She Drives Me Crazy (15 page)

Emma nodded. "I've never backed away from something just because I thought it was too big or too hard for me to handle."

The girl's gulp was visible. "You have to be able to handle a lot of big heads, huh? Are they really big? Really
really
big?"

'There are definitely some big-headed men out there," Emma replied, thinking of the construction foreman and of her former boss at Parker Securities. "But I can give as good as I get."

The girl's jaw dropped. "Have they
told
you that? I mean, how'd you know you were good at giving the head stuff?"

Emma was barely listening. The more she talked, the better she felt, until she was pepping herself up, more than the teenage girl, who was positively goggle-eyed by this point. "It takes practice. Confidence. And a willingness to bite off as much as you can chew, without swallowing anything."

This time the girl started to cough into her fist. "Don't swallow anything," she mumbled when she could speak again.

"You okay?"

She nodded weakly. "Uh, yeah. I umh…well, I'm not much into swallowing, so that's not a problem. But I didn't even know there was biting and chewing involved."

Emma didn't entirely follow the girl's train of thought, but gave her a friendly smile, anyway. "It's okay. You're young. You're starting out right." Then she frowned. "Just remember, don't sell yourself short. You're worth a lot, don't go offering yourself up for free on guy's laps at parties."

"I won't," the girl said vehemently. "No more freebies."

They stared at each other for one moment, and Emma had to wonder if her makeup was smeared or if she had lipstick on her teeth. Because the teenager just stared and stared. "Is everything okay?"

The girl shook her head, hard. "Sorry. Fine. Uh, now, I know you came in here to hide, and you probably don't do your shopping at a place as boring as this, but can I help you anyway?"

Emma looked around at the small shop, with clothes racks only half-full and Giant Colosul Sale signs everywhere. The place looked like it was about to go out of business. If the bookkeeping was as bad as the spelling, she could see why.

Too bad she didn't have any money because she saw some really cute things hanging within reach. Well, within reach of her fingers. Not of her empty wallet.

"Do you like working here?" she asked, pulling her attention off an adorable beaded black cocktail dress.

The girl nodded so hard she almost smacked her chin on her collarbone. "Yes. Love it. I am
not
looking for another job."

"Good," Emma murmured. "I don't suppose you're hiring?"

The girl snickered. "Funny."

Emma had figured as much. Her luck couldn't possibly be good enough to have her ducking into a hiding spot and coming out with a job. No matter how much the store might need someone to do their books…or heck, dress their mannequins. Emma couldn't afford to be picky right now.

"I figured as much," she murmured to the girl, then peeked outside to see if the coast was clear. It was. Thank heaven.

So she'd struck out on her first try. She wouldn't give up. The day was young. The guys were gone. She had two good ankles.

How hard could it be to find a job in a small, friendly town like Joyful, Georgia?

"Hey!" he called out when he realized the blonde was about to step into the street, onto the hot black pavement, in her bare feet. Not to mention into the path of J. R. Brandon's pickup, which had turned out of the post office parking lot.

His cry caught her attention and the woman turned around.

Yeah. It was her.

He shoulda stayed where he was—in the open doorway of the diner where he'd bought himself a sandwich for din-ner. Or kept right on going where he'd been headed—back to his office to consume that sandwich during a rare late-night working glom.

Instead he walked down the block. Toward Emma. She watched him approach, saying nothing.

"Em," he said with a nod.

"Hello, Johnny."

"You out to break your head open again by stepping in front of a truck?"

She gave a disinterested look over her shoulder at the late-afternoon traffic. Not that the few cars chugging up the avenue could be considered traffic. But hit by a truck was hit by a truck. It didn't really matter how many cars were on the road in the meantime, did it?

"Guess I wasn't really paying attention."

"Anyone ever tell you how to cross a street."

She frowned. "Are you on safety patrol duty this week? Don't tell me, when you're not working as D.A., you're a substitute crossing guard?"

Testy, testy. But there wasn't any real heat in Emma Jean's words. She looked uninterested…distracted. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Bullshit."

"Tsk tsk. Such language."

He grinned. "Eve's not around. Besides, I have the feeling that kid has a heck of a vocabulary of her own."

For the first time, a real smile appeared briefly on her lips. "I think you're right."

Seeing the way Emma eyed his foam cup, from which he'd taken only a sip of his Coke, Johnny held it up. "Want some?"

She grabbed the cup with a grateful nod, and took a sip.

Johnny watched, the strangest heat filling his gut as her lips curled around the straw. When she pulled it away from her mouth, she left a smear of bright pink lipstick there.

He swallowed. Hard. Unable to tear his eyes off of that pink smear. Finally, though, he cleared his throat and gave himself a good mental kick. "Better?"

Nodding, she fanned herself with her free hand while she passed his drink back to him. "I've had yet another long day, just like yesterday. God, people in this town are so strange."

"How so?"

"They're either rude to my face or they ask a bunch of weird questions. Or they try to pick me up."

There was a perfect opening to bring up the whole pom star rumor, which was still flying around town like a spastic hummingbird. But Johnny didn't particularly want to get kicked in the nuts on a public street in broad daylight for asking a woman if she had sex for money.

Besides which, it didn't exactly seem polite.

"But nobody,
nobody
in this town is hiring."

That thrust the Emma-as-porn-star out of his mind, even though the image of Emma-having-sex was never far away.

"Hiring? What do you mean?"

"You know, the regular old kind of hiring. Cashier at the drug store. Teller at the bank. Popcorn maker at the movie theater." She gave a humorless little laugh. "Ditch digger. Anything at this point."

He just stared, until Emma's face pinkened and she drew in a few deep breaths. Her frustration had made her reveal more than she'd probably intended. Like the fact that she was staying. Here. In Joyful.

"This isn't a social visit for your ten-year reunion, is it?" he asked slowly, hearing the dread in his voice.

She shook her head.

"You're staying."

She nodded.

Staying. Christ, she was staying. This wasn't a week or ten-day-long game of let's-torment-Johnny. This was a frigging nightmare straight from the most tortured part of his subconscious. Emma Jean was moving back to Joyful for good. "You
can't
mean it."

She crossed her arms, the pose doing wicked things against the low neckline of her silky dress. The skin there was pinkened. She'd apparently forgotten the danger of the Southern sun, and he had the most ridiculous urge to yank her dress up.

Only to protect her from sunburn. Not to, uh, cover anything, which would imply that he was affected by the way she looked.
No sir. Not this boy
.

"I do mean it. I'm here to stay. At least for a while."

Her words shook off his lapse into horndog land. "Why the hell would you want to move back to Joyful?"

"Why the hell did you never leave?"

"I
did
leave," he shot back.

"For college. Then you came right back here to drop into your role as wicked Walker man. Why? Did you figure you couldn't make it anywhere else?"

Direct hit. It wasn't precisely true, but Emma's accusation had crossed his own mind once or twice in the past. Leave it to her to zero right in on it.

Coming back here to the familiar faces and the familiar pace and the all-too-familiar lifestyle had been almost too easy. He'd sometimes thought about things he might have done, places he could have gone, if he hadn't felt the need to come back here and… what? Live up—or
down
—to the Walker name? Play devil's advocate to the lousy sheriff? Enable his mother to hold her head up high? All of the above?

Yeah. He'd sometimes wondered if moving back to Joyful had been one big cop-out. But damned if he wanted Emma Jean Frasier to be the one throwing that in his face.

He stepped closer, crowding her, suddenly angry with her for accusing him of nothing more than what he'd thought of himself. "We're talking about you. Not me. Why are you looking for work?"

She inched a step back. "For the usual reasons."

"Like?"

"Gee, a paycheck? Benefits? A regular meal once in a while?"

He'd become used to her sarcasm in the few days she'd been back. He'd even begun to like it, though he'd never have expected it from the sweet angel he'd known in the old days. But he sensed that beneath her smart-ass bravado, she was all-too-serious. "Since when does the spoiled rich girl need to worry about a regular meal?"

She countered with a question of her own. "Since when is it any of your business?" Then, as if she knew he was going to argue the point, she quickly changed the subject. "I don't suppose you've given any thought to looking into the construction of the club. Or gotten me a copy of the tax record?"

The mulish expression on her face told him it was pointless to go back to the issue of her job. She'd changed the subject, end of story.

Northerners.

"Well?" she prodded. "Have you learned anything?"

He had. He'd just been trying to figure out how to tell her what he'd found. She wasn't going to like the answer, not one bit. But she also didn't look like she'd have the patience to keep waiting.

Sooner or later, she'd go back out to the construction area. He couldn't stand to ever see her in that dirty little jail cell again. And he'd sooner cut off a limb than have to console her while she cried her eyes out one more time.

Or see her get all fired up and spitting mad until his blood was boiling right along with hers. For all the wrong reasons that had nothing to do with the strip club and everything to do with wanting to strip her and take her up against the closest wall.

"Yeah. I did," he bit out.

"Well?"

He didn't want to have the conversation here on the corner. Taking her arm, he said, "Let's go to my office and talk."

She shook her head. "Just tell me what you learned, okay? I'm tired and I haven't had a very good day."

Seeing the determination on her face, he did as she asked. "Your grandma sold the lot right before she died, Emma Jean."

She sucked in a shocked breath, her eyes widening.

"I'm sorry to tell you this, but it's true. I looked up the records myself."

"I don't believe it," she said.

His jaw tightened. "I'm not making it up."

She shook her head, looking dazed. "I'm sure you're not…I just…I can't believe she went ahead and did it."

"You mean, you
knew
she was thinking about selling out?"

"She told me she was considering it." Emma met his stare, her amber eyes glassy and punctuated by dark circles beneath them. "But I never thought she'd really go through with it."

The tremor in her voice confirmed the one question he'd had. A part of him had wondered if Emma, herself, had bought the property from her grandmother, not wanting the truth known because of the kind of business now being built there. Obviously not. "So you really have nothing to do with Joyful Interludes?"

She raised a curious brow.

"The club."

'That's the name of the place?"

He nodded.

"And it's really a…a strip club?"

"Yeah, from what I hear."

"Joyful's gotten big enough to need a strip club?"

"Back to that naked woman issue, hmm?" he asked, remembering their conversation Friday in his car.

"I can't believe quiet little Joyful is allowing this to happen. Where are the protestors? Why hasn't anyone raised a fuss? It's like everyone in this town is asleep!"

It had surprised him, too, though he expected things were heating up in the church meeting rooms and at the local bridge games. Just because nobody had shown up with the picket signs didn't mean nobody was painting them in their garages.

Doing the groundwork for Emma had aroused his own curiosity. Funny how quiet—and how fast—the whole deal had been…from old Mrs. Frasier selling her land to an out-of-state corporation, who then put through some slickly worded paperwork to get the zoning and land use applications approved. He wouldn't go so far as to call the deal a dirty one, but it didn't seem to be entirely clean and above-board, either.

Then again, here in Joyful, nothing ever was.

"I can't believe the residents aren't in an uproar," she mumbled, still looking dazed over what she'd learned. The late-afternoon breeze wisped a strand of her short, silky hair across her face, but she didn't seem to care enough to brush it away.

"I imagine there's some talk," he admitted, forcing himself to focus on the issue. Not on her hair. Not on her lips. Not on that sassy little smear of pink lipstick on his straw.

It was the color of a ripe strawberry. His favorite fruit.

"Nobody found out anything until last week when the billboard went up," he finally said.

"So it was very hush-hush. Isn't that unusual for this place, where everybody whispers about every kid who's ten minutes late for his curfew or they discuss what color underwear the new Sunday school teacher's wearing?"

He could have defended Joyful's gossip line as being fully up to date and functional. But he didn't figure now was a good time to mention the leopard-spotted thong rumor. Or the whole porn star thing.

"Yeah, I guess it is," he said with a nod. If he gave a rat's ass either way about this pitiful town he called home, he might have cared enough to investigate. But he didn't. Joyful could get as corrupt and nasty as any other town and he wouldn't go out of his way to reread a single zoning law.

Unless…

"Johnny, isn't there anything you can do about this?"

Damn. Unless
that
. Unless someone—like
her
—asked him to.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, it's bad enough my family land has passed out of the family. I can't imagine it turning into some tacky roadside strip club. Is there some legal way around this?"

She was asking for his help. Doing the one thing guaranteed to get him to do what he sure as shit didn't want to do. One more word, and he'd be a goner. If Emma Jean said "please," in that sweet, soft way, with her pretty pink lips, he'd promise her just about anything. At least, that's how things had gone in the past.

Not this time.

Tsking, he shook his head and gave her what he hoped was a salacious smile. "You asking me for another favor? Better watch out, Emma Jean, associating with the likes of a Walker. Don't you remember? You lie down with dogs and one day you may just get bit."

His choice of words probably hadn't been wise, considering the way he'd nibbled on her neck, memorizing the taste of her skin, leaving his mark on her that night in the gazebo. But they had obviously done the trick.

Because she remembered, too. Her lips parted as she sucked in a quick breath. Suddenly it didn't seem to matter that they were standing outside, on a public street, in plain view of anyone in the diner, or the courthouse, or the hardware shop across the street. They seemed very much alone for a long heady moment, full of memory and expectation. And a sultry kind of want he didn't think either one of them had ever fully gotten over.