Debts (3 page)

Whatever is showing on Miriam’s face pleases Natasha because she smiles a satisfied smile as her hand travels familiarly down Emmett’s side to his thigh. Emmett, already stiff and uncomfortable, jerks forward as he pulls her arm off him and returns it to her side. But Emmett would do that because he would never be so rude as to fondle someone in public. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t want Natasha to do it. Just not in front of company. It’s obvious to anyone who looks at the two of them together that they have a past, a hot, sexy past that probably involved a lot of torn clothes. One could argue that he has every right to a past and a present and a possible future with Natasha; after all, it’s not like he ever said,
Miriam, I’ve never had any women in my life, and I never will, other than you
. She almost smiles at the thought. Her and Emmett’s relationship has deepened in the six months since Jason was arrested, and they’ve been steadily dating, but it doesn’t mean his life is an open book. Certainly hers holds a deep trove of secrets. Just because Miriam thinks Emmett is the most amazing person she’s ever met doesn’t mean he thinks of her as anything but a special friend, who’s always in need.

“I should go,” Miriam says. “I didn’t know you were busy, Emmett.”

Emmett looks frustrated. Refusing to look at Natasha to the point of rudeness, he reaches out for Miriam’s hand. “What is it, Miriam?” he asks, ignoring Natasha completely. His hand, callused and warm, envelops her cold hand. “What do you need?”

Miriam winces. She always seems to need something, doesn’t she?

“It can wait,” she says firmly.

Natasha catches Miriam’s eye as she flips her hair and strolls over to check out flash.
Something about the way Natasha stands with her bare back on display, and everything it stands for, reminds Miriam of the way a dog pees on a tree to mark its territory.
Lady
, Miriam thinks,
I might think you were scary if I hadn’t just met an archangel of God. You’ve got a long way to go before you’re in that league
.

Miriam looks back at Emmett’s sweet, concerned face. Now she knows who called him at lunch. She hadn’t known that he had a business partner, but she can’t blame him for not mentioning it sooner. Who would have believed that Emmett’s financial backer was a hot young woman who’s clearly in love with him? Whatever business they have to discuss, tattoo shop or otherwise, there was no point for her to stay, but it doesn’t mean she won’t leave a scent mark of her own before she goes.

“It’s Natasha, right?” Miriam says as she heads out the door. Natasha nods, looking wary. “I think Emmett’s made me some of your tea. It’s really delicious.” She might be out of her league and totally screwed, but from the look of fury on Natasha’s beautiful face, Miriam knows she’s not without her own set of skills.

“God damn it, Natasha,” Emmett growls once Miriam is out of the shop. “Why do you have to be like that?”

“What?” she asks, staying on the other side of the shop. “I was perfectly nice.”

“You wouldn’t know nice if it bit you on the ass.”

She snorts as if that amuses her, but nothing about this visit has been amusing. The girl is gone, but that’s a tiny, insignificant victory. She’s losing him. He brewed her goddamned tea for this girl. Natasha makes a point of sending Emmett a small care package every few months—not often enough to be annoying, but often enough to count on. And he goes and brews this girl a pot of the very tea she sent him, a blend she had made with Emmett in mind, knowing he sometimes has trouble falling asleep. A Thousand Winks became the shop’s bestseller, and for good reason. It’s an intimate tea, meant for sipping quietly after a long day. It’s a tea that invites you to relax, to let go and open up. Natasha feels her blood pressure rise as the images flip through her mind: the late night, the shared laughs, the kisses they lean in to share. Emmett used her tea to get close to someone else. It’s a betrayal of the deepest sort: not only is he falling in love with someone else, he used what she gave him to achieve it.

The music in the store continues to thump along, the rapper’s thick accent making the staccato words indecipherable. The blinds are drawn over all the windows except for one, and the afternoon sun gushes through like someone’s spraying it out of a hose trying to flood the shop from that one window. She walks over to stand in the square of light, paying close attention to keeping her back straight, her head up. Dust motes glitter and dance around her. As much as
she wants to hug herself and curl into a small, quivering ball of sadness, she won’t. She smooths her hair back and in the sunlight, her long locks glow like embers. Emmett flicks a quick glance at her and then looks away, jaw locked tight.

Emmett hadn’t been serious about anyone in so long that she’s grown used to the assumption that he never would, that one day he would realize she was the one for him after all. But something about this awkward girl has him enamored. Natasha can diagnose the symptoms quite well after suffering herself for so many years. Even if those two don’t end up together, the fact that he could fall in love again means he’s moved on.

She glances down, half expecting to see a crack running down her chest, her heart breaking and oozing through it like mucky sludge in utter humiliation. Visions of that second tea shop flash through her mind and she feels a sudden fury at how much she is willing to give and how little Emmett is willing to take.

“I’m serious, Natasha,” Emmett continues, heedless of her broken heart bleeding before him. He strides to the counter and starts closing the account books and stacking them. “I’m done. I’m not playing this anymore.” His moves are jerky and rough, utterly at odds with his typical cool. “You have no right to come in like this. I’ll pay you the money I owe you; I haven’t missed a single payment. Next time you want to see the books, I’ll email you the goddamn files.”

“I have every right to check on my investment,” she says bitterly.
Nine years
. Nine years she gave this man to come around. “You’re in my debt. I gave you a loan when no bank in their right mind would touch you. I gave you generous rates. The least that I get in return is annual visits to make sure you aren’t bankrupting me.”

“Oh, screw that,” Emmett says, his anger rising to meet hers, slamming the whole stack of documents on the counter. They make a cracking sound on the black marble counter that
sounds like an openhanded smack. She flinches. “You have no right to touch me, we clear? I’m not your boyfriend—I haven’t been for nearly a decade. I’ve always been kind to you, even now, I didn’t embarrass you, but God help me, I should have.” She can count on one hand the times she’s seen Emmett truly angry and none of those times were ever directed at her.

Natasha opens her eyes wide and blinks.
Nine years
. He won’t see her cry.

“You’re not right, Natasha. I’m telling you this as someone who used to care for you a lot. You’re beautiful, yeah,” he says, at the surprised on her face. “You know you are, you’re sexy, but you are not right in the head.”

She turns her back on him, blindly looking out the window as she gathers her thoughts. For the first time in her life, she regrets her tattoo. She always felt that no matter what happened, having the tattoo bound Emmett to her. But now that she’s going to break with him, she doesn’t want any part of him with her anymore. There’s only one way to do it: hit first and hit hard. She hears papers rustling as he files away the various documents he pulled out to show her. He’s tidying up, he’s moved on in every sense of the word, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have any weapons left. The thumping beat of “Qué Onda Guero” gets under her skin and gives her that last push she needs to say what needs to be said.

She turns to face him. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyers,” she says, her voice steady, her eyes dry. Her hair and dress are perfect.

He looks up from the counter, his face blank.

“I’m calling the loan.”

At the newspaper office, Miriam fiddles with a ceramic mug in the break room, heavily milking and sweetening her coffee, as if her ability to turn something dark and bitter into something sweet and creamy meant she could affect the rest of her life in a similar manner. Yeah, right.

She takes her coffee to her desk and taps at her computer, halfheartedly scanning through her emails. Her cluttered desk is full of scrawled notes, marked-up articles, and to-do lists in various states of checked-off-ness. There are two half-empty coffee cups with sludge that she’s been meaning to wash and an apple for later.

“Chief says Judge Bender agreed to an interview.” Miriam looks up to see the new intern, Craig Lang, standing by her desk, waiting for her to say something, his caramel eyes bright with excitement. Craig is the only one who calls the short and portly Frank Hale “Chief,” short for editor in chief. It’s obvious that the new nickname delights both Frank and Craig. It’s also clear that it won’t be long before the whole office refers to Frank that way.

“And you’d like to come?” she asks dryly.

He grins in response. Tall, talented, eager to learn everything about the newspaper business, he’s as opposite as an intern could be from the last one. Of course the last one, Jason, is in jail, awaiting trial, so it’s probably a good thing they’re nothing alike. She was nervous about having an intern when he started three weeks ago, but he won her over in a day. Craig’s skin is the color of a latte, he has sandy blond curls, and his eyes are golden brown. Golden, Miriam decides. He’s golden, not just by complexion but by talent and possibilities. Terrific student,
talented writer, and he’s on fire when he plays basketball—which was the main reason he made it to Warfield Prep, the county’s elite private school that supplied all the paper’s interns. Hamilton might be a small town, but it recognized potential when it saw it, and no one could meet Craig and not think that great things were in store for him.

“You’re not going to like him,” she warns. “Judge Bender has a way of making ‘good morning’ sound like something filthy just crawled in.”

“So?” Craig shrugs. He’s slim for someone his height, but instead of looking gangly, he looks controlled. He has a natural coordination that makes his smallest movements look graceful.

“Some people like to avoid unpleasant experiences,” she says, and grimaces, thinking of the afternoon visit at Emmett’s shop.

“You can’t live by dodging unpleasant experiences,” he says back, giving her a weird look. “Life’s just one problem after another. Can’t let that get to you.”

“You have problems? Like, what, you only scored twenty points instead of thirty?”

“The season doesn’t start for another four months,” he says.

Miriam rolls her eyes.

He grins and shrugs. “What?”

“Nothing,” she mutters. Why was she so afraid of conflict? Maybe because she’s never all the way sure if she’s right or wrong, whereas self-doubt doesn’t seem like something Craig has much problem with. “You’re welcome to come along with me; in fact, probably better I have a witness when the judge does something inappropriate.”

“What, like, hit on you?” Craig asks, a hint of steel in his voice. That toughness reminds her that he never answered her question: What problems does a golden child have?

“Not necessarily,” she says. “But there’s something about Judge Bender that makes you
feel like he’s recently finished a diet and you’re dessert.”

Emmett rubs the space between his eyebrows, where tension headaches like to start. He needs his loan called early like he needs a case of the Ebola virus. Working with Natasha was a dangerous proposition to begin with, and really, when you lie down with snakes, you can’t be surprised when they bite you. But you can still curse rotten timing.

The shop is quiet in the aftermath of Natasha’s bomb. He imagines he can still hear the crash of the door she slammed behind her, but it’s more of a psychological echo than an auditory one. The music playing is some indie rock group he can’t name, though the song sounds familiar. Light breeze from the ceiling fan flutters a citation for a city ordinance violation on his desk, held down by a metal dragon paperweight. It states that the crack on the walk to the front door of the shop has been deemed a dangerous impediment for the disabled. It’s his second citation. The first came a few weeks ago for the lightbulb that was out over the front door (city ordinance: reg. 14, paragraph b: premises must be well lit); never mind that the light only mysteriously malfunctioned when Officer Richie arrived and the shop was closed. No one’s trying for subtlety here.

The mayor, eyeing a run for state senate, recently proposed all sorts of bans on “undesirable businesses” in downtown Hamilton. Even though the proposal won’t come up for vote for another two months, with the town’s conservative base frothing at the thought of “cleaning up” downtown, the police chief has already been issuing tickets for various minor infractions. Ironically, Natasha might be out of luck getting any of her investment money back,
let alone the entire loan. In two months, he might lose his business license and the whole shop with it. That would probably be fine with her; it was never about the money to begin with.

A customer walks in with a sketch in hand. It’s a pen-and-ink drawing from a funky children’s book that was published a couple years ago. She’s excited and confident—it isn’t her first tattoo. They discuss pricing and placement as Emmett firmly puts aside his future problems and concentrates on his current (if perhaps temporary) business.

Emmett is bent over his work, carefully following the lines of the sketch in blue ink, when someone walks in. He spares a glance. A man in his thirties wearing a leather coat and cowboy boots ambles in, thumbs hitched in his wide leather belt, fingers framing an enormous brass belt buckle with a stylized flame. Emmett doesn’t recognize him, but something about his face has Emmett taking a second, longer look. Medium frame, longish brown hair carefully disheveled … He could be an undercover health inspector. But he’s not. His cowboy boots are silent on the polished floor and his pale eyes have not left Emmett’s face since he entered. They have weight to them, those freaky eyes.
Not right
. The thought pops into Emmett’s mind.
He’s not right
. There’s something hot and malevolent in the gaze, at complete odds with the mild expression on the man’s face. The small hairs on the back of Emmett’s neck stand up. He sets down the needle gun and rises from his stool without realizing it. The customer glances over her shoulder in surprise when she feels the inking has stopped.