ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5) (37 page)

I wasn’t quite sure how to take that information. Why would a president of a big company still consider me for a position after I’d left school and done all I could to vanish from the face of the earth? Hadn’t there been other promising students who could be recommended for internships?

“The thing is, this position that I’m offering you today isn’t going to be like the internship you would’ve been offered a year ago,” Dan said. “This position isn’t anything glamorous, but at least it’s a foot in the door. And maybe a step up from, oh, I don’t know, taking your clothes off for money and living in your car.”

I pressed my lips together and looked down, embarrassed. I thought I was discreet about my living situation, always parking my car in different lots around town, protecting my privacy with sunshields and blankets. I never showed up to work dirty, finding different places to bathe. Yet, here was Dan Shepard, eagerly exposing my secrets as if they meant nothing at all. I could’ve maybe afforded a room somewhere, but I’d always felt more at home in my car. It was my one remaining physical tie to Texas, and it had gotten me through many things. I didn’t mind living in it.

“The position comes with an advance,” Dan was saying, reaching into his suit jacket and withdrawing an envelope. “You’d obviously have to make an initial investment into your appearance, your living situation, your physical location. The company’s located in Seattle proper, and I can’t say the dress code is bikini friendly.”

For not the first time, I squirmed, uncomfortable in my own skin in front of this man. This was my work uniform when I was at this bar, and it earned me my cash. Why did I feel self-conscious all of a sudden?

“There’s plenty of money in here for a new start,” he said, sliding the envelope in front of me. “Like I said. This current gig of yours isn’t going to last forever. You need to think about what you’re going to do when you’re ready to get over this bohemian blip of your life and get serious again.”

The tone of Dan’s voice reeked of condescension, and it more than ruffled my feathers. Who was he that he could just waltz in here and tell me all about my life? He didn’t have a single clue about anything.

“I’ll think about it,” I said, standing up from the bar, eager to get myself away from whatever craziness had found its way to this establishment.

“Keep the cash,” he urged. “You’re going to need it to get started at Shepard Shipments. You’ll need to buy business clothes. Shoes. Everything.”

“I don't know who you think I am, but I don't take handouts,” I said, pushing the envelope back at Dan. “And I told you I'd think about your offer—not that I was accepting it.”

Dan gave a low whistle. “A wise businesswoman already. Looks before she leaps. How’s this? If you won’t take what's in the envelope because I’m telling you to take it, how about I use it to pay for your services? You’re a good dancer, after all, and I have to say very attractive. Besides, I won’t be able to ask you for something like this once you start working for the company.”

“If I start working for the company,” I corrected, as my face got hot. What was wrong with me? On a regular night, I would’ve done anything to dance for a customer like Dan. If he dressed nice, took care with his appearance and hygiene and the like, chances were that he would be willing to take care of me, too. He’d have the cash to spend on my inflated drinks or on tips if he decided to purchase a special dance from me. I’d be at his side the entire night, a leech with makeup, looking to see whether I could bleed him dry before he swerved his way home.

So why was I so hesitant now? I didn’t know exactly what was in the envelope, but I knew it was cash. However, how much cash remained to be seen.

“You’re taking the envelope,” Dan informed me, smirking. “But it’s up to you to decide if it’s a handout or if it’s for something you’ve earned.”

I set my jaw and signaled to the bartender. “A dance,” I barked, and he went to go adjust the music.

Dan raised an eyebrow. “Just one dance?” he asked.

“One dance is all I need,” I shot back, whirling him in his chair until his back was against the bar and I was mere inches away from him, standing between his knees.

The song started up, and I worked my way slowly into movement, grasping each of his knees with my hands, pushing them apart so I could wriggle between his thighs, pressing a knee against his crotch to remind him just who was in control.

Both of Dan’s eyebrows were raised now, and some part of me was glad that he was paying attention, that I had command of the floor. All of the other customers sitting around the dinky little bar were watching my every move. I was the one in control.

I untied my bikini with one hand and looped it around his neck while his eyes were preoccupied with the sudden sight of my breasts. Then I used it to drag his face down, a hair’s breadth away from my skin, before pushing him away again. The coins on my wrap rattled in time to the quick movements of my hips, and it wasn’t long until I untied that, as well, swinging the jingling fabric above my head to the cheers of other customers.

Dan didn’t cheer. He just watched, a slight smile curving his mouth upward.

I realized that I wanted to shock him out of that cool demeanor; I wanted to do something to give him a taste of the turmoil he’d introduced in my life tonight. I had no idea that, coming to work at the bar, I’d be offered a real job out of the blue—a real job and an envelope of money. It sounded too good to be true, and it probably was. Dan had said the job wasn’t glamorous, whatever that meant, but he’d ignited some dangerous flame of hope inside of me.

Hope that, after all that I had wreaked ruin upon, after all the lives I’d affected, that maybe I’d someday have a happy life again.

It was something I didn’t want. Something I hated to think about. I deserved this, shedding my clothes for strangers, letting them gaze upon the relative beauty of my outer appearance while I was the only one who understood just how ugly I was within.

As the beat in the song swelled in a crescendo, I leaped into Dan’s lap, rocking his chair back against the bar and looping my arms around his neck for stability. I straddled his lap and squeezed my thighs around his waist, gyrating my hips, aware that I was only in my thong.

Dan’s hands had initially grabbed my hips to make sure I didn’t fall off him in my sudden and acrobatic move, but now they traveled to my bare ass, his fingers slipping experimentally beneath the straps of my thong, seeing just what he could get away with before I slapped him away.

For the right price, I’d let a man get away with far more than he thought he was going to.

Something about the man between my thighs lit me on fire. Dan didn’t care that I was actually trying to make him uncomfortable. He seemed exceedingly at ease with me in his arms, his fingers trailing over my back, making me shudder and press my breasts into his chest.

Of course, one part of him wasn’t at ease at all.

A growing bulge in those nice trousers of his let me know that, in spite of his cool demeanor, I really was having a strong effect on him.

“Don’t worry about that,” he said into my ear so I could hear it over the music. “It has a mind of its own.”

“Don’t feel bad,” I countered. “Happens to customers here all the time.”

“I assure you, I’m feeling the opposite of bad right now,” he said, his hands finding my ass again and squeezing it. “I feel like I have to be breaking some rules right now.”

“I’m the one who decides the rules,” I said, grinding against him in time to the music. “And you’ll know when you break one.”

I got close to him—close enough to tell he’d recently brushed his teeth and to enjoy his taste in fine cologne—to make him lower his eyelids to half-mast, letting my lips graze ever so lightly against his.

Then, the song finished.

I hopped off, all business, and got dressed again as if nothing had transpired between us. I noticed, with some small amount of satisfaction, that Dan’s erection didn’t diminish in the slightest.

“I’d advise you to swing by the trucker’s road stop on your way out of town,” I said, looking pointedly between his legs. “You can take a cold shower and wash off my perfume, if you’re going home to anything special.”

“I’m not washing off a single thing,” Dan said, leering a bit. “And the special something I’m going home to tonight is the sweet memory of you. Hope you don’t mind that I’ll be thinking of you later.” He made a suggestive hand gesture and laughed at my blush.

How had he turned this entire power dynamic back around to make me feel like the silly one? I thought that I’d had everything well in hand, but this man seemed not to mind that he was sporting a boner in a dump of a bar after just propositioning me to work for his company.

“Well, Beauty,” he said, getting up and discreetly adjusting his pants, “you have my number. Keep the envelope. You’ve more than earned it. I look forward to seeing you in Seattle.”

One last searing gaze and smirk and Dan walked out of the bar without so much as a glance over his shoulder.

What arrogance. He’d gotten a lap dance from me, a person he wanted to hire, and then assumed that my mind was already made up as to whether I’d even work for him. He didn’t know the first thing about what was going through my head right now. I could take that money and move on, go someplace else, maybe even to Canada.

Somewhere I wouldn’t be found.

I’d drift away, out of the memory of the president and vice president of Shepard Shipments, and disappear, just as I’d aimed to do when I left Texas.

And how long would I be able to live like that before I couldn’t rely on my outward beauty to feed me anymore? How long would it take for my inner ugliness to seep through my skin, mar my face, and show the world exactly who I was? Something inside me knew that it would be much sooner than my forties.

I took the envelope, cracked it open, and my eyes bugged out. It was more money than I’d made since I left college. More than a year of crawling along, degrading myself, and in a single dance, I’d made the most money I’d ever seen.

Why did Shepard Shipments want me so badly—to track me in my ramblings across the country? Surely I couldn’t have stood out that much in my business class.

In a rush of memory, I remembered a lecture I’d attended while I was still at school. It had been hard to concentrate. The desperation inside of me was reaching a fever point, and it had to have been only weeks or months until I decided I couldn’t do it anymore; I couldn’t go to my classes and pretend everything was all right any longer.

But one thing stuck out in my mind, as clear as day. The professor for my business class had been a woman, not a man, as Dan had implied.

Had there been some kind of mistake? Could I have misunderstood when Dan was talking about the professor being a friend of his brother?

Had there been a connection at all?

“You’re up on the stage again, Beauty,” the bartender said, jerking his chin at me. “Everyone’s waiting on you.”

There was a gaggle of eager men around the stage, thirsty for a taste of what I’d given Dan.

“They’re just going to have to wait,” I said, grabbing the envelope and business card and walking out the door.

Dan had been right. My mind was already made up. I was going to Seattle—if only to unravel this mystery.

Going without wearing normal clothes—namely, pantyhose—for more than a year meant the biggest adjustment for me, when I stood in downtown Seattle, eyeing the façade of the Shepard Shipments building, was trying to figure out the most ladylike way to pull my pantyhose out of my ass. I was early and uncertain of myself.

The reflection of the girl in the glass doors was someone I didn’t really recognize anymore.

Part of it was that I hadn’t really gotten a gander at myself in a while. It was tough to get a full-length view of yourself when you lived in a car.

I’d taken the money Dan left me and filled up the gas tank to my car, first of all, then used the rest to completely replace my wardrobe.

Even in college, I’d rarely worn anything other than sweatpants or jeans and a t-shirt. I retained most of those clothes in my move, but none of my collection was appropriate for a professional workplace.

Certainly, as Dan had told me, not my bikini.

Shopping was an unexpected pleasure. On the road, I’d never splurged on anything that I couldn’t put into my belly or the car’s gas tank. Now, though, my new clothes were a necessity. I put on my nicest jeans and cleanest t-shirt to go to a mall just outside of Seattle, treating myself to pretty shoes and pencil skirts and blazers, selecting accessories to go with them and a new purse that closely resembled a briefcase.

I realized I was having fun before I could stop myself, reminding myself that I wasn’t allowed to have fun anymore. I was going to figure out just what Dan was hiding from me at Shepard Shipments and move the hell on, punishing myself in the penance of my choosing.

I didn’t deserve to be happy because the one night I actually had chosen my own happiness over others, people had died.

People who were close to me.

People I loved.

When Caro had come around the corner of that dark country rode, going way too fast, she’d noticed a pair of cars pulled to the side of the rode and panicked. I didn’t realize at the time what was happening. I was too drunk to process anything beyond my own selfish needs, and I woke up much later in the hospital with a concussion that could’ve been mistaken for a hangover.

My first thought—first beyond whether I was seriously injured, where Caro was, and just what had happened—was that my parents were going to murder me for landing myself in the hospital. I didn’t even want to call them.

“You’re awake,” the nurse had observed, her tone a little on the cool side of neutral.

“How long have I been asleep?” I asked, my voice hoarse.

“You slept all night,” she said, giving a perfunctory glance at her watch. “It’s nearly dinner time. Are you hungry?”

My appetite dropped out through the pit that suddenly opened in my stomach.

“It’s already Sunday evening?” I squeaked, pushing myself to a sitting position. I was sore, and there was a bandage on my forehead, but I felt no worse for wear. “I have to go. My parents are probably going crazy this very minute trying to figure out where I am. They’re going to be so pissed. Where’s Caro? Where’s my friend? Did she already leave?”

The nurse who had been pure business before faltered for the first time.

“Let me get the doctor for you,” she said, ducking out of my room, and I still didn’t think of anything beyond my own selfish situation. My parents were going to murder me; I was going to murder Caro for leaving me here; and I would probably never see the outside of my bedroom again until I went to college—if my parents even let me go anymore. I felt it more likely that I’d be sent to a convent or some institution for stupid, stubborn girls who refused to follow the rules instead of the University of Texas.

The nurse re-entered the room, accompanied by a kindly looking doctor.

“How are you feeling right now, Amanda?” he asked, perching on the side of my bed, examining the bandage on my head. “Can you rate your pain on a scale of one to ten, with one being the least and ten being the—”

“I feel fine,” I said quickly. “It’s just that I have to get home. Or is my phone here? Can I have my purse? Is there a phone I could use?”

More and more, I was feeling less apprehensive of how angry my parents would be at me and more anxious about scaring them. I wasn’t in the habit of disappearing from my house and not returning. They’d notice me gone. They’d worry. They’d fear the worst. I didn’t care about being imprisoned in a convent any longer. I just wanted to tell my parents I was okay.

“Amanda, you’ve had quite a knock on your head, and you’re very lucky to be awake right now,” the doctor said. “Do you remember anything about last night?”

I swallowed hard. “I was at a party,” I said. “We left the party…after the police came to break it up. Caro and I went driving….”

I narrowed my eyes. Everything was fuzzy, and I didn’t know how much had to do with the alcohol I’d consumed last night or the concussion I’d suffered.

“We were singing,” I continued slowly. “I think…I think Caro lost control of the car.”

“But you don’t remember exactly how or what happened afterward?” the doctor asked.

“No?” I said uncertainly. “Is that bad?”

“Not necessarily,” he said, patting my hand. I noticed for the first time that my other hand had a needle in it, attached to a bag of fluid above my head. “Much of the time, after catastrophic events, the brain tries to protect you by limiting your memory of the incident.”

I swallowed, my mouth impossibly dry. “Catastrophic?”

“There are some people who want to talk to you now…if you feel up to it,” the doctor said, standing up.

Another twist of nerves in my gut. “Is it my parents?”

“I think you’d better let them explain,” the doctor said, standing aside at the door to admit a pair of police officers.

If I wasn’t already lying down, I would’ve swooned and fallen in response to my anxiety level. Yet, I still thought it was about me, still certain that I was getting in trouble for attending a house party and drinking beer underage and fleeing the cops and speeding down the road with Caro.

I was so fucking selfish. So fucking stupid.

“Amanda Beauty Hart?” one of them asked, both of them towering awkwardly over my bed.

I was faint with dread, certain they were about to start reading me my rights as they dragged me from the bed and handcuffed me. “Yes?” I didn’t so much as flinch at my middle name.

“The driver of the car, Carolina Salazar, lost control at high speed and went into a spin as she attempted to recover and overcorrected,” the same officer intoned, as if he were reciting the plot of a movie he didn’t find to be all that exciting. “She hit two cars stopped on the side of the road.”

I swallowed hard. “Is she okay?”

The other cop, a woman, picked up the narrative in only a slightly warmer tone of voice. “We regret to be the ones to inform you that Carolina Salazar died in the wreck.”

My hand flew up to cover my mouth before my shoulders began to shudder with grief.

This was my fault. All my fault. I’d been the one to suggest we go driving. I could’ve said anything else, but I’d wanted to go driving. Now, Caro was dead. It was all my fault. All of it.

“Are you all right, Amanda?” the doctor asked from the doorway.

“Can I please call my parents?” I sobbed. I needed them. I needed something. I needed to wake up and for all of this to be a bad dream brought on by too many beers the night before.

“That’s the other thing we need to tell you,” the female police officer continued. “The cars that Carolina hit…one of them belonged to your parents.”

Shock and disbelief numbed the worst of it as her words washed over me. A person could only take so much in a day, after all. And later—much later—when I’d pored over the police report, grappling with my new reality, scrambling to understand all that I’d done to ruin my life and so many lives around me, I finally got the complete story.

Caro had taken a curve too fast. We would’ve had a breathless laugh about it, possible ending up in one of the fields bordering the road with a little minor damage to her car, if not for the two cars parked on the side, just after that curve.

Caro had seen them and panicked, and the out-of-control car had spun into my parents, standing outside the second car, the owner of which had been blacked out of the police report.

Most of the details about that second car had been blacked out, which frustrated me for a time, until I decided that I probably didn’t have a right to know the stranger my decision had killed. They would just be one of a quartet of ghosts I would have to carry around.

What I did know was that, for whatever reason, the two cars had stopped on the side of the road.

For whatever reason, my parents were standing outside the driver’s side window of the second car.

For whatever reason, Caro’s side of our speeding, spinning car had struck them, pinning them between the vehicles, and hitting the other car with such force that the driver of the second car had also died.

And, for whatever reason, my selfish, stupid, ungrateful, horrible ass was the sole survivor of one of the most terrible wrecks in the history of my community. Before I’d gone to college—and in the circles of people I avoided on campus that knew the story—I became something of an object of pity.

I couldn’t go to the funeral; I couldn’t face the sympathetic tears and bewildered platitudes. I couldn’t look myself in the face in any mirror I happened to pass. All of it was my fault. All of it. Four lives cut short because of me.

There were lawyers and more police officers and an extended stay at the hospital for the majority of the summer before everyone around me seemed to agree that the best thing for me to do would be to get my education, as my dead parents intended, and try to get on with my blighted life.

The struggle lasted all of two and a half years. I tried to submerge myself in anything to distract myself from my overwhelming guilt, the crippling sorrow. I tried having loads of friends, always chatting or hanging out or partying, then exiled myself when I decided that, since I’d denied four human beings the chance at making and maintaining friendships, I didn’t deserve any.

I tried to give myself over to my studies, tried to bury my past in new information, facts, interpretations, and mounds of homework. Yet, it wasn’t enough. I lost interest too quickly, gave up too readily, didn’t care about the consequences of not completing homework or attending class or studying for tests. Who was going to hold me accountable? I’d been responsible for my parents’ deaths. I didn’t deserve to learn new things, to be a lifelong learner, as one of the professors urged the class, because I’d cut four lives short in one act of stupidity. I didn’t want to learn new things to support some distant professional future because I didn’t want a future. I didn’t want to be here anymore. I didn’t want to be alive, and yet here I was, continuing to trudge to class.

I immersed myself in alcohol, attending every party I caught wind of, getting a reputation for being “that girl”—the one who drank like a fish but always ended up puking and weeping for reasons she wouldn’t disclose.

I drowned myself in sex, seeking the nothingness after it was over, the relief to be blinded by intensity and then ushered back down, the sweet pain of meshing my body with another person and punishing myself after by pushing them away, refusing to see or talk to them again, giving myself an even worse reputation than before.

When there was nothing else I could find to lose myself in, no liquor that remained a mystery, nobody else I was willing to give my body to, I decided to literally lose myself. In one night, I packed up my clothes and what few belongings I cared for, shoved it all into my trunk, and just drove. I rolled along highways I’d never seen, past cities I’d never see again until my car started sputtering. Then, I put more gas in it and kept driving. I repeated this pattern until I was in a state I’d never been in and thoroughly out of money. I’d inherited something from my parents’ deaths, but I’d left it in the care of estate lawyers, sick at the thought of spending money linked to their demise by my idiocy.

I found a parking spot in a semi-darkened lot and went to sleep, not waking up until someone knocked on my window and asked if I was all right.

That’s how I worked my way across the country; traveling when I had money, staying still and restless when I didn’t. I did anything and everything to earn money. There wasn’t a job I didn’t try in my pursuit to flee from myself.

I thought often of just ending it all, ending my suffering with a knife or a rope or an acceleration into a wall in the car that had become my home. I wallowed in misery, unable to escape, unwilling to try to get over the tragedy my life had inspired.

In the end, though, I decided that death was too good for me. I didn’t deserve any kind of relief from my sadness and regret. I’d ended four lives—three of whom were the most important people in my own—and I’d survived with just a bump on my head. Some part of me wished I’d been maimed, disfigured in some way, just so the world around me could appreciate the irony.

My name might have been Beauty, but there wasn’t one goddamn beautiful thing about me. I was a monster.