Risk (Gentry Boys #2)(12)

I got off the couch and rested the guitar against the wall.

“I’ll leave you to it,” I told her, heading for the back patio. I knew she was waiting until I was out of earshot before answering her phone.

I picked up some of the free weights we kept on the patio and started pumping sets of fifty. Usually it wasn’t a problem. It was an easy way to push myself out of the funk and get focused. I would channel everything into my body’s rising strength. It pleased me to feel myself growing more powerful with every lift. It meant I had a shot at battling through whatever challenge was on the horizon. I used to beg for that power when I was a kid as my brothers and I hid in the desert darkness from the same monster. He still haunted us all, just in different ways. I always figured the stronger I became the more defeated he would be. The mind doesn’t always listen to those arguments though.

After ten minutes I set the weights down and stood. Arizona in August is a punishing place. The sweat rolled out of my pores and instantly evaporated in the searing heat. I couldn’t hear Saylor’s voice. I wondered if she was still talking to Truly, and what Truly had said about me.

Strangely enough, I would have given a lot just then to know the answer.





CHAPTER FIVE


TRULY



I jumped out of bed the moment I heard Creed close the door. For a few minutes I didn’t do anything but pace back and forth naked. Dolly crept into the room and stared at me warily from the doorway. I thought I detected a note of disapproval in her bright eyes.

“I know,” I told the cat. “There’s nothing you can say about it that I’m not already thinking so you may as well keep your rude scolding to yourself.”

The cat blinked.

With an incoherent shout I dropped back onto the bed. I leaned over my bare knees and stared at my toes.

I had f*cked Creed Gentry.

Holy shit, I f*cked Creed Gentry!!!

Repeatedly. In more ways than were decent. And he was so good I couldn’t even wrap my head around it.

With a groan I flopped back into the log cabin quilt I had sewn by hand when I was fifteen. I’d dragged that poor thing through my manic life until we wound up here. Now I’d forced it to suffer the indignity of hosting a big fat f*ck party with a surly bad boy I scarcely knew.

Dolly jumped on the bed and curled up close to my face. I nuzzled her dark fur as she purred. She came into my life a year ago, when I was fresh out of a bad deal with a man who figured I was young enough and stupid enough to accept being a kept woman. I knew better, although it took me a little while to realize I knew better. I wasn’t about to stomach becoming something only slightly classier than a street walker. By that point I’d been in Arizona for about four months but that was a block of time mostly spent entertaining Paul Angelo. He was twice my age and absurdly possessive. He also had a wife and kids who knew nothing of my stained existence in a luxurious Phoenix loft. When I found that out I realized how much I’d been kidding myself about my own status. I told him where to get off and then I got out, refusing the pile of money he tried to throw at me.

At the time I only had enough cash to rent a tiny trailer in a crowded Mesa park. By then I was living in isolation. Friends were a myth. Family was a half remembered dream. A few of the folks ambling around the trailer park seemed sketchy, dangerous. But mostly they were just ordinary people; a little lost and yet still hopeful, kind of like me.

Dolly was a skeletal wraith who ran like the devil every time a human came within twenty yards. Something in her watchful eyes and undernourished body tore at me. I started setting out a plate of milk every evening and sitting nearby as I waited for her to find it. After the fourth night of patiently holding out my hand she finally ventured close enough to touch. Her rough little tongue gently swiped my knuckles and I casually pulled her into my lap. When I took her inside I wasn’t sure she would stay. But she did. Maybe she recognized a kindred spirit, an allied stray to face the world with. After a few months I was able to clear enough money from waitressing jobs to get out of the trailer park and into a shared apartment close to the university.

I listened to the swift beat of Dolly’s heart for a few minutes before sighing and rising from the bed. I was damn glad Stephanie was still out of town. We weren’t close and Stephanie Bransky struck me as someone who suffered from an excess of intensity. When she wasn’t running off to class she was holed up in front of her computer or barking into her phone. It all seemed mysterious and exhausting. I’d asked her once what the hell she was up to but her flat expression said she had no intention of talking about it. Stephanie didn’t bring men home. She probably wouldn’t have approved of Creedence Gentry.

The shower felt good after so many hours of sweaty exertion. As I pulled the worn terrycloth robe over my skin and wrung out my hair, I started to feel like less of a basket case. I’d had a one night stand. So what? People did that all the time. It’s not like Creed would think less of me. I doubted he would think of me again at all.

Even though I hadn’t slept much the night before I wasn’t tired. Hours remained until I needed to return to the restaurant. Dolly stayed under my feet while I headed to the kitchen and whipped up some scrambled eggs. I hadn’t exactly been honest when I told Creed I never cooked.

With a plate in hand I walked into the living room. It was my plan to vegetate in front of the television until the striking memory of Creed’s naked body began to fade. Dolly bumped into my ankles when I stopped cold. There, in the middle of the beige carpeted floor, was the crumpled shape of a man’s shirt. I remembered thinking last night how the blue fabric brought out the color of his eyes. I leaned over slowly and picked it up. Why the hell hadn’t he taken his shirt with him? He couldn’t have overlooked it; it was out here in plain sight. Maybe he left it behind intentionally, as a reason to come back later.