Polished Slick (Natural Beauty) (3 page)

Next, in a cubicle near the kitchen, was Erin—the phone support person. She worked between noon and four Monday through Friday. She was a student at the community college in Edenton, and worked after class. She was part-time and absolutely replaceable. Jerry didn’t know much about her, even though she’d been on the team for six months, so she made it onto his suspect list. Something about the way she whispered when she answered the phone didn’t sit right with him.

The rest of the N-by-N employees weren’t in the building at the moment, but they didn’t make good suspects for a variety of reasons, anyway.

“You’re probably right,” he said, picking up his laptop and spinning his chair toward his cubicle. Before he could get to his feet, however, a sotto alto said from the bench, “Imagine how productive we’d all be if we actually
worked
during working hours.”

Somehow, he squashed down the urge to fling his cell phone in the direction of the bratty voice, and instead ground his teeth. He wasn’t a violent guy. He was just so damned
tired
. Short-tempered. Everything was setting him on edge.

He decided then and there to do two things. First, make time for pleasure even if it meant he had a backlog of work because of it. Second,
tame
that little shrew. He’d done it before. Wasn’t hard, and sometimes they kept up the “nice” after he was through.

Juan got in front of him, studied his face, and doubled over in uproarious laughter. Shaking his head, he backed toward the boxing area, and whispered, “Take some advice from your old friend Juanito. Don’t argue. The women—they like that. Seems to charge their batteries. You’re better off just letting her have the last word.”

“Nope.”

Jerry couldn’t resist. He cast a glower at the owner of the smug voice. Unfortunately, she wasn’t looking at him at the moment.

Her head was down, expression impassive as she measured ingredients from cryptically labeled canisters, so he squinted at her hair, and tried to figure out what was different about it.

“Ah.” The color at tips of her pixie cut was missing. Trinity let Mercedes cut her hair, and Mercedes liked to experiment. The last application had been blue. Trinity must have opted out during the last cut. Not too many women could pull off a style that short, but she had a heart-shaped face and delicate features, unmistakably feminine. She would have been beautiful even if she were bald.

As if she felt his gaze, she glanced up from the oil she was pouring to find him staring. Any other time he would have indulged her in a contest, but for once, he did the punk-ass thing and rolled away in his seat. He’d save the fight for another day.

CHAPTER TWO

Jerry left the barn at five as always, but like every other day, leaving the barn didn’t mean getting away from work. Thoughts of sabotage at N-by-N filled his head, and no matter how loudly he sang along to some Panic! At the Disco anthem, he couldn’t stop thinking.

Over
thinking.

Eventually, he took to drumming rhythmically, and loudly, on his Jeep’s steering wheel while he traversed the country roads. That bit of motion helped some.

No amount of mood enhancement could prepare him for his mother being on his trailer’s porch when he turned down the long driveway. Her arms were crossed over her silk shell, and her lips pursed—evident even at that distance. She was obviously ready for confrontation.

He’d give her one.

“You picked a bad day, woman,” he mumbled, and cut the ignition.

His mother made her way down the steps as he fetched his laptop case from the back seat.

“
Why didn’t she just wait on her own porch?”

Kate had picked across the yard in her little dainty espadrilles to his front bumper by the time he slammed the back door.

He anticipated her question, and responded to it, before she could even get the words out of her mouth. “Soon,” he said. He took a wide berth around her.

“Um.” She jogged to catch up. She’d never talk to a man’s back, especially not this one’s. “How soon, Jeremiah? Next week? Next month?
When
?” Popping an eyebrow up, she tucked a swatch of light brown hair behind her ear, exposing the moon-sized diamond in her lobe.

When he didn’t answer immediately, she cleared her throat.

“Jesus.” He gritted his teeth and sidled around her, holding his door key out in front of him like some kind of sword while she trailed at his heels.

She was quick when she had a motive.

“I don’t know. I work a lot of hours, and moving is disruptive.” He jammed the key into the lock and gave it a frantic jiggle while she yapped.

She wouldn’t follow him in. Fact. The farthest she ever went was the threshold, where she stopped as if some force field prevented her entry. In truth, she believed the trailer had the taint of Satan. She’d said as much. Vocally, and often.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have the luxury of discouraging her visits, because although the trailer was his, the property it was parked on belonged to his father.

Kate had kicked Jerry out of the main house about five years ago because she honestly believed that with his first piercing, he’d opened himself up to possession. Since then, he’d become more and more in league with the demonic with each stud, expander, and barbell he got. He let her think what she wanted.

His parents had let him park his trailer in the side yard of the Rouse property as a temporary thing, but Kate had wanted him to move so she could expand her garden. Her garden was nowhere near where Jerry was parked, but he didn’t want to be where he wasn’t wanted.

If he could leave now, he would, but some things took more time to do the right way. Most people wouldn’t know it, but he was the kind of guy who strived to do things perfectly on his first attempt.

“It needs to be
soon
, Jeremiah, or so help me I’ll cut your electric and make sure you can’t get mail here.” She waggled an index finger at him.

“Fine,
Mom
.” The door gave way and he strode over the threshold, pushing the knob even as Kate put her head into the gap to speak.

“You really don’t want to do that.” He sounded pissy and didn’t care. She was doing the equivalent of putting her head in a lion’s mouth.

She backed up a pace, eyes narrowed.

“How does Dad feel about you rushing me off the family property, anyway? Haven’t seen him in weeks. He still alive?” He already knew the answer to the first question. He just wanted to hear her newest spin on it.

Her nostrils flared. “Louis and I discuss everything.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“Rude. Must you be the ever-present thorn in my side?” She sighed and flicked a dismissive hand at him before stomping down the stairs. “You take it up with your daddy when he gets back from God-knows-where. I can’t even keep up with his schedule.” She stopped and pointed at his face. “I’m warning you, Jeremiah, you can fluff up your fur all you want, but you
will
respect me.”

“When?”

She grunted in a most unladylike fashion and threw her hands in the air.

He laughed at the misguided woman’s expense, finally feeling his blood pressure decrease to a healthy level.

After more than thirty years of antagonism, nothing that woman could say could stress him out any more than he already was.

CHAPTER THREE

Trinity had a plan, and she was damned proud of it.

All the nail polish tampering was occurring at night. Therefore, it made sense the shenanigans were being enacted by someone with easy access to the barn. Whoever it was had to have a key or access to one. Nikki had dispensed keys to all the staff members as a matter of practicality, because sometimes certain core staff members, like Juan and Jerry, had weekend tasks. Nikki wasn’t always there to let them in.

If someone’s key was stolen or copied, it’d be easy enough for some saboteur to shimmy inside for a bit of thuggery. There wasn’t an alarm. They were in the friggin’ boonies, for crying out loud. Nobody was dumb enough to tiptoe around a farm in the dead of night. Everyone knew Charlie Mitchell had a big gun, and wasn’t afraid to use it.

Trinity decided the only thing to do for it was have a bit of a stakeout. She’d get this problem wrapped up in twenty-four hours or less, and the thought of it made her beam all the way through the rest of Monday’s workday, and longer during the drive home to Edenton.

It was so simple! Name the culprit, and that promotion she was gunning for would be in the bag. Maybe.

She was still grinning when she met her Aunt Ginger at Christine’s Tavern in town. Christine’s was part of their Monday night tradition, and had been since Trinity had moved back home from college.

Ginger operated the only pediatric dentistry practice in the tri-county area, and tried to help parents out a little by staying open past five p.m. She closed on Saturday afternoons, Sundays, and Mondays, but was pretty much chugging away non-stop the rest of the week as the sole dentist in the clinic.

Monday nights were Beer-and-Brats nights at Christine’s, and they sat at their usual table with cold pints of
hefeweizen
and sausage sandwiches piled high with their usual accoutrement. The combination of sauerkraut, sweet mustard, and banana peppers had been Trinity’s creation. For Ginger, it’d been an acquired taste. Ginger had grown used to making concessions to Trinity. Their relationship had always been that way, even when Trinity had been a precocious four-year-old demanding Ginger change the channel. Trinity didn’t
like
cartoons. Ginger had taken the bossy tot’s demands in stride, even laughing at the spunk the kid had. Years later, when Trinity moved in with Ginger, the older woman already knew what she was getting into.

What had started for Ginger as a week of babysitting while her niece and nephew-in-law vacationed on the Outer Banks, ended with nine-year-old Trinity’s enrollment in school in Edenton. Trinity’s father had gotten orders to be stationed overseas for two years. That itself wasn’t a huge inconvenience for the family. They’d endured separations before. What made the situation pricklier was Trinity’s mother being informed that after five years of fighting for a promotion, she’d gotten it…and it would require their relocation to the Silicon Valley.

Ginger was the one who’d come forward and suggested Trinity stay with her. She’d thought it was time for the girl to stay put for a while, and she could provide her with the kind of stability she’d never had. Ginger had promised to give her back after Trinity’s dad returned from his deployment, but by then, no one would dare separate them. No one saw the sense in uprooting Trinity, so she stayed another year…then another…and another…then she went to college. Now she was nearly twenty-five and living with her great-aunt yet again.

Trinity was digging into her German potato salad with gusto when Ginger nudged her under the table with her foot. She looked up and met Ginger’s mischievous gaze. “Hmm?”

Ginger leaned over across the small four-top, nearly plopping the reading glasses dangling from her neck chain into her dinner. She cupped her left hand beside her mouth as if to shield her words from nearby patrons, although no one was really paying attention. Christine’s was always loud. That was the rule, not the exception. A person could re-enact the Battle of Gettysburg on a tabletop and no one would bat an eye.

“Hey!” Ginger whispered hoarsely.

Trinity raised an eyebrow.

Ginger darted her hazel eyes sideways toward the bar.

Trinity turned her head slowly to look. “What? What am I looking at?”

Ginger bobbed her head toward the bar. “This may sound like an ignorant question, but…is that a man or a really big woman?”

“Huh?” Trinity scanned the backs of patrons seated at the bar, and snorted when she honed in on the creature in question.

Ginger squinted at her. “You know, don’t ya? He or she? I can’t tell from the back. Could be a statuesque woman, and I don’t recognize the hair. Can’t be a local.”

Now Trinity’s snort upgraded to a chuckle. “Oh, it’s a local. Ha.
Statuesque.
” She wiped away the tears forming at the corners of her eyes, and tried to calm her mounting hysterics with a long sip of her beer. Didn’t work, so she went ahead and let out the laughs.

Ginger poked her lips out.

“Sorry.” Trinity dabbed her eyes again, and tried another sip of beer. “I guess from this angle, you can’t see all the piercings and the very prominent Adam’s apple.” She faced the bar again, and studied the blond dreadlocks that fell to the middle of the man’s back.

Jerry—and it couldn’t be anyone
but
him—was built like a swimmer. Broad shoulders with long limbs and torso. That was what was evident for everyone to see, but Trinity also knew beneath his clothes Jerry had well-developed calves, firm abdominals, and extensive tattoo work. Not that she’d been looking, but just a month before, the N-by-N staff had their annual retreat on Bald Head Island. Nikki’s friend, Beth—the company’s very part-time trend-watcher—owned a timeshare there.

Someone had asked Jerry why he didn’t wear shorts more often. He’d claimed his unfinished tattoos didn’t make sense without color, but Trinity thought that was bullshit. They were
obviously
waves…not that she was looking. Nope, Trinity wasn’t looking
at all
. It wasn’t like she had a calf fetish or anything.

Never.

Jerry’s legs were hardly a blip on her radar screen. Just like that little silky trail of hair between his navel and the top of his swim trunks had been completely not worth her attention. Same applied to the dimples in his back, just above the top of his sagging shorts that acted like neon arrows pointing down to his ass. They seemed to instruct a person inclined to do so to “grab me!”

Nope, not sexy at all.

Hell, if it had been anyone else but Jerry, maybe she would have allowed herself the fantasy. But
Jerry
?

“You got the wall, muh-fucker!” Brock Lane shouted from the corner nearest the bar. His was one of the few disturbances at Christine’s worth noting. No one wanted to be stabbed by a dart, after all. He was swaying, and one of his eyelids drooped as if every part of him, excluding the other eye, was drunk to the point of being pickled.