Chapter 12 #3
She nodded on a ragged breath, breathing in all his scents, allowing herself to relax in the flour and vanilla and musk. In the warmth.
“That’s my girl.”
“Think she’s coming back tonight?” Zara asked as she laid down three queens on the table.
Harper set the fourth queen down in front of herself. “She’s had a rough day. She and Jannie are friends, right? It’s probably for the best if they spend the night in Jannie’s trailer.”
Laurin didn’t agree with that any more than he agreed with the way Zara, who had been hesitant to play cards with him at all because of how murky the rules were with card games in Islam, had turned out to be quite the rummy ringer.
Candace and Jannie were friendly, sure, but he wasn’t sure how good of friends they really were.
Jannie hadn’t ever come by after hours, and Candace had never been anything but solitary in her excursions around the park.
He was sure Jannie had other stuff to do while they were taking breaks from filming, but friends would find some time together if they only saw each other a couple times a year, right?
Laurin didn’t want to vent about it, so he shrugged vaguely and picked up the top card.
It was, predictably, useless, so he set it back down.
Also predictably, Zara snatched it right up off the discard, and Laurin figured she was about to do something completely mind-blowing with it, but the front door flew open so hard the TV rattled.
He shot to his feet and grabbed his chair, prepared to use it as a weapon if they were being attacked, but that gut instinct was preposterous and made far less sense than the reality of the situation: Jannie half-carrying, half-dragging Candace through the doorway.
“I can walk. I’m fine,” Candace said . . . or, that was how Laurin translated it, at least. The woman was trying her hardest to walk on her own, but her feet kept flipping over, and Jannie wasn’t strong enough to carry her.
“What’s wrong with her?” Zara cried out, backing up into a corner.
Harper laughed brashly at the girl. “Drunk as a skunk, from the looks of it.”
Jannie frowned. “I didn’t mean it, I swear. I wasn’t thinking when Candace asked for a drink. I just wanted her to feel better.”
“You weren’t thinking about what?” Laurin asked as he dipped down to get his shoulder up under Candace’s arm.
“The girl doesn’t drink,” Jannie huffed. “She used to, back when she first started doing these shows. Her marriage was falling apart then, you know? She was doing her best, but the stress did her in. She quit drinking, oh—”
“I’m right here!” Candace bellowed, her body suddenly going from limp noodle to elbows of fury.
Laurin had enough experience dealing with much larger, much stronger, much drunker teammates, so he dodged the blows easily, switching his hold to stand behind her and pin her arms back.
“Lemme go! I’ll cry assault, I’ll do it!
I’ve neber . . . neb . . . benner . . . never done it before, but this is the time!
I got all these witnesses and-and-and—!”
And limp noodle. Her knees went right out, and Laurin had to do some fancy side-stepping to avoid trampling her legs.
“I’m just going to get her into bed,” Jannie said. “Sorry about this. I’ll stay with her; you don’t have to bother.”
Laurin shook his head. “No bother at all. I’ll take care of her from here. Why don’t you ladies all head out? I’m thinking social hour’s about up.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Zara protested, her eyes wide enough that Laurin could tell she’d never been around somebody who was drunk before, at least not someone who had gone this sloppy.
“What if she . . .?” She looked around and dropped her voice really low to say, “She already threatened to accuse you of rape! You need us as witnesses.”
Laurin was about to scoff at that when Jannie jumped in for him. “That’s my fault,” she admitted. “I may have given her some bad advice that took flight of its own. Or, not bad advice, but poorly timed. She’s just not thinking clearly.”
“You can’t touch me,” Candace mumbled. “No one can touch me. No one . . . no one wants to touch me.”
“Now you’re not even making sense,” Jannie clucked. She squatted down in front of Candace to brush the girl’s bangs back but cast her eyes up to Laurin. “Maybe I should stay. Or, do you think you could help me get her back to my trailer? She can sleep it off there.”
Laurin shooed her away. “I’m fine. You guys get out of here.” He scooped up Candace, now entirely limp, and nodded to the door. “There’s loads of nasty critters running around at this hour. Take the flashlight and stick together. Please.”
The trio nodded and headed out. Laurin leaned to watch the light as it bobbed toward a golf cart sitting on the path; a moment later, the engine revved up and the cart sped off.
Candace was feather-light in his arms. She’d curled into herself some, no doubt cold in the same lace dress she’d worn all day. Her legs were speckled in goosebumps, and she’d tucked her hands into a ball under her chin, reduced to a child in her sleep.
Laurin chuckled softly as he headed down the hall to her room, slowly opening the door he already knew squeaked badly and peeking in. She was fastidious about keeping that door closed, so he hadn’t yet gotten a chance to look inside. He’d suspected a whirlwind within.
Instead, it was neat as a pin, the bed made and all the clothes put away.
She had the angel from the tree sitting on her desk next to two stacks of books, the taller of which was comprised of at least half a dozen books with pages heavily marked by evenly staggered flags.
There were some personal effects, including an ornate jewelry box and a hand-stitched quilt, but Laurin saw no photos.
As soon as he laid Candace out on the bed, she startled herself upright, mumbling about being okay again.
“It’s late,” Laurin told her. “You can go to sleep now.”
“I’m not tired,” she argued through yawns.
“Everyone’s gone home. Nothing to do but go to bed.”
She frowned and flopped face down into the pillow. Laurin rolled her onto her side to keep her from suffocating as she grumbled, “Everyone hates me anyway.”
“You don’t make yourself easy to like.”
She stuck her tongue out. “People don’t like me no matter what I do, Mister Man.”
“Mister Man? That wounds me.” He got to work on her shoes, untying the bows of the ribbons that wrapped halfway up the calves and unwinding them, taking care not to tug too hard on her foot as he shimmied the shoe loose.
He supposed this could be misread as him undressing her, but he had a young daughter who passed out in everything but pajamas, as most children did.
Removing Candace’s shoes was practically reflexive.
On one leg, he noticed a streak of something and tried to wipe it away, but the streak widened. He rubbed it a bit more to reveal a secret bit of art, a small piece of something that must have been much larger for how indecipherable this chunk was. “You covering up tattoos?”
“Why don’t you . . .?” she started before hiccupping roughly enough that Laurin thought he'd better get a trash can. She propped herself up on her elbow so she could shake her head free of cobwebs and pat her chest before taking another shot at it. “Don’t you see for yourself?”
Laurin grinned. “I’m sure I’ll see it eventually.” He patted her leg and stood, but Candace grabbed his arm.
“Do you want to see me?”
“I see you just fine.”
“No, I mean na—”
“I know what you mean.” Yeah, after the adrenaline of today and after seeing the sweet, sensitive Candace beneath her prickly shell, he’d wasted a lot of brain space thinking of her soft, warm body against his, but not tonight.
When he undressed her, it would be because she was drunk on kisses, not vodka.
“A lot of people want to see me like that,” she said, the words tumbling out until she was breathless. “After . . . after Summer Bakes . . . Lucas posted some photos of me. They’re all over now. They’re phono . . . phro . . . phurtoshuff?”
“Photoshop?” Laurin knew about the photos.
He hadn’t seen them himself, but supposedly they were just nudes, nothing more graphic.
He’d assumed they were real, the sort of photos a girl sent her boyfriend when she thought this was forever and he’d never use them to shame her.
The more she let slip about what happened with Lucas, the less he believed the photos were authentic.
“Yup.” She popped the p with a burst of air that blew a raspberry across her lips. “So you didn’t really see me naked, just my head on a naked lady. Nobody’s seen me naked in . . .” Her brows furrowed as she processed some serious math. “In five years.”
“Nobody’s going to see you naked tonight, either,” he said, holding back his chuckle over that clearly incorrect math. “Do you want me to tuck you in?”
“Why don’t you want to see me naked?”
Well, now, that was a bear trap Laurin would gladly chew his own leg off to escape. “Oh, I’m not saying I don’t. Do you have blankets in—?”
“You think I’m ugly.”
She was twisted in a funky position, her face was squashed onto her hand, and one eye was more open than the other, but no. She wasn’t ugly. She was mean sometimes and sad a lot of the time, lonely and stubborn and fragile, but not ugly.
“You’re drunk,” Laurin said, knowing his words were wrought with peril but preferring that argument to her current one.
Her lips pursed, and she wiggled them thoughtfully. “I don’t drink.”
“You did tonight.”
She flopped back down. “Why did you help me today?”
“Same reason you helped me.”
“Because you think I’m not competition?”
“That’s not what I said. I’m gonna go grab some blankets for you, okay?” He retrieved the blankets that he’d left by the fireplace to warm but waited until he heard her snoring lightly to enter her room again.