Shooter (Burnout) (12 page)

Chapter 9

Hayley found she was more than a little nervous when Chris knocked on the door two hours later. Nervous to be alone with him, but not for all the usual reasons and since she didn’t know what to do with that, she pushed it away and called out, “It’s open.” Chris came in, carrying the chips he’d bought and a six pack of beer. Hayley was dishing out cole slaw. “We can eat outside,” she told him, nodding toward the back door. “It’s nice out.”

“Sounds good,” he replied and headed that way. On a trip back into the kitchen, he gathered glasses, napkins and silverware. Hayley picked up two plates of sandwiches.

At the small table on the back deck, Chris offered her a beer, but she declined.

“It’s past noon, Slick,” he informed her.

“I know but it wouldn’t be a good idea,” she replied. “I don’t drink much.” Or ever, she thought to herself. “And I have cookies in the oven. Drunken kitchen fires were not on my to-do list for today.”

He grinned at her. “You’re baking me cookies? Hot at noon, right on schedule.”

“I am not baking
you
cookies,” she shot back. “I’m baking
me
cookies. My last apartment didn’t have an oven and I miss cookies like you wouldn’t believe.” She eyed him from across the table and then sighed. “But I guess, since you mowed my lawn and are directly responsible for me being able to buy the ingredients for said cookies, you can have one.”

At that moment the microwave timer beeped and she headed back into the house. Intrigued by the cookie smell, Chris followed her. She pulled a baking sheet out of the oven and set it on the range. He peered around her. “Chocolate,” he surmised.

“Yes, but with a secret ingredient,” she told him, reaching for a spatula and a dinner plate she’d already set on the counter. She started scooping them up and putting them on the plate to cool.

“Love?” he teased.

She snorted. “Pepper.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Say what now? Pepper cookies? I don’t know, Slick. Just how long were you in Denver? I think you’ve been without a stove for too long. People don’t eat pepper cookies.”

She set the plate of cooling cookies on the counter beside her and reached for a covered mixing bowl. She spooned out more dough onto the now empty sheet. “Yes, they do. Maybe not here in South Dakota. But these cookies are a hit in Albuquerque. I used to work at a bakery there and we couldn’t make enough of these cookies to keep up with demand.”

Chris reached for a cookie and sniffed it. “I thought you were from Phoenix,” he replied casually, inspecting the cookie.

Shit
, she thought. And pretended to have trouble getting the dough onto the baking sheet. “I am. But I have an aunt in Albuquerque and sometimes I stayed with her. And when I did I worked at the bakery she owned.”

“Hmmm,” Chris said noncommittally and she resisted the urge to look at him to see if he believed her. Whether he did or not remained a mystery because he took a bite of the cookie.

*********************

She was lying about the aunt, that much was certain, but damn she wasn’t lying about those cookies. “What kind of cookies are these?” he asked again around a mouthful of chocolate-y peppery goodness. Apparently people in Albuquerque had good taste and weren’t squeamish about pepper in their baked goods.

“Do you like them?”

“Honey, these are the best damn cookies I’ve ever eaten. What the hell are they?”

She smiled at him and it reminded him that he was supposed to go easy on her. But damn. That smile. It was almost better than the cookies. “Spicy Mexican Chocolate.” He watched greedily as she put another batch into the oven and set the timer. He was so going to negotiate for more than one cookie.

“Whew,” he said loudly. “I am some kind of worn out. From mowing your lawn, Miss Daisy,” also reminding her that he’d chauffeured her to the grocery store.

She shot him a withering look then picked up the plate of cookies and handed it to him. “Let’s take them outside.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied happily, practically skipping off with his booty.

Chris was on his fourth cookie when he caught her eyeing him strangely. She didn’t look like she was thinking about making him her Pirate King. She looked…wistful. “What’s up, Slick?” he asked her.

As if startled by being caught out, she covered it by plucking a cookie off the plate. “I…I could make lunch for you,” she said suddenly. “I mean,” she added quickly. “If you really won’t let me mow the lawn. I could make lunch on Sundays. Possibly a really good lunch, if you promise not to mow before 8 am. My mom made us lunch on Sundays.”

“Yeah, that’s a good deal,” he replied and picked up his beer. “So…is she gone? Passed or…?”

“No. She still makes lunch on Sundays for my dad.”

He nodded. “Why’d you leave Phoenix?”

She frowned at her plate. “Um, just, you know, you can’t live at home forever.”

“Well, that’s the truth,” he agreed. “Did you go to college?”

She brushed some crumbs off the table to avoid looking at him. “Yeah. But I didn’t finish. I left my junior year.”

“What’d you study?”

“Nothing.”

He was quiet a moment. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

She looked up at him. “I wasn’t…I mean it’s true. I didn’t study anything. I was…it was a very different time. Very different life. A guy like you wouldn’t understand.”

Chris set down his beer. “I went to college, Slick. I’m not just some dumb army grunt.” It was true. He’d taken classes every spare minute that he wasn’t deployed until he’d earned a four year degree, albeit it took a lot longer than four years, but still.

She gaped at him. “That’s- that’s not what I meant! I- I was not calling you stupid. I was just saying that I was raised differently. That’s all.”

Well, they were definitely raised differently. That much Chris could agree on. Unless she was secretly raised by a one percenter motorcycle club. But Slick didn’t know him, didn’t know he’d escaped the outlaw life by enlisting. He was more than a little irritated that after all he’d done to transform himself, this woman could still see underneath to his white trash underbelly.

“I have a double major in Political Science and Business, Slick,” he informed her in a clipped tone. “Maybe the army paid for it, but I earned it. We aren’t that different,” he bit out.

“But we are different! You were in the army. Now you own your own business! You’re a useful member of society,” she replied. “I didn’t study anything in college because I was only there for my MRS.”

Chris leaned back in his chair and stared at her. Then a slow grin spread across his face. “MRS.”

She rolled her eyes at his obvious enjoyment of the situation. “Shut up. I said it was a different life. So, I can’t start a ground war and analyze it later with my political science degree, or build a car from rubber bands and an erector set, but I can make you lunch on Sundays. And discuss Early American Poets while you eat it.”

“With your MRS degree.”

She glared at him. “If you don’t mow before 8 am like a normal person.” She stood up, grabbed her empty plate, and stalked off toward the kitchen.

Chris remained at the table for a bit, considering what she’d told him. She’d been bred for this, making lunches, baking cookies, keeping a home. He imagined her younger, husband hunting at college. She said she hadn’t finished. That must have been when she’d gotten hurt. Being raped when she was barely out of her teens seemed like a brutal price to pay for her naivete.

Now she wandered alone, taking only what she could carry from place to place. Living inside pages of books because it was safer. She’d opened herself up at least once to a man who repaid that trust by smacking her around and chasing her out of Denver. Chris wanted to kill both of these men. Slowly.

He looked out on the lawn and remembered her advice on Easy. People wanting to pretend the world wasn’t a violent place when it obviously could be. Slick’s parents had wanted her to forget what happened to her. But once she’d been shown a darker, harder world than the one she knew, she couldn’t pretend life was just cookies and PTA meetings. No blaming her for that. But she missed her old life. And she wanted a tiny piece of it back. Lunch on Sundays.

He gathered his own plate and his empty bottle and headed into the little blue house. She was pulling more pepper cookies out of the oven. “So this is what your mom does?” he asked her, putting his plate in the sink and grabbing the dishwashing detergent. “Lunch on Sundays?” She glared at him. He grinned. “I just want to make sure you’re qualified for the position.”

“What do you normally eat for lunch on Sundays?” she challenged.

He thought about this. “Saturday night’s pizza. Or Friday night’s pizza. Or Thursday night’s pizza, if nothing’s growing on it. I eat a lot of pizza.”

She made a face. “So this is a step up for you, either way.”

“Oh, definitely. Especially if Sunday lunch includes cookies. Or some kind of dessert. Feel free to branch out.”

“Not before 8 am,” she insisted.

“We’ll have to renegotiate in the summer. It gets way too hot to put it off, Slick.” He immediately regretted saying it. Because the look on her face said she wasn’t planning on being around that long. “8 am,” he repeated. “Copy that.”

When he was finished with the dishes, he realized she’d packed a tupperware container full of cookies for him. “Try to make these last until next Sunday.”

He eyed the box. “Yeah, I’m not gonna lie. That’s not a possibility, Slick.”

Chapter 10

It was Thursday night, Poker Night, and while Hawk opened the cold pizza box sitting on Chris’s kitchen island, Tex managed to find the tupperware container that Chris had stupidly left out.

“Don’t touch that,” he demanded.

“What is it?” Tex asked, prying open the lid against orders.

Chris tried to reach for the box, but Tex moved out of the way, taking the box with him.

“What is it?” Hawk repeated.

“Cookies,” Tex declared, peering into the box. “Where’d you get cookies?”

“Those are mine. They’re special cookies,” Chris said, again trying to snag the box.

Hawk looked up from the pizza. “You put weed in cookies?”

Tex frowned at Hawk. “You don’t put weed in cookies. You put weed in the butter and then make the cookies.”

Doc came into the kitchen from the living room, scowling. “Are we really gonna eat weed butter cookies? What are we, 16?”

“There’s no weed. It’s pepper,” Chris informed him.

Tex reared back from the box. “Do what now?”

“There’s pepper in the cookies. And they’re mine.”

“Who puts pepper in cookies?” Doc asked, eyeing the cookies like he was certain ‘pepper’ was the new street word for weed.

“Slick does. They’re…” he paused to remember, “Mexican chocolate.”

“Holy Shit!” Tex yelled. “You found a chick who can make Spicy Mexican Chocolate cookies! You bastard!” And he unceremoniously shoved a whole cookie in his mouth. Then he muttered something about “Texas” and “Just like home,” and other things that were hard to understand because his mouth was full. But the obvious gist was that he loved the cookies. He offered Doc one and threw one at Hawk from across the kitchen.