Читать книгу Now That You're Here - Lynnette Kent - Страница 9

HARLOW STAYED in the shadows at the street end of the alley, dragging on a cigarette as he watched Falcon put the English lady into a cab.

Ryan came up from behind, with Tommy following. “Hey, Harl—”

“Shut up.” Harlow jerked a nod toward the street. “Falcon’s still out there.”

“Okay, okay.” They froze in place until the door to the club opened and closed Falcon inside.

“Nice scenery,” Ry commented. His voice sounded easy and light, the way it did after a rush. “I like my women on the big side.”

“I like ’em big where it counts.” Tomas cupped his hands in front of his chest. “Ya know?”

Ryan laughed. Harlow dropped his cigarette butt to the pavement and ground it out with the toe of his shoe. “Think with your brains for a change, Tommy. The lady could be useful.”

“Women are built useful.” This gesture was graphic and dirty.

“I was listening to what they said.” Harlow ignored his friends’ cackles. “She’s cooking for the club.”

“So?” Ryan yawned. “’Bout nap time, ain’t it?”

“So…she’s not likely to be a shithead like the last guy. Or like Falcon. Bet we can get some food off her.”

“Hey, man, I’m all for free food.” Tomas shook his head. “But food from this place is hard to swallow. My ma cooked better drunk.” He scratched his head. “’Course, I don’t think I ever knew Ma when she was sober.”

“Long as we keep out of Falcon’s way, we could be in fat city.”

“Sounds good to me.” Ry rubbed a hand over his chest. “I get tired of puttin’ holes in my belt. What’s next? You gonna get us a house, too? We each get our own john, right?”

“You want a john?” Tomas staggered back in fake surprise. “You freaking ‘selling’ it now, dude?”

“Shut up.” Harlow started up the sidewalk. That was one thing they’d managed to stay away from so far. They stole, sure, when they had to. They worked a little, when they could find a job. But they hadn’t gotten into the sex business and they didn’t deal drugs. He didn’t have much pride left. But he did have some.

“If you can’t say something nice,” Ryan drawled beside him, “don’t say nothing at all.” He yawned again. “Man, I gotta crash. Think T-Bone is home? His squat’s pretty empty most afternoons.”

“We’ll check it out.” Harlow could feel the need waking up in his belly, in his brain. He’d gotten Ry taken care of. If he could stash him somewhere safe, he’d be able to take care of himself.

A couple more blocks…a hundred more yards…just two flights of stairs. Funny, how the sickness got so much stronger, so much faster, these days.

He pounded on T-Bone’s door as Ry all but fell asleep against the wall. The door swung back. “What the…? Oh, it’s you.” The man with shoulders as straight as the bone of the steak he was named for ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Whaddaya want?”

“Can Ry crash for a while? I’m going out.”

“Me, too.” Tomas wiped his nose on his sleeve.

T-bone glanced over his shoulder into the bare room. “Yeah, sure. Whatever.” He turned, stumbled through an inner doorway and closed the panel behind him.

Harlow shoved Ryan and Tomas inside. “Get some sleep. And maybe tomorrow night we’ll get a decent dinner.” Before they could think of a word together between them, he shut himself out in the hall.

Claws raked at the inside of his head, and his stomach twisted as he stumbled down the steps. The closest supply wasn’t the safest. But he didn’t think he could make it farther. Sometimes, second best had to do.

I know a hell of a lot about second best, he thought as he tracked down the dealer, made the buy and ran for cover.

Big brother Mark had always been a tough act to follow. Captain of the Little League team, the Pop Warner team, the Y soccer team. Straight A’s in every grade. Special awards in math and science. And that was all before high school.

Then the real stuff started happening. Scholarships and special sports camps and more math awards. Honor Society prez, top of the senior class. Headed for the Air Force Academy.

Until shithead little brother screws up. Big time. One minute, Mark’s standing there yelling at him. The next, a car speeds by and big brother’s flat on his back with blood everywhere.

Crouched behind a Dumpster at the back of a liquor store, Harlow tightened the band around his bicep, pumped his fist, took the syringe from between his teeth. Funny thing was, Mark had even more influence over his brother’s life after he was dead. We’re number two, whether we try harder or not.

But just a minute later, when he loosened the band on his arm and felt the power surge through his blood, being number two didn’t matter anymore.

LUNCH in the club’s kitchen, with Tiffany at the table and Emma cooking, was not Jimmy’s number-one choice for their first date in twenty years.

But he couldn’t deny that she knew her way around a kitchen. He watched as she sliced tomatoes, lettuce and onions, leaving them in neat stacks, instead of strewn across the table, which was the style he was used to. She skimmed the top off melted butter and then basted the rolls before piling on thin slices of ham and cheese, vegetables and a special sauce she threw together in about ten seconds flat.

The result was magic. “What’d you do to make ham and cheese taste like this?”

“Even the chips are different. Better,” Tiffany added.

Emma smiled. “The right mustard, a few spices…oh, and bat’s eyes. The bat’s eyes are crucial.”

Tiffany’s face went white. She lifted a corner of the roll and stared suspiciously at the inside of her sandwich. “What are those little round brown things?”

Jimmy laughed—for what seemed like the first time in years. Emma put a hand on the bartender’s shoulder. “Capers, Tiffany. The seeds of a pepper plant. I promise, no animal eyes of any kind.”

“Oh.” Tiffany sighed with relief, then gave Jimmy a dirty look because he was still chuckling. “How do I know what strange stuff foreigners put in their food? Far as I’m concerned, meat loaf with peppers in it is a gourmet dish.” She got to her feet and walked stiffly to the door into the club. “Thanks for the lunch, Emma. I’d better get back to work.”

Jimmy held up a hand. “Hey, Tiff, your limp beats mine today. What you’d do this time?”

She grinned. “In-line skating. There was this bump in the asphalt…”

He nodded. “I get the picture. Take it easy.”

“Sure, boss.”

Emma stacked the paper plates and took them to the trash. “She’s very easy to like.”

“Tiffany’s almost as big a draw as the music. Half the customers come in just to flirt with the bartender.”

As for himself, Jimmy enjoyed watching Emma move around the kitchen. The apron she’d tied on over her yellow dress did nothing to conceal her full breasts and shapely hips and legs. A breeze coming through the screen on the back door stirred the small curls at her temples and on the nape of her neck, made him think of how smooth her skin was in those places. And in others…

In just a minute or so, the kitchen looked spotless, which was as novel a concept for this room as decent food. Jimmy tamed his thoughts into innocuous words. “You really are good at this cooking stuff. I wouldn’t have guessed that twenty years ago.”

“I’ve learned a lot in twenty years.” She folded the dish towel and sat in the chair across from him, her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. Her fingers, he noticed, were bare.

“Who do you cook for?” Might as well make sure of his assumptions, not that he planned to take advantage of Emma any more than he already had by giving her a job.

“Friends, myself. Dad, when I could.”

“No husband?”

She shook her head. “No husband. I was engaged, but we…broke it off.” After a second her gaze met his. “No wife?”

Jimmy shook his head. “Not even an engagement. And no good explanation, either.”

“You don’t need to make one.” She took a deep breath. “Listen, Jimmy, I wondered, have you thought any more about the medallion?”

The question hit from out of the blue, and he didn’t have a ready answer, except the truth. “It’s a beautiful piece and I’m very honored that your dad wanted me to have it.”

When she hesitated, he answered her next question before she asked. “But no, Emma, I don’t want to trace the history. I told you—it doesn’t matter.”

“I’ve done some research on the Internet—we wouldn’t necessarily need to visit the reservation. There are galleries and museums in the Southwest—”

“Which is where the metalwork probably came from. I know. I’m still not interested.”

Her folded hands dropped to the table with a thump. “Why?”

He would have liked to avoid this confrontation, but couldn’t. “Look. There was a man, an Indian, who made a big point of his heritage, his cultural pride. He knew the legends and the language of his tribe. He could trace his people back for a hundred years and more. He talked about forcing the whites to acknowledge Indian rights, to make reparations for the land they’d stolen. He wanted to bring the Indian race back to its rightful place of power, on the same level with whites.”

Emma nodded without speaking. Her gaze encouraged him to finish.

“This man lived on land his family had claimed for generations. One day, a car pulls up in front of his house—a house hung with signs and symbols of Indian power. An Oklahoma oilman gets out, nice guy, good suit, and offers the Indian an indecent amount of money for that land.”

“He took the money?”

“Of course not. It was Indian land. So the white men came back one night and caught him out at the barn, then beat him up until he agreed to sell.”

“I know these evil things happened. But that doesn’t explain—”

He held up a hand. “The man was my grandfather. My mother was his youngest daughter. They moved to the reservation after that, where he drank himself to death. My dad did the same, a little while after he told me the story. I was eight years old.”

“Jimmy—”

“I figured out right then and there that being an Indian was an accident of birth. A correctable birth defect, even. I found the cure. I walked away from that history and I don’t look back. For any reason.”

Emma stared at him from across the table with her twined fingers pressed tight against her lips. The hurt in her eyes said she’d taken the story into herself.

Shaking his head, Jimmy lurched to his feet. “Don’t be so sad, Emma. All of this was a long time ago, and doesn’t matter anymore. That’s the point.”

He would have liked to comfort her. But that would mean controlling the contempt for his grandfather’s weakness that roiled in his belly—not something he could handle in a minute or two. Without another word, he abandoned the kitchen, leaving Emma by herself.

ON HER THIRD AFTERNOON at work, Emma fortified herself with a deep breath, then left the kitchen and headed for Jimmy’s office. She peeked in. “Do you have a moment?”

He looked up from his account book with that heart-stealing grin. “For you, always. What’s up?”

They’d overcome their differences over the medallion by simply avoiding the subject entirely. Jimmy spoke with her, laughed with her—but not about anything that mattered. He didn’t get to the club until midafternoon, when she was already deep into prep work. Once the club opened, Emma was too busy to do much more than breathe, and too exhausted afterward to argue when he paid for the cab to take her home. Their situation bore little resemblance to the easy enjoyable reunion she’d anticipated.

But then, nothing about Jimmy seemed to be as easy as it had been twenty years ago. He wore armor now, invisible but quite impenetrable. By unspoken consent they’d ignored the revelation he’d made of the tragedy in his past. A tragedy, as far as Emma was concerned, still active in his present.

But she knew better than to broach the subject again so soon. This was a different mission. “Have you ever considered a more…um…adventurous menu?”

His reaction was not the encouragement she expected. The engaging grin faded, and his straight eyebrows drew together. “I think I told you, the food isn’t the draw.”

“You also told me the guests are enjoying their meals now. Why not expand a little?”

“This isn’t that kind of place.”

“It could be.” They both watched his long fingers rotate a pencil between point and eraser.

When he looked up, his gaze wasn’t angry, just wary. “Why change what works?”

“Why do something halfway?”

He gave a choked laugh. “Did I hire you to argue with me?”

Emma shrugged. “You hired me with the understanding that I would do my best. I’m telling you I can do better than ham-and-cheese sandwiches and dill pickles. The music deserves more than that.”

Jimmy shook his head. “Jazz is not polite music. It’s down and dirty, gut-wrenching. It doesn’t need polite food.”

“Jazz is also elegant and sophisticated and profound. We could provide that kind of food.”

“Your third day at work and you’re already rocking the boat?” He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes for a second. “What do you want to do?”

She sat in the chair across the desk. “A salad or two, I thought. And a featured entrée—an actual dinner on an actual crockery plate.”

He rocked his chair back, putting more distance between them. “We don’t have plates. Or forks or spoons or knives.”

“I can solve that problem with one telephone call.”

He lifted a sardonic eyebrow. “You’ll blow my profit, buying dishes. The margin’s not all that great to begin with.”

“Of course.” She lifted her own eyebrow and regarded him skeptically. “What kind of car is it you drive? Some sort of animal…Pinto..? Bronco..? Cougar?”

“Might be worth a try, boss.” Tiffany came in to stand at her shoulder. “Draw some folks in who stayed away because of the food.”

After staring at them a few moments, his face unreadable, Jimmy shook his head. “Emma, I’m sorry. I just don’t want to get into that kind of trade. Thanks for the effort, but no thanks.”

She drew a deep breath. “Jimmy—”

He held up a hand. “I never argue with a beautiful woman. And especially not with two beautiful women. Take away the distractions so I can get back to my numbers here, okay?”

With a sigh of surrender, she made her escape, Tiffany following close behind.

“That went well.” Emma sank into the chair at the kitchen table. “I’d say we left him at the point of conceding.”

Tiffany gazed at her with a frown. After a moment, her face cleared. “Oh, I get it. You’re joking again.”

Emma propped her chin in her hand. “Yes. I’m joking.” With the thumb of her free hand, she stroked the grain of the worn worktable. “Who’d have thought he would be so stubborn?”

“He’s a man, isn’t he? They’re all like that. They want their own way.”

“You sound as if you’ve had plenty of experience.” Emma pushed her own losing encounters with the male drive for control to the back of her mind.

“Yeah, well, my Brad pretty much says what goes.” The bartender put up a hand to massage her shoulder, wincing a little. “He’s six-four and two-fifty, so most people don’t argue.”

“What’s wrong with your shoulder?”

Tiffany dropped her hand. “Brad and me were fooling around last night—play fighting, you know. I hit a chair leg and got a bruise. That’s all.” She stepped through the doorway into the club. “See you later.”

Could she really be that clumsy? Or…Emma followed her into the dark. This was meddling—again—but she had to ask. “Tiffany, does Brad hit you?”

Wiping down the bar, the other woman shrugged. “He gets mad sometimes. And he forgets how strong he is. Nothing major.”

“How long have you two been together?”

“About three years.”

“But you aren’t married?”

Tiffany laughed. “I was already married once. To a real loser. I don’t plan to be trapped like that again.”

That should have been reassuring. Wanting to be convinced, Emma started back to the kitchen. At the doorway, she turned once more. “You probably have lots of friends and family already. But if you ever need help, please feel free to call me.”

“Thanks.” Intent on polishing a spotted glass, Tiffany didn’t look over again.

Alone in the kitchen, Emma tried to put the matter out of her mind, without success. Tiffany probably didn’t weigh much more than nine stone—one hundred twenty pounds or so—and she was half a foot shorter than Emma’s five-ten. Why would such a big man even think about wrestling—“play fighting”—with someone so much smaller?

Sighing, she focused her attention on the food yet again—sweet, ripe tomatoes and crisp lettuce, fragrant onions. Block cheese didn’t cost much more than fabricated cheese sauce for the nachos, especially when grated by hand, and tasted better. There was such peace in preparing food, a sort of rhythm…

Outside in the alley, glass hit concrete with an unmistakable shatter. Someone cursed, loudly and fluently.

Emma went to the screen door and peered out.

A boy stood just across the narrow lane, with a pile of rubbish at his feet, evidently fallen through the ripped bottom of the white plastic sack he held.

Harlow, the homeless boy she’d given money to her first night in Denver. The one Jimmy had rescued in the fight.

As Emma stepped outside, he looked over and grinned. “I guess I got greedy. Tried to carry too much.”

Emma crossed her arms. “What in the world were you trying to do?”

“Just looking for some lunch.” He started backing away. “Sorry if I bothered you.”

“Lunch? In the rubbish bins?” She spared a glance for the mess at his feet. “You were going to eat that?”

His shoulders lifted in a shrug, and his face flushed. Emma watched him a moment, then ducked back into the kitchen for another sack and a dustpan. “Clean that up and put it back where you got it. Then come inside.”

“That’s nice ’n all, lady, but…”

“But?”

“Well, this part of town is where I hang out most of the time, and I’ve tangled with Mr. Falcon before. He’s not big on handouts.”

Jimmy had warned her about this boy and his friends. They were drug addicts, he’d said. Best left alone.

But Jimmy wouldn’t expect her to ignore a hungry boy. “I’ll pay for the sandwich, if that will make you—and Mr. Falcon—feel better. You’ve got five minutes.”

Just as she set a full plate on the table, he tapped at the door. “Are you sure, lady? I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble.”

For an answer, Emma opened the screen and waved him inside. “Wash your hands and then sit down. And my name is Emma. Emma Garrett.”

He grinned again, and she blinked against the shine of it. “Pleased to meet you, Emma Garrett. I really appreciate the lunch.”

And he did—he ate every crumb in silent pleasure and asked for a refill on the glass of milk. Draining the last drop, he sat back with a sigh. “I won’t be hungry again anytime soon. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” She’d worked while he ate to give him privacy, but now she leaned back against the counter, watching him as she dried her hands. “Isn’t there somewhere you call home where you can get a meal?”

“Not this side of Amarillo. I’ve been on my own for a couple of years now.” He stood and picked up his paper plate and cup. “All right if I put these in the can over there?”

“Yes.” She waited until he closed the lid. “You don’t have a job?”

“Not steady work, no.” He glanced at the table. “I got a drop of mustard on your table. Let me wipe it up.”

Emma handed him the sponge. “Do you go to school?”

“Not since Amarillo.” A sheaf of dark blond hair fell over his eyes as he bent to his task. He was too thin and not very clean. Except for his hands now. Beautiful hands.

With a glance at the door into the club, he placed the sponge in the sink and stepped back. “I’d better get lost. Mr. Falcon’s car is out front. He wouldn’t like finding me in here.” At the screen door he paused. “Thanks again, Emma.”

“You’re welcome, Harlow.” She thought of urging him to come back. But he seemed convinced that Jimmy would disapprove. Until she had that situation figured out, she wouldn’t press. “Take care.”

With a quick nod, he slipped out the door. Emma looked outside an instant later to see which way he went. But the alley was empty. Harlow had disappeared into thin air.

WHEN EMMA CAME OUT of the kitchen at about six o’clock, Tiffany was in the storeroom, Jimmy had disappeared behind the closed door of his office, and Darren was sweeping the main room, with a book propped between his hands on the broom handle.

Smiling, Emma sat on a bar stool. “I hope you’re getting a lot of reading done, because you’re missing quite a bit of the stuff under the tables.”

Jerked out of his concentration, he looked at the floor around him. “I should know better.” He sighed, slapping the book onto a tabletop. “I guess I’ll just pull another allnighter after work.” He ran a hand through his curly brown hair, then gripped the broom handle with grim determination.

The next question came automatically, after twenty years in academic life. “What’s the assignment?”

Darren bent to brush napkins and potato chips out from under a chair. “I’ve got a paper to write for my history class. I have to get this primary-source reading done before I can even start thinking about what I want to say.”

“When is the paper due?”

“Tomorrow by three.”

“Darren! And you’re just starting this afternoon?”

“Well, I had a music-theory final this morning. I’ve been studying for that all week.” Darren’s passion for music—his dedication to the band he’d organized and played with—was the reason he worked at The Indigo. More than once he’d confided to Emma his dreams of performing and composing jazz.

“Are you a fast writer?”

“No. I hate it. But I have to take this history course to meet graduation requirements.”

“How much do you have left to read?”

“Four stupid pages.”

“Here.” She crossed the room and held out her hand. “I’ll sweep. You read.”

“Nah, that’s okay.” He kept hold of the handle.

“Come on, Darren. I can sweep for you. I can’t write your paper.”

He grinned, an endearing, mischief-filled expression. “You sure? I hear you’re an expert.”

“Idiot.”

Darren released the broom this time and Emma took over the job. Judging by the condition under some of the tables along the far wall, the server had been doing a good deal of double-duty work while sweeping up.

She was bending to whisk the last of the refuse into the dustpan when someone behind her cleared his throat. Upside down, Emma looked awkwardly around her jeans-clad legs and saw Jimmy’s black shoes, the soft gray of his cuffed trousers.

Damn and blast.

She finished the task and straightened up. “Hello there.”

Her face felt hot, wisps of hair stuck to her forehead and cheeks. She almost certainly had a swipe of dust over her nose, while Jimmy looked cool and controlled in a black shirt and silver tie. One of them had grown up quite nicely. The other had remained an adolescent mess.

His eyebrows were drawn together, but his eyes held amusement. “I could swear I hired somebody else to do that.”

“A bit of sweeping is good for the soul now and again.”

“Where’s Darren?”

“Um…on break.”

“On break.” Jimmy thought that over. “He comes in at six. He needs a break before seven?”

“He needed a chance to finish up some reading for school. I’m ready for the evening—I thought I could help him out.”

“Emma, you can’t do everyone’s work around here.”

“Oh, I know. I haven’t the faintest clue about mixing drinks.” She offered him a cheeky grin. “Tiffany’s job is safe.”

He shook his head, chuckling. “I don’t think I knew what I was getting into when I hired you to work here.” With a smile, he headed back to his office.

Emma watched almost greedily. Even considering the limp that marred his once-athletic gait, he was a wondrously attractive man.

“Neither did I, Jimmy,” she murmured. “Neither did I.”

“NO SHIT, she gave you lunch?” Tommy pounded the heel of his palm against his forehead. “Why didn’t I go?”

Stomach still full, Harlow grinned. “You’re freakin’ stupid, maybe?”

“Maybe.” Tommy didn’t mind knowing he was as dumb as a brick. He was big enough not to need brains. “Man! Ham and cheese.”

“And milk.”

“Chocolate milk?” Ryan stood beside Harlow, shivering in the summer heat.

“Not chocolate. Just cold. In a glass.” Harlow hadn’t had milk in a glass since he’d left home. Or a decent bed. Or a good pair of shoes.

But if he was gonna feel invisible, if people were gonna look at him like he’d just murdered somebody—which, to be truthful, he had—Harlow figured he might as well do it with strangers. Tommy and Ry and his other friends on the street didn’t treat him like anything but what he was. A kid with nowhere to go.

“What I’m thinking,” he said, distracting himself, “is that we can play Emma Garrett for a real good deal. She all but freakin’ melted when I smiled at her. So I butter her up, put on some manners, she’ll be giving me steak before too long. Then I’ll bring in Ry, and he’ll look real pitiful and she’ll feed him. Then Tommy—you practice looking nice, okay? You scare the shit out of most people just standing there. Anyway, if we behave ourselves and keep out of Falcon’s way, we’ll be in fat city.”

Tommy shook his head. “Falcon pulled some of that shit on us, remember? Gave us money, then tried to push rehab. I’m not going that route no more. I’m thinking it’s too big a pain, just avoiding him.”

“Then you’re not hungry enough.” Harlow looked at Ryan. “What do you think? You up for some decent meals?”

“Yeah, I think it’s a good deal.” He smiled, a sweet little boy’s smile that reminded Harlow of his younger brother at home. “But what do I eat in the meantime?”

His eyes were big circles of brown with tiny black dots in the middle, his face white and dirty and sick-looking. He would need another hit in an hour or so. That would use up their last ten bucks.

Time for a couple hours of spanging. Hanging out near the financial district downtown, asking the suits for spare change, they always got enough for a burger or two each. Harlow put his arm around Ry’s shoulders and gave Tommy a punch on the shoulder. “Like always, I got the answer to that, my man. You just stick with me.”