Chapter Five
When she woke up in the morning, she had no sense of what time it was. And that was weird. More than a little weird. She was
also warm. And comfortable. She didn’t have a single ache on her body, and she wasn’t contorted into a strange shape. Quite
the contrary, she was sprawled out in the center of a king-size bed.
She jerked awake, tangled in all the bedclothes. And then she remembered.
Daughtry.
The King family. They had brought her in. They’d fed her. He’d let her sleep in his bed.
He had an amazing chest.
He had a drawer full of condoms.
Some of that information wasn’t useful, so she set about deleting it from her brain. She had overslept. For sure. There was
no way he was still around.
She slipped out from beneath the covers and realized that she was going to have to get her clothes out of the dryer. Cautiously,
she opened up the bedroom door, and crept out into the hall.
She smelled bacon. She moved slowly down the hall, making her way toward the kitchen. And there he was. Standing with his back to her at the stove. He was wearing a black T-shirt that stretched tight over his muscles, and a pair of dark denim jeans that cupped his ass like a pair of hands. His feet were bare. Something about that made her heart stutter.
“Morning,” he said.
He reached out to his left and picked up the mug. He didn’t turn to face her as she assumed he took a sip of the coffee.
“You’re still here,” she said.
“Yeah. I figured I’d give my shift a miss today. Got it covered.”
“Why?”
“I thought it was more important to spend some time showing you around. I didn’t want to turn you loose with my family just
yet.”
“But you could.”
“It’s true. I could. I want to have a realistic talk with you.”
“Can I have bacon first?”
Then he did turn, and her heart jumped hard against the front of her breastbone. He was the kind of stunning men never were.
Not to her. That sculpted jaw, covered in dark stubble, the strong column of his throat. His broad shoulders. His thick, muscular
arms and well-defined forearms.
And he was just... a human man. Standing in the kitchen, making breakfast. He wasn’t a superhero off saving the world.
And when he wasn’t in his police uniform, she couldn’t feel like he was an adversary. Well. She imagined she could if she
tried really hard. She reached down deep and searched for a bit of resentment she might be able to pull up.
But she didn’t want to find any, actually.
On the stove there was a plate of bacon, and a heap of scrambled eggs in a pan. There were biscuits. Hash browns. And pancakes.
And she was starving.
“I haven’t seen this much food since... Well, since last night. But before that, it was a long damned time.”
“Eat,” he said. “Because you’re not going to be able to get any work done as long as you’re that bony.”
She scowled.
“Don’t body-shame me,” she said, moving forward and grabbing hold of the piece of the bacon and taking a bite off the crisp
end. She could’ve cried. Except she was Bix Carpenter, and she didn’t cry.
“I’m not body-shaming you. It’s obvious that you want to have a bit more meat on your bones than you do. Are you going to tell me you got this
thin on purpose?”
“No,” she said. “But I don’t see the point whining about it. Sometimes in life you have extra food. And sometimes you don’t
have any. There’s no point feeling sorry for yourself over it. I don’t care if I’m skinny. I can still do things when I need
to do them. I can still work for you. And now, I got a lot of fuel available to me. So, I’ll do my best to top up now.”
“All right. I’ve heard a lot of philosophy from you. Why don’t you fill your plate and have a seat at the table, and we’ll
have a discussion about how this is going to work.”
He handed her a plate, and she started piling the food high.
“Coffee?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Never developed a taste for it.”
“Orange juice?”
“Please.” Her tongue went tight, her mouth watering as she anticipated the sour juice. Having choices like this was...
amazing. But she didn’t want him to know just how grateful she was.
She sat down at the table, and he gave her a big glass of juice. Then he sat down across from her.
“All right. Give it to me straight. All your information, so that I can get you put on payroll.”
“Bix Carpenter,” she said.
“It’s really not short for anything?”
“I think it’s short for neither of my parents gave a shit.”
“Right. And where do you come from?”
“Idaho originally. But we’ve been all over. Mostly western Idaho and eastern Oregon. But a bit up into Washington. Sometimes
down to California.”
“What do your parents do?”
“Not a damned clue what my mom does, since I haven’t seen her in about twelve years. As for my dad, I think he makes license
plates.”
“He’s in prison?”
She rested her forearms on the table and looked at him full on. “That was the joke, Sheriff.”
“And what was it you all did?”
“We made moonshine. That’s what we did.” She didn’t see much point holding it back now. That was the thing. He was going to
find out.
“Right. That it?”
“Yes. My brother, my dad, they got into some heavier stuff. There were drugs sometimes. But I never had anything to do with
that. We were always together. Sometimes we tried our hand at splitting up for a little bit, because it was easier. But we
usually drifted back.”
“How old are you?”
She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It does.”
She sighed. “I’m twenty-three,” she said.
“Why did you tell me you were older?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I wanted you to believe that maybe I had more of a life. Like maybe I had somebody looking out
for me. The truth is, I don’t. The truth is my dad, and my brother were the only two people that really had any involvement
in my day-to-day life. And now they’re in prison. For a while.”
“Because of the drug running.”
“Yep. I knew it was bad news. I did. I told them that. But they didn’t listen to me. My dad doesn’t... He likes to think
around the system. He doesn’t believe in limitations. He believes that society is stacked against people like us.”
“And what are people like you?” he asked.
She suddenly had the feeling that she was in an interrogation room. Damn that man—he’d softened her up. She almost had to
admire it, because he was good.
It was just like being down at the station. It was just that he’d fed her. And there was a beautiful view of the mountains outside, rather than it being one-way glass with more cops staring at her from a hidden vantage point.
“Just... We’re poor. Okay? Uneducated, white trash. It is what it is. We were homeschooled because my dad didn’t want the
school system to indoctrinate us.” She frowned. She said that, and she knew it was a lie. It was what her dad had always said.
“I mean, he probably homeschooled us because he didn’t want teachers asking about what was going on at home.” She tried to
imagine her and her brother, dirty and skinny as they sometimes were, going into a classroom where a teacher might have blown
the whistle on them.
“Also, my dad would’ve had to enroll us in school, and that would’ve required him to give them the address and...”
“He doesn’t like being in the system.”
She nodded. “Hell, it’s kind of a miracle I’m in the system at all. That my mom got him to let her give birth in the hospital,
let me get a birth certificate. I’m probably lucky I have documentation at all. I think as things progressed, as his views
changed, he would’ve avoided that.”
“Right. So, no school. And what did you do all day?”
“We worked. Helped with chores and with batching the moonshine. He had a pretty big operation back in those days. He had a place to stay. The property. He didn’t end up keeping it. We got raided by the Feds at one point.”
“That must’ve been difficult.”
She shrugged. “If there’s one thing I learned from my dad that I really do believe, it’s that there’s no use wallowing in
the hard times.”
“Right. Well. Now that I know little bit about your background, tell me what you want to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“How long do you think you want to work here?”
“You said it would probably take me about a week to earn the money for my starter.”
“And then what are you moving on to?”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
“I’m serious. Do you have opportunities elsewhere?”
“I have the opportunities that I always have. I like to make my own way. I don’t want to be dependent on anybody.”
“But what if you stayed here for a while? Worked here for a while?”
“I’ll tell you what, Sheriff,” she said, ignoring the strange tug in her chest. “Why don’t you at least see how I work before
you go offering pity labor.”
“Bix, none of this is out of pity. You told me that you had a hard time finding work, and I have work.”
“Yeah. Well. Like I said, maybe you should wait and see what you think after you actually see my work, and after you see my
rap sheet.”
She got up and put more bacon on her plate, ate it until she felt full. And then she wanted to cry. But she wouldn’t.
“I have another question for you,” he said.
“What’s that, Sheriff?”
“I can outfit a place for you. But especially if you’re only staying short-term, I wonder if it makes more sense for me to
get a bed to put in here.”
“You want me to stay here ?”
“It’s up to you.”
She squinted. “Let me think about it.”
“All right.”
She had a feeling that he took way longer to leave the house because of her. After she finished eating, she went and got clothes
out of the dryer.
“Do you have stuff in your van that you need to get?”
She thought of her few cherished personal items.
“Yeah. There are some things I might like.”
“After we work a bit, do you want me to drive you over there to get some things?”
“Yep. If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t.”
It made her want to yell at him. To push at him a little bit. Because why was he doing all this for her? She understood. At
least, she understood the reason that he’d given. But it just felt weird. She wasn’t used to it. Her dad, her brother, they
wouldn’t have treated her this nicely. They never had.
She just had to remember what she’d told Daughtry not a few minutes ago. Sometimes in your life you had a lot of something. Sometimes you had a little. Right now, this was happening, and there was food. A warm, safe place to sleep where she didn’t feel like she had to jump up bright and early, as soon as she’d gotten the bare minimum of rest, and get back on the defensive.
So, she was going to take it. Not ask too many questions. And not get too attached.
That was her best bet.