Читать книгу Dream Lover - Stacey Keith - Страница 9

Chapter 5

Brandon told himself he was going to find April, make nice, and talk her out of escalating everything. But as soon as he sped through the back roads of Cuervo, opening up the Harley’s throttle and relishing its throaty howl, it wasn’t the case he was thinking about.

It was April.

She’d probably never even been on a Harley. Hell, she hadn’t been on a lot of things. Why that interested him, he didn’t know. Had he ever slept with a virgin? Hard to remember. Maybe back in the beginning, but that was years ago. It was all kind of a blur.

What wasn’t a blur was the road, which stretched out endlessly before him, with no windows to block his view, no car doors to prevent him from enjoying the rush of intense freedom. Everything came pouring over him at once: the sun devils dancing on the horizon, the shock of blue Texas sky, the lane stripes that his Fat Boy split beneath its wide front tire.

A good ride put you into a state of hypnosis, where you were everywhere and nowhere at the same moment. The muffled roar of the wind, the sharp green smell of the grass, the power of the bike beneath him were the closest things to God he’d ever known.

Working in an office, in a suit, punching a time clock…no way. Hell, he’d rather go back to foster care. But that brought him back to Matthew…and to April.

So now he was thinking about April again.

In a town the size of Cuervo, it shouldn’t take him long to find out where she lived. Going to the Raymond County Child Protective Services offices was out of the question. Just thinking about it made him uptight. No, he needed to catch her off guard. Alone. Without Deputy Dumbass hanging around.

Brandon had sweet talked Matthew’s Spanish teacher into giving him a passing grade last year. He’d had her speaking all kinds of Spanish in the back seat of her car.

Sometimes you had to take one for the team.

He’d try the Double Aces first, which was where he’d last seen April. As he approached on his bike, it looked as though the bar was already packed with the happy hour crowd. Bruce Springsteen wailed out of the jukebox. He found the owner, Jimmy, wiping down the bar with a rag.

“What’ll you have?” Jimmy asked.

“A shot of the good stuff.” Brandon took the nearest barstool. A smoking hot brunette was giving him the come hither, but there was no time to chase down that dead end.

Jimmy held up a bottle of Jack Daniels. “Good enough?”

The guy was a real charmer. Brandon waited until he finished pouring the shot before saying, “I’m looking for April Roby. Figured you might know where she lives.”

Jimmy had fists the size of Christmas hams and a face that looked as though someone had lit it on fire and put it out with an ax. When Jimmy scowled at him, Brandon felt his muscles tense out of pure reflex.

“Now what business does a fella like you have with a nice girl like April?” Jimmy said.

Brandon glanced around the bar. If he punched Jimmy now, he might have to take on twenty or thirty other guys. Those were bad odds, even by his standards.

He tossed back the shot, feeling it burn all the way down to his stomach. Casually, he peeled off a few bills and said, “Guess I’ll just have to find her myself.”

As Brandon turned to leave, the dark-haired woman gave him a playful smile. “I know where she lives.”

He glanced at Jimmy to see if he’d overheard her, but Jimmy was busy manhandling the blender. The woman slid a cocktail olive off a tiny plastic spear with her teeth and gazed at Brandon with the kind of smoldering invitation he recognized because it always went straight to his crotch.

“You were here the other night,” she said. “I saw you leaving with some skanky blond chick.”

Brandon didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. All he had to do was wait for it…

“Name’s Roxanne.” She put her hand out for a shake, but he ignored that, too. He hated handshakes. They were things a douche in a suit would do.

“Oooookay.” Flushing, she withdrew her hand and went back to toying with her olives. “Why are you looking for a boring little wallflower like April?”

He smiled. “Maybe I like wallflowers.”

“April working a case for you or something?”

Now she was just messing around, trying to get more than he would give. On a flare of irritation, he said, “Do you know where she lives or are we just going to sit here all night asking questions?”

Her dark eyes widened. “Impatient much? April lives on Tilden and Decatur. White house with a porch. It’s on the corner so you can’t miss it.”

Brandon went outside, climbed on his bike, turned the ignition switch and the fuel tap, teased open the choke, and then gave the throttle two full twists. The Harley growled to life. There were two other motorcycles next to his, but he didn’t recognize them. His crowd tended to show up later than this.

He took off, wondering where Tilden Street was. All he saw was a fancy movie theater called the Regal, a water tower on stilts, and a storefront that had the words Sweet Dreams: Home of the UFO Cake in fancy gold letters.

People in Cuervo were even weirder than he thought.

Exiting Main Street, he headed toward what looked like a residential area. It didn’t take him long to find April’s house.

When he saw it, everything about her made sense. Not the baggy skirt and low heels, because nothing made sense about that. But just a look at where she’d come from told him who she was.

The house was pure Texas. It looked like the kind of place that had Halloween decorations in October and a twinkling tree in the window come Christmas. It was the house he had always longed for when he was a kid—before he realized that dreams were for other people, not for him.

He pulled up to the curb and killed the engine. As he started up the walkway, Brandon sensed that his presence here was scaring the locals, but that didn’t stop him from staring back. Across the street, a pair of beady eyes peered at him between half-closed curtains. The nosy old broad actually had a phone in her hand.

He stepped onto April’s porch. There were hand-painted coffee cans with flowers in them, a rocking chair with a pink cushion, and a porch swing that creaked. He cupped his hand against the front window and looked inside. An old piano with sheet music. A braided rag rug like his grandma used to make. Real oak furniture that had probably been in the family for generations.

The house was a travel brochure about April.

He felt as though he had no business being here, that he was dirty somehow and full of darkness. In a house with dainty flowers and pink chair cushions, Brandon could never feel at home.

“What are you doing here?”

Brandon spun around. April stood on the walkway staring up at him with an expression of sheer panic. Over her shoulder he could see the woman glaring at him, phone in hand, which was when he guessed what had happened.

“That old battle-axe call you?” he asked.

April wanted nothing more than to run. Those innocent blue eyes of hers told him things. And damn if he didn’t want to chase her. Despite his best intentions, he couldn’t help but wonder what might happen if he relieved her of that pesky virginity and showed her what life was really all about.

“You can’t be here,” she sputtered. “Mrs. Felps is calling the police.”

She was practically panting with fright, which made Brandon realize that he would have to try harder to calm her.

“I’m not going to hurt you, April,” he said seriously. “I just want to talk about Matthew.”

“You should have come to my office,” she insisted. “It’s two minutes from here.”

“I don’t do offices.” He sat on the top step, leaned his elbows on his knees and looked up at her. She was wearing the same dorky outfit she always wore, which was probably the only reason a beautiful woman like her was still a virgin.

“You can sit,” he said. “I promise not to bite.”

Not yet anyway.

“I’m waiting for the police to arrive,” she said.

The police weren’t coming. Brandon knew that. At least not until April gave Hagatha over there the signal, which was why the old bat kept hovering in the window.

“Like I said, I’m not here to hurt you.” Brandon ran one hand over his stubbly jaw and realized he’d forgotten to shave. Because he wanted to see her sputter, he said, “We could talk inside if that would make you feel better.”

She looked so incensed, it was everything he could do not to laugh. “Whatever awful thing you came to say, you say it here. I don’t let strange men inside my house.”

April clearly let no men inside her house. Maybe not even the mall cop. Brandon tried to get a game plan together in his head, but he was enjoying just sitting here on her nice clean porch, watching her Ivory-soap skin turn every shade of pink.

“I thought we could talk about my brother,” he said. “You might have some ideas about how to get the kid to school.”

April blinked. The wariness in her eyes receded a little, but she still wasn’t there yet. “He’s your responsibility, Mr. McBride. You figure it out.”

“Please don’t feed me the company bullshit. I came here ready to lay it all out for you. The least you can do is help.”

He watched her take a deep breath before remembering that the Big Bad Wolf probably shouldn’t be staring at Red Riding Hood’s chest too intently.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll sit. We’ll talk. But the minute you go off topic, I’m calling—”

“The cops. I know.” He tried smiling, but figured it was better to be completely bullshit-free with her.

“Matt’s a good kid,” he began as she sat nervously on the step beside him. “He’s got a mouth on him, but hey, at least he’s talking. When our mom died, he didn’t say a word for six months.”

He could tell that surprised her. “It’s called ASR,” she said. “Acute Stress Reaction. But it usually only happens in cases of acute trauma.”

April’s neighbor had come outside and was pretending to water her plants. She had on Tweety Bird house slippers and must have been mad as hell that she couldn’t hear a word they were saying.

Matthew had been through agonizing trauma—things that Brandon didn’t even know about because he hadn’t been around. Too busy riding bikes, chasing tail, getting into trouble. At the time, he’d had no idea Matthew was a daily witness to brutal fights between Celia, their mother, and that wife-beating asshole Monroe. Even now Brandon tried not to think about it because when he did, his stomach tightened with guilt.

He wasn’t about to tell April that.

She was supposed to represent everything he hated: the law, the state, the crap that had sent him to foster care in the first place. Even the fact that she was a social worker should have made him hate her.

But April smelled like vanilla. She reminded him of a fluffy white house kitty, the purebred kind with a jeweled collar. Maybe that was why he had such a hard time seeing her as the enemy. But he knew it was all a trick.

He’d had a social worker once named Sandra Jacobs who’d ignored his pleas to move him out of a foster home. His foster father had been a drunk, abusive, belt-whipping bastard, a lot like Monroe. If you were late to dinner by even a fraction of a second, he made you kneel bare-legged on a bed of uncooked rice. For hours. And that was his easiest punishment.

No, he had to work the system, work April. Because otherwise the system would eat his brother alive.

“Matthew has a hard time in school, I’ll admit,” Brandon said. “He’s like me. Walls mess with his head.”

April turned her face toward him, flushing when she saw him looking at her. “Yes, but he has to go. It’s the law. Just because a child isn’t happy with school, that doesn’t give him the right to abandon his education.”

Straight out of the social worker handbook. April had all kinds of theories about life, didn’t she? She just didn’t have any experience living.

“Tell me something,” he asked softly. “Did you like school? Were you one of those girls who gave a shiny red apple to the teacher and put pony stickers on her notebook?”

Sure, he was baiting her. He wanted to see what she would do, even though a part of him knew better.

But another part of him wanted to see where that vanilla smell was coming from. His blood heated at the thought of grabbing her wrists and pinning them to the mattress. The triumph of feeling her part her legs for him. How soft her breasts would be when he cupped them in his hands and stroked the tips.

And now he was hard as a rock.

“Is this where you start insulting me again?” April asked.

“Insult you?” Her pink lips were very close. The longer he stared at them, the harder he got. Casually, he moved his forearm down to cover the worst of the problem. “No one’s ever accused me of being a gentleman.”

The space where he ended and she began grew thick and heavy, the way air felt before a storm. You could be standing outside and everything would go still, too still, and then the heat lightning would crackle through the sky and the thunder would boom and all hell broke loose.

Brandon had that same premonition now. Some ancient force was about to be unleashed. Now that it was here, he had no clue how to make it stop. Coming here had made things so much worse.

“You could homeschool Matthew,” April was saying, “but I think we both know you’re not homeschool material.”

Brandon couldn’t deny it. He couldn’t do much of anything, actually, except watch her lips move.

“We provide counseling services,” she went on. “Maybe your brother would benefit from grief counseling about his mother?”

Grief counseling. Brandon heard the words. He just couldn’t make sense of them. The urge to taste her made him sweat. He wanted to chase that brisk, impersonal professionalism out of her eyes and replace it with a look of delirious surprise.

But why her? Why an annoying, know-it-all virgin like April?

“Are you even listening?” she asked him. “It’s like I’m talking to myself all of a sudden.”

“I’m listening.”

“You were the one who wanted to discuss this.”

“I’m discussing.”

She waited, clearly expecting him to say something. He wondered if she wore sexy girl stuff underneath that skirt. Was she one of those women? Prim and buttoned-down on the outside, but once the bedroom doors were closed…

“Matthew’s great at motocross,” Brandon said. “He’s won some important races. I’m trying to get him sponsors.”

“Two-fifty cc’s or four-fifty?” she asked, shocking the hell out of him.

“Two-fifty,” he replied. “How do you—”

“My dad,” she explained. “Dirt bikes, muscle cars, vintage rebuilds, you name it. I grew up smelling motor oil.”

Man, it was weird having a conversation with a woman he had such mixed feelings about. Usually chicks wanted one thing from him. And it wasn’t friendly chitchat.

April looked at him with those big blue eyes, which made him lose his train of thought again. “Can I ask you something?” she said.

“Sure.”

“How did your mom die?”

He couldn’t tell her because he didn’t know himself. Matthew had been there, but Matthew wasn’t talking about it. When Brandon started getting in trouble as a teen, Celia had decided to let him rot in foster care. She and Monroe had just had Matthew, so it seemed as good a time as any to cut Brandon loose. For over a year, he was shuttled around. Then Celia let him come home, mostly because she needed a babysitter for Matthew. And Brandon had come home for Matthew. Also to get the hell out of foster care. But not because of his close relationship with his mom.

“I don’t know,” he said. “To be honest, there’s a lot I don’t know.” In fact, his brain didn’t seem to be functioning at all. Not with this tightness in his chest and this trapped yearning feeling because he wanted what he couldn’t have. Not with her looking at him. Not with those lips.

He launched himself away from the porch fast enough that she couldn’t see what she’d done to him. What better way to scare her off, to guarantee that she’d nail him in court for sexual harassment or being a shitty guardian or whatever the hell she wanted to. All because he had some sick craving for her that didn’t make any sense and wasn’t going any further than this.

“Wait,” she called to him. He looked over his shoulder at her, all radiant in the light of late afternoon. Her beauty was angelic. April was a window into a world he’d never known, not even in his dreams.

She moved closer, still a little wary, arms crossed. “I know you think I’m a lightweight. But what I really am is a messenger. Matthew’s school attendance is no laughing matter. If he won’t go to school, you should ground him or limit his motocross. Because the state of Texas will intervene. And I promise you neither one of us will like what happens after that.”