Scarlet
“I’ll buy you lunch.” Theo pulls into the car park of a café.
“You don’t usually eat lunch.”
He turns off his truck and pins me with a serious look.
I shrug. “Fine. You’re hungry today. I’m just along for the ride.” I get out.
He opens the door to the café for me.
“Thank you, sir.” I wink.
He shakes his head and mutters something I can’t quite understand.
The waitress seats us by the window and gives us the specials. Theo orders a bacon avocado cheeseburger with fries and iced tea.
“Have you decided, ma’am?”
“Do you have spring water in a glass bottle?”
“Sorry, just tap.”
I nod. “Fine. I’ll do that, no ice, and several lemon wedges.”
“Food.” Theo glares at me with narrowed eyes. “Order food.”
“I’m on a cleanse.” I smile. “It’s good to give your body a break from constant digesting.”
“She’ll have what I’m having.”
“I don’t eat meat anymore.” I keep smiling at him. “I think meat is too acidic for my body.”
He sighs. “Grilled cheese for her.”
“Or dairy.” I cringe. “It’s too acidic too. I read that our bodies have to rob calcium from our bones to neutralize the acidity. It’s crazy how milk is touted for helping build strong bones when really—”
His jaw tenses.
I bite my tongue and shrug. “Sorry. I’m … sure you don’t really care.”
The waitress clears her throat. “I can get you a garden salad, no meat or cheese.”
“She’ll take it.” He continues to glare at me.
“Ranch, French, Italian, Caesar, or Balsamic dressing?”
“No dressing … just bring extra lemon.” I hand her my menu.
Theo focuses out the window. His jaw remains clenched. “You look like shit.”
I laugh. “Why thank you. Day. Made.”
“If I find you passed out, when I find you passed out, I’m not calling for an ambulance. If you want to kill yourself, a gun would be a helluva lot easier.”
“You think I want to die?”
He looks at me, expressionless.
“Fair enough.” I shrug. “But for the record, if I find you passed out, I will call for an ambulance, check for a pulse, and administer CPR if necessary.”
“And if I put a bullet in my head?”
The waitress serves our drinks. I squeeze my lemon wedges into my water. “Would you? Would you put a bullet in your brain?”
He takes a swig of his iced tea then licks his lips. “If I wanted to die, yes, I’d put a bullet in my head.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t just swim with the sharks every morning knowing that statistically one day you’ll be breakfast?”
He grunts. As usual, my words only aggravate him more.
“Do you own a gun?”
“Why?” He strokes his beard while shooting me a beady-eyed glare.
“I’ll make you a deal. If you show me where it is, and how to use it, I promise if the day ever comes that I want to die, I will place it at my temple and pull the trigger. Deal?”
Theo doesn’t make the deal. In fact, he doesn’t say another word for the rest of our lunch. He might be my unsolvable mystery and when he studies me like he has been today, I think I may be his, too. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Theodore Reed cares about me. I know better.
“Oh, shit!” I grab the back of Theo’s shirt as we exit the café.
“What?”
“That’s Harold Moore and a woman who is not his wife,” I whisper, peeking around Theo’s body like I have some reason to hide.
I’m not the one pressing a younger woman up against my black Range Rover, sticking my tongue down her throat and my hand up her shirt. His charcoal suit looks designer too. Not the charity shop getup he wore the day I met him.
“What’s your point?” Theo continues to the truck as I shuffle behind him, like he’s shielding me from gunfire.
I hop in and shut the door. “What’s my point? Nolan’s dad is cheating on his mum. That’s my point.”
“That’s not news around here.” He backs out and waves, yes waves, at Harold as we pull out of the car park. Harold waves back like he’s not at all trying to hide his affair.
“Does Nolan know?” I think back to Nolan’s comment about unconventional marriage.
Theo chuckles. It’s uncharacteristic of him, and normally I would find it endearing, but he’s laughing about an affair. “Yes. He knows. Everyone knows … except Nellie.”
I open my mouth then clamp it shut and repeat it several times before words find their way out. “Why doesn’t he leave her? Why make a fool of her?”
He gives me a quick glance with a quirked eyebrow. “You’ve met Nellie. Right?”
“Yes. She’s … she’s … a little …”
“Crazy.”
“I was going to say simplistic. It doesn’t mean she deserves to be cheated on.”
“No, she’s crazy, and they have a doctor’s diagnosis that confirmed it.”
“Oh … well, what happened?”
He shrugs. “Don’t’ know. Don’t care. Nolan had some accident.
She lost her shit. The family is richer than God, but she doesn’t have any clue as to her social status.
Before she lost it, she was the epitome of a southern, uppity rich bitch.
Big parties, charity events … they own half of Savannah and one of the most lucrative horse ranches in Kentucky. Now, she’s the equivalent of a child.”
“Why isn’t she someplace receiving special care?”
“Rich people don’t live in institutions.”
“It makes no sense. He dresses in secondhand clothes when he’s with her … but …” I shake my head. “He’s cheating on her. Why stay?”
“The money is all Nellie’s. If anything happens to her, everything goes to Nolan. The old fucker just wants the life. Nellie’s content, so Nolan’s content. Harold gets to stay. End of story.”
“So, Harold lives two lives? Crazy-dressing husband to Nellie one minute and rich businessman shagging younger women the next?”
“Yup.”
I’m buzzing inside, trying to play it cool like I’m not dying, seriously dying to solve this mystery. “Just like that? Nolan has an accident and Nellie goes mad? How does that make any sense?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”
We park in front of the hardware shop, and he jumps out, not waiting for me and my ten-second delay from my head stuck in detective overdrive.
“Wait!”
He doesn’t.
I chase him around the store for ten minutes. He’s quick and precise with his shopping. His lack of patience to browse shouldn’t surprise me. I’m mesmerized by his concentration while loading his trolley with paper bags of nails, screws, caulk, some big roll of paper, and other random stuff.
“I love these.” Plucking a windmill from the checkout display, I blow on it as we wait in queue.
“When I was younger we had to get out of our house in a hurry because …” I peek up at Theo and grimace “Let’s say for reasons.
Anyway, my dad told me I could bring one toy.
I grabbed this red and silver windmill that I stole … ” I glance up at him again.
He regards me with wide eyes.
My name is Scarlet Stone and I steal random stuff and plant it in the sparkly rucksacks of mean girls, then report them as thieves so they get in trouble. Karma is my religion.
I clear my throat. “That I borrowed from Piper, a girl who made fun of me in school. I had far more expensive options, but I chose the windmill.” I blow on it again and smile.
“Pinwheel.” Theo loads everything onto the conveyer belt at the checkout.
“Sorry?” I deposit the windmill back in its cardboard display and squeeze past him to wait at the end of the checkout.
“It’s a pinwheel, not a windmill.”
“I don’t know what you mean by pinwheel.” I cross my arms over my chest.
“Of course you don’t.” He shakes his head.
“You’re making fun of me.”
He smirks.
After the cashier scans the last item, Theo reaches over, grabs the ‘pinwheel,’ and swipes it past the scanner himself. He holds it out to me like a long-stemmed rose. Expressionless.
I gawk at it, then at him for a few seconds before my grin wins over and I take it. “Thank you.”
He considers me with a tense brow and eyes that make a slow trip down my body and back up to meet my gaze.
It’s not sexual, it’s confusion, conflict—maybe even wonderment.
For a moment so brief I can’t fully make sense of it, I think he sees my truth.
I could cry because it’s … I inhale a shaky breath …
not his to see. He nods once and swipes his credit card.
My hands fist. I haven’t had the urge to chew my nails since saying goodbye to Oscar, but Theo could break me before I get the chance to let go on my own.
I clear my throat. “You shouldn’t use credit cards. They’re not secure.”
He glances over at me while I blow on my windmill.
“Our system is secure, ma’am. I can assure you,” the cashier says.
Keeping my focus on my proverbial long-stemmed rose, I shake my head. “It’s not. If I had a laptop, I could bring up every credit card number that’s been swiped through that exact machine in the past thirty days.”
“You can load your lumber around the back, just show them your receipt.” The clerk hands Theo his receipt then gives me a dirty look like I said something wrong.
“What?” I say as Theo continues to scrutinize me while we walk to the truck. “Cash. Pay cash, Theodore. It’s safest, unless you keep your wallet where someone can pick your pocket.”
“I’m going to feel someone sticking their fucking hand in my pocket.” He gets in the truck.
I open my door and throw him his wallet as I get inside. “I’m not so sure you would.”
He leans to the side and feels his back pocket, like there’s really any question that I lifted his wallet.
“Fucking thief,” he mumbles as we drive around back to get his lumber.
“Ex-thief.” I grin, holding my windmill out my rolled-down window.
It’s a good day. Scratch that. It’s a great day. Theo loading heavy lumber into the back of his truck is a visual treat. I lean against the side of his truck. My windmill takes a backseat to Theo’s muscles. My insides warm as my mind drifts back to the feel of his hard, naked body pressed to mine.
Human touch—oxygen to the soul.
“You’re drooling.”
I wipe my mouth but nothing is there. Theo chuckles.
Laughter—music to the soul.
“Cheeky bastard.” I glare at him, but my grin doesn’t give it much merit.