from Pain to Pleasure (Gainesville Book 1) (51 page)

She put her phone down and looked up at the clock on the old mantle. 10 o’clock.
Where did the evening go?
, she thought. The fire was nearly out, and her eyes were tired from reading. She decided to call it a day and put the paperwork back in the boxes. She climbed the stairs and crawled into her cosy bed. She fell asleep pondering the question that kept going around in her head: who was the ring’s original owner?

Continued in:

“Steak dinners and a bottle of good wine for my wife and I, please.” Freya couldn’t help but overhear the celebrating couple as they placed their unusual order.

For Freya, wondering who would come to Marco’s Diner for an overpriced and overcooked steak was a great escape from musing on her own worries. It wasn’t that the diner food at Marco’s wasn’t cheap and good, but if you ordered anything beyond the basics, you’d be cramping later and left much lighter in your wallet. Locals knew to bring their own wine and pay a surcharge, as the restaurant’s mark-up on the alcohol it sold made the jewelry industry look charitable.

She knew she shouldn’t worry about any of it, and she tried to tune out the private conversation and ponder her personal problems.

“Daniel! What were you thinking? Let me call the waitress back before she puts in our order.” The woman’s almost frightened voice carried over the high booth, making not eavesdropping nearly impossible for Freya.

“Karen, I’m thinking that you’ve given me five wonderful years, and I never got to take you on a honeymoon. I know we said the bonus was going to be for getting things for our baby, but I just feel like I never get to treat you. You deserve a nice dinner out, especially on our anniversary.”

“Honey, I don’t need this to know you love me. And I know you. You’ll be working overtime to make this money back later, so let’s just have a simple dinner with water. I’m happy with that. We can do all this later when it won’t be a burden.”

“No. This one time we’re having a nice time for our anniversary. Let me treat you how I have always wanted to. Just this one time, and we can be our usual, reasonable selves later. I’ll even sleep on the couch as a penalty, if you want. Just let me have this. I hate that we’re always planning for ‘one day’ because I can’t get ahead at work. I want one night where we forget about all that. We have all the necessities for Annie already. So sit back, and enjoy a night out on the town. Tomorrow, we can return to reality.” The following silence had Freya on the edge of her seat.

“Just tonight, then. And no sleeping on the couch. What kind of date would that make me?” Karen answered, ending with a giggle that made Freya almost smile and gag at the same time.

“
Barf!
” whispered Freya to herself, low enough to make sure that her cynicism didn’t ruin the couple’s evening.

She was honest enough to admit that part of her response was from pure jealousy. There wasn’t much Freya wouldn’t give to hear a guy tell her to forget her worries for just one night. To have a shoulder to lean on, an extra mind to help figure the riddles that blocked her way, a gentle touch to show her she was worth something to someone. Those were things she’d thought were simply her right just a few short years before. She learned they weren’t rights, but privileges, the disastrous night of her 16
th
birthday.

Here she was, feeling older than her 21 years and sitting in a diner, trying to find a way to keep her end of a deal with a devil. Alone. Yeah, jealousy had made her act like a lot of people did when they saw something they truly wanted—they demeaned the object of their desire. She knew she shouldn’t let her father’s latest machinations twist her so easily. She had fought too hard to break the mold she thought she’d been born into.

Digging into her simple meal of a turkey club sandwich and chips, Freya chastised herself for her immature response to the couple. She reminded herself that she was better than that. Looking around Marco’s, Freya knew just why she put herself into her town’s fringe community—because the fringe was not yet beyond hope, though hope was a precious commodity there.

The Tarra Saphra Community Center was a bright beacon that doled out hope to the youth in her mother’s old neighborhood. Because some people in town whispered that Freya’s mother had slept her way out of this neighborhood, Freya hadn’t been received well when she arrived on the center’s doorstep as a dispirited 16-year-old. Now she ran the center, with the community’s backing, and she had some respect from the youths it served.

The early years had been a series of fights, both at home and in the neighborhood, to do what she thought was right and make the community center into more than a half-filled and undermanned joke. The center had been a wedding present to her mother from her father, and it had been left pretty much on its own since then. Occasionally, there were small infusions of capital or cast-off equipment, and largely, it was run by incompetent managers who were gifted the job as a balm or bribe.

The center had saved Freya during her dark years of reinventing herself from the spoiled heiress she’d once been, and she was determined to save it now. For Freya to sit back and let it be replaced by a shopping mall was not an option. The local stores a mall would replace supported more than just the families running them.

Luckily, her older brother agreed with her, and he had helped her put together a charity concert to be held in a little over a month from then. If Freya could raise the same money the sale of the community center would make, then the center could stay open.

The community center’s biggest contributor, Freya’s father, had walked away from it over two years earlier. If she somehow pulled this deal off, Freya still had to make up the funds he’d provided previously. She’d been finding money piecemeal over the years, but she’d have to make up the deficit on an ongoing basis after the concert.

So while she might have put out an inferno by organizing the concert, she was still fighting dozens of little fires just to keep the place going. But every time she walked in and saw what it was capable of, she knew it was a worthy fight. If she could find a good-paying job, she could divert some of her paychecks to the center. However, under the terms of her current arrangement with her “loving” father, that just wasn’t possible. She hated being on his string, and she’d promised herself that one day she would be able to cut it.

And then maybe shove the scissors into his black heart
, she thought before she could stop herself. She refused to be like her father, and part of that meant just getting away from him cleanly. Revenge was for those that could afford to pay its price. Her mother, and probably her siblings, too, would pay for her if she took that route. She shook her head to get it out of the dark place it had sunk into.

She decided that she needed to do something nice to bring her out of her funk, or it would follow her back to the center and spread like wildfire when the kids sensed it. Knowing she couldn’t eat anymore, now that she had let her anger ruin her appetite, Freya prepared to leave. She motioned for Flo, her waitress, to meet her at the till, and Freya hoped her usual trick would work to dispel her negative mood.

“Flo, can you get the bill for the couple sitting behind me, too?” Freya asked the gregarious waitress, who was already sporting a knowing smile.

“Let me guess—anonymously, as usual?” Flo asked, breaking into an even bigger smile and winking at the good-hearted girl in front of her.

“It wouldn’t be much of anything any other way. By the way, make sure you add something on for dessert. It’s their anniversary.” Rummaging in her black hole of a purse for her wallet, Freya missed the glint of approval in the older woman’s eyes.

Flo wasn’t surprised by Freya finding someone to buy dinner for; every time she came in, she found a person and a reason. Freya might have come from the “right” side of the tracks, but in the five years she’d been coming into Marco’s, she never showed it in her manner. The fearful young girl Freya had been had turned into a compassionate woman. She wore her heart on her sleeve, and on her, it was a good look, Flo thought.

Freya was always friendly and willing to lend a hand. No chore was too big or dirty for her to dig into, if it helped one of the members of her mother’s former community. Tarra, Freya’s mother, had only sent money back to the neighborhood out of guilt after she married a one-hit-wonder musician.

There had been a betting pool started over how long Freya would last working in her mother’s old realm. Freya had outlasted all the estimates, and then when she found out about the pool, stated that she’d won it and demanded the money. That act had caused a ruckus until it became known what she did with the money.

People who needed it back unexpectedly found their money returned to them in unmarked envelopes. Others found what they needed most besides money sitting on their doorsteps. Of course, no one could prove it was Freya, as she also made a donation to the community center in the amount of the pot. Freya was sneaky when she needed to be.

“Darn it!” Freya suddenly exclaimed, as she looked through her wallet. “Do you think Jean can give me a rain check? I know he’s a terrier about paying, but it seems my sis needed to go shopping again.”

“Your sister needs a good whupping. I can ask, but you know it depends on how he and Harriet are doing. I haven’t heard a shout from the office all day, so we might be good,” Flo responded.

Freya stifled her laugh as she watched Flo sashay into the back to speak with Jean, the owner. You would think with the name of the diner being Marco’s, it would easy to guess the owner’s name, but Jean and his wife Harriet weren’t ones to spend money on things like new signs. So they left the name when they bought the place and promised each other they would change it when the sign stopped working, which had happened about 10 years earlier.

After she heard a slamming door, and then a rumbling Flo, Freya had an inkling as to how the rest of her evening was about to go: not well. It seemed about right for her day, which had started bright and early with her sister Eva crying on her shoulder about how mean their parents were to her.

How could Eva be expected to walk around town with last month’s purse? It would shame her on the boutique circuit for sure; that was the gist of Eva’s argument, which was made at the ungodly hour of 5 a.m. Eva had been just getting in from a night out with her friends, who were more like parasites, by Freya’s estimate.

“Scrooge says if you can’t pay, then I got to report ya. I’m sorry, chicky. I’m going to walk slowly over to the phone, and I bet by the time the police decide to stop in here, you’ll have been back in to pay. You know they take a good few hours, at least around this time, for something like this. Plus, I think Joe is on tonight, so you won’t have to worry about Calvin calling in your plates like he did last time.” Flo looked sadly at the deflated woman in front of her, wishing she’d taken a frying pan into the office with her to to knock some sense into that old troglodyte Jean.

Freya said, “One day, I’ll remember to check my wallet before I order. Especially after Eva decides she needs my advice about something that can be bought. I feel so bad about the couple, though. Can you get me their info, so I can do something else later?” Freya’s mind was already mapping out the fastest way home and back, hoping that Flo letting her go wouldn’t cause trouble for her.

“Here, use this,” a husky and somehow familiar voice said. It came from behind Freya and startled her.

An arm extended a shiny black card, highlighted in distinctive gold, toward Flo. The arm came from directly behind Freya, along with the deep voice. The man came close enough to Freya’s back that for her to turn fully around would cause some embarrassing rubbing. So she turned her head a little to try and see who was helping her out. While his face seemed to be out of her view, his arm, shoulder and part of his chest were not, and what she could see and hear of him wasn’t helping her to stay as collected as she would like.

His bare forearm had a stylized tattoo running up its length, and that seemed to ring some foggy bell for Freya. Since the tattoo ended under the cuff of a black T-shirt, no other visual clues were evident from her position, and Freya was at a loss.

“For both tickets, hon?” Flo asked.

“For whatever the lady wishes.” The teasing response moved over her as both the man’s arms came up to the counter around Freya, effectively boxing her in.

A slight scent, one that screamed “sinful male,” seemed to envelop her, and why it made her feel safe was a mystery to Freya. She was starting to think that she was going to have to do something soon before a scene erupted in the restaurant. Freya wasn’t her sister, and unlike Eva, Freya hated being noticed. She had long before learned that the background was where she was made to be, not the spotlight.

“Do I know you?” Freya whispered so Flo wouldn’t catch what she said. Freya loved Flo, but she knew Flo was a font of gossip on this side of town.

A stranger paying for not only Freya’s meal, but those of the people she’d wanted to treat, would definitely be gossip-worthy. Freya wouldn’t be able to dine here for at least a month once that story got around, not to mention the difficulties it would cause her at the center. Anything that looked interesting about Freya would be twisted until it was so far from the truth, it might as well be a fairy tale. It wasn’t that people wouldn’t be on her side, but they’d still talk and get it all wrong.

Once again, a velvety chuckle was heard from the man behind her as he leaned in to catch her scent. She watched as Flo totaled up three tickets and ran the credit card through their antique machine. You could hear its electronic pinging. Freya waited, desperate to see who had made her libido wake up for the first time in years.

“I added a nice tip on while I was at it,” Flo stated, winking at Freya as she walked back with the credit slip for the unknown man to sign.