Chapter 4
Chapter four
Lou
I wake up all at once, bolting up in bed, nausea rolling through my body.
It was a nightmare, and one I’ve had before, but the image of flames licking up a gingham curtain is clear as day.
My hair clings to my sweaty face, and I push it back while my temple throbs with each beat of my panicky heart.
Where am I?
A small camper—but whose? Not Milo’s. His RV is the long kind with extendable walls and a driver’s seat in the front. This camper is a third of the size, the type that needs to be towed behind a vehicle.
There are trees out the windows, but nothing else. No landmarks. I could be anywhere. I’m still wearing my skulls and roses dress, and the hard shape of my knife is still in the pocket, so I’m probably not about to become the star victim of a true crime podcast.
Then again, everything in the camper is a pastel blue or yellow, so I’m not ruling out a serial killer yet.
Summer sunlight is streaming in, turning this tin box into an oven, and I fist the blankets to shove them off. Gina’s mom’s quilt? That was on the new bed in my apartment yesterday. Does that mean Clay left me here? Is the camper his?
“Hello?”
There’s no response. I’m alone. So yeah, it looks like he dropped my drunk ass into this bed and left.
Okay, whatever the hell is going on, if I don’t get some fresh air, all those rum and Cokes will be coming back up.
“Fuck me,” I mutter as I push to my feet. Either the camper wobbles as I move from window to window, opening them all, or I’m in worse shape than I imagined.
Windows open, I drop onto the bed.
There’s a bottle of water on the counter of the kitchenette. It’s heavily beaded in condensation, as if it had come out of the freezer last night, and is sitting on a neatly folded hand towel.
I snatch the bottle up, holding it to my neck with a sigh. That’s better.
Now that I’m not cooking and my nightmare has faded, I take in my surroundings.
Double bed. Kitchenette. A small table with booth seating on either side at the other end. And a single box sitting on top of it, next to my handbag.
The camper has been lovingly restored, but the pastel curtains and bedding don’t fit Clay’s rich douche aesthetic. He should be all charcoal grays and alabaster whites, with a focus on bland minimalism.
No, that’s not quite right. He’d be into rich browns and leather with sapphire blue accents. Just different enough so he can feel superior to the other rich douches.
I crack open the bottle and take a long drink of water, then take the three steps across the camper to investigate the box.
One pair of old skinny indigo jeans. One cropped red bustier top. One black lace thong. One pair of red rimmed sunglasses.
Are you fucking kidding me? He went through all my clothes and chose an outfit for me? That asshole.
There’s also a note on the table, next to two keys—one likely for the camper, the other probably for my bar—and another bottle of water.
1:30
That’s it. All it says. Is he summoning me?
Well, he’s getting an early surprise.
The sink won’t turn on, so I strip out of the dress, pour water onto the hand towel, and clean myself as best I can. I put on the clothes he picked out for me, but only because my dress is damp with sweat.
Since I’m currently at war, I sit at the little table and carefully apply my makeup and do my hair.
By the time I’m done, I feel less hungover and far more righteous. I step outside and take a good look around.
The camper is an old Shasta, a vintage toaster-looking style with robin’s egg blue on the bottom and a white top. It’s parked without a vehicle in sight in a small clearing with freshly cut grass, and through the birdsong in the trees, a truck rumbles by on the highway.
I’m in the seldom-used overflow parking behind Gallo’s.
The grass is still cool underfoot, and I slide the sunglasses on as I carry my heels to the dirt track—it’s too overgrown to call it a road—where I slip them on.
Gallo’s comes into view after less than a minute’s walk under the green tunnel of arching tree branches.
I step around the metal swing gate with the private property sign, meant to keep people from wandering down to the old house at the end of the driveway, and into the hot summer sun.
I let myself in, and this time I walk down the blessedly cool hall quietly, no angry heel clacks to announce my arrival.
And no slap of flesh on flesh coming from my office. Doesn’t mean Clay doesn’t have Gina’s mom upstairs in my apartment after the two of them were getting cozy at the reception last night, but at least that bed isn’t mine. Therefore, I don’t care.
I walk straight into the bar, drop my handbag and sunglasses on the counter, and set to work making myself a Bloody Mary. And while I do it, I put my bar back to rights, swapping the bottles of booze until they’re where they always go, moving the glassware until it’s where I like it.
The beer fridge is all out of order, too. Not that I feel like getting on my knees with this hangover. But I am hungry, so I wander into the kitchen.
I’m in luck—there’s a chicken salad sandwich in the fridge. A quick inspection and a sniff reveal it's only a day or two old, so I take it back to the bar, pull down one of the barstools, and dig in.
“Enjoying my sandwich?” Clay asks dryly as he walks in.
I spare him a glance. He’s wearing a white button-up with the top two buttons undone, and dark gray trousers. There’s some shine to his black shoes and the black belt, but this is a dive bar, not a Michelin-starred restaurant, and we don’t open for hours. Why is he dressed like that?
I swallow my bite of sandwich, dabbing at the corner of my lips with a paper napkin. “Did Mariah make this?” The adobo mayonnaise gives it away.
“Yes. The night before last. She’s convinced I can’t feed myself.”
I scoff. “Are you living off the charity of the women of Havenwood?” I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he was. Enough men do, and he’s better looking than most.
Clay points to the chalk menu above the bar as I take another bite.
I glance up and nearly choke. “You changed the menu?” I ask around a mouthful of chicken salad. The usual bar fare is up—wings, burgers, various fried foods—but so is a variety of sandwiches and a salad of the day.
“Your cousin neglected to mention that he fired the cook. Mariah was willing to step in, provided I also hire her son to help her on busy nights, and if I gave her control of the menu.”
I automatically open my mouth to protest, but that’s actually a good change. Mariah’s a phenomenal cook, and her son has been struggling since dropping out of college.
Our old cook, Jared, could work the deep fryer, but that was about the extent of his skill. And he and Travis were forever fighting, which was annoying. Also, he only ever spoke to my boobs.
“If Mariah chooses to make me a sandwich,” Clay continues, “she’s doing it on the clock with food from Gallo’s kitchen. It’s not charity.” He steps behind the bar, frowning as he notices the bottles I’ve moved.
I can’t exactly complain that he’s dipping into the stock with my empty Bloody Mary glass right there. So I brush the crumbs from my fingers and stand up to lean over the bar. All the better to display the tops of my boobs in the top he chose for me. “So, are we going to talk about it?”
He pries his gaze from the bottles to look at me, a grimace on his face that he barely manages to hide by scrubbing a hand over his mouth. “Must we?”
“Yes, we must. For one, how dare you?”
His eyes fly open. “You kissed me.”
I’m about to lay into him for going through my clothes, but that stops me short. I kissed him? “Excuse me?”
“It was unfortunate. It happened. It was unremarkable. We don’t need to talk about it. In fact, as business partners, I insist we don’t.”
I narrow my eyes at him, but I can’t tell if he’s fucking with me. “Why would I kiss you?”
He moves to stand on the other side of the bar from me, leaning forward until mere inches separate us, his honey eyes cold. “You tell me.”
My mouth opens, but standing this close to him, I remember. Heat rushes over my face. I thought he was Milo.
My plans to crash with Gina were short-lived when I found out she was living with a husband I knew nothing about.
With Milo’s RV occupied by a woman with a cat, and all the cabins at Happy Lake booked, and Milo refusing to get us a room at Aurora Luxury Resort, I’d been unwilling to sleep in his tent.
I was ready to fight Clay over my apartment, but he’d disappeared, which left my car or Milo’s tent as my only options.
Neither ideal, but at least Milo’s tent would come with a few orgasms, so I’d changed my mind and ran after Milo.
That fucking kiss scrambled my drunk brain, even before I realized it was Clay, not Milo, I’d thrown myself at.
“Guess it was forgettable,” I say evenly, hoping my blush looks like an angry one. “What I wanted to talk about is you choosing my clothes and summoning me to my bar with nothing more than a time written on a scrap of paper.”
His eyebrows lift ever so slowly. “You picked out those clothes last night. You were very insistent on finding your third favorite thong—you waved it in front of my face, in fact, after dumping an entire box of them on my bed. And you took the quilt.” He leans back, his palms landing on the bar with a light slap.
“But I did summon you with a scrap of paper”—he tilts his head, flashing me a smirk, and I want to dump the dregs of my Bloody Mary over his smug face—“after you told me to write the time down so you wouldn’t forget. ”
Shit. That’s coming back to me, too—especially the thong part. I think I made a mess to annoy him. But I’m not ready to let go of my anger yet. “You left me in that caravan. I didn’t know where I was when I woke up.”
He shrugs. “You got me there.”
“Not a safe place to leave a drunk woman.”