Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
Clay
I make it five steps into Gallo’s back lot, clutching the package in hand, before I stop.
Sweat beads down my neck, heat baking my black T-shirt. It’s nearly noon, and the day promises to be a scorcher. Why the hell did I put on jeans?
I glance down at the package. I can’t wear these stupid jeans again—especially not bringing this to Louisa. Will she remember the only time I’ve worn these since she blew back into the bar two weeks ago was the day I went down on her? Probably not, but I can’t take the chance.
Muttering a curse, I turn and stride to the side door. I locked it, so it takes me a moment to fish the keys out of my pocket.
It’s even hotter upstairs in the apartment. I toss the jeans on the bed, slip into my usual tailored pants, and ditch the T-shirt in favor of a white one. It’s too hot for a dress shirt, and anyway, Louisa stares at my forearms often enough. I might as well give her more to drool over.
Not that I’m dressing for her.
Fuck. I am dressing for her. Maybe I should put the first outfit back on.
No. Christ, I need to get a grip.
I grab the box, lock the doors behind me, and walk back out into the sun.
This time, I make it across the empty back lot to the start of the old road before panic sets in and I turn around. I don’t need to act as a deliveryman. Louisa will walk into the bar at some point today. I can give her the package then.
She’s probably out looking for her ex again. At least, that’s what I assumed she was doing yesterday. She didn’t return until late afternoon, by which time I’d wasted two sweaty hours pushing a lawnmower around the meadow, wondering if she’d found him and what happened next.
I didn’t ask last night at work. She didn’t volunteer any information.
I stop before I reach the door.
This is ridiculous. I’m not afraid of her, so I turn again and force myself to walk back in the direction of the camper.
All I’m doing is delivering a simple package addressed to her.
My name isn’t on it anywhere—she can’t prove I bought these for her.
And anyway, what’s the worst that can happen?
A repeat of the last time I stepped foot inside the camper?
That’s no hardship. I wouldn’t mind getting my mouth on her again.
I stop dead in my tracks at the edge of the clearing—Louisa is sunbathing.
She’s lying on a blanket near the camper in a red and white polka dot bikini, looking like a summer dream. Her dark hair is twisted up, her hands tucked under her head. With the dark glasses hiding her eyes, I can’t tell if she’s awake or asleep.
Shit. I’m fooling myself. The worst that can happen? She rejects this little gift.
No, not the gift. Me.
The sudden vulnerability leaves a sour taste in my mouth, a full-body revulsion that makes me shudder, the sweat on the back of my neck going cold.
I should leave the state. Get as far away from her as I can. There’s no need to lie low anymore. No one is looking for me or the money—if they were, they’d have found me by now. I can leave anytime.
A shimmer of sweat clings to her skin, and her chest rises and falls with each relaxed breath.
Twenty thousand. I’ll launder twenty thousand and leave before the end of September.
Maybe thirty thousand by the end of October because she looks so fucking good in that damn bikini.
Stop bargaining with yourself and give her the fucking package before she notices you lurking like a creep.
I square my shoulders and stroll across the short grass.
She’s awake. She props herself up on her elbows as I approach, drawing one knee up.
Christ, the way she arches her back. I want to make it bow like that again.
“Tanning?” I ask, stopping as I reach the edge of her blanket.
“It’s not working. You’re still the pallid shade of a corpse.
” And all that smooth skin is glistening in the sun, very much alive and enticing.
I want to feel the heat radiating off her body as I kiss my way along the graceful line of her collarbone.
She smiles. She’s wearing that red lipstick. She’s seldom without it. Only when she’s in the sauna—and presumably when she sleeps at night—does she take it off. “Getting my vitamin D.”
I have to tilt my face up to the sky so she can’t see exactly how close I am to offering myself up in a rather crude innuendo. “You’re going to burn.”
“My sunscreen is vampire-grade.”
Before I can suggest helping her with a reapplication, I remember the package in my hand. “This came for you,” I say, abandoning the sky to set the box on the blanket.
Louisa sits up and reaches for it, frowning with puzzlement.
“And you need this,” I pull the new phone from my pocket, along with a charger, hating the little flutter of anxiety behind my sternum. “I took the liberty of putting my number in. Do not abuse it.”
Her frown deepens as she abandons the box for the items I thrust her way. “You bought me a phone?”
“No, Gallo’s bought you a phone.” A critical distinction. “It’s a business expense. And for your safety.”
“Thank you.” She smiles up at me with that pretty mouth, and there’s a genuine warmth in it that I’m not expecting. The heat of it tingles across my cheeks.
I nod, and with nothing in my hands and no idea what to do with them, I stick them in my pockets.
The smile on her face grows as I continue to stand there, staring at her like I’ve never seen a woman in a bikini before.
Say something, and leave. It shouldn’t be this difficult.
“I’ll see you around.” The cringe comes before I can turn my back on her. I’ll see you around? I see her every goddamn night.
I don’t flee from the clearing, but my stride eats up the distance to safety. I don’t slow down until I reach the back lot of Gallo’s—and then I freeze.
Travis is leaning against the building, in the shade near the side door, vape in hand.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I demand as I walk by on my way to the door.
“Nice to see you, too,” Travis says with a good-ole-country-boy grin. He’s dressed nicer than he was the last time I saw him, but not in anything worth mentioning. “I’m here to see Lou,” he says when I don’t respond.
I yank the door open and glare at him. “Do you think she wants to see you after you sold her bar out from under her?”
Travis has the nerve to laugh. “From what I hear, she’s still got half the bar.”
Against my better judgment, I motion for him to step inside. He pushes off the wall, pockets his vape, and steps in. “What do you want from her?” I ask, following him to the bar.
“I need a place to stay,” he says bluntly as he walks around the bar and helps himself to a beer.
“So look for some place to rent, preferably far from Havenwood.”
Travis takes a long drink, makes the relieved noise of the parched, and sets the bottle down. “Can’t afford it.”
For a second, I’m convinced I didn’t hear him correctly. Given what I paid him for the bar, surely he can afford rent. He should be able to afford a down payment on a mortgage in any number of small towns in this state or in the surrounding states.
It hits me and my blood boils, but my voice is pure ice when I say, “You spent it all.”
“Yeah,” Travis says, a momentarily dreamy expression crossing his face. “Fuck it was fun. I went down to Florida to see the ocean, you know? The women down there—”
I screw my eyes shut tight and pinch the bridge of my nose. This man-child blew nearly $100,000 in the last four weeks? Travis goes on and on about spending it up. The longer he talks, the harder my head pounds. “You sold me a bar you don’t own,” I finally interrupt.
To my surprise, Travis nods. “But I sold it to you for less than it’s worth, and clearly you’ve worked out something with Lou, so no harm done.”
“You aren’t listening. You sold me a bar you don’t own.”
His brows furrow, his head tilting slightly as he picks up his beer again.
“I found the will,” I explain, forcing calmness into my voice. “The bar was never yours.”
Travis laughs, but some of the color drains from his face. “What will?”
“The one your mother hid. It left Gallo’s entirely to Louisa.”
He shrugs, raising the beer to his lips. “Must be an old one.”
“She signed it a couple of weeks before she died.”
“She changed her mind.”
I make a non-committal noise and lean against the bar. “I hear you’re quite the forger. You and that lawyer who drew up the paperwork for the sale of the bar.”
Travis looks at me for a long moment as he reassesses. “What do you want?”
“I want you to leave and never come back.”
He snorts. “Sure, with what fucking money?”
“I’ll pay you enough, but if you blow through it again, you won’t be getting more from me, and if you come back to try Louisa, I will tell her about the will.”
Travis is silent for a moment while he drinks his beer. When he finally sets it down, his expression is grim. “Two hundred thousand.”
I feign shock. “I don’t have that much.” If he sees me as a limitless ATM, he’ll never go away.
“Well, that’s what it will cost,” he says, settling into a number that he likely thought too high when he first said it. “I’m the one who has to move away from the only place that’s ever been my home. I’ll need money to start over. Two hundred thousand, or I stay right here until Lou comes around.”
I keep up the charade of haggling for a little while, but I need him gone before Louisa finishes playing with her new toys and comes swanning in to thank me.
In the end, I agree to two hundred thousand, and Travis agrees to meet me at a public boat launch to collect it.
I follow him outside to make sure he actually leaves.
He gives me a sarcastic salute and swaggers over to the muscle car he clearly purchased with the money I already gave him.
I’m bitterly aware, as the engine growls to life and Travis whips the car out onto the highway, how unfair this all is. That man doesn’t deserve a dime, and while I’m paying him so Louisa won’t have to deal with the man who sold her bar, he’s still benefiting—more than she is.
With a sigh, I go back inside, locking the door behind me. It’s too hot upstairs, so I drop into a booth in the bar. I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing paying Travis to leave. There’s clearly no love lost between the cousins, but he’s still her family. She might not appreciate the interference.
My phone chimes, and I find myself smiling as I pull it out of my pocket. My old phone is disassembled in a drawer upstairs, and while Benji and Briar have this number, there’s only one person I’m expecting a message from.
Louisa sent me an image. A selfie, taken lying on her bed, her dark hair spilling over her pillow, a lazy look of utter satisfaction in her hooded eyes, bliss radiating off glowing skin. Her shoulders are bare —a tease, since the image ends just below her collarbone.
I’ll spend the afternoon wondering if she was naked when she took this photo. If her bikini bottoms were wrapped around one ankle, her untied top pushed down to her waist.
Another message from her pops up as I’m staring at the selfie. Two words—thank you—and a kiss emoji.
I told you not to abuse this number. I reply, hit send, and toss my phone aside before I can ask how she likes the expensive toys—or, worse, invite myself over to play.
It can’t happen. It’s better this way. I still put that look on her face, and I didn’t even have to be there. I can take care of her from a safe distance. Pay off her cousin to leave her alone. Buy her little things to make her happy.
It’s enough that she was thinking of me when she used those toys.
The phone chimes again, and I’m already rising to my feet, ready to forget every new resolution I have about not getting involved, but it’s not Louisa inviting me over.
It’s Benji.