HELLO BEAUTIFUL

19.Small World

“She always had so many friends, she knew everybody.”

Mike looked down at his plate as he listened to Em Jorgenson. No longer hungry, he made a half hearted effort to move his eggs around, settling for a bite of toast washed down with bitter coffee. The diner was a lean to job beside the Greyhound station, on the outskirts of the industrial district. It didn’t look any better on the inside, but Mike wasn’t there for the view; he was there to talk to Em, about what had happened to Janet Arlington.

There were a few things that were a given in his life as a private detective. That people wanted to talk, needed to talk, was as much a part of it as the waiting or the strange hours. Em Jorgenson held court behind the battered Formica counter, coffeepot in hand. Mike let her talk, that was another part of the job.

“At least until she met that guy.” At that point, Em turned and hollered down the length of the counter at a guy in grey overalls sitting on the end. “Jerry? What was his name, you know the one.”

Jerry didn’t look like he knew much of anything, but like Mike, he appeared to share the belief that if you let people talk enough, it got easier to figure out. Jerry looked up, his head cocked to the right as Em ran down what she had just told Mike.

“Brightman something. Never did like that asshole,” Jerry spoke around a mouthful of hash. Mike tried not to notice, while paying attention to everything he said. Like Em, Jerry had a need to talk to. Mostly it was just a way to pass the time. Jerry came around the counter and sat beside him, leaving one stool between them. Mike had the impression it was homophobia rather than distaste; Jerry probably never sat next to any guy, for fear people would talk. As Jerry continued to scoop hash and eggs into his mouth, Mike realized that he didn’t mind.

“You know,” Jerry continued, pointing a piece of toast at Em, “I sold her a ticket.”

Greasy eggs slid and curdled in his belly. Often, Mike didn’t know for sure whether the things that he discovered were true or not. Intuition and instinct counted for a lot, and his instincts were yelling at him. Janet had been a bright and friendly young woman, until she met Brightman. At which point she became nervous and withdrawn, pulling out of friendships and eventually leaving school altogether. Mike wondered just how voluntary that was.

As with Em, Mike didn’t have to do more than show an interest in order to get Jerry to talk. Mike swiveled on the stool, being careful to keep the requisite amount of distance between him and the other man.

“It was close to the end of the school year, you remember that year,” the toast was up again, waving towards Em to include her in the conversation. Em leaned on the counter, all ears. “The year when she disappeared. She came into the station. I sold tickets that year. She came right up to the counter and put her purse on the ledge, taking out her money and asking how far it would take her.”

Mike heard every word with the same crystal clarity that had affected him earlier. Janet had ran, had just picked up whatever she had and ran. She hadn’t had much, didn’t have a car. Maybe she didn’t think she had friends anymore, no one to call that she thought would help her out. She had to have been so desperate. Just to leave, to get as far away as she could. Amber had pulled at him, and had made him change his mind on a case but it was Janet that tore at him and kept him awake at night.

Jerry sat up a little straighter as he continued. “She didn’t have quite enough to get to LA, so I put in some of my own money, ayup. Never did see her again, after that.”

Mike didn’t dare say it out loud, but he believed that this last bit of information was an addition that Jerry made up. Maybe on the spot, or maybe afterwards, when it had come out that Janet had disappeared. Just as people wanted to talk, people also wanted to help. Except that sometimes they didn’t. Afterwards, it looked bad, and they told themselves that they had helped anyway. It wasn’t as though Janet was around to contradict him. Maybe he believed it by now.

Mike stood, pulling off a couple of bills to pay for breakfast, making sure to get a receipt, keeping up his fed routine. “You’ve both been a great deal of help, thank you.” Em and Jerry were effusive in their goodbye’s, but Mike was already turning, shutting them out.

He stood out of the drizzle outside, just under the awning, and lit up a cigarette, his hands shaking. It all played out so clearly in his head. Closing his eyes he leaned back against the weathered wood siding. If he reached out, he could almost touch her face, so he didn’t. He wasn’t sure he could bear it; there were still so many unanswered questions.
He ground the butt beneath his heel and turned away from his car, towards the Greyhound station, worrying the locker key in his pocket as he did so.

For all Mike knew, the station was the last place that anyone had seen Janet Arlington alive. Anyone other than the man that killed her, that is. The station was empty, dimly lit and desolate the way all waiting rooms were. Plastic benches of chairs all cemented to the floor. Windows that didn’t let in much light, not for any lack of trying. Dispensers for coffee and snack bars. The lockers were at the end of the station, in a niche by themselves.

Mike didn’t need to pull the key out of his pocket; he knew the number by heart. Locker A713. While he walked down the aisle reading off numbers, he wondered how Brightman would have known that Janet had fled. Would he have followed her, or had he just known? Had Jerry maybe called Brightman at the time? Mike knew that Jerry would never cop to it, even if Mike asked, which he wouldn’t unless he had more proof. It was too late, far too late, to do anything now. It was possible that Brightman had just known.

Mike stood in front of locker A713, the second question tugging at him; how could he be sure that there would be anything in the locker when he opened it. Brightman could have moved it, maybe years ago. Mike didn’t believe that though; Brightman would have kept whatever was in the locker where it was. He might move the locker, or come to look at its contents from time to time, but he wouldn’t remove it. Killers were creatures of habit and Mike already knew that Brightman was a collector. His ‘trophies’ would be in the locker, Mike knew.

Still, it was hard to take that step forward and unlock the drab grey locker; there would be no illusions after that. The cardboard box fit just inside the space of the locker; Mike wondered if Brightman had planned that, or if it was a later addition. A box was easier to move without anyone seeing the contents; if he did take it out. Maybe a foot by a foot and a half square, and around 10 inches deep. Mike’s chest hurt and he realized that he had held his breath. The box should have been bigger; a young woman’s death shouldn’t have come down to a box that you might use to pack boots in.

Using the tip of a pen, Mike finally lifted the lid of the box, peering inside. Even with no one else in the station, Mike stayed close to the locker, shielding its contents from view. It cast a dark shadow over the contents; colors washed out to shades of grey and black.

It looked like rust in the dim light, but Mike knew that it wasn’t. It was blood, and by the looks of it, a lot of it. Brightman hadn’t washed up afterwards, perhaps that was part of the thrill for him, a bigger kick than his box of trophies back in Yuma.

The opened buck knife had a blade a little over six inches long. The blood, dry for many years now, had rusted the blade and stained the wooden hilt. The only bright spot that remained was the bright brass end of the tang. Mike could picture Brightman handling the weapon by that spot, not wanting to clean the blood off the rest of the weapon. Mike felt cold and shuddered. There were guys that he had served with, guys that went south, disappearing, anonymous, into the jungles of South America. When he had been much younger, he had heard tales of guys in Vietnam that collected ears, made them into necklaces. It had always seemed like camp fire tales, until he had seen it for himself, repeated in a jungle thousands of miles away. Human nature always outed.

In the bottom of the box, in all likelihood placed as a morbid display for the knife as anything else, was a blood stained piece of clothing. The blood was dried to a black crust. Mike didn’t touch it, even with the tip of his pen.

He closed the box lid, realizing that he was shaking. It passed quickly; what he needed to do was clear in front of him. Carefully removing the box from the locker, mindful to touch only the edges, Mike wondered if Brightman would come back and find his trophy gone. What he would do. Mike didn’t go far with the thought, because it didn’t matter to him anymore. He walked out of the bus station and dropped the box on the seat next to him, driving to the post office. He didn’t spend an awful lot of time thinking about what he would say to any local law that pulled him over and found a murder weapon in a box next to him. He didn’t care about that either; he was in a place where it didn’t matter.

Once inside the post office, he wrote a clear, detailed letter, addressing it to Sheriff Hollabird, the only law he had met that he trusted enough with what he knew, that he thought would listen, because he had seen a part of it with his own eyes. Halfway in, he realized that what he was writing was a debriefing. Mike held nothing back; this wasn’t the give and take that their previous discussion had been. Mike wanted the record to stand in his place, as testimony, if he wasn’t able to testify in court. In case he never came back.

He had to look up the address before he carefully labeled the package for the Sheriff’s eyes only. Paid the postage, with extra for insurance. The Sheriff would have to sign for it, ensuring that it got where it needed to go.

For a while after he mailed it, Mike just drove. There wasn’t enough alcohol to burn the image of the bloody blade from his head. If he tried, he was certain that the clarity that had infused him from the moment he woke would keep him from oblivion, from peace.

He pulled his car off the road at the farthest point of El Centro’s industrial district and got out of his car. The rain hadn’t let up but he paid it no mind, walking to the front of his car and resting against the hood, holding his hand up to shield the cigarette as he lit it. The gully in front of him did what it had done for decades, channel what water there was into the desert beyond. Mike looked out across the expanse and wondered where Brightman would have buried her.
—

Mia pursed her lips in an attempt to stifle her laughter as her brother’s gravelly voice echoed across the diner. Finishing the plate she was working on, Amber went to join her, peering out of the pass through window. “He really doesn’t take any shit, does he?”

Out on the diner floor, Dom loomed over a table of four long haul truckers. He wore a white apron tied loosely at his hips and held a ratty order pad. He looked huge, out of place, and faintly ridiculous. Up until now, no one had said a word about it. Apparently, the truckers thought there was strength in numbers and had decided to try to give him a hard time, something Dom didn’t have a great deal of patience for.

Helping Mia out was something he had never objected to. Especially now, when he still felt guilty over Heather; not for Heather herself but for the trouble it had caused Amber and his sister. The four truckers were trying to be funny but Dom was in no mood to take garbage off anyone; the truckers picked the wrong day.

Mia leaned on the counter top, peering out of the pass through as Dom stalked back down the length of the diner to drop off the order. She tried to keep a straight face and failed miserably. “As long as he doesn’t kill anybody, it’s okay.”

The two women leaned their elbows on the stainless steel ledge. Dom had walked halfway across the diner and then froze, as Brian’s car pulled back out of the driveway. It had been too busy for Dom to talk with Brian when he had first seen Brian pull in.

Craning her neck a little further out the pass through, Mia frowned. Brian had come in, not even stopping at the diner, for either her or Dom, and drove to the back. Where she knew Eddie was. That Jim was back there too didn’t put her mind at ease any. Now Brian was driving back out, in even more of a rush than when he came in. “Uh oh.”

The tension was easily read by Amber, already on alert after everything that had happened. Before she could say anything, Mia reached out and squeezed her arm, grinning as she walked past. “You’re okay for a couple of minutes?”

Pulling the trucker’s order off the wheel, Amber took a look at what she would have to cook if Mia left the kitchen. Burgers and sandwiches; she was pretty safe. Looking back at Mia, standing in the doorway, Amber grinned. “I got it.”

Her apron off, Mia disappeared down the hallway, just as Dom poked his head out of the front door of the diner. Brian was long gone, so Dom didn’t run out, hoping to catch him. Instead, he glared towards the garage. After a minute, Dom spotted Jim wheel out from under the car they had been fixing for the past week. Eddie was nowhere to be found and Dom wondered if Eddie had left with Brian. He wasn’t sure what bothered him more; Eddie still in the garage, or Eddie gone.

Being left in the kitchen by herself was no longer something that unnerved Amber and she got started on the order, glad that it looked like it might be the last one for lunch. When she was occupied, she could shut the busy part of her brain off. Of course she thought of Dom, of how it felt to wake in his arms, to be kissed by him.

In the beginning, it had been like that between her and Alan. His passion and intensity had thrilled her when she was younger and he had even been gentle. Once. That had not so much faded as blew up in her face, one day shortly after they had been married. Afterwards, he had apologized. He had cried and talked about how stressful his job was. That he’d never do it again. She ended up being the one to feel guilty.

It wasn’t right to judge, Amber knew that. Two men weren’t alike just because they were men. “Not like you had the best judgment anyway, sweetheart.” She turned the burgers over, prepared the plates, shook the fries in their basket. “Great, you’re talking to yourself everywhere now.”

“There are worse things.”

All at once, Amber spun around, nearly knocking the plates off the counter, let out a short squeal which she stifled by jamming a hand over her mouth. And blushed. Dom caught the edge of the plate before it reached the point of no return and pushed it back onto the counter, sticking his thumb into the burger into the bargain. “Don’t think they’ll mind, do you?”

His movements economical, Dom reached out for the clean white rag that hung from Amber’s apron and wiped the sauce off his thumb before he put the plates up on the pass through. Being pinned between Dom and the counter should have terrified her. It scared her a little but she wouldn’t run. It was true, her judgment sucked, but that was something she was willing to leave in the past. And Dom wasn’t a stupid mistake that she had made; Dom had never disappointed her; she was tired of running, of being afraid. So Amber didn’t bolt.

Mia came into the kitchen right behind Dom but she waited in the doorway, watching her brother with Amber. It wasn’t hard to see that something had happened between them. For a good piece of her life, Mia had walked through the car wreck that was her older brother’s personal life and she knew that the morning after didn’t usually run this smoothly.

If there even was a morning after, Dom tended to go from fireworks to fight before the sheets were even cold, she knew, so this was somewhat new to her. Letty had been the only other woman that Dom had been serious about and the idea of anyone being sweet with Letty was a thought that made Mia smile. It wasn’t that Dom hadn’t tried though, at least at first, it just hadn’t been taken well, so he had stopped. With the other women, they hadn’t mattered so he hadn’t bothered to try.

There was a time when Mia had hated when her brother did that, but in time she had begrudgingly come to terms with it. At least he didn’t string women along. It also made it pretty clear to Mia that the affection she was seeing now was the real thing. She was torn; wanting him to be happy, not wanting him to hurt Amber if it wasn’t something he intended to follow through with.

Mia put on her apron and walked up behind Dom, resting a hand on his waist. “I don’t think we’re going to get any more people in, if you wanted to go.”

Dom never took his hand off Amber’s arm as he turned and slipped an arm around Mia’s waist; all three of them for a moment taken into an embrace by Dom. “You gonna be okay here for a bit?” He wanted to leave, wanted to call Brian, wanted to stay with Mia. Mostly he wanted to be alone with Amber for a while, but he didn’t want Mia stuck with all the work if he left.

Breaking into a grin, Mia stepped back towards the grill, expertly flipping a pair of tongs. “Sure. If it gets hairy, I’ll get Jim to put on an apron.”

Amber’s jaw dropped a little; as if the idea of Dom serving tables wasn’t silly enough. The idea of Jim in an apron taking orders had Amber put her hand over her mouth again to hold in her laughter.

“I’d like to see that,” breaking into a grin, Dom laughed and stepped aside, his hand sliding down Amber’s arm to her lower back, guiding her past. “If you grab everything you need to bring, I’ll be out in a second.”

Looking at Mia first, Amber walked past, feeling the kitchen go silent behind her. She fought the urge to turn around. They were about to talk about her, she knew. ‘A little hard to do that if you’re right there,’ she thought, as she left the diner through the back and ran across the driveway. The hood of her car had been raised at some point. Dom had been in the diner with her the entire time, so it would have been Jim. She had gone to having no friends, to having maybe one friend, to now having several; it made her smile.
—

“Dom.”

Letting out a sigh, Dom turned and rested a hip against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. He knew what was coming; it would have pissed him off coming from anyone else. It would have pissed him off even coming from Mia if not for the look in her eyes and the sound of her voice as she called his name. He said nothing, just waited for her to continue; she had been holding it in for a while, interrupting wouldn’t help.

“Just don’t hurt her, okay?” Mia pled with him; she didn’t need to say ‘please’, her voice said it for her. “She’s so…I don’t know how to say it.” Her hands fluttered up; it wasn’t often that Dom saw her inarticulate. It gave what she said a depth that the words themselves didn’t.

“Scared,” he finished for her. It bothered him that any woman should be scared around him but he knew, more importantly he felt, that Amber wasn’t afraid of him. “She’s scared,” he repeated, “But not of me.”

“She doesn’t trust herself,” Mia came off the counter where she was leaned and crossed the kitchen. Dom’s arms opened and enfolded her automatically and she rested her cheek on his chest, like she had done since she was a young girl. “But she will, just don’t hurt her. Please?”

Pulling her head out of the comforting embrace, she looked up at him, her chin resting on his chest, pleading with him. Dom took his hands off her back and held her face between his hands; there was nothing Mia could ask him that he wouldn’t give, that he wouldn’t try to give her. Pulling her forehead to him, he kissed her at the hairline, holding her tight. “I’m an asshole, sis, you know that. But I’m going to try. I don’t want to hurt her either.”

“You’re not….” she muttered, wanting to defend him, even if she agreed with his statement.

“Yeah, I am. Or I was, fuck, I don’t know. I’m going to try though.” Thinking things through with women wasn’t something he did a lot of and he closed his eyes. He didn’t know if he could do it and his chest tightened, thinking of what that made him if he couldn’t keep his word. If he hurt her anyway. He was well aware of his track record, but he also knew how sick he was of it, how empty women like Heather, even Letty, to say nothing of all the others, made him feel.

Mia snickered, pressing her face harder into his chest. “You break her heart, I’ll break your neck.” Brian had told her about the warning Dom had given him.

“So it’s business as usual then?” He grinned down at her, stroking over her back. Mia was his sunshine, especially when she grinned back up at him.

“Yeah, just like that. Now go, and don’t make me kick your ass, Toretto.”

Dom snorted and kissed her cheek before he left the kitchen, to follow Amber.
—

Dom read the small plaque at the front desk while he waited for Amber to come back down; she had been uncomfortable when they drove up, because Dom would have to wait outside, or at least in the lobby. Having to stay outside didn’t bother Dom; what did bother him was Amber’s apologizing for it. Not that he got mad at her.

Dom ignored the look over the security guard gave him when he walked into the lobby behind her. ‘You don’t ever have to apologize to me again,’ he had said, tracing a knuckle under her chin so she would look at him when he had said it. She had been about to apologize again and caught herself, closing her eyes, exhaling.

‘Okay, no more apologies.’ Her cheeks had flushed red in embarrassment and shame, but she hadn’t looked away from him. ‘It’s been a habit for a long damned time though, so you’re going to have to bear with me.’

‘No more apologies, Amber,’ he had repeated.

She hadn’t answered, just pulled herself together and got out of the car to drop off the work that she had.

Cowling, Rowland and Howe. Underneath, in smaller text, was International Trade. Feigning boredom and disinterest, Dom stepped away from the plaque to look around the rest of the lobby, not able to gather much from the place. That was intentional, he guessed.

Internally, it was another matter. From Brian, Dom knew that International Trade was the company that Brightman worked for. Used to work for. The place might be a subsidiary, but it was all the same thing to him, and he didn’t like Amber having anything to do with it.

‘What the fuck is she doing working for that fucker?‘ Dom knew that it was stupid the moment that he thought it. Amber wasn’t working for Brightman; Brightman wasn’t even employed with the company anymore. For all Dom knew, Amber had never known who her husband worked for in the first place. That had the ring of truth to him; he couldn’t see Brightman being open and honest with her.

Feeling himself getting hot, Dom turned away from the desk with its solitary gold plaque and no secretary and walked towards the huge window that took up much of the front of the building, looking out at the carefully landscaped grounds.

What really ticked him off was that he didn’t have the right to say a damned thing about it. About where she worked or what she did. For that matter, he still didn’t know what it was that she did, although from the looks of the place and all the security, Dom knew that it had to be something important. Brian had mentioned that International Trade was an import/export company with intelligence ties. Which meant that the company Amber was temping for was even further up the food chain.

Looking back at the elevator as she came back down, he thought that he might ask her about it. ‘Hell, maybe she doesn’t know either. She had to take this job after all your damned prying lost her the job she had. Maybe you should just leave it the fuck alone already.’

It was that simple fact, that his meddling had gotten her fired, that made the decision for him. He would mention it to Brian, at least he knew that Brian could keep his mouth shut. The reflection from the mirror-like marble on the wall opposite glared back at him when he thought about Brian. About Brian and Eddie being gone, having left a note pinned on the cork board at the back of the garage, for him to try to track down the last address he had for Vince. The security guard walked across the lobby towards the elevator doors just before they opened.

“That was quick.” The deep sound of his voice made Amber blush when she stood beside him at the window, looking out. She had faltered as she stepped out of the elevator and looked across at him standing there, leaning casually against the glass, looking completely at ease. He was waiting for her and she held her breath, uncertain about what she wanted to do. Without thought, she crossed the lobby until she stood beside him, her hand tentatively on his arm.

Amber snorted easily, instantly comfortable beside him; Dom was what was comfortable and familiar and it made her feel strange and wonderful all at once. Alan had never dropped her off or picked her up at work; he had never wanted to be with her just to be with her. He had never waited for her. Even when they had been a lot younger, she had always been the one running after him. “Thanks for waiting for me.”

‘Why wouldn’t I wait for her?‘ He kept the thought to himself; some things it wouldn’t help him at all to know the answer to. “Anytime.” Dom held the door for her, behind her all the way, as though he wanted to put his body between her and the place she worked. “This place gives me the creeps,” he leaned down and whispered to her as the door swung silently shut behind them.

Looking at the building over her shoulder, she cocked her head to the side, and then looked back up at him, puzzled. “Really?” He opened the car door for her and she got in, taking the opportunity to look at the building again. She had felt that the moment that she had walked in, like she was being watched. Of course, she knew that she was being watched, anyone that entered the building was, but it had never really bothered her before. Until now.

A few days working at the diner and her whole idea of work had changed. Dom slammed the car door closed after he got in and she turned to him. “Me too. Guess I never thought about it too much before, all the surveillance.”

Inwardly, Dom cringed, but he kept that to himself too; he had wanted Brian to hook surveillance up to the inside of her house, whether she knew about it or not. Turning back into the street, his voice dropped a little, to a conspiratorial whisper. “Are you okay with it, working there?”

He could hear her deep breath, slower exhale, and watched as she looked back at the building before it disappeared behind them. “I don’t have much of a choice. I paid off the house in full but….”

“Not a whole lot left over,” he finished for her. The situation hadn’t been all that different when he had gotten out of prison; he had just enough to pay for the garage, and only if it was way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. That was something he paid for in full, so he knew what she was talking about. Needing to pay for the mortgage on the house and garage was a part of what had originally got him into the thefts in the first place; it wasn’t just the draw of easy money. He never wanted to be in that situation again.

At least now he had something that was his, bought and paid for, so he knew where Amber was coming from. The difference was that he had another source of income; it wasn’t a lot, nowhere near what he had pulled down before, but it was clean and steady. Looking over at her as she looked out the window, Dom thought of Mia again; left on her own, with nothing. At how hard it had been for her and how many things she had missed out on.

Thoughts piled up in his head as they drove in silence; Brian, Mia. Vince. Letty. Amber hadn’t answered and one look at her face let him know that she was thinking too hard, about too much. He hated that he dumped thoughts of money on her, especially when he knew that what he had done had got her fired in the place. Sure, Eddie had done the actual dirty work, but he was responsible.

Dom looked down at his watch and sped up a little; the train through Yuma ran like clockwork and if he didn’t reach the crossing before it did, they’d be stuck behind it for a good twenty minutes. “The car Jim brought in’s nearly road-worthy.”

Baffled, Amber looked at him; she had no idea where he was going. That Dom would offer her a car was the farthest thing from her mind. The puzzled look on her face had Dom crack a grin, before he turned off one road and down another. “Fuck!” Hand slamming on the steering wheel, the car slid to a stop as they approached the train crossing; the barrier was down already and there was no way he would jump the tracks, not with Amber in the car.

“I’m sorry…”

“Fuck,” Dom muttered softly this time; he had startled her, on top of confusing her, and now she was turned in her seat to face him, but backed up close to the door. Like she didn’t know if she should run or not. Unclipping his seatbelt, he turned to face her, just as she got a hand over her mouth; she hadn’t meant to apologize.

“Fucking bad habit. I’m….” Angered, she didn’t finish. Still saying sorry, just not in words anymore. “Goddamit! That didn’t last long, did it!”

Before she could put up a struggle, Dom’s arms were around her, one arm resting along the back of the seat, his other arm pulling her tight, crushing her to his chest. Stifling anything else she had to say, out of shock as well as brute force. His fingers brushing through her hair reminded her to breathe. “Okay,” she chuckled, “after right now, no more apologizing.”

The grin was back but he hadn’t let go of her, just relaxed a little. “Probably should have mentioned the train.” They both looked out to watch the railcars passing in a blur, stretched in a long line out into the desert, where they disappeared. “We’re gonna be here a while.”

“No way around, I’m guessing,” Amber had spotted a truck come up behind them.

“It wouldn’t matter, the tracks cross every road between here and home.” Reaching out for her had been automatic, once he realized that he had frightened her. It pissed him off to think about how many times something similar might have happened to her; yelling escalating to the point where she got hit. Still, she hadn’t bolted, and had let him hold her, so he wasn’t quick to let her go.

Dom hadn’t forgotten what he had been saying. “About the car,” he began, grinning at her confused look. It made him a little sad too, that she had no idea what he was about to say, that maybe no one had ever made her that kind of offer before. “I want you to have it, when it’s done. Shouldn’t be too long, maybe a week.”

Shocked silent, Amber gaped, unsure of what to say, or even of what she had heard. “You’re giving me a car?” she whispered, searching his face for signs of some trick.

“You can drive a standard, right?” The baffled look on her face hadn’t disappeared, just changed slightly. No longer confused about what he had stated, but why he had offered. The look wasn’t an accusation either; she didn’t assume he wanted anything, she just honestly didn’t know why he had offered. It tugged at him and again he found that he thought of Mia, alone with no one to care for her, having to struggle so hard to hold it all together. “I want you to have it.”

Amber wanted to say no, that she couldn’t accept such a gift, but the simple idea of it was that she was so touched that she didn’t know what to say, or how to even begin. She couldn’t afford to buy another car either; hers had been so reliable for so long that it had simply never occurred to her.

Dom, true to his word, had explained on the drive out what had happened to her car, that it could be fixed, but once the problems started, they were likely to continue. That she would have to drive something in the time being because getting stuck out in the desert on the way home wasn’t an option.

“I…” she stammered, unsure of what to say.

“Just say yes. It’s yours, I want you to have it,” he repeated. He doubted that she heard him the first time.

A deep shaky breath and Amber closed her eyes; she would not cry. It was the wrong think to think because tears came the moment she thought it, and she swiped at them quickly. “Yes. Thank you.” It was hard but she looked up at him. “Thanks,” she stated simply, this time as one friend to another; it was new, and it felt good.

Dom’s fingers were still in her hair and he played with a loose strand of it, letting it slide over the knuckles of his index finger. The only sound was the rumbling of the train outside and their breathing. They had kissed once, early in the morning. It hadn’t been planned; it had just felt right.

Soft and receptive, her lips parted when he kissed her again. Like their nearly chaste morning kiss, he was gentle, more gentle than he liked, but he didn’t press. ‘Careful, asshole,’ Dom could nearly hear Mia threaten him in his head.

A heavy bottom lip brushed over hers, feeling her breath, a series of soft kisses while he shifted his weight in the seat, all the while pulling her tighter to him, until his back was to his door with her on her knees beside him.

He had kissed her first. Gently. Amber’s heart raced so fast that she thought Dom had to hear it, that the truck driver behind them, also stuck behind the train, had to hear her. It was so unlike her but then again, everything that had happened since she had moved into her tiny house in the desert had been unlike anything else she had done before.

Nearly black, his dark eyes were on a level with hers; he didn’t press, didn’t push, didn’t take. It made her brave and it wasn’t as though they had never kissed before, as though she hadn’t tilted her chin up earlier that day and kissed him back.

Swallowing, she leaned forward, scared to close her eyes, and kissed him, awkwardly at first. She panted, trembling, before tilting her head and kissing him deeply, feeling a jolt slam through her as their tongues touched, just the tips at first, playing dare.

Dom leaned back, taking her with him; it wasn’t far to fall and it was, just against the door of the car, a few inches. Amber was above him, her mouth as hard and insistent as the short panted breaths that fanned against his cheek.

Raw emotion swirled through her in a confusing maelstrom, leaving her shaken. Passion was not a word that she would have used to describe her marriage but passionate was what she felt, held by Dom. He kissed her back just as ardently, the heat plain in his touch. It felt incredible to be wanted like that and know that Dom would never hurt her to get what he wanted. An inadvertent moan slipped from her lips; letting go, she slid her arms around his neck, shuddering at the feel of stubble that scraped pleasantly along her arm.

The honking pulled her back, startled, and she fell back on the seat, looking behind her at the truck as it honked at them. The train had passed. Amber held a hand to her cheek, feeling the skin burn beneath her hand. Instantly shy, she looked down, straightening the bottom edge of her shirt; it had come untucked, exposing a small sliver of her belly. Whether it had been her or Dom, she didn’t know.

Dom leaned across the seat, his knuckle under her chin, making Amber look at him once more, ignoring the truck as it honked angrily behind them. He watched her the entire time and kissed her wet lips softly again, parting, his thumb tracing over her bottom lip.
—

“What do you mean, you’re going to be busy?”

Alan’s hands tightened into fists, his arms crossed over his chest, as he tried to push the anger back inside where he told himself he could handle it. Where it wouldn’t show, where he could keep the disguise. He needn’t have bothered; Heather hadn’t even turned from where she worked at the counter, making dinner.

“Exactly what it sounds like. Busy. You know, as in something else to do.” Heather snipped, her voice clipped and bitchy, turning back to face him. They had been having this fight for about twenty minutes and she was fed up with it; she was fed up with Alan. She was fed up with his stupid belief that just saying something made him right. She was sick of his trying to manipulate her. When she had wrecked Amber’s car, it was because it pleased her at the time; Alan hadn’t had to talk her into anything and it pissed her off that he thought he had. Nobody told her what to do. “Flat out. No, period, that’s it. Face it, you got even with her, fine, you wrecked the stupid little bitch’s car. Now get the hell over it. It was a stupid idea to begin with.”

The palms of his hands tingled and Alan tried to loosen up; little crescents had opened up in his skin where his nails dug in. The tingling was blood. “Shut the fuck up,” he ground out, losing control, feeling the blood from his hands spread until it was a veil over his eyes, it’s angry blanket setting up a thrum in his ears.

A pounding that still couldn’t drown out Heather’s voice, although it deadened the words that she said, all but the word ‘no’.

Dismissing him, she turned her back on him, conversation over. He was screaming at her, a stream of hate from a well that would never run dry. Grabbing her hair sharply drew the shocked yelp that made him instantly hard and then he spun her around, slapping her. Not too hard, just enough to let her know who was in charge.

That was the idea anyway; Heather had other ideas. “Oh, you fucking son of a BITCH!…”

copyright © jan 2008 xxxevilgrinxxx