Chapter 13
13
Kit
“ I ’m taking an Uber,” I said, for the millionth time. The sun was setting. Tess had a sunburn across her nose, and I was ready to go home. I’d earned my five grand. Though, truthfully, I’d had a good time.
Tess was good company. The hockey players were excellent eye candy. And the strawberry shortcake was the stuff memories were made of.
And Liam had been Liam. Part happy puppy, part devastating sex symbol. He was flirty and fun and too appealing for my own good.
“You’re not taking an Uber,” Liam said. “It’s ridiculous. We’re leaving now too. I’ll give you a ride.”
We stood outside Harrison’s house where, behind us, the party was kicking into another gear. There was dancing going on in there. Once upon a time I loved dancing.
I imagined going back in there and dancing with Liam. The way his arms would come around my shoulders. Our hips would brush, first accidentally, and then on purpose, the way they did in Nashville all those years ago. When everything had been…perfect. For a moment.
“No,” I said and stepped past him, heading down the sloped driveway to where the Uber had dropped me off. What was with these guys and the mile long driveways straight uphill?
“Yeah, Kit!” Tess said. “Come with us.”
Liam and I turned to look at the girl, wrapped in a towel. Hair sticking up all over the place. The sunburn across her nose. Her eyes were drooping behind her glasses. She looked pooped.
“For the kid, Kit,” Liam said with that crooked shit-eating grin on his face. “Let me give you a ride so she can fall asleep in the back seat of the car the way she wants.”
I growled in my throat. “You fight dirty,” I said to Liam, stomping up past him towards his ridiculous truck parked beside the rest of the ridiculous cars in the parking pad in front of the house.
I put my arm around Tess’s shoulders and listened to Liam whistle and toss his keys in the air like everything was just going that guy’s way.
But that’s how he lived his life. Under a cloud of absolute good fortune. Me and my dad were probably the only bad luck the guy ever had.
Except, I remembered then about his mom dying. That solemn press conference with his brother asking for privacy. Wyatt sitting there with dry, hard eyes and Liam looking like he’d been put through the ringer.
“Come on, kid,” Liam said, opening the back door so Tess could climb in. He buckled her in her booster seat. He grinned at her, and to my shock, she reached up and patted his shoulder.
“That was fun,” she said. “You did good.”
“More fun than the aquarium?” he asked her and she nodded. “What about the circus?”
“That was a weird circus,” she said.
He nodded vigorously. “You’re right, that was a weird circus.”
“This was the best of all,” she whispered.
Liam Locke nearly started to cry. His neck got all blotchy and he blinked a bunch of times.
I had to look away or I’d start crying.
“I’m glad you had fun,” he said to her. “Harrison said we could go back anytime.”
She yawned right in his face and he shut the door, smiling.
I climbed into the passenger seat while he walked around the front of the truck to the driver’s side. The moonlight turned his blonde hair silvery and edged his white shirt with a glow that he didn’t need.
He was pretty enough.
I glanced behind my seat at Tess who was already asleep, head back, mouth open.
Liam got into the truck like a lumbering bear, singing under his breath and jangling his keys.
“Shhh,” I whispered and nodded my head to the seat behind me.
“Holy shit,” he whispered. “That was fast.”
“Kids,” I said and he laughed like he understood. He put the keys in the ignition and glanced over at me. “Where am I taking you?”
I gave him the address, which he clearly didn’t know. I guess he’d never been in my neighborhood. “I’ll tell you as we go,” I said and he nodded.
He started the truck, and despite the rear camera, he put his hand on the back of my seat, filling my space with the scent of him. Sunscreen and chlorine and sunshine. A normal summer smell that on him was somehow extraordinary.
This guy move - the hand on the seat, looking over his shoulder to back up- there was something sexy about it. A hot thing guys did that they probably didn’t even realize was hot. Was it the competence, I wondered? The sharp turn of the neck, the tension in the forearm making all those veins pop.
It was attractive when middle-aged accountants did it. When Liam Locke did it, it was deadly.
“What?” he said, smiling at me as his eyes cut to me and then back to the driveway.
“Nothing.” I said as he backed up the whole way.
Show off.
He put the car in drive and headed down the ridge.
“So,” he said. “I have a proposition…”
“Nope,” I said.
“You don’t want to hear it?”
“I think I know where you’re going.”
“I need a nanny.”
“You totally need a nanny. Turn left here,” I said when we got to the bottom of the ridge.
“You’re really good with her,” Liam said.
“Thanks,” I said. “But I’m not a nanny. I have many other jobs, remember?”
“So quit.”
It ticked me off how easily he said it. Nothing had been easy in the past five years since everything went down. Jaw tight, I kept my eyes focused on the road. “You know I can’t.”
“I don’t think I like you working at the End Zone anyway. That place is always going to be filled with drunk guys staring at your ass in those barely there shorts.”
I snorted. “You should know, you were one of them. Look, Liam, you don’t get to dictate the terms of how I pay you back. You just get to take what I pay you.”
“Fine. I’ll cancel the debt.”
His face was lit up in red lights from passing cars. He glanced over at me, our eyes meeting in a way that made me breathless.
“Turn right here,” I said, directing him onto the road that would bypass downtown to the neighborhood where I lived.
“Debt free in two weeks,” he teased.
“Right again at the light,” I said and we pulled down Congress Street. I was painfully aware of the boarded-up buildings and the addicts gathering in the shadows between the street lights. But Liam kept his mouth shut and turned left when I told him.
“Here,” I said and he pulled to the curb in front of Ms. Rene’s house. The lights were on and I could see her silhouette through the curtain on the front windows.
“Nice garden,” he said, leaning down so he could look through my window.
“My landlady has a green thumb,” I said. I reached for the handle and he stopped me with a touch on my shoulder. His hand was so big he covered me from my collarbone to my shoulder blade. It made me feel small. Warm.
“Kit, why isn’t this an automatic yes?” he asked in a low voice. His breath feathered my cheek and I reached up to tuck my hair behind my ear.
“Paying you back isn’t really what it’s about,” I said. I wasn’t looking at him, which was the only reason the words came out. That and his warm hand on my shoulder. It had been five years since anyone had touched me with kindness. It had been since him. And he was pulling me apart.
“I get it. You felt guilty. You wanted to make things right. I’m telling you, you do this for me and we’re square. You could get your life back.”
My life back.
That’s what this entire journey had been about. Once I knew what my father was, once I watched him get sentenced, I felt like I should have been sent to prison with him.
To pay for my crimes too.
The crime of not asking more questions. Why was there so much cash? Who were these black-suited guys who showed up in the middle of the night? Why couldn’t I go to college?
I’d should have asked about the gifts. The clothes and jewelry. Cars and a fancy boarding school education. I’d taken all of it for granted. When none of it was earned. Everything I had was stolen from someone else.
Once he was sentenced, I sold everything we had, paid off the lawyers, and took the remaining amount to the list of victims my dad had accumulated over the years.
Dillon Le Coeur had been the first on the list. Liam Locke was the last.
Five years of my own personal purgatory and now Liam was offering me an end to it.
“If I did this, what are the rules?”
“Rules?” he asked.
“Do I…live with you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
I took a deep breath. “That won’t work.”
“Okay then. You don’t. We can figure it out.” His fingers shifted on my skin, sending goosebumps across my arms. I shrugged away from him.
“I should go in,” I said. “Before my land lady sees this truck and gets...” I was going to say her gun, but it was too late. The front door opened and Ms. Rene, with her hair in rollers and her late husband’s shotgun in her arms, stood in the doorway.
“Is that a gun?” Liam asked.
“Yes. And it’s loaded.” I opened the door and waved at her. “It’s me, Ms. Rene. I’ll be in, in a second.”
“You got that hockey player in there?” she shouted back and Liam laughed.
“This isn’t funny,” I muttered.
“Come on,” Liam said and turned off the truck. “It’s a little funny. I’ll walk you to your door.”
I glared at him and he winked at me. He checked that Tess was still asleep and climbed out of the truck. I had no choice but to follow.
“You can put that gun down,” Liam said as he walked up the sidewalk. He was all swagger and bonhomie. Ms. Rene didn’t even pretend not to check him out head to foot.
“Jeez Louise, you’re a big one,” Ms. Rene said as she touched the bottom of one of those curls in a move so practiced I had to laugh. “I’m Ms. Rene,” she said, holding out her hand like she was Scarlett O’Hara. Liam, to his credit, took it between both of his hands and squeezed it. No kiss, which from Ms. Rene’s face, was a bit of a disappointment.
“Thanks for bringing Kit home safe and sound,” Ms. Rene said. “She keeps taking the bus at night. I tell her one of these days her luck will run out and I’m going to have to shoot someone.”
Liam laughed. “Well, it was my pleasure. The last thing this world needs is you shooting anyone.”
“I don’t know,” Ms. Rene said. “Seems like some people need shooting.”
“Okay,” I said, stepping up onto the small porch. “Thanks for the ride.”
“What about my offer?” Liam asked.
“Offer?” Ms. Rene asked, all ears.
“I’ve offered Kit a job for a few weeks.”
“Oh, she’s got enough of those already.”
The problem here was I couldn’t shove Ms. Rene inside the house and slam the door in Liam’s face.
Liam looked at me. “How many more?” he asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said at the same time Ms. Rene said, “three.”
“It’s not three,” I muttered. “It’s like two and a half.”
“You’ve got that bar job. Terrible place,” Ms. Rene said. “Have you seen those uniforms?”
“They’re the worst,” Liam agreed. “You’ve got kids’ parties. I know about that. What’s the third job?”
“She helps balance check books down at the senior center,” Ms. Rene said.
“No one pays me for that,” I said. “Can we stop this now?” I asked, painfully aware that Liam was staring holes into the side of my face.
“Well, I’ve offered her a job that would allow her to stop working all those jobs,” Liam said.
“You have?” Ms. Rene’s face lit up and then fell, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “It isn’t indecent, is it? I saw that movie, you know. And she never should have said yes to that million dollars. Messed up her whole life.”
“It’s not indecent,” Liam said with absolute sincerity. “It’s the opposite. She should take it.”
“You should go,” I said. I pushed at his shoulder, a little nudge that was completely ineffectual. My hand looked tiny against his body.
“Okay,” he said. “But I’ll be in touch.” He lifted his hand and shot us that good boy/bad man grin of his and trotted down between the flower beds back to the truck.
“Honey,” Ms. Rene said.
“Don’t say it,” I said.
“I’ve got to say it,” she said and put an arm around my shoulders. “That man is fine with a capital F.”
I laughed. “I don’t think people say fine anymore.”
“I say fine . Only in this case it’s probably not enough. What’s this job opportunity?”
“He wants me to be a nanny. He’s helping a friend out by watching her daughter, but he’s in over his head.”
We stepped inside the house and Ms. Rene began the process of locking us up tight.
“Well, that sounds like a perfectly good job. What’s the problem?”
Of course she was right. That job meant the start of the next chapter of my life. All debts paid. All wrongs as right as I could make them.
But what would it cost me?
“Nothing,” I said and gave her a big smile that I didn’t really feel.