Chapter Four
Lula
The stains in the carpet matched the stains on the paisley bedspread when I arrived at room four.
It was my favorite number.
I chose to take it as a sign that things were going to look up soon when Jack handed it to me after asking exactly no questions—not even to inquire if I was going to stay longer than the month I paid for when I showed up.
I had to give Jack credit—the bedspread did reek of bleach. Like he, unlike major hotel chains, did actually launder the full bedding instead of just the sheets. That said, I couldn’t get over the possible fluids that had touched that damn thing.
As such, it sat, untouched, behind the door where it wouldn’t be in my way. The sheets had been stripped as well, then the mattress completely soaked in disinfecting spray that created a cloud of scent so noxious, I’d needed to air the room out for hours.
Only then did I put my own bedding on, all the while telling myself that it was just temporary, but that I wanted to feel the comforts of home while I stayed.
The rest of the room followed. I put on some elbow-length gloves and scrubbed every square inch of the bathroom until the bleach fumes gave me a headache.
After that, I wiped down the outside and inside of the desk, nightstands, dresser, and desk chair. And, finally, I scrubbed the walls with a flat mop.
It left the floor.
It had fresh vacuum lines, but I’d been tempted as hell to rent a carpet shampooer to ease my mind. Ultimately, though, I decided that I had a ‘shoes all the time’ policy instead. So I had slippers that went on my feet the second my heels came off. No bare feet touching the rug.
And it was… doable.
Not ideal, but doable.
Was the part of me that was accustomed to a sprawling walk-in shower and deep soaking tub sobbing a bit over the tub/shower combo in a heinous mustard-yellow color with atrocious water pressure?
Yep. Did I hate that I went from penthouse views of Shady Valley and the Death Valley mountains for…
the gas station and prison? Also yes. Was it inconvenient to no longer have a kitchen or laundry in my unit?
Oh, absolutely. Especially since I’d really been picking up cooking as a hobby.
But I had to do what I had to do. And what I had to do was sneak in a microwave and mini fridge and buy mostly pre-made foods from the grocery store to eat.
Everything was an adjustment.
But it had been almost the full month already and my worst fears had not come true.
I had no bed bug bites. There were no creepy men at my door.
And, perhaps most important, no one in town had found me out.
That was mostly because once I snuck in, I didn’t leave my room again until I absolutely had to.
Things were especially risky once I learned that the new prospect for the MC—Hail, I think his name was—was staying at the motel too.
Luckily, he seemed to spend most of his waking (and sleeping) hours at the club. Likely under a pile of women.
No one else in town, outside of the criminal empires, seemed to know who I was.
I hadn’t ever really been the most social of people.
And that was working in my favor while staying at the motel.
If I did occasionally pass by someone in the hallway, it was never someone who would look at me twice.
Hell, most of the people staying here were doing so for nefarious reasons.
They no more wanted to out me than they wanted me to out them.
It was all… tolerable.
Temporarily.
The problem was, things weren’t turning out to be as short-term as I’d planned when I’d first packed my car full of mostly just my living essentials: clothes, bedding, electronics, and cleaning supplies.
I expected that once I set my mind to sorting this whole mess out, I would have it all figured out in two weeks, tops. That had simply been my experience in life. If I knuckled down and worked hard, I could get results. Not easily. But I was relentless, which had always led to results in the past.
This whole situation was simply a little out of my wheelhouse. There’d been a learning curve to a lot of it. And I still felt out of my depth all these weeks later.
I was going to need to resign myself to at least another month, possibly longer, depending on if I needed to do more travel.
But, I reminded myself, each week I stayed here, I was saving myself money. Some very much needed money.
So long as my secret didn’t get out, I had no concerns.
Complaints? Yes. But not concerns.
“Ugh, again?” I grumbled as I made my mad dash back to my room from the creepy-ass laundry facilities. Which was basically two washers and dryers next to each other in a dimly-lit oversized closet.
I was lucky Jack let me use them at all. They were meant only for the bedding. And it saved me a lot of time and money since I would need to go out of Shady Valley to hit a laundromat if he didn’t let me.
On the wall directly behind my bed, a man was showing a woman a very mediocre time—judging by the jackrabbit hammering of the bed against the wall and her loud, almost comically fake, moans.
I didn’t know if it was a couple having an affair (for her sake, I hoped not) or the favorite room for a local sex worker, but I was getting sick of all the body-smacking, wall-banging, moaning, groaning, dirty-talking racket.
I grabbed my speaker and cranked up my music as I set to folding and hanging my clothes, reminding myself to be thankful that I had a roof over my head, clean clothes, food in the fridge, and air conditioning that certainly did as well as it could considering it was older than I was.
It could be worse.
I could be living in my car.
Or in a tent in this damn heat.
I had a lot to be thankful for.
Even if I had much more to be pissed off or depressed about. But since there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about that right now—save for the hours of searching online at night—I had to try to focus on the good.
That was practically a mantra from my grandmother growing up: You’ve gotta focus on the good stuff, Lu. It makes the bad more tolerable.
I wasn’t sure I ever appreciated while she was alive just how right she was about everything.
If she was around right now, she’d be reminding me that this motel room was nicer than her first apartment, that she survived living there with three young kids for years with no air conditioning and a husband who was never around because he worked nearly around the clock to raise them out of that life.
And that, after a few years, they finally bought themselves a sweet little home that was all theirs.
She would tell me how every morning she woke up in a home that belonged to her, she was thankful for the struggle that got her there.
I hoped I could be thankful for the struggle one day. When I was on the other side of this whole situation.
Because of the hard work of my grandparents, I hadn’t known any kind of real poverty in my life. They’d lifted up our family for generations. I’d also been on an upward path myself until a month or so ago. I fully planned to get myself back there again.
“It’s a temporary setback,” I said, glancing at my reflection in the window as I moved to sit down at my desk and opened my laptop.
I didn’t really even know what I was looking for anymore, but I refused to sit around and drive myself crazy with my own thoughts. I had to do something.
The last club I had was back on the outskirts of Golden Glades. The trail had gone cold by the time I got there. I was hoping that maybe looking at things with fresh eyes might help me find something I’d missed when I was in the thick of it, when I was full of hope and rage.
But a few hours later, I hadn’t made any kind of meaningful progress.
“Ugh,” I grumbled, slamming my laptop lid, then wincing and carefully placing my hand on it. I had to be gentler with my things. It wasn’t like I could easily replace them now.
It was also why I packed up my laptop, tablet, and phone and shoved them in my largest purse.
As a whole, I trusted that no one was going to break into my room. But I wasn’t taking chances with my electronics.
I carefully applied my makeup, slicked back my hair, and slid into a simple beige wrap dress and heels.
I had precious little of my signature scent left, with no ability to buy it again, so I’d sprayed some of it into unscented lotion that I carefully placed at my pulse points.
Feeling at least somewhat like myself, I made my way out of the hotel and drove back down the dirt road toward the main drag, where I parked and acted like I hadn’t just come from a motel, but my nice old apartment.
I liked working nights at the pub. Because I lived alone and didn’t have much of a friend group, it felt good to be around people at work.
Typically, I spent hours poring over the receipts from the night before and the income from Cillian’s other ventures, then worked to mesh them all together in a way that no forensic audit from the government could ever pull apart.
It was painstaking, exacting work, and just what my mind and spirit needed to distract me from everything else for a few hours.
It was amazing how loose my shoulders and jaw felt when I finally looked up from the books from the night before.
I dropped them off in Cillian’s office, then grabbed a to-go coffee cup from the kitchen and filled it to the brim from the pot to store in my fridge to make myself some iced coffee in the morning.
One little thing to be grateful for: great, free coffee to start my next day with.
For the first time since coming back to Shady Valley, I was breathing a little easier as I made my way back to the motel.
I was even humming a little as I unlocked my door, thinking of how nice it was going to be to take a little walk, sipping my iced coffee, enjoying some free exercise before the town heated up too much.
Another thing to be grateful for.
But I stepped into my room and flicked on the light.
Then nearly leapt out of my skin.
Because I wasn’t alone.
Oh, no.
Raff was sitting on the desk chair, legs out, ankles crossed, fingers laced and placed on his stomach, looking perfectly at ease. And like he’d been there for a good, long while.
I should have known.
God, I should have.
Raff was nothing if not relentless.
Especially when it came to me.
There was no way he was going to let it drop that he’d obviously seen me… and I’d been lying about it not being me.
Damn him.
He could ruin everything for me.
His head tipped to the side as he looked at me.
“So, you gorgeous thing, you,” he said, shooting me that panty-melting smile of his. “Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on now?”