Divorced, Desperate and Dead (Divorced and Desperate Book 5) (12 page)

“I thought you said you wanted the old Chloe back.”

“I do. But the old Chloe didn’t go out with guys who just wanted to screw her and leave. I’m not desperate enough to date someone just to get laid. Bob is pretty good at taking care of that itch. And . . . and I’ve been hurt enough.”

Sheri looked at her as if she was a sad case. “Okay, but please just go out with Dan.”

Chloe sighed and dropped back into a kitchen chair. “Are you sure he’s not a player just like his partner?”

Sheri shrugged. “I don’t think he’s a player. I mean, I don’t know for sure, but . . . Hell, you don’t have to sleep with him. Just date him. Get a few kisses, maybe go to first base. Get your feet wet in the dating pool. Move past . . .”

“Jerry,” Chloe said.

“Yeah. I’m worried about you.” Right then, Cupcake came and jumped up on her kitchen table. “I’m afraid you’re going to end up to be the old woman with no love life and a bunch of cats.”

“I’m not . . .  Oh, hell. I’m scared to go out with Dan because I think my best friend has a thing for him.”

Sheri frowned. “I don’t have a thing for him.”

Chloe cut her a cold stare.

“Okay,” Sheri admitted. “Maybe I think he’s hot, but I’m with Kevin. I’m . . . engaged. Wait, how can you even think that?  I’m the one who tried to set you up with him.”

She heard it again in her friend’s voice. Something wasn’t right between Sheri and Kevin. “What’s going on with you and Kevin?”

“Nothing.”

Chloe stared her down.

“Okay, things are awkward right now. I don’t know what it is. We didn’t even have sex this weekend.”

“That could be my fault,” Chloe said. “You were taking care of me all day. He probably felt ignored.”

“It’s not you.” Sheri dropped into the kitchen chair across from her and Cupcake jumped in her lap. She started brushing her hand down the cat’s back. “It was his idea to postpone the wedding. For the second time. He swears it’s because of work and stuff, but . . . I just don’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” Chloe said. “Have you asked him and tried to talk about it?”

“Not really. Well, not in depth. And I think that’s what scares me the most.”

“You’re scared of what he might tell you?”

She frowned. “No, I’m scared that the postponement doesn’t bother me enough to get to the bottom of it. It’s as if he’s not that big of a deal.”

Chloe didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say a word. And as crazy as it sounded, Chloe wished Jerry hadn’t been such a big deal to her. But no, she’d loved him heart and soul, and his suicide had left her feeling so damn confused and abandoned.

“I love him,” Sheri said. “I do. But lately, it just doesn’t feel like . . . enough. And I think he’s feeling it, too. And trying to figure it out scares the pee out of me.”

Chloe sighed. “Maybe you just both need some time. Maybe go somewhere together on vacation.”

“Maybe,” Sheri said as Cupcake jumped up on her kitchen table. Chloe almost pushed him off, but that had been Jerry’s rule.

Another wave of panic washed over her. “And maybe I just need some time, too. Before I . . . before I drop Bob and try to find the real thing.”

“No,” Sheri said. “It’s been a year. You said Dan was going to call you. Tell him yes, or call him.”

“But—”

“No buts! Go out with him. Have some fun.” Sheri reached over the table past Cupcake and placed her hand on Chloe’s. “Promise me you’ll say yes.”

“But—”

“No excuses,” Sheri said. “Just say yes!”

• • •

“Just say yes,” Beth told Cary on Thursday morning, as they waited for the wheelchair to take him out of the hospital.

“It’s not logical. I don’t need to go to her house. I’m doing fine.”

Beth frowned. “When has logical ever been used to describe Kelly? Look, she’s way overprotective. She can drive me crazy, too. We both know that. But she’s our sister, and yes, she thinks she’s our mother. But damn it, Peewee, she was our mother after mom died. Just stay at her place for one night. Let her mother you for one more day. It’s not going to kill you!”

He frowned, not happy, but already conceding in his mind. Beth was right. He needed to just placate his older sister. She deserved it, if for no other reason than she’d put her own life on hold to finish raising him and Beth.

But after five days in the hospital, two of which he couldn’t remember, the doctor had finally released him. All he wanted then was to get back to work and help catch the punk who’d shot him and possibly killed Marc Jones and Tommy Fincher. So far, Turner and Danny and the entire Glencoe and Hoke’s Bluff forces had come up empty-handed. The address they had found on the asswipe was old—before the kid had run off from foster care.  Cary wanted this guy caught. He’d hurt enough people. Innocent people.

Innocent. That was the word that took him there. Chloe Sanders asleep in her bed. Talking about her fiancé killing himself—seeing the unjustified guilt she felt over it. Her face shining bright red, staring at him while he was naked and covered in his lunch. Her standing in the middle of the road, as a black pickup sped right at her.

Oh, yeah, he wanted to catch J.D. and make him pay.

He closed his eyes and tried to push all thoughts of Chloe out of his head . . . again. Tried lying to himself that Room Six didn’t exist. But he’d never been that good at lying, especially to himself—even when he knew that the truth hurt.

“She’s not going to accept it any other way,” Beth continued, interrupting his thoughts and grabbing a bag of his items that needed to be carried out. “I’m going down. They said the wheelchair is on the way. Please don’t argue with Kelly. She’ll win. She always does.”

“Friggin’ hell! Fine. I’ll go to her house for one night. One!”

Beth smiled and leaned down and kissed him on his check. “We love you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, but forced himself to smile at her.

Beth walked out, and right then, a small, older lady wearing a candy-stripe top and Aggie baseball hat worn low over her face walked in with a wheelchair.

“I really can walk,” he said, finding it difficult to let someone’s grandmother wheel him around.

“Rules are rules,” she said. “In the chair, Buster.”

He couldn’t help but wonder why he even tried to argue with any female. He never won.

He stood up and sat in the chair. She came around, dropped another bag of his items in his lap and started out. Amazingly, for an elderly woman who didn’t look like she weighed ninety pounds soaking wet, she pushed him with gusto.

They rode the elevator down to the lobby in silence. When the doors opened, she hurried him out of the elevator and started whistling. In mere minutes, moving at a fast trot, she pushed him out the hospital door. Kelly’s car wasn’t there yet.

“Is this where they were told to pick me up?” he asked the woman.

“Sure is, coward.”

He froze. Had she just said . . . ? Then bam, the voice rang a familiar chord inside him.

He looked back over his shoulder at the woman. She had the damn hat so low he could only see part of her face. He couldn’t swear it was Beatrice Bacon, but he couldn’t swear it wasn’t.

“What did you say?”

“I said you look like my husband Howard.”

That hadn’t been what he heard. He started to question her again, but heard a car pull up. Facing forward again, he saw his sister’s car stopping right in front of him.

“Coward,” the little old lady said again. “You had better take this time off to contemplate life.”

He turned to look at her, but she was gone.
Shit
. He stood up, dropping the bag in his lap to his feet. His dirty underwear spilled out, but he didn’t care. He looked around. Left to right. Right to left. She wasn’t there.

“What’s wrong?” Kelly asked, getting out of her car.

He looked at his sister as she moved around to open the back door for him as if he was helpless. Beth crawled out of the front seat and snatched up his underwear.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. Bad enough his sisters thought he was a weakling; he didn’t want them to think he’d lost his mind, too.

• • •

J.D. woke up almost happy to be in his old room. It didn’t even matter that his body ached from sleeping on the floor for the last few days. Not wanting to face Jax, afraid of what the gang leader would do, he’d come back here—to his grandmother’s house. He parked in the back, so anyone passing by wouldn’t know he was there. But at the end of a dead-end street with only one other house about halfway up the block, not a lot of people drove by.

He found the key his grandmother had kept under a rock in the back of the house, and he let himself in. No one was living here yet. What would it hurt if he hung out for a while? Her furniture and things weren’t there no more than she was, but it still felt like home.

Dead silence filled the room—no buzz of electricity—and the Texas morning heat already had a drip of sweat rolling down his brow. He’d used his lighter to get around at night. Not enough light for anyone to notice he was here.

Right now, still half asleep, he would swear he could smell that minty scented medicine his grandmother rubbed on her knees to keep them from hurting. And then there was that warm, welcome scent of bacon that always seemed to flow from the kitchen.

His grandmother had always fixed him bacon and eggs for breakfast. Then she’d make him eat an apple, because she believed the saying ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away.’ It must not have worked for her.

But damn, he missed her. And not just because he was hungry, but because . . . he hadn’t realized what it would feel like to not have anyone. Not one person who cared. Especially not the foster family the state had sent him to.

When he’d run away from there, he’d joined the Black Bloods. They were supposed to be his family.

Family like his drugged-out mom and stepdad, he supposed.

He almost got up, but his gaze went to the water stains on the ceiling. There, in the corner, in the brown mark the roof leak had made, was the image of the angel. He still remembered climbing up on the roof to fix the leak after a storm had knocked a branch down. His grandmother had stood below yelling at him to be careful.

When you gonna paint that ceiling?
His grandmother had asked numerous times after that.

Someday,
he’d told her.  Yet he’d never done it and he’d never told her about the angel. Truth was, it might just look like a water spot to most people. He hadn’t wanted her to think he was crazy, so he’d kept the angel image to himself.

Squinting his eyes now, he made out the image. He wondered if his grandmother was with the angels. She’d believed in stuff like that, even more than him.

But face it, even if they were real, he’d never see one now. Because of him, a man had died and a cop was in the hospital.

Closing his eyes, he could hear Tommy begging for his life. He could see the look in his eyes when he’d looked at J.D. A desperate look, pleading for him to stop it.

J.D. pressed his palm over his face. Why hadn’t he spoken up? Why hadn’t he tried to stop Jax? Why had he let Jax kill him?

Hell, now he even wished he’d let that cop arrest him. But he’d been high and hadn’t been thinking right, and the thought of prison, of being locked up for the rest of his life, had scared him so much, he’d shot his gun and raced past.

He looked back up at the angel. “I screwed up, didn’t I?”

His phone rang. He rolled over and picked up the cell and checked the number. Jax had actually called him twice, but he hadn’t answered.

It wasn’t Jax this time.

Carlos.

He hesitated for one second, knowing Carlos was with the Black Bloods, but he was also J.D.’s friend. The only person he halfway trusted right now.

He picked up the phone.

Chapter Twelve

“You gotta be kidding!” Fourteen-karat frustration laced Cary’s voice, as the buzz of the pool filter filled his sister’s backyard. “You’re seriously telling me we have zilch? Not even a partial print?”

Danny and Turner had stopped by a few hours after he’d arrived at Kelly’s. It took everything Cary had not to ask them to break him out of his sister’s house and take him home.

“Not one,” Turner answered, continuing to update him on the case. “They went over the whole car. J.D. must have wiped it down after he offed Tommy Fincher. Of course, they are still doing some tests to make sure all the blood was Fincher’s. Not that it looked like there was a struggle.”

“So, no J.D. And no proof. How could this happen?” Cary growled and leaned back in the patio chair.

“I wouldn’t say ‘no proof’,” Turner said. “We got the ID from the hit and run victim.”

Danny suddenly sat up. “Thanks for the reminder,” he said.

“About what?” Cary asked.

“I’m getting laid this weekend.” Danny grinned.

Cary shook his head. “What the hell does getting laid have to do with this case.”

Danny leaned forward. “Does getting shot always put you in pissed off mood?”

“Can you stop thinking with your dick and help me catch this asshole?”

Danny cut Cary a hard look. “Hey, we want the guy caught, too.”

Guilt shot through Cary. He might not be thinking with his dick, but he sure as hell was acting like one. “Sorry. I just want to be out there working this case.”

“Have they said when you can come back?” Turner asked.

“Sergeant says I have to bring a note from the doctor. And my appointment’s not until next week. I got off the phone with them right before you got here. They won’t move my appointment up.”

“Why don’t you call that stewardess?” Danny said. “Bet she could help you pass some time.”

Cary frowned. He’d gotten a text from Paula wanting to get together this weekend. He’d messaged her back and said he couldn’t. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t want to see the sexy brunette. The fact that he’d done nothing but think about a different brunette with blue eyes had nothing to do with it.

Not a damn thing.

“Can we get back to the case?” he asked, not wanting to talk about his sex life.