Pleasure in the Rain (14 page)

“If you say so, sugar.”

They veered into the station as if there were an impending shortage on brake pads, and Darryl Lee was conserving. She gripped the door handle and held onto Sebbie’s collar to keep him from taking a nosedive onto the floorboard. A white Ford truck pulled away from one of the gas pumps, forcing Darryl Lee to give in and siphon off some of his brake supply. At the same time, he hit the horn, sending out another round of
Dixie
.

He lowered his window and waved for the driver to stop. “Hey,” he yelled, “I’ve been lookin’ for you! Pull over!”

She got a glimpse of the man in the other truck and the distinct impression that he wasn’t as happy to see Darryl Lee as Darryl Lee was to see him. Darryl Lee cut the engine and put a hand on her arm. “Can you wait a minute?”

“As a matter of fact, no,” she said, glancing at her watch. “I really need to get going.”

“Nineteen years, and you can’t wait two minutes?”

She failed to hide her astonishment. “You’re not really suggesting that I owe you something, are you?”

He glanced down at her feet, now threatening to burst free from the flimsy straps of her Italian sandals.

“Two minutes,” she conceded.

He hopped out of the truck, walked over to the Ford.

Sebbie
took his place in the driver’s seat, paws planted on the windowsill, staring at the two men as if he’d been given a front row seat at a catfight.

The truck’s passenger side window lowered, and a large black and tan hound stuck its head out the window, greeting Darryl Lee with a tongue-lolling smile.

Sebbie
started yipping full blast.

Grier picked him up and shushed him. To no avail. He did a happy dance on her lap, wagging his whole body at the hound, who was, of course, paying no attention to him.

The Ford’s driver got out and walked around to where Darryl Lee stood rubbing the dog’s head.

Grier tried not to stare, but curiosity got the better of her, and she squinted at the man’s face. With a start, she recognized him as Darryl Lee’s older brother, the resemblance impossible to miss.

Bobby Jack Randall. The name came instantly to her, even though she’d barely met him once when she and Darryl Lee came back to his house to watch TV, high school code for making out. Bobby Jack had been home from college for the weekend, and she remembered now the way he’d looked at her with what she’d later realized - too late, actually - was pity and even later on discovered the reason for.

If Darryl Lee looked like Bradley Cooper, Bobby Jack could pass for a slightly more serious, slightly taller version. He had the same dark hair and startling green eyes. Amazingly enough, he was even better-looking than Darryl Lee.

“You’re a rat’s ass, you know it, son?” Bobby Jack said, glancing her way with clear disapproval, his voice carrying through Darryl Lee’s rolled down window.

“Hey, man, I wish, but it’s not what you’re thinkin’,” Darryl Lee said.

“Right.
I thought you and Dreama were trying to work things out.”

Darryl Lee glanced back at Grier, and she decided his two minutes were up.

“Come on, Sebbie.” She picked up his leash, opened the door and slid out, waiting for Sebbie to jump down beside her.

He did, jerking the leash from her hand and shooting across the parking lot toward the truck, the hound now barking at him in a very large hound dog bark.

Grier ran after him, her feet again screaming in the hateful heels. “Sebbie!”

“Looks like he’s got a little crush on Florence,” Darryl Lee drawled, smiling at her.

Grier’s face went three shades of red. She scooped Sebbie up and without giving either man another glance, teetered for the inside of the station.

The girl up front studied her as if Grier had fallen out of the sky. She had a tablespoon size wad of gum in her right cheek. Each time she chewed, the gum made a sharp popping sound, the art of which must have taken some practice.

“Is there anyone here who can give me a ride back to my car with some oil?” Grier asked, while Sebbie struggled into a position where he could look back at the truck over her shoulder.

“We don’t really allow no dawgs in here,” the girl said. “Bobby Jack don’t even bring his Florence in, and if anybody was allowed to bring a dawg in, it would be Bobby Jack.”

“Sebbie’s really not very much like a dog,” Grier said.

The girl narrowed her gaze at the back of Sebbie’s head. “Looks like a dawg to me. Maybe he could pass for a shrimp.” She chuckled at her own joke, then sobered with a reluctant, “You don’t look like you’re from around here.”

“My car broke down a few miles back,” Grier said. “It just needs oil.”

The girl popped her gum again, watching Grier as though she thought she might grab a pack of the Redman tobacco gracing the rack in front of her and make a run for it. She picked up the phone on the wall, punched a button and snapped out, “Marty, come to the front, please.”

She turned back to Grier then and said, “I guess we’ll make a one time exception for your . . .dawg.”

“Thank you so much,” Grier said, trying to sound grateful even as she heard the sarcasm in her voice.

Grier glanced out at the parking lot and saw the white Ford pulling away from the station, the hound’s head hanging out the window, ears flying back with the wind.

Darryl Lee headed her way. He arrived at the door at the same time as a guy dressed in grease-spotted coveralls, a bandana covering his head.

Gum Girl hitched a thumb at Grier and said, “She needs a tow, Marty.”

Marty smiled a brown-toothed smile that made Grier wonder if he’d been dipping into the store’s Redman stash. “Not a problem. Let me get the truck, and you can meet me out front.”

“Thanks,” Grier said.

Darryl Lee waited until Marty headed out the door before saying, semi-hurt, “I could’ve given you a ride back.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “Dreama’s probably expecting you somewhere.”

Darryl Lee grinned. “That jealousy I hear in your voice?”

She rolled her eyes and gave him a look that would have humbled most men. Except Darryl Lee, of course.

From the corner of her eye, she could see Gum Girl watching the two of them as if she’d just flipped the channel to a steamy soap. With Sebbie now deflated and whimpering in her arms, Grier cut short the entertainment and headed out the door to wait for Marty and the tow truck.

“Hey, whoa, now.”
Darryl Lee pulled her to a stop with a hand at her elbow. “How long you gonna be in town, Grier?”

“No longer than I have to be.”

“How long’s that?”

She rounded on him then, the aggravations of this day suddenly getting the better of her. “What difference does it make to you, Darryl Lee?”

“It makes a lot of difference,” he said, his voice soft in a way she had once found completely impossible to resist. “Come on, Grier. You know it’d be good to catch up.”

“Isn’t that what we just did?”

“It was a start.”

“And a finish as far as I’m concerned.”

Marty pulled up in the tow truck, rolling down the window to call out, “You ready, ma’am?”

She nodded and signaled she’d be there in a moment. “Thanks for the help, Darryl Lee. It was good to see you,” she said, aiming for a note of graciousness and falling several decibels short.

“Can I call you while you’re here?”

“What point would there be in that?”

He dropped his gaze down the length of her, the look in his eyes answering her question. “Exactly,” she said. “You take care, Darryl Lee.”

She climbed into the truck, Sebbie hopping up to sit at her feet. She lifted her hand in a small wave.

“You haven’t seen the last of me, Grier,” he called out as they pulled away.

She rolled up the window and forced herself not to look back.

*

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AN EXCERPT FROM GOOD GUYS LOVE DOGS

By

Inglath Cooper

Prologue

Ian McKinley had finally made it. Reached the pinnacle. The top rung of the ladder. Tonight represented the crown jewel in the career he’d spent seventeen years of his life building. Thirty-nine, and, by most definitions, he had everything. Money. Success. A teenage son. A beautiful fiancée.

Not to mention having just brought on board the biggest client ever for CCI Investments of Manhattan, he was a hero to his partners. This party at the Waldorf-Astoria had been thrown for him, the invitation list a who’s who of New York City high rollers.

Standing here now among trays of Champagne and tables loaded with exotic-looking foods, he should have been nothing but exhilarated. Somehow, he merely felt tired. Bone weary with the routine of his life, the predictability of it.

Every morning he bought his breakfast at the same bagel shop on Sixtieth Street, ate it at his desk with exactly two cups of coffee, no cream, no sugar. Every day he ran six miles at noon. He couldn’t remember when he’d done anything remotely spontaneous.

But this was the life he had wanted. This was what he’d worked so hard for  ̶  to prove a poor boy from the wrong side of Manhattan could make it to Park and Sixty-first. He only regretted that neither Sherry nor his mother had lived to see his success. He’d promised them both he would make something of himself one day. He wondered if they would have been proud of him. But then, if Sherry had lived, maybe he wouldn’t have been quite so driven. Wouldn’t have buried himself in his work. Life would have been more about family. More normal for him and for Luke.

Did he even know what normal was anymore?

For the past three weeks, he’d gotten no more than five hours of sleep a night. That might explain his fatigue, except that part of him felt as if he’d been tired for years. He needed a vacation. Away from the city. When was the last time he’d taken one? The last time he’d spent more than an hour alone with his son? Guilt gnawed at him. He would plan something for them to do together. Soon. And he would make sure he kept his word.

“Why is it you look like a man headed for the gas chamber instead of the man of the hour?”

Ian swung around to find Rachel looking up at him with inquisitive eyes and a smile on her lips. “Hey,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder and giving it a soft squeeze. “A pillow and a bed sound pretty good about now.”

“I could go for that. Especially since I’ve been getting just a little jealous of the stares half the women in the room have been sending you all night.” She leaned in to kiss the corner of his mouth, her right breast pressing into his chest. He waited for the surge of attraction that should have followed her deliberate provocation and decided, when it did not come, that he was more tired than he’d realized.

“Hey, we can’t have any of that.” Curtis Morgan clapped a hand on Ian’s shoulder. A short man with a receding hairline and an expanding waistline, Curtis was one of Ian’s partners at CCI. “Not until after the wedding, at least. Ms. Montgomery, you’ll have our guest of honor ducking out before I’ve had a chance to make my toast to him.”

“I suggest you hurry up and do it,” Rachel said with a raised brow. “I’m afraid he’s nearly dead on his feet.”

“No wonder. You really gave this one everything, Ian,” Curtis said. “Our firm will see the benefit of it. We’re all very appreciative.”

“Yes. I’m so proud of him,” Rachel said. “Now, if I could just get him to agree on a wedding date.”

She looked up at Ian with wide eyes that attempted to convey innocence, but Ian suspected Rachel knew exactly what she was doing.

As methodical about her personal life as she was about attaining senior partnership status at the law firm of Brown, Brown and Fitzgerald, Rachel made no secret of the fact that she thought a marriage between them would be mutually beneficial. She’d continued pressing her case for the past couple of years until she’d finally convinced him she was right.

Two weeks ago, when Ian asked her to marry him, it had been with the understanding that there was no rush. Both their lives were full, and a piece of paper wouldn’t change things drastically. Or so he had told himself.

When Sherry died right after Luke was born, he said he would never marry again. Unexpectedly losing his wife at the age of twenty-three was the most painful, life-altering thing he’d ever known. Something inside him simply shut down. For the first five years after her death, he didn’t date at all. When he did start seeing someone, he made sure it never lasted for any length of time, never long enough to let things get serious.