75. Chapter 75
She wasn’t at Blue’s. A waitress in a navy jumper told Jason that most of the waitresses ended up at a bar two blocks away after their shifts.
He spotted her Mazda parked underneath a flashing sign with half its letters burnt out.
Smitty’s was the kind of dive good for scraping up nines and tens.
Tonight, he’d rescue a solid one from the hellhole where Theresa didn’t belong.
The one, he’d realized while signing on Whitlock’s dotted line and stuffing the tiny box, getting heavier by the minute, in his jacket pocket.
Jason parked his bike and shook out his limbs to muster up his usual swagger. But the stuff he used on other women had never worked on Theresa. He couldn’t remember, now that it mattered, what finally won her over.
Oh yeah. I saved her from a tornado and told her I was a millionaire.
He was still a millionaire, even after the pile of cash he’d recently dropped on her. He also helped save a life. Too bad he didn’t have Saul in his back pocket to tell her what a stand-up guy Jason Young had become since he walked away from the kind of thing Theresa said didn’t just happen.
He headed past the red hatchback she’d never have to drive again if she didn’t want to and into Smitty’s, spotting her immediately—a homing beacon in tight jeans and a crop top, leaning against the bar.
Her hair was curly and wild, barely brushing her bare shoulders, and her dark-pink lips sipped on a very lucky bottle of beer.
Jason stalked across the room. As soon as she saw him, her face blanked, then twisted into a mask of flushed cheeks and fury in the few seconds it took to reach her.
“Theresa,” he said. “I’ve got something to say to you.”
She swallowed hard. “Jason.”
Jason. Was there a sexier sound than his name coming out of her mouth?
“No. No, no, no. You shouldn’t be here,” she said, which was less sexy.
“Come outside with me.”
She glanced behind her and said, “I can’t. You should leave.”
“You’re pissed at me, and I’ve got it coming, but this can’t wait.”
“You left,” she said, her chin jutting out with well-placed contempt. “And you didn’t look back. Adios. Sayonara. Did you forget?”
“No, I didn’t forget. I haven’t thought about anything else since I drove away.”
She reared back in surprise. Good. Shock was easier to work with than anger. He closed the small space between them, close enough now to smell the soft, sweet magnolia that had clung to his jacket for weeks.
“I need five minutes of your time, T.”
“Don’t call me T.”
“If you don’t like what I have to say, I’m out of your life forever.”
“You already are.” She sipped her beer with those lips, the mouth he’d chased across the miles. He wasn’t too proud to beg.
“Theresa, come on, honey. I’ve been through the wringer since I left.”
“What? Your girlfriend ditch you already, so you’re crawling back here?”
“No. I’m not crawling back. Jesus H. Christ, T, I just need five minutes.”
“Jason, you can’t be here.” She looked over her shoulder again, and her body went rigid. “This isn’t happening.”
“What?”
She shoved him in the chest. “Leave. Now.”
Behind her, a mullet in a sleeveless shirt was coming out of the bathroom, wiping his hands on torn jeans and heading for Theresa. Jason had been too focused on finding her to clock the Trans Am in the parking lot.
He should’ve known better.
No, she should know better.
“You’re joking,” he said. “It’s Stu’s watch?”
“Watch?” Her eyes narrowed. “What watch? And hey, you don’t get to judge me.”
Stu, the man Jason hoped never to meet for Stu’s sake, put his arm around Theresa.
“What’s up, man?” Stu lifted his pointy, stubbled chin.
Jason wanted to tear Stu’s arm from its socket and beat him over the head with it for touching her.
He could do it. Stu’s fist probably packed a decent wallop, but his arm was wiry and thin and…wearing a black digital watch.
“What the hell,” Jason muttered.
“Jason.”
There was a slight tremor of warning in her voice as if Theresa was scared and trying not to show it. Scared for Stu?
For me?
“Jason?” Stu asked. “You don’t mean the Jason?”
“The Jason?” he asked, finally looking at Stu’s face. After a close-up of the gearhead’s beady eyes and mustache, he guessed, “You must have a solid-gold cock, Stu.”
“Jason,” Theresa hissed.
“Funny.” Stu snorted. “They told me about you. The waitresses at the Sip. Said you’re a two-timing loser and I should keep you far away from my Theresa.”
My Theresa. Jason smirked. He was going to enjoy mopping the floor with this dipshit.
“What are you laughing at, asshole?”
Stu let go of Theresa and she flattened herself against the bar.
“Jason, just go. Please,” she said.
Her big brown eyes were wide with worry, as if Stu could actually do some damage, and it was enough. If she was worried, then she cared, and if she cared, then there was a chance.
Even if there wasn’t, she wasn’t leaving with Stu.
“I’m laughing because you think you’ve got her,” Jason said. They were eye to eye but Jason thought he had the muscle.
“It’s funny to you that I’m taking her home tonight?” Stu asked, cracking knuckles caked with dried engine grease.
“Stop it. Now,” Theresa snapped.
“Funny that you think you’ll ever take her home again,” Jason said.
Stu swung. Jason figured he would and ducked out the way.
Shit. This wasn’t how he meant to do it. He’d always been lousy at planning. As Stu staggered off balance, Jason took the envelope out of his jacket and shoved it into Theresa’s chest.
“Hold this for me, will you, honey?”
Theresa Agnes Stone was written on the front in Aldus Whitlock’s messy lawyer scrawl.
“What?” she asked.
He was already running full bore into Stu. They took down a bar table, scattering the people sitting at it in a spray of beer, the bottles shattering on the uneven wood floor.
Jason took Stu’s shirt in one fist and cracked him across the jaw with the other.
“Stop it!” Theresa hollered. “Just stop it, you idiots.”
Jason grinned at her over his shoulder, giving Stu an opening to land a punch to Jason’s jaw.
“Ouch. Motherfucker.”
He spat blood on the floor and turned back to the brawl he’d lose if he couldn’t keep his eyes off the girl. Stu was lanky, his gangly arms and legs hard to pin down. Jason managed to land a few more hits to Stu’s ribs before thick hands curled under his armpits and yanked him to his feet.
“Enough,” boomed a voice as burly as the arms pulling Jason through the crowd of spectators. “Break it up.”
Jason wiped the corner of his mouth and whirled on the beast of a man, who might’ve been a bouncer or bartender or Grizzly Adams’s portly cousin with every inch of exposed skin covered in dark, bristly hair.
“Out.” Grizzly pointed a puffy finger at the exit.
Jason straightened his jacket. Stu got to his feet and brushed dirt and beer froth from his jeans, cussing and spitting blood.
Theresa was staring at the unopened envelope.
“Out. Now.”
“Oh, come on,” Jason said. “I barely touched him.”
“I was minding my own business,” Stu was saying, nursing his swelling jaw.
Grizzly took a clump of Jason’s jacket in his claw and dragged him toward the door.
“Easy, man, this is real leather,” Jason said.
“You heard him. Get the fuck out,” Stu said.
“Hey, Stuart, how does it feel getting laid out on your ass in front of your Theresa?”
“Fuck you.”
“Get out,” Grizzly said with a shove. “And don’t come back.”
Stu sidled up to Theresa again, and she stared over the splintered table at Jason, eyes frantic as a cornered cat in need of rescue.
He was going to save her, damn it. He already had, if she’d open the envelope.
Clutched to her chest was the way out of Stu’s arms and diner jobs and the small house not fit for Theresa, who belonged in a palace, or a big house on a pond with a man who finally realized he was head-over-heels, butt-crazy in love with her.
With Grizzly Adams heading to the far end of the bar and Stu bitching to the bartender, sucking on a fresh beer with his cracked lip, Jason plunged his fist into his jacket pocket for the tiny box that might change nothing or everything, and crossed the distance to Theresa in three strides.
“It’s for you,” Jason said, placing the box in her palm.
“Hey!” Grizzly rolled up his sleeves and plowed toward him.
Stu slammed down his bottle. “The fuck you doing?”
“It’s all for you.” Jason grabbed Theresa by the neck and kissed her. “If you want it.”
“I said out.” A muscle in Grizzly’s temple ticked, and Jason held up his hands in surrender.
Glancing at Theresa for what he hoped wasn’t the last time, Jason walked out of Smitty’s to wait.