Polished Slick (Natural Beauty) (7 page)

Then there was Nikki, who knew better than anyone his limits. Being pregnant, however, had made her respect for those limits soften a bit. She’d cornered him with her eyes narrowed and jabbed a finger at his chest. “Jerry, I need to put you in an ad,” she’d said.

“No,” he’d said.

When her brow furrowed, he put up his hands and sighed. In two-plus years, she’d been good at not pushing him. She gave him space to handle business in the way he saw fit and didn’t supervise him nearly as much as she did the rest of the staff. So, for Nikki to make such a request of him really meant it was technically an edict. He’d play nice, although this particular order chafed him. Being in national advertising materials meant his old agent might catch wind of what he was up to and try to lure him back.

In fact, the likelihood of that was quite good, because Bobby regularly set up web alerts under his name and whenever he popped up somewhere online, she swooped in like a hawk and shot off an email.

So, whatcha doing now? Ready to work again? Coe Beachwear is asking about you.

He was through with that shit. Sitting around all day, waiting for sets to be decorated. Having people fuss with his face and hair when he just wanted to surf. He’d only gotten into modeling in the first place so he’d have money to pay his rent between surfing tournament wins.

Still, he knew even though Nikki had some oftentimes uncomfortable requests for him, his position in the company was basically locked in, ironclad safe. He did what she said, because she was a damned good employer. If she weren’t, he wouldn’t be sitting in front of his real estate agent at Edenton Bakery, nursing a grilled chicken panini, and filling out a housing wish-list.

He set his pencil down and raked a hand through his dreads. “It really needs to be detached, Lynn. If that means I get a crappier house that needs some work, then I’m okay with it. I can swing a hammer if I’m forced to.”

Lynn giggled and covered her lips with a dainty hand—a most unusual quirk for a fifty-year-old woman—and batted her false eyelashes at him.

He stifled a groan.

“Oh, I just bet you can! I’m sure you have all sorts of delightful muscles under that plaid shirt of yours.”

“Not really. I’ve got all kinds of delightfully crass tattoos that aren’t fit for viewing in Edenton. Naked women and pentagrams and such.”

Half-lie.

“Listen, did you find out anything about that distressed property out in Rocky Hock?”

“Um…” The Realtor’s face flushed purple, but she recovered, and drummed her acrylic nails on the tabletop as she thought. “Oh!” Her eyes went round as saucer, and she snapped her fingers at Jerry.

Guess I’m a dog now.

“You know what? I did.” She bent down sideways and riffled through her briefcase. “The county is going to auction it off soon for back taxes. No clue what happened to the owners.”

“When’s the auction?”

“Tuesday.”

“Tuesday? God.” Jerry threw his napkin down, and pushed back his plate. “For fuck’s sake, the one day I can’t get out of the office.” It was like a conspiracy. Every move he tried to make in respects to finally vacating his parents’ property was met with obstacles. Seemed almost like black magic.

“Jerry, if you give me the cash I’ll go bid on your behalf. I’d
love
to do that for you.” She propped her chin up on her intertwined fingers and batted her heavy lashes at him once more.

“Really? That’d be great. I just can’t swing it since I’ll be tied up all morning.”

“Literally?”

He just stared at her.

She batted those lashes again, and he expelled a strained chuckle.

What was wrong with people lately? “No, not literally.”

She sat back in her seat and straightened her pile of paperwork. “But are you sure you want
that
property? Keep in mind you won’t get to inspect the inside of the building before the auction, only the grounds and the outside of the structure.”

“I get it. And really, Lynn, it’s okay. Even if the house is shit, if I get the property cheap enough it’ll be worth it just for the land. I can just cart the trailer over there until the house is habitable.” He shrugged. “It’s not ideal, but I’ll do it.”

“Well, all right,” she acquiesced. “Just give me a limit and I’ll see what I can do. The auction hasn’t been heavily advertised, so that may work in your favor. There are always a few flippers out there looking to make a buck, but when they see this one I think they’ll go running.”

He finished his sandwich and hastily bid the real estate agent good evening, claiming he had an appointment. It wasn’t
quite
a lie.

Juan beat Jerry back to his trailer. He stood on the steps holding a six-pack of Tecate and his wireless game controller. “You got the new Vampire Thief game?”

Jerry slogged up the path with his messenger bag and a grocery bag full of mail. Kate’s mail withholding threats had meant nothing because he knew her far too well. He’d been having his mail delivered to a PO box for months. He’d also purchased a generator so he’d always have power. Disconnecting him from the well would be a far more difficult feat, so Jerry didn’t worry about water. She didn’t have the smarts to cut the flow on her own, and no one Jerry knew in the county was going to do it for her. Her reputation tended to precede her.

“Yup,” he said to Juan. “They also sent along some girly shopping game hoping I’d take a look at it. No dice. You can give it to your kids.”

“Hey, thanks!”

“Jeremiah!”

Jerry closed his eyes and groaned. “Fuck.” He pulled the screen door open and nodded, indicating Juan should enter. Awful timing. As Kate picked across the side yard, other regular visitors of his loosely organized game night pulled into the shared driveway.

“You can’t keep doing this!”

Jerry leaned onto the wooden banister and gave her a look he hoped conveyed sufficient boredom. “What
now
?”

“The cars, Jeremiah. The tires are tearing up the sod. The ground is still soggy from all that rain we had a few days ago.”

Right, because people in the boonies cared about pristine lawns. Why concern themselves with the inevitable messes the gophers, deer, and rabbits would make? He took a deep, centering breath then straightened his back. “I’ll deal with it. I’ll have them park on the shoulder.” He was halfway down the stairs when she said, “Good.”

She couldn’t see him rolling his eyes.

She followed him, talking at his back. “Now, what’s the timeline for moving your trailer?”

Is she for real?

He stopped abruptly, and faced the battle-ax. “You ask me the same question every day as soon as I get out of my vehicle. I give you the same answer. I’m trying to get out of your hair and off your grass as soon as I can. That’s all I can tell you.”

She put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes. “You could be a little more gracious, Jeremiah. We raised you better than that. We didn’t have to put you up.”

Jerry raised an eyebrow at that statement, but couldn’t address it at the moment. He waved at Trey and Carter, who’d just debarked their cars, and held up his index finger telling them to wait. Turning back to the glowering harpy, he whispered, “What’s wrong? Did you commit yourself to the ladies’ group fall garden show again and had a sudden revelation my trailer’s not ornamental enough to make the cut?”

Her silence was his answer.

“All right. You know, you’re right. I’m a big boy. I’ll be gone as soon as the ground dries enough to pull the trailer out of here. That is, unless you want
more
ruts in your yard.”

“Don’t you worry about the ruts.”

He put his hand over his heart in a conveyance of false shock. “Oh, I see. You’re finally getting the driveway paved after all these years of me suggesting it. Onward and upward, right? That’s goddamned fabulous.”

She threw her hands up and marched up the driveway toward the house. “I don’t know why I even bother with you.”

“I can think of some reasons,” he called out, pounding up the stairs. “Every single one of them starts with a dollar sign.”

* * *

The parking situation on Yellowhammer Road was somewhat precarious. Seven cars and trucks parked on the shoulder in front of the large Rouse parcel. The mud-splattered trucks and custom low-riders seemed out of place in front of the elegant, two-story, antebellum farmhouse several acres back.

Trinity whistled low. “What did Jerry say his father does for a living?” Even if it was old family property, it had to cost a pretty penny to maintain.

She made a U-turn at Happy Home Road, and parked her coupe behind Jason Alberti’s souped-up minivan. He didn’t even have kids. “Poor guy,” she mumbled.

He’d graduated high school a couple of years after her, so he couldn’t have been much more than twenty-two. Had to be a hand-me-down.

She toggled her door locks with the remote clicker and picked around the cars toward the driveway at a pace that belied her actual lack of confidence. She actually thought there had to be something
wrong
with her—that she’d taken leave of her senses when the idea of crashing Jerry’s game night came to mind. Just because she was a chemist didn’t mean she couldn’t think outside the box when necessary.

She’d been helping Juan package insect repellant bottles, and was being friendly, thinking it’d be good foundation work for when she was his boss. They made idle chitchat while they folded and taped boxes.

“So, doing anything fun tonight?” she’d asked.

He’d cocked one eyebrow up at her with wariness in his expression, and continued taping. “Oh, the same as always. It’s game night.”

She’d nodded. “Oh, family game night. That’s such a nice tradition. Aunt Ginger and I have a little tradition, too. We do beer and brats at Christine’s every week.”

He’d shaken his head and chuckled. “No, no. No family. It’s just us guys. You didn’t know? Bunch of us meet at Jerry’s once a week. We bring our game controllers and some snacks and we play video games until we pass out.”

She’d stopped taping. “No. I didn’t know. No one ever tells me anything.”

Naturally, he’d backpedaled. He shrugged and made his voice light, singsong. “Well, it might not be your scene. Bunch of smelly guys, belching and swearing. Not very delicate.”

“I’m a chemist, not a florist. I’m not going to wilt. Would have been nice to have been asked.” She’d tried not to sound petulant, and failed. At least she hadn’t stomped her foot.

“Hey, nobody asks. We just show up.”

So, she showed up.

She had no interest in games, but she figured it’d be a good opportunity for intelligence gathering…and to keep an eye on Jerry. She still wasn’t completely convinced of the viability of his security camera scheme, and wondered if the installation was meant only to disarm Nikki a bit while he figured something else out.

Had she actually been thinking earlier, she would have asked him to install the viewing software on her computer, too, but she’d apparently been in some sort of hypnotic trance that rendered her brain into lard. Hell, she’d nearly started a fire at her workbench at four o’clock, because she’d been so distracted by Jerry’s profile while he was on the phone with a customer. She hadn’t realized how close her sleeve was to her cooker’s open flame.

She made it halfway across the yard to the trailer before she froze and had to take a minute to process what she was seeing.

Most of the trailer’s windows were covered in opaque black paint, but one frontward window was ajar. Through the crack, she could hear masculine voices shouting, groaning, congratulating. And from her position, she could just barely see a glimpse of a grinning Jerry and an impressively massive wide-screen television. The thing was taller than her car.

“Shit.” This was hardcore stuff, and here she was, empty-handed. Conspicuous. She’d look like the rat she was.

She clucked her tongue and thought briefly about fleeing to fight another day, but she’d come all this way out to the swampy hinterlands, so the least she could do was try. That box of granola in her trunk’s emergency box would have to suffice as a peace offering. They weren’t Doritos, but they were edible.

Mostly.

She retraced her footsteps down the driveway, and this time made it all the way to the door.

Allowing herself one bracing breath, she knocked.

No one answered.

The noise inside the tin can was now beyond the limits measurable by the decibel scale.

“Dammit.”

She knocked once more, pounding with the fleshy part of her fist.

The response came in the form of the rat-a-tat of gunshots and explosions from the video game that had her clutching her chest.

“Jesus.”

She decided to just try the door, and predictably, the knob was unlocked. She stepped over the threshold before what little courage she had left fled away on one of those gunshot echos.

The guys didn’t seem to notice her at first, even with all the air conditioning escaping through the wide-open door. The gathering of men was so transfixed, entranced, with the game, that an atom bomb could have been dropped in the Rouse yard, and they wouldn’t have heard it.

“Fucking shit game, man.” Juan tossed down his controller, and pulled a foam earplug from his ear, looking up. Shoving off his seat, his gaze landed on her at the door. “Oh.”

Now, seven more pairs of eyes turned in her direction. More earplugs came out.

She gave them a nervous little wave. “Hey. I, uh…” She held up the lame box of granola. “I brought a snack.”

Silence, as their stares shifted from her, to the box of organic sandpaper she held in her left hand.

God forbid she ever actually get stranded and need to eat them.

Juan was the first to speak. “Hey, Trinity. You want a beer? We got, like, six different kinds. No wine coolers or nothing like that, though.”

As if she’d drink a wine cooler.

She scanned the room, meeting the stare of each man, all mildly annoyed at the interruption. This was their woman-free zone, and here she was—a spy. A killjoy.