Defending My Mobster (BWWM Romance) (14 page)

“I can see the appeal. Why did you leave?”

I sighed. “That’s the big question, isn’t it? This world got a little too small for me, I guess. I was in the same schools all my life, with the same friends and the same guy, and my parents were proud of me because I wanted to stay there for the rest of my life. I studied finance at the Community College in Kerrville and I had my eye on a two-man accounting company on the edge of the industrial area. But this world doesn’t move along with the real world. It stays frozen in time. It’s almost like Brigadoon.”

“Like what?”

“Brigadoon. You know, that village that only appears once every hundred years for a day somewhere on earth, but to the people who live there every day just follows the other.”

Aaron shrugged. “Okay… so you left because you were getting too big for the place?”

“Something like that.” I looked out the window at the passing scenery.

“So what happened to the guy?”

“What guy?” I turned to look at Aaron.

“The one you were with for so long.”

“Oh,” I said. The guy that had stolen my heart. The one I’d wanted to spend the rest of my life with, because I couldn’t see a future without him in it. My chest constricted and I forced myself to breathe. This place reminded me how empty I felt. Dreams lived and died in this place. Dreams, futures, hope. “He decided to stay behind.”

Aaron shook his head. “Some people are born to be small-town forever.”

“Something like that,” I said again.

We drove on in silence. I closed my eyes, letting the hum of the car lull me into a doze. The sun that fell through the window colored the insides of my eyelids orange. Somewhere ahead of us, my past was lurking, waiting to pop its ugly head over the horizon and welcome me home. I shuddered. If I was lucky Noah wasn’t there anymore. I knew he’d wanted to leave his drunk of a father and find a better life. God knew he’d needed it. Noah wouldn’t have stayed. And what were the chances of me running into him? We were there on business. Just a night or two, and I could leave it all behind again.

This wasn’t going to be a problem. I breathed in deeply, ignoring the fistful of nerves that knotted together in my stomach.

The afternoon sun hung low enough to be in our eyes when we heard a clanging sound somewhere under the hood of the car.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I said. Aaron looked in the rearview mirror like it would hold an answer. “There’s nowhere out here where we can stop. Last stop’s Ingram but we’re almost half an hour out, I think.”

“Well, let’s hope we don’t break down, then,” I said.

We almost made it. I saw the first buildings of the town against the sky when the clanking sound suddenly got louder, and then the engine cut. Aaron tried to start the car again, but it whined and sputtered and almost looked like it would catch, but then gave up. Aaron tried two or three times, before giving up too.

“I don’t think this is going to go anywhere,” he said. “We better call someone.”

“I’ll deal with it,” I said and pulled out my phone. I dialed the hotel that was expecting us, and tried to explain where we were.

“They’re sending someone,” I said when I finally got the reception on the same page as me. “I don’t know how long, though.”

The sun was well on its way toward the horizon, splashing the world with strokes of red, orange and pinks. I would have loved it in different circumstances, but my stomach bothered me – I hadn’t eaten since we’d arrived at the airport, and I really needed to pee.

“Here’s someone, now,” Aaron said, getting up from the hood he was leaning against. I stepped out of the car. The truck approaching us was evergreen, polished until there wasn’t a spot of dust on it. The man behind the wheel wore a white cowboy hat. When he stepped out I noticed his faded jeans with worn leather chaps over them, and cowboy boots like you would see in any western movie. He wore a checkered collar shirt that looked a bit rumpled. He introduced himself to Aaron, shaking his hand. There was something familiar about his walk. Fluid and confident. Pure cowboy, rough and rugged. Handsome as anything.

My taste in men hadn’t changed. But something was off. My skin broke out in goosebumps and I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. The blond hair curling out from underneath the cowboy hat was a shade too familiar. So was the stroll towards Aaron, and the firm handshake.

When he turned to me, my brain finally added up what my body had known all along. It was Noah. And his soft sea-green eyes fell on me, holding my own gaze for what felt like forever. I prayed the earth would open up and swallow me whole. Or that I would faint. Or something. Anything that would take me away from this. From him.

He had been my version of the American dream. The handsome cowboy that I’d wished my children would look like one day. And then once the unthinkable had happened, and the idea of children had become a hard reality, the friend I’d seen in those eyes had turned into the enemy.

None of my children could end up the way he’d chosen to be. Not the ones I would have with the right man one day, because this time I’d have a choice.

I had nightmares about that face, too. About his high cheekbones and square jaw. About the eyes that could look into my soul, and so many years ago had still found a reason to reject it.

“Hey, Tam,” he said, his voice soft and silky, caressing my skin. He held out his hand to me, but I crossed my arms over my chest. I knew the electric current that went with the touch of his skin.

“Tamika,” I corrected him. He couldn’t just use the nickname he’d always called me, like he hadn’t shattered my heart. I couldn’t touch him. I wouldn’t. After a moment he dropped his hand by his side, and it hung there, his fingertips almost touching his jeans. His eyes were still on me, but they had closed, like a shutter had been drawn, and Noah was gone. Only the brilliant eyes remained, empty.

Yeah, that’s what it had felt like when I’d lost him then, too.

“Do you know each other?” Aaron asked, looking from me to Noah.

“Well, in a small town like this, I doubt there are a lot of people that don’t know Tam. Tamika that is”

“We’ve met,” I said, tight-lipped. I glanced over at the truck. It was the one he’d wanted his whole life. I remembered the photos now, in his bedroom. A pang of jealousy nailed me in the chest, and I was surprised at the intensity of it. How was it fair that he’d gotten what he wanted, but I hadn’t?

“Shall we look under the hood?” Noah asked, finally breaking the spell when he turned away. Aaron kicked the tire.

“I doubt you’re going to be able to fix anything on this one,” he said.

Noah shrugged and Aaron walked around the passenger door to pop the hood. Noah lifted it and stuck his head inside, whistling. I was relieved that it wasn’t a tune I knew. The sound of his whistle, the way he jumped from one note to the next, was bad enough to hear again without the tune being something from my past.

“Nope,” he finally said, dropping the hood back into place. “We’re going to have to get this one to Murphy. He’ll take a look at it.”

“I wouldn’t even bother, it’s a rental,” Aaron said.

“I thought it was a strange ride for a man like you,” Noah said. Aaron raised his eyebrows and looked at me.

“He means you look too classy for it,” I interpreted, and I kicked myself for it the moment I did. I hadn’t wanted to be able to still read Noah. He turned and flashed me a smile that made me feel unbalanced.

“Is there a place in town where we can find a replacement instead?” Aaron asked.

“Murphy can help you out with that too. I’ll tow you in.”

“You don’t exactly have a tow-truck,” I pointed out. Noah pulled a length of rope from the foot-well.

“If it’s a truck, and it’s towing, it’s a tow-truck,” he said and walked around to the back of it. He lay down in the dust on his back to tie the rope to the undercarriage of his truck. I rolled my eyes.

When the rope was fastened to the car as well, Aaron walked up to the truck, but Noah shook his head.

“You’re going to have to steer it. Get in behind the wheel. Tamika can ride up in the cab with me.”

“What?” I protested. “Can’t I ride with Aaron? Or steer, at least?” I didn’t want to be in the truck alone with Noah. I didn’t even want to be in the truck with Aaron with Noah. But Noah shook his head.

“If something goes wrong, it’s better to have one dead than two,” he said and turned away. Aaron’s face went ash.

“He’s kidding,” I said coldly. Damn him. There was no way I was going to get out of this. “You’ll be fine,” I reassured Aaron who walked stiffly to the car, and I walked to the passenger door of the truck.

Was I going to be fine?

The drive to Ingram was short, but it felt like forever. I sat on the smooth leather seat, as far from Noah as I could, and even then he was so close that if I reached out my hand I would be able to touch him. I could feel the warmth radiate off his skin across the gap between us. The smell of his cologne hung thick in the cabin, and it brought back memories of starry skies and my skin on his.

It was the same cologne he’d been using before. It smelled musky and male, mixed with a smell that belonged only to Noah. I knew, because just after I’d lost him I’d gone to a store like a heart-broken teenager and found his cologne so I could have his smell at least. And it hadn’t smelled like him. It had smelled like a fake.

My skin prickled on my left side, where he was. I tried not to look at his face, outline his profile. The couple of times he tried to make conversation I cut it short, because I knew I would stare at his lips when he spoke, and I didn’t want to give him ideas. I didn’t even know what my idea was. I just knew that he was as contagious as before. My body responded to him before my mind even calculated what was going on.

And on top of all that, it looked like he was as unaffected by my presence as if I were another man, not the girl that had given everything to him. He had been my first.

When we finally found Murphy’s car lot, the sun was sinking behind the horizon fast. Murphy stepped out of his trailer. The last seven years hadn’t treated him well. His hair was long and shabby, sticking up in all directions, and he’d developed a tummy. His grease-stained shirt looked like it was the same one I’d seen him in last, and the stubble on his chin was grey now.

“Well I’ll be damned,” he said when I got out of the truck. “If it isn’t Tamika Davis. This is the last person in the world I figured to see you rolling in with, Noah.” Murphy’s western drawl had gotten thicker, and the smell of rum was in the air.

“Hi, Murphy,” I said, holding out my hand to him. He grinned at me and kissed it, and I fought the urge to wipe my hand on my pants. Aaron joined us, introducing himself. Murphy looked him up and down. Lawyers didn’t often come to Ingram, and in a dusty ranch town, what was shabby to him was still too dressy. Murphy looked at me again.

“Whoot, if Vanessa—“

“Can we leave the car here? It’s one of the airport’s.” Noah interrupted Murphy. The old man looked at Noah for a moment, scratching his head. I narrowed my eyes at Noah. I didn’t know a Vanessa; as far as I knew, Murphy was single.

“Sure, if you can get someone to come get it.”

“I’ll take care of it,” I said. “Do you have something else we can use?”

“Sure,” he said again. “You guys can poke around the back, I have some of them running.” He pointed us in a direction, and we walked around a wooden shed while Noah stayed behind with Murphy.

“This is definitely different than the city,” Aaron said.

“Very,” I said. It was filled with every person I’d hoped never to see again. We found four parked cars behind the shed. Three of them were trucks that looked like they came from the time just after the war. The fourth was a car that was so covered in rust I wasn’t sure what color it used to be.

“Not much of a choice,” Aaron said. He looked them over, and finally decided on the buttery yellow one. It looked the best of the four, although with the film of dust that covered it and the rust that was creeping up on it from the bottom and the back, ‘best’ was a relative term.

When we found Murphy again, Noah had already left. The red Corolla had been dumped under a tree. I felt Noah’s absence acutely, but I was relieved I could relax. Murphy handed over the truck’s keys to Aaron, and we sputtered our way out of the yard.

“Smooth like pudding,” Murphy called into the wound down window at Aaron’s side.

“Well bring it back in a day or two,” he said. The truck crawled down the drive at a snail’s pace, disregarding the pedal Aaron floored. “Or three or four.”