Pedal to the Metal: Love's Drivin' but Fate's Got the Pole (The 'Cuda Confessions Book 3) (75 page)

A dark look crossed his face, smoothed away in an instant. He reached out and wiped away a tear rolling down her abused cheek. The shock of his touch hit her harder than Cotton. Hands that large shouldn’t be capable of such tenderness.

That notion led her thoughts to a bad place, making the trembling in her core crank up a notch.

“C’mon, let’s get you some ice.” He turned on a smile she’d bet her last dollar usually got him his way. “Cotton’s paperwork’s not going anywhere, but you might be able to avoid a black eye if we hurry.”

Defective gene pool. That had to be why she let him lead her to the Mess Hall. The warm hand he placed at the small of her back helped calm the tremors threatening to shred her self-control, so she allowed it to remain as they walked.

Yeah, that was why. It wasn’t because she had lain sleepless for two weeks or more, fantasizing about how his hands would feel on her bare skin.

The Mess Hall was deserted at three in the afternoon, because the inmates fixed their own evening meals in each residence hall. The JOC’s carried keys to most of the locked doors at the facility. He let go her hand to find the correct key. Wrapping her arms around her waist to ward off the tremors, Tori’s thoughts jumped to Cotton’s assault.

She’d pushed him too hard, trying to get to a breakthrough before she left, because the idea of leaving anything undone went against her grain. She’d put herself in a position to be hurt, mainly because it bent the gorgeous new JCO out of whack when she put forth the idea. She didn’t need her medical degrees to understand contradicting his reasonable objection had been a petty way to get even for the sexual frustration he’d given her lately.

“You’re shaking.” His gruff voice brought her back to the present. She looked around, surprised to see they’d crossed the large dining hall and entered the kitchen while she’d been lost in her own head.

“I...I’m not,” she denied, forcing herself to take deep breaths.

“Yes, you are.” He borrowed the soothing tone she used on patients experiencing dementia. “It’s the adrenaline. Always kicks in after a battle. Gives some people the shakes.”

Battle. Some people.

His words hit her like another slap in the face. No wonder she’d instinctively been both attracted to and wary of him. The man had ‘former military’ written all over him. Not the rank-and-file kind of military, either. His sleek cat-like movements, rock-hard musculature, and the way he’d just waltzed in the door and had JCO’s with more seniority following his orders without question, marked him as a damn good candidate for elite forces. Not to mention the way he’d worked wonders with Cotton, a hard case if ever she’d seen one. JCO Max Martin was the sort of man that commanded respect. A word of praise from him helped melt the ice the juvenile used to shut off feelings for others.

“Ranger, Delta Force, Air Commando, Force Recon, or SEAL?” she blurted.

The ‘Cuda Confessions Book 4-The Secret Book

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I
don’t remember much about the decades between the rip-roaring pity party I threw myself at nineteen and sobering up to stare forty in the eyes. I remember being shocked that so much time had passed, but so goddamn little had changed.

I doubted there was much worth remembering anyway, but the mirror threw back a road map of all those rutted dead-ends I’d wandered, a beer in one hand and a shot of Jack in the other, so I avoid mirrors whenever possible.

I hated myself for giving a damn what my makeup looked like when Dale motherfuckin’ Hannah deigned to drop by for first time in that same two-decade span. I stood frozen on the front porch, a bag of groceries in one hand and my granddaughter’s hand in the other, when he rolled up on chrome rims so shiny, I could see every wrinkle booze had printed on my face. Each of those fancy rims cost more than I’d paid for my Dodge Neon.

He pulled in and made a three-point-turn before he cut the engine, so he’d be ready to run like a scalded dog.

Again. 

“Can you take the groceries inside for Grandma?” I asked Shelby. Eager to please, the four-year-old grabbed the handles. I winced when the bag hit the threshold with a thump. The dozen eggs wouldn’t survive being dragged to the kitchen, but I let her go. She was too young to hear anything I had to say to this man.

Damn him. How could a heavy dollop of frosting in his hair make him look better? My gray made me look like a hag, but I was too worn out with men to waste a buck on hair coloring.

“I thought about coming to see you in the hospital when Caroline said you were on life support.”
Goddamn it, that’s not ‘fuck you and get outta my yard’.

He shoved a boot onto the top step, tucked his hands into his back pockets, and grinned. “Too much temptation, huh?”

Man always did know me better than anyone. “Too easy. One yank and done?”
No, Hannah, you ain’t gettin’ off that light. You need to bleed.
My eyes strayed over his shoulder. This time of day, the setting sun lit the wing on the granite angel in the cemetery across the way. Three spots down lay the young woman who’d been Dale’s excuse for making the wreckage I called a life.

Anger finally caught in my chest, shrieking like fresh tires on hot asphalt, but Dale threw me right into the wall before my outrage got up to cruising speed.

“Laid eyes on Jonny Jet yet?”

Jet was the hot shot NASCAR driver my daughter was seeing. I huffed. “Nah. He’s just playin’ a hard round of gas or ass while he waits for some California beauty pageant queen.”

Dammit. That dagger was meant for Jesse Hancock, the other NASCAR driver who’d fucked me over after Dale got done with me. But nothing Jesse had done hurt half as bad as what Dale did.
Get your shit together. He almost died and now he’s seen Jesus. He’s gonna make everything right. I won’t get a better shot at putting him on his knees.

Don’t go down too easy. He won’t buy it if I do.

“Wrong.” Oh, the arrogance in Dale’s tone almost made me mess this up before it got goin’ good, but I kept my expression blank and let him run his mouth. “He’s lookin’ at Caroline like she’s the garage he could call home. He’ll be at my house tonight. Come on by and I’ll introduce you.”

Ain’t it a good thing that booze rots brain cells instead of teeth?
If mine had been the least bit loose, every last molar in my head would’ve tumbled to the porch.

Say no. Tell him to go to Hell.

“Go to Hell.”

“What about Colt?”

Our son had taken nearly every step of his life at Dale’s side. Just one more thing I’d fucked up—letting Dale take Colt while I got my GED and tried to mend my broken heart with Jesse.

Dale swept the hat off his head. In every photo of the man I’d seen in the last decades he’d been clean-shaven and wearing a Ridenhour Racing cap. The hat he wore today said something else. Hannah-Built. Were the rumors true, then? Dale was leaving that nest of vipers at long last?

“I was wrong, Robyn. I was wrong, okay? I fucked up. I see that now. If it’s the last thing I do, I’m gonna make it up to you. Colt’s damn near a man.”

Our son was twenty-fucking-six, although it sure didn’t seem possible. Dale had been a man for two years by the time he turned sixteen. The man who’d saved me, only to break me and throw me out right here on my daddy’s porch. So, what was the problem with Colt? I doubted Dale pampered him, even if he did rip down this road in a Mustang with about fifty grand in aftermarket parts.

“Won’t be much longer till he’ll need us to stand up at his weddin’. You want to be there for that, don’t’cha? He needs to see us together. He’s a man divided, Robyn, and that’s my fuckin’ fault, for shuttin’ you out. I’m gonna fix that.”

Not ‘let me fix that’. Not ‘I want to make things right’. And sure as hell not ‘can you find it in your heart to forgive me’? But, ‘I’m gonna fix every little hurt, bump, and bruise’.

Or that’s what my stupid, stupid heart heard, anyhow. I tasted the tang of Budweiser and heard the sweet, crooning lullaby that only Jack Daniels could sing.

Get thee behind me, Satan.

“Harlot! Is that the bastard that killed my baby? Get his ass off my property before I shoot him dead.”

I had to laugh at the fool screaming from the far side of the hedge between my house and the parsonage for the church across the road.

“I think the preacher’s been tokin’ on some good shit, Hannah.” If there was one thing I figured me and Dale could still do together, it was hate The Reverend Robert Shalvis. I flipped the old man my middle finger.

“Oh, hello, Bobby,” Dale drawled. The danger simmering underneath the molasses tone made the hair stand up on my arms. “Damn, it’s been a coon’s age since I laid eyes on you. C’mon over here.” Dale turned to face the parsonage and spread his legs wide, in the cocky way that still made my heart jump a beat. Holding out his hands, he flashed the grin that had cost me my virginity.

“I got your fuckin’ salvation right here. Let me lay hands on you, Brother Shalvis. I am done livin’ with this boulder inside me. I crave salvation! C’mon, old man. I’ll spot you the shotgun and still rip your fuckin’ heart right outta your chest. Step through that hedge. I wanna be bathed in the blood of the Lamb.”

I burst out laughing. After all these years, Dale could still mock the sing-song chant the old man used in the pulpit. Dale raised his hands high, barking with laughter as Bobby scuttled into the house. 

“Was it somethin’ I said?” Dale flipped the cap onto his head again and turned to leave. “And I sure could use a homemade banana puddin’ tonight. Shelby’s like me. Can’t abide that crap they sell at the grocery store deli,” he tossed over his shoulder. “We’re celebratin’ her graduation and her world record.”

“Gonna have to pass on that offer, Hannah. I got me a hot date with a motorcycle man.” That remark might not have drawn blood, but it drew Dale up short.

I knew better than to think that glint in his eye was jealousy, but I still hastened to add, “Sons of Anarchy on Netflix,” because some tiny part of me was still Dale Hannah’s girl.

Dammit.

“Show up about seven, will ya? You’re my gift to Colt, and to Shelby. I wanna surprise ‘em both, so if you don’t mind, wait on the deck till you hear me knock.”

“Looks to me like you been tokin’ on Bobby’s stash.” I had my shields up now. If the bastard thought he could just waltz up and tell me to bring him a banana pudding, and oh, by the way, I want you shifting from foot to foot on the porch like some carnival act waiting to take center stage, he—

My mouth fell open when he went right down on his knees in the grass beside the open door of that jacked-up truck. My nursing training kicked in. I leaped off the porch. The man had been in ICU when I called over to Sammy Owens Trauma Center yesterday, for God’s sake. I skidded to a halt in front of him, trying to think what symptoms I should look for after a patient experienced a traumatic brain injury.

Dale wrapped his arms around my thighs and held on like a man going down for the last time. 

“Please, Robyn. My little girl went on national television, tellin’ the whole world I was her hero. Bet you got a good laugh about that. I know goddamn well you can tell her I ain’t one. But, I ain’t dead yet, so there’s still hope I can fix my mistakes.”

Bingo
.

I hated the way the man’s deep rumble stirred things better left dead.

The only time I’d seen Dale on his knees was right before he crawled between my thighs, or the thighs of Jill Shalvis, the adopted daughter of the crazy preacher man next door. The redhead we’d both fallen in love with. Shelby Hannah, the stepdaughter Dale was about to adopt, was the spittin’ image of Jill.

I reckoned that likeness was only possible because the God I’d grown up fearing—Bobby’s God—was the Old Testament variety. The One who taught men to throw rocks at women like me. Sure as hell not the one described in the New Testament, who hung out with harlots.

That’s not true.

And because of that hideous night—the night Dale had passed from boy to man and me from girl to woman—and not the nights we’d spent racing and fucking—I asked, “With or without marshmallow cream?” I swiped the tear off his cheek and cursed the new goatee for all it was worth, because it made him so gorgeous.

Like Lucifer.

I couldn’t bear the look in his eyes, so I raised my head to stare at the angel with the broken wing. I battled with my heart while I wondered for the millionth time if that Old Testament God had been laughing when He prompted Bebe Hickman to spend more money on his wife’s marker than the cheapskate had ever spent on that good soul the whole fifty years they’d been married.

Only a certain kind of man would buy a broken angel.

But it took a different kind of man to try and mend an angel with broken wings. Should we hold them to account for their failure, or give credit for trying? Two decades with my best fellas, Bud, Jose, and Jack, hadn’t helped me decide.

Why don’t men do a woman the favor of being all bad or all good? How many women like me had gone down in the crossfire between the tug of war between money and love that raged in the souls of ambitious men like Dale Hannah? He’d taken the money, of course, but, even I gave him credit for the struggle he put up before he succumbed.