Chapter 5 #3
Another half hour passed. By this time, he was steaming.
He knew for a fact that Miles had packed up and left for a three-day trip to New Orleans to play.
Erica and her grandmother had had a fight and Erica was sulking in her room because Dora had refused to grovel for forgetting their lunch date.
Even Joshua and Tilly had finished up for the night and gone home.
But Casey was still on the job. Something about that just didn’t sit right with him, and his patience was gone.
He grabbed his hat on the way out the door. In a shorter time than one might have imagined, he had parked outside the Ruban Building and was on his way inside. A guard stopped him at the door.
“Sorry sir, but the offices are closed for the night.”
Ryder shocked himself by announcing, “I’m here to pick up my wife.”
“And who might that be?” the guard asked.
“Her name is—was—Casey Ruban.”
The man took a quick step back, eyeing Ryder with new attention.
“You’d be the fellow Miss Ruban married.”
Ryder nodded.
“Well, now, I might need to see some identification…just for the first time, you understand.”
Ryder opened his wallet.
“Justice…yep, that would be you, all right,” the guard said. “We heard Miss Ruban had married a man named Justice.” He reached for the phone. “Just a minute, sir, and I’ll let her know you’re here.”
“No,” Ryder said, and then softened the tone of his voice with a halfhearted grin. “I was sort of planning to surprise her.”
The guard smiled. “Yes, sir. I understand. Take the elevator to the top floor. Her office is the first one on your right.”
“Thanks,” Ryder said.
“You’re welcome, sir,” the guard said. “And congratulations on your marriage. Miss Ruban is a fine lady.”
Ryder nodded. Even though she was a little hardheaded, he was beginning to have the same opinion of her himself.
By the time he got to her office, his sense of injustice was in high form. He walked inside and past the empty secretary’s desk without pausing; his gaze fixed on the thin line of light showing from beneath the door on the far side of the room.
* * *
Casey’s head hurt, her shoulders ached, and she was so far past hungry it didn’t count. What was worse, she didn’t even know it. Realization of her condition came only after the door to her office swung open and Ryder stalked into the room.
Startled, she stood too swiftly. The room began to tilt.
Ryder saw her sway and grabbed her arm before she staggered.
All she could think to say was, “What are you doing here?” before he took the pen from her hand, and turned out the desk lamp.
“I came to take you home. Your day is over. It’s night. It’s time to rest. It’s time to slow the hell down. Do you understand me?”
He was mad. That was what surprised her most. Why should he be angry? It took a bit to realize that he wasn’t angry at her. He was angry on her behalf. At that point, lack of food and exhaustion kicked in. Damn him, he wasn’t supposed to be nice…at least, not like this.
She shrugged out of his grasp and reached for her purse. “I don’t need you telling me what to do.”
He stood between her and the doorway and once again, Casey caught a glimpse of the same man who’d come out of the shadows of Sonny’s Place and taken a dare no other man had had the guts to take.
“Then consider it a suggestion,” he said quietly, and reached for her arm.
This time she didn’t pull away. They walked all the way to the elevator without talking, then past the night guard who grinned and winked. Silence was maintained all the way out to the car. It was only after Casey felt the seat at the back of her legs that she began to relax.
Ryder slid behind the wheel, then looked at her. It didn’t take him long to make the decision. “Buckle up. You choose, but you’re not going home until you eat.”
Casey wrinkled her nose. “The car smells like French fries.”
“Dora spilled a few. I’ll clean it out tomorrow.”
It took Casey a moment for the answer to connect. Dora? French fries? In the car? She turned where she sat, staring at Ryder in sudden confusion.
“Who’s Dora?”
“You are bad off,” he said, as he put the car in gear and backed out of the parking space. “She’s your grandmother, isn’t she?”
“You called her Dora?”
He shrugged as he pulled into traffic. “Said she didn’t want me calling her ma’am.”
“Why was Dora…I mean Gran…eating French fries in the car?”
“Because they went with her cheeseburger and cherry limeade.”
Casey’s mouth dropped. “She ate fast food?”
He grinned. “Ate it real fast, too. Never saw a woman so hungry.”
Casey still didn’t believe she was getting the story straight. “She ate her meal in the back seat of a car?”
Ryder gave her a sidelong glance. “Are you still faint?”
She covered her face with her hands and groaned. “My God, why did you take Gran to a fast-food restaurant?”
“Because she was hungry, that’s why.”
“But…”
He took the corner in a delicate skid, the likes of which the Lincoln had never seen. “You know what?”
Casey clutched at her seat belt, almost afraid to ask. “What?”
“You people are too uptight. You need to loosen up a little. If you did, you might find out you-like it. Better yet, you might even live long enough to spend all that money you’re so dead set on making.”
There wasn’t a civil thought in her head as Ryder turned off the highway and into another parking lot.
But when he opened the door to help her out, the odor of charbroiled meat made her forget her anger.
A few moments later, she realized where he’d brought her, and if she hadn’t been so hungry, she would have laughed.
As he led her in the restaurant, she would have been willing to bet the last dollar she had in her pocket that, by tomorrow, it would be all over Ruban Crossing that Eudora Deathridge had eaten French fries in the back seat of a car.
What was going to ice this piece of gossip was the fact that Casey and her honky-tonk husband had also shared a late-night dinner at Smoky Joe’s.
As restaurants go, it wasn’t bad. It was Smoky Joe’s sideline that gave him, and his restaurant, such a bad reputation.
Casey lifted her chin as they walked inside. She could tell by the sounds coming from the back room that the floor show was in full swing.
“Wonder what’s going on back there?” Ryder asked, as he guided Casey to an empty booth.
“Mud wrestling,” she said. One eyebrow arched as she waited for his reaction.
His interest sparked, he had to ask. “Women or ’gators?”
“Women,” she replied.
She watched as the light in his eyes faded. She sighed. She should have known it would take more than naked women in a hot tub’s worth of red clay to get him excited.
“I think he saves the ’gators for Saturday nights.”
He handed her a menu. “Good. It’ll give us a reason to come back.”