Chapter Three
Cox had drawn the short straw, and he was, to put it mildly, salty about it.
Badger had decided that having someone ‘on her ass’ while Miss Big City Developer was in town this weekend meant actually being on her ass. He didn’t simply want tabs, he wanted her followed. Shannon had called him when she’d checked in, and he’d roped Cox into the first shift.
Sometimes working at the compound, and therefore being convenient to saddle with fresh club jobs, sucked ass.
He was sure Badger meant some cloak and dagger, superspy kind of bullshit, lurking in the shadows so she didn’t know she had a shadow, but fuck that. He wasn’t going to creep behind a woman while she went about her life. He didn’t give a soggy shit about her comfort, and he wasn’t following for her safety, but he’d be damned if he’d be taken for a psycho stalker pervert.
He looked up from his phone, where he’d been scrolling baseball news on ESPN, and found Autumn Rooney frozen at the foot of the staircase, staring at him like he was a psycho stalker pervert.
As soon as their eyes met, she looked away, squared her shoulders, and strode toward the door; she’d apparently decided she had no reason to interact with him. And as far as she knew, she didn’t.
Cox stood up while she walked across the wide lobby. “Hey,” he said, loud enough for her to hear, but not so it sounded like a demand or a warning. Yet.
She stopped and turned. “Are you speaking to me?”
Obviously he was; there was nobody else in the lobby. He had no intention of playing linguistic games with her, but if he started out sniping, he’d end up having to stalk her like a psycho perv.
“Yeah, I’m talking to you. I’m here for you.”
His phrasing must have sounded like a threat; she took a step back. “What?”
“People above my pay grade decided you should have somebody with you while you’re goin’ around town. Right now, that’s me.”
She crossed her arms, and Cox noticed she didn’t have a handbag or briefcase tonight. In fact, she was dressed more like an actual person than he’d ever seen her: in jeans, a white button shirt, brown boots with an almost-reasonable heel, and a fitted corduroy jacket in a dark gold color. Usually she dressed like Going to Work Barbie, in sky-high heels and skirts so snug he couldn’t figure out how she managed to walk.
“I don’t need an escort or a bodyguard. Nor will I tolerate a babysitter.”
Fucking hell. He was the wrongest possible patch for this job. No skill with sweet talk and no desire to try. He didn’t like to talk at all. He didn’t even like to smile, because it made people think he wanted to talk. How the fuck was he supposed to convince her to let him go with her wherever she was going, which he did not want to do?
Subterfuge fucking sucked, so he said it straight out. “Look. It’s my job to keep up with you tonight. I wish it wasn’t, but nobody gives a shit what I want—or what you want. So I’m either with you tonight, or I’m following you tonight. You pick which one.”
Her arms still crossed, she shifted her weight from one leg to the other. She was tiny, not much over five feet, but something in her posture made her seem to grow. And the look on her face was pure, bloody murder. Her eyes flashed wildly under a stormy brow, and ... huh. Maybe it was the color of her jacket, but her irises seemed golden. Her ponytail lay over one shoulder like a wide vein of copper.
She was really pretty; he’d not noticed that before. Other patches had made comments about her good looks, but he’d never understood what they were seeing—probably because her Going to Work Barbie getups were like bright neon signs to him: Nothing to See Here. In more normal clothes, he saw the woman, and yeah, she was pretty.
Her looks meant absolutely nothing in any possible case, she was still a carpetbagging, money-grubbing, corporate snake, but it was a noteworthy fact he filed away.
They stood and stared at each other for a while. Cox watched her face shift through an array of emotions and thoughts until she settled for a moment on ... calculating. After she figured out her angle, her expression became friendly. Wide-eyed, even.
“Okay, then,” she said in a syrupy voice, “If you’re joining me, be useful. Show me Signal Bend through your eyes.”
He shook his head. “I’m goin’ where you go, not the other way around.”
She smiled. Cox could imagine her deploying that sharkish hook at the critical moment of one of her business deals, probably when she was stealing the shoes off orphans’ feet or something.
“If you’re going where I go, then you’re going to have to follow me like a stalker, Daniel. If you don’t want to do that, you’re going to have to show me around.” Her smile gained a gleam of triumph. “You pick which one.”
“Don’t call me Daniel. I’m Cox. Just Cox.”
She cocked her head to one side, but said nothing.
He fucking hated this snaky bitch.
“Fine,” he grumbled, defeated. “What do you want to see?”
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~oOo~
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She said she was hungry, and he was supposed to ‘show her around,’ so Cox headed off in the direction of Marie’s. The town tongues would wag like crazy when people got a load of him sitting at the diner with the enemy, but he didn’t give a fuck.
Autumn pulled up short. “Wait. We’re walking?”
He turned back and gave her a look. “We’re going to Marie’s. It’s less than two miles away. You can’t walk that? You’re not wearin’ your fuck-me shoes, so what’s the problem?”
Those skinny arms crossed again. “I can promise you I don’t own a single pair of fuck-me shoes.”
That was probably a great opening for some cutting remark about her sexuality, but Cox didn’t fuck around with insults for the sake of insults. If he said something shitty to somebody, it was because they deserved something shitty. Even then, he’d rather just walk away.
People thought he had beef with everybody, but that wasn’t true. He didn’t give enough of a shit to have beef with almost anyone. With a few exceptions, he hated everybody equally. Not because of anything they’d done, but because people fucking sucked.
Autumn Rooney, he had some beef with. But he didn’t need to do anything about it because the whole club had the same beef with her.
“I don’t want to walk,” Autumn said after several seconds of quiet impasse.
“My bike doesn’t have a second seat.” For the specific reason that he never wanted anyone on his bike with him.
“I wouldn’t ride your stupid motorcycle anyway. But luckily, I didn’t walk from the airport. I rented a car.” She pulled out a set of keys with a plastic fob and pointed them at the parking area. A faint double-beep sounded from there. “This way—unless you’re so testosterone-addled you won’t ride when a woman is driving. In which case, you can follow me on your steel penis.”
Cox’s cheek tensed oddly, and he realized his mouth was trying to smile. He licked his lips to divert it, but the thought that had set his facial nerves twitching held: she was pretty good at snarkball, spiking back every volley he sent her way.
It was one thing to dislike someone; stripping that dislike bare and using it like a switch was next level, and he didn’t think he’d ever known a woman to throw down like this. Of course, most women avoided him, and those who didn’t avoided talking to him much. As he preferred.
“I got no problem riding with you,” he said and strode toward the parking lot. Autumn trotted forward to pass him, then led him to a big silver Audi sedan.
Either the woman was loaded or she had a great expense account. Probably both.
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~oOo~
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Cox had expected people to take note when he walked into Marie’s with the woman who was trying to ruin Signal Bend, but he was surprised when the diner had one of those straight-from-Hollywood moments and the whole place went quiet as everybody stopped and stared. It was almost six o’clock, so Marie’s was near capacity. That was a lot of people suddenly forgetting their manners.
So subtly it was unlikely anyone but him noticed, Autumn faltered a little when the silence crashed down. Cox put a hand on her back to keep her moving in the direction of the only open booth. As they headed toward it, he sent a look around, making eye contact with as many people as possible until they all remembered they had their own business to mind.
Autumn slipped into the booth. Cox slid onto the other bench and grabbed two menus from behind the condiment caddy. “You ever eat here?” he asked as he handed her one.
The look she hit him with screamed, Are you stupid? “This is my fifth visit to Signal Bend. Of course I’ve eaten here. There aren’t many options to choose from.”
He’d asked a question; she’d answered it. There wasn’t anything else to say unless he wanted to throw snark back at her, and he did not. So he focused on his menu and left her to her own.
After a minute or so of silence while they stared at the laminated pages, Cox sensed someone come up on them. It was Kalina, a waitress here, and also a club girl whom he tended to favor, primarily because she didn’t try to make conversation with him. She was happy to quietly sit on his lap in a corner of the Hall while he drank, and then sit on his lap in his dorm room while he fucked her, and then go on about her life without expecting even a ‘see ya later’ from him.
“Hey, Cox,” she said as she put her pen on her order pad. “You know what you want?”
Cox nodded at Autumn, whom Kalina had thus far ignored. “You ready?”
“Sure,” Autumn answered. “I’ll have the fried chicken sandwich with fries—can I get some cheese on that?”
“We got American or Swiss,” Kalina answered with a hostile sigh.
“Swiss, please,” Autumn said, either unaware of the chill in Kalina’s tone or ignoring it. “And a Coke.”
“Diet Coke?”
“No, regular. Thank you.”
“Uh huh.” Kalina turned to Cox, and her tone shifted to friendliness. “What’re you having tonight?”
Cox found that he’d been so absorbed by Autumn’s order he needed a second to remember what his was. “I’ll do the grilled ham and cheese with fries.”
“You got it. Sweet tea, right?”
“Right.”
“Should be ‘bout ten minutes for your food. Drinks comin’ right up.” Kalina gave him a quick smile and walked off.
A soft, almost secret chuckle slipped from Autumn’s lips, and she swiped her phone open. “I’m always surprised how great the reception is out here.”
Cox leaned back and studied her. “I guess you know why, studyin’ up on us like you did.”
She looked up and set her phone aside. “I do. The Horde paid to put in a tower.”
He nodded.
After another stretch of quiet, she said, “Is it that you don’t like to talk, or you don’t like to talk to me?”
“I say what I need to say. Not everything’s about you.”
Kalina arrived with their drinks. When she was gone again, Autumn said, “You are every bit the jerk you look like.”
Now Cox did grin, briefly. “Yeah, I am. But ain’t you s’posed to be makin’ nice with us hicks out here?” He let his voice settle into his father’s Ozark drawl. “Ain’t that the way with you big city business folks? Stealin’ food out our mouths while you grin at us all pretty?”
For about two seconds after he finished that volley, she looked hurt, and then angry. Her expression didn’t change; it was all in her lively eyes—which were a light, coppery brown that did, in fact, seem gold when the light hit them right. Then her eyes settled, and a predatory smirk shaped her mouth.
“I tried that. I came into this sincerely wanting to work together to make Signal Bend better, and you all shoved that up my ass. Now I don’t have to take your abuse with a smile anymore, because I have what I wanted. That property is mine. Signed, sealed, and paid in full. And now you have to be nice to me to get something for yourselves.”
“I don’t have to be nice to anybody.”
“You know I meant your ‘club.’” She made quotes with her fingers, as well as with her voice.
He didn’t take that bait. “Why d’you think anybody’s gonna be nicer to you now? You took what nobody wanted to give you. That don’t make you a hero.”
“The mayor wanted the deal, and he’s not the only one. This project will help Signal Bend when it’s finished and operating. And it will help whoever gets the construction contract, too.”
“We don’t need your help. Not now, not in the future. We’re fine here without your stupid strip mall.”
Her fists balled up with sudden, palpable frustration, and Cox noted with some surprise that she was about to slam them on the table. But Kalina arrived right then with their plates, and Autumn smoothly returned to nonchalance.
When Kalina was gone again, as Cox reached for the ketchup, Autumn said, “It is infuriating that you dunderheads refuse to see what I have shown you repeatedly: Heartland Homesteads are not strip malls. They are designed to be community centerpieces, not basic services.”
“This community has a centerpiece. It’s called Main Street, and we’re on it.”
“Yes. True. And it’s charming as hell. This is a great little town, with great potential. But you don’t have the infrastructure yet to realize that potential. One ten-room inn inside the town limits. One market. Two bars. A diner, a Sonic, one slightly more upscale restaurant, and a tea room. That is nowhere near enough to keep people in town, enjoying all you offer here, spending money here. I bought a building that has stood empty for more than a decade. I didn’t displace anyone. I didn’t force a business to close. I bought an abandoned building.”
He noticed that she spoke of the deal as hers, not her company’s. Not knowing what to make of that, he filed it away in case it mattered later. “And you’re buying out a whole block of houses, too. Some of those houses are rentals. You think their landlords are gonna help them out?”
“I’m offering move-out packages to tenants, and I’ve offered the Zillow value for everybody who’s sold so far—and Zillow is higher than fair market value calculations, trust me.”
“I don’t trust you.” He trusted almost no one. His Horde brothers. Mostly. But that was it.
Autumn sighed. “I’m not the enemy, Cox. I’m not a monster.” She sagged back in her seat, as if he’d exhausted her reservoir of snark.
He felt a glimmer of guilt but shoved it away at once and said, “You’re human. That’s bad enough. And I don’t give a shit if you’re an enemy or not. You can have that out with Badge.”
More quiet. Cox waited a bit to see if this spell would finally stick. When Autumn seemed to be finished making her case for how she was going to save a town that was doing just fine without her, he picked up his sandwich and got to eating.
She took his cue and picked up her sandwich as well.
He’d been surprised that a chick like her—tiny and obviously glued to the fashion magazines—would order such a robust meal (a not-Diet Coke even), and he’d expected her to pick at it, but she grabbed that fried chicken sandwich in both hands and took an impressive bite. She chewed for a while, washed the rest of her bite down with a big sip from her soda, and went in for another big bite.
The way she was putting away that sandwich would give some of the Horde a run.
She looked up and saw him watching. “What? Are you horrified by a woman who’s not afraid to eat?”
Cox registered that he’d been staring while she put down most of her meal, and his sandwich was growing cold and soggy in his hands. He set it down on his plate.
“I don’t care how you eat.”
“Then why are you staring?”
“Just surprised somebody like you eats like that.”
She paused with a fry halfway to her mouth. “Somebody like me?”
He waved a hand at her. “Little and skinny and dressed like a model. I thought all you shiny city girls eat six almonds and a strawberry and call it a meal.”
Setting the last bit of her sandwich down, Autumn wiped her hands with a napkin. “Shiny?”
“Now you’re just repeating words I say.”
“They’re provocative words. What about me is shiny?”
Cox felt like she’d maneuvered him into a trap. This was the kind of shit that happened when he put any effort into a conversation—he missed some double meaning, or some sneaky stratagem, and ended up wedged in a corner with no way out, like a rat in a maze.
“All of you. Like plastic,” he said, hoping to put an end to it.
He succeeded. She reacted like he’d hurt her, even wincing subtly.
She slid to the outside of her bench. “I need to use the bathroom. I’ll pick up the check on my way back.” She stood. “Then I’m going down Main Street. I don’t give a damn what you do.”
Cox watched her walk toward the restrooms. He hated that chick. Fucking snake.
So why the hell did he feel guilty?