Chapter Six #2
He’d let me slide in first on the side I wanted, sliding in
right beside me, and he’d asked me what I wanted to drink so he could order it
for me when the waiter arrived.
He’d done the same with my meal.
I couldn’t hack this.
I didn’t know what to do with this.
It wasn’t that this was a surprise.
It was just with what happened in that parking lot melting
to take its place into a past with a lot of other stuff that wasn’t all that
great, precisely how it felt was only now hitting me.
And what that was, was the fact that Miss Annamae would
adore Marcus Sloan.
She might look askance at whatever he did to be able to buy
his Mercedes. But I had a feeling she’d overlook that simply with the way he’d
murmured sweetly, “Watch your feet, darling,” as I’d lifted them into his car.
“Daisy.”
I turned my gaze from my glass to him.
He was watching me closely. “Are you all right?”
No.
And hell yes.
I didn’t give him either of those answers.
I told him, “I’ve never been here.”
“Excellent steaks,” he murmured, still watching me closely.
“It’s very nice.”
Marcus made no reply.
“Did you, uh…” I tipped my head to the side, “ask me
something?”
He turned more fully to me, shifting his bourbon and branch
closer to the edge of the table in my direction, his long-fingered hand wrapped
around it.
“I’d like you to tell me something good,” he said.
“Okay,” I replied readily and launched in. “You look real
nice in that suit, sugar. And you got a good haircut. I like it.”
His lips curled up. “Thank you, honey, but what I meant was,
about you.”
“About me?”
“About your life.”
I tipped my head to the side even as I dipped and twisted my
chin, my eyes drifting away from him.
“Please tell me it wasn’t all bad.”
He sounded like he really wanted me to do that so I looked
at him and shared, “Momma had a man once. He was called Stretch. He called me
sweetheart. He had broad shoulders, and even if they were fightin’,
any time his eyes came to me, he made them sweet. I thought it was like a
superpower, him bein’ all kinds a’ mad at Momma, but bein’ able to hide that from me. He used to ask me to go to
my room, or if I was in my room, he’d come and close the door so I wouldn’t see
or hear them fightin’. It didn’t work. But it sure
was nice.”
“Yes, that was nice,” Marcus replied like it was but it
wasn’t.
The first part I knew was because at least Stretch had
tried. The second was because there was fighting to shield me from.
I looked to my martini. “When he left, he told me I could
call him whenever I needed him.”
“That’s nice too,” Marcus said softly.
I looked to him. “He said it then kinda
took it back ’cause Momma got up in his shit right while he was sayin’ it. I remember it like it was yesterday and I was
ten. But she was screamin’ and carryin’
on and shovin’ him and he had no claim to me. I knew
he wanted to try. I reckoned he liked me and he looked after me in his way when
they were together, but he didn’t want her in his life. He was done with her
and I didn’t blame him. She wasn’t nice to him. She wasn’t nice to anybody. She
used him mostly to pay the cable bill and the electricity and whatever she
could get outta him. I think he did it at first ’cause she was real pretty and
he liked her coochie. Then he did it so I’d have
cable and light because he just liked me. But to be done with her, I knew he
knew, even if he didn’t like it, he had to be done with me. So he left. And I
never saw him again.”
“That’s not nice,” Marcus rumbled, not appearing real
thrilled at my story.
I shrugged, looked back to my martini, took in a deep breath
and whispered my finish.
“Only man a’ hers I missed when he was gone.”
“That’s all you have that’s good?” he asked, not sounding
real thrilled at that possibility.
I drew in another breath, and as I let it out, I looked back
at Marcus and shared the real good stuff.
“For a spell, my momma worked as a daily girl for a lady
named Miss Annamae. When I call her a lady, I mean she was a lady. A
fine Southern woman who lived in a graceful mansion her beloved but sadly
departed husband left to her after he died. A mansion he’d grown up in. So had
his daddy and so on for a long while. He didn’t rock her world with this. She
grew up in one herself, just a different one from a different fine Southern
family.”
“You liked her,” Marcus noted, still watching me closely.
“She liked me,” I replied.
“I’m not thinking that’s a good response,” he muttered like
he wasn’t talking to me.
I let the stem of my glass go, turned more fully to him too,
and reached out, putting my hand to his thigh.
When I did, I realized Marcus Sloan did not only take care
of his grooming, he took care of other things too. The muscle beneath the fine
material was solid.
My.
I tore my thoughts from what my hand was encountering,
somehow found the strength to leave it right where it was, and told him, “She
liked me. And she was kind to me. She gave me a tin of cookies she baked
herself every Christmas my momma worked for her. And on my thirteenth birthday,
she gave me an add-a-pearl necklace.”
“That’s very sweet,” Marcus murmured.
I nodded. “It was.”
“Did she add more pearls after your thirteenth?” he asked.
“She died three days after my birthday.”
“Christ,” he bit out low.
“And I hocked it for a bus ticket out of there when I was
nineteen after I caught my boyfriend in the act, sleepin’
with my best friend who was my best friend only to get to my boyfriend. I went
direct home and told my momma all about it. I barely got the story out before
she slapped me across the face and told me to get over it. Life was shit and
then you died so no purpose wastin’ it bitchin’ about
men bein’ assholes when there wasn’t a being with a
penis who wasn’t all asshole. And furthermore, I was a fool for havin’ any friends. Women were backstabbers and
man-stealers. They talked behind your back more than they said anything to your
face but when they said somethin’ straight to your
face, if it was sweet, you could guarantee it was a lie.”
“This isn’t something good, Daisy,” he informed me, not
looking happy.
“It’s all I got, Marcus,” I told him but I gave his thigh a
quick squeeze. “And it sounds bad. But Miss Annamae knew. She might not have
known exactly what was gonna cut it but she knew somethin’ would. And she knew I was a good girl. She knew I
listened to her and she knew all the things she taught me I’d taken in. So she
knew I’d need that necklace one day. Now, I think she mighta
hoped that I’d wear it at my wedding to a wonderful man who’d help me fill my
house with lots of babies. But I reckon she didn’t hold a lot of hope for that
and knew I’d need it for what I needed it for and she’d be happy I had it when
I needed it and that it was her who gave it to me.”
He kept hold of my gaze for a moment after I quit talking
then he looked down at his drink and twisted it side to side in his fingers.
He looked reflective.
And upset.
And I didn’t like that.
“Honey bunches of oats,” I whispered.
His gaze came right back to mine.
And doing so, he made my heart warm right up in a way I knew
sure as certain it would never again be cold.
Not ever.
Not ever again.
Not as long as Marcus was with me.
“It don’t sound good but it was,” I told him, real quiet,
moved by his look that I felt in my heart. “I lost her but even though she’d
been gone for years, she was there for me in that moment when I needed her
most. It wasn’t good for me there. And even with what happened to me in that
parking lot, since I left that place, it’s never again been that bad. That’s
how bad it was. She wanted me to have the means to escape when I’d had enough.
It was the most precious gift anyone ever gave me. The time she gave it by handin’ me that box. And the time I hocked it and bought
myself freedom.”
“There’s no more good?” he asked.
“Smithie,” I told him.
“Other than him.”
“LaTeesha,” I went on.
“Daisy, you understand me.”
I shook my head and gave his thigh a squeeze. “Sugar, you
aren’t gettin’ it. I had her for a short while. But I
had her. Do you know where I’d be if I didn’t?”
“No. Where would you be?”
“Back there in a place where every day was hell. I’d
probably have a man who drank or gambled or shot up or beat me or all those. Or
I’d have a string of ’em, none of ’em treatin’ me right. A job that
I hated workin’, doin’ it
with people who thought they were better than me. My momma alternately hittin’ me up for money or gettin’
in my face, bein’ ugly. Miss Annamae taught me to
keep my head held high, darlin’, and I was strugglin’
with that.” I leaned into him. “Really struggling. They would have
beaten me. She gave me the way out when without her doin’
that I’d have no way out, and here I am, in a fancy restaurant in a great town
with a handsome man. It’d make her happy. Real happy, baby.”
When I was done talking, his attention moved to my hair, as
did his hand. He pulled some curls over my shoulder and stared at them resting
there.
“You know why it was,” he murmured to my hair.
“Pardon?”
His gaze came to mine and the hand he’d used to shift my
hair he now used to sweep his fingertips across my cheekbone in a whisper of a
touch that was there and gone.
But the precious memory of that touch would remain until the
day I quit breathing.
“People live lives they hate,” he said, resting his arm
along the top of the booth beside me. “They see a patch of light, the only
thing that drives them is to snuff it out.”
I gave him a small smile and said, not mean, “That’s sweet,
sugar, but that’s like tellin’ a homely girl all the
other girls bully her ’cause they’re jealous.”
“So what you’re telling me is that all that’s happened to
you is just about predators preying on the weak?”
My head twitched.
“You aren’t weak, Daisy,” he stated.
No, I wasn’t.
I’d been knocked down. Again and again.
I just kept getting up.
And I was still standing, in platforms, with great hair.
I swallowed.
“And those other girls bully the homely girl for one reason
only. They’re bitches. And that says a fuckuva lot
more about them than that homely girl, and not one single bit of it is good.”
My fingers tensed reflexively into his thigh.
“You’re right, sugar,” I whispered.
“I know,” he returned. “As for you, why would a rich woman
in a graceful mansion give the girl you thought you were the time of day?”
I felt the sting before I knew what was happening, and I
blinked rapidly to keep them at bay.
Marcus didn’t wait for me to answer.
He gave me his answer.
“Because she was old enough and lived enough life with
enough abundance in that life to see you for what you were. Not a beautiful
girl who would become a beautiful woman. Not a sweet girl who was strong and
smart who would become so much more than her mother, it’s laughable. Not a bold
woman a weak man has to beat down to make him feel strong. Or fuck around on
before she realizes she could do better and scrapes him off. No, she saw all of
that, just without the bad shit leaking in.”
I was now breathing deep along with blinking a lot in order
to stop myself from losing it.
But even though Marcus saw it—I knew he even had to feel
it—he was still far from done.
“I bet if you went back to that place, all those people
would still be in it, living lives they hate. And you’d sweep through looking
like a movie star and they’d take one look at you and know they had every right
to be jealous of you. To hate you. To beat you. Talk about you. Cheat on you.
And they’re so entrenched in their bitterness because they only have themselves
to blame that they didn’t make their lives better, the only regret they’d have
is that they hadn’t been able to drag you right down to where they are, smother
your light, make you go dark.”
His fingers peeled mine from his thigh and curled around
tight, holding my hand right there.
And he kept going.
“Miss Annamae didn’t give you those pearls because she
thought for a second they’d get close to beating you down. She gave you those
pearls because she knew without a doubt they never would.”
“Please stop talking,” I whispered, seeing as he’d gone all
fuzzy because my eyes were trembling with tears and I could take not one little
bit more.
For a second, he didn’t say anything and he didn’t move.
Then he lifted my hand and touched his lips to my fingers.
He put it right back, curling them around his thigh again, and he looked to his
bourbon.
He raised his glass and took a sip.
I drew in a shaky breath.
Then I removed my hand from his thigh and reached for my own
drink.
After I’d thrown back a slightly unladylike sip, I returned
the glass to the table and my attention with it.
“Daisy.”
“Please, please,” I was still whispering, this time
to my glass, “I can’t take more of your sweet.”
“Baby, you need to move your glass. Your appetizer is here.”
My head came up.
The waiter smiled benignly at me.
I moved my glass.
Marcus moved his arm to around my back and pulled me to his
side so I was tucked close.
I picked up my fork in order to dive into my crab cake.
I had the succulent-looking crab halfway to my mouth when
Marcus asked, “Where did you grow up?”
I braced but answered, deciding that was an innocent enough
question, and if he pressed for more, I’d shut it down.
He didn’t press for more.
He scooped out some of his oysters Rockefeller.
And we ate.
Marcus
Marcus got her drunk.
He did this without remorse.
It bought him a good deal of her amazing laughter.
It also got him the bonus of her passing out in his car,
this meaning he didn’t have to have words with her about where he fully
intended to spend the night that night.
He carried her to her apartment and took off her shoes, her
necklace, her bracelets, and carefully slid out her earrings but left her in
her dress when he tucked her into bed.
He left her room, closing the door behind him at the same
time sliding his phone out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket.
He flipped it open and made the call.
“Boss,” Brady answered, sounding mostly alert, somewhat
drowsy.
Within a minute, he’d issued his order.
He finished with, “Hopefully that pawn shop will still be
open. If it isn’t, maybe someone who ran it will be around and they kept
records. But I don’t care what it takes, Brady. Even if you have to pull
Nightingale into it. Find those pearls and get them to me.”
“You got it, Mr. Sloan.”
“Goodnight,” Marcus said and hung up.
Then he took off his suit jacket, his tie, shirt, shoes, and
socks and he stretched out on Daisy’s couch, tucking a toss pillow under his
head and pulling one of her throws over his body.
He closed his eyes, and within seconds, with Daisy resting
safe in the next room, Marcus was asleep.