Hard (2 page)

The second floor hallway is lined with several doors, but only one at
the end is closed. I head toward it as Tyler systematically flips on
lights and inspects the open rooms just for good measure—a
bathroom here, a hall closet there, a guest bedroom, complete with an
afghan quilt Grandma McEntire must have made. Too bad she didn’t
teach her grandson not to be a degenerate gambler.

I put my ear against the closed door, hear the quiet stirrings of an
unsuspecting sleeper who’s about to get a big surprise.

The knob turns quietly. The outline of the bed is just visible by the
moonlight through the blinds. I can make out a figure curled up in
the middle of the sheets: Jamie, in the last peaceful sleep he’ll
have for a while. Even if he doesn’t know it yet.

I switch on the bedside lamp. “Rise and shine, asshole,”
I say, bending over Jamie’s head and rustling up a dose of the
old Ryder.

I yank back the sheet and reveal a girl in black panties, the side
band twisted and pushed down a little below her hip, and a white
t-shirt worn thin to the point of see-through, stretching over her
breasts and coming only to just above her belly button, tiny even on
her small frame.

A hot blonde, half asleep.

Not Jamie McEntire.

Not that I’m complaining.

CASSIE

I’d been dreaming about England again, and for once it had been
almost nice. Restful, even. Not the nightmare I usually experience
when England sneaks into my subconscious.

Maybe that’s because my subconscious knew there was a real
nightmare going on in my house, standing right next to my bed.

When I first woke up, I thought maybe I was having some kind of
jet-lag-induced hallucination, like maybe my knackered mind was
seeing Jamie but processing him as someone else. I didn’t
recognize the voice, but I’ve been surrounded—some might
say drowning—in British accents for so long that Americans
almost sound strange to me now anyway. Unfamiliar.

But, still, it’s disturbing to be the one who’s
disoriented in your own house while the stranger looks unbothered.
Even pleased. Amused.

Maybe it’s my old University of West Alabama t-shirt, the one
with the cartoonish Luie the Tiger across the chest, or the fact that
I don’t have on pants. Mental note: wear full pajamas from now
on. You don’t want to give intruders any ideas they may not
already have.

He’s tall, whoever he is, or maybe it’s the way his blue
suit jacket drapes over his wide shoulders that makes him seem big.
Button-up shirt, with enough buttons undone to imply a well-toned
chest. No tie. A criminal who keeps it casual, but his laidback look
doesn’t make my frightened heart pound any slower, my shallow
breath any deeper.

He drops my lavender sheets, and looks me over, like a predator
sizing up the trapped prey. “Where’s Jamie?”

I scoot backwards toward the opposite edge of the bed. “Don’t
fucking touch me. You better stay right the fuck there,” I say,
trying to control the tremble of fear in my words as my mind races
for anything that I could use as a weapon—an old nail file in
the nightstand, a paperweight. There’s the bedside lamp, which
he’s still standing next to, but I have a hunch that he’s
probably not just going to hand it to me, no matter how nicely I ask.
I emptied out this room when I went to Europe two years ago. Never
thought I’d be coming back, and damn sure didn’t leave a
baseball bat conveniently under the bed. I’d even settle for a
catcher’s mitt. I could knock him right across his perfectly
angled cheekbones.

As I stand, I grab the only thing in reach: a pillow. I hold it out
in front of me like a shield.

He scowls. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says. He
crosses his arms, and the sleeves of his suit and shirt shift up
slightly to reveal tattoos that end right at his wrist.

“Who the fuck are you and what the fuck are you doing here?”
I say, my voice deeper than usual, my hands steady despite the fact
that I feel like I have hot lava in my veins, boiling and ready to
erupt any second.

Between fight or flight, I’m choosing to fight. Because when I
left London this morning, I was done fleeing for good.

I cross over the bed in three long strides, thrusting the pillow into
his face as hard as I can, holding it there like I’m going to
suffocate him standing up or at the very least disorient him like
he’s disoriented me.

He stumbles backwards a step, but manages to lift me around the waist
and toss me over his shoulder, disarming me of the pillow. It falls
to the floor as he carries me to the wall, where he sets me down and
grabs my shoulders, pinning them, his grip forceful but also soft in
a way, like he’s trying to hold me, not hurt me. I can feel the
smooth fabric of his suit pants on my bare skin as he spreads his
legs so his shoes straddle either side of my naked feet.

“Really running up your tab in the swear jar tonight,” he
says. “Kind of like your little boyfriend. Except he owes more
than a few quarters.”

“What are you talking about?” I say. Whatever’s
happening right now, I refuse to let him think I’m afraid. I
look up, meeting his eyes. They’re blue, that deep kind of
sapphire color. Piercing, I might say in a different context, one
where I know what the hell is going on.

“Got him, Ryde?” Another male voice calls from the
hallway.

“We’re good here,” he says. “You and Valero
head to the car.”

I turn to face my captor. “Shouldn’t you go with him?”
I say. “Clown cars don’t work unless all the clowns are
inside.”
He doesn’t budge. “But we were just
getting to know each other.” His hard chest presses against me
and I can feel his heartbeat, measured and even. Like he’s
relaxed.

That makes one of us.

“So what’s your name, tiger?” he says, his mouth
half smiling as he glances down at my t-shirt.

“What’s yours?”
No fear, Cassie.
Calm,
cool, collected.

He releases my shoulders, instead putting his hands on the wall on
either side of me, boxing me in. “Ladies first.”

“Bullies before beauties,” I say, batting my eyes, making
sure there’s no doubt which of us is which.

“Ryder,” he says. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“For this kind of pleasure,” I say, “I’m
usually at least taken to dinner first.”

“High expectations,” he says. “And you are?”

“Not telling you shit.”

“That’s too bad. Because I need to know where Jamie
McEntire is,” Ryder says. “Although I certainly
appreciate a woman who stands by her man.”

I narrow my eyes. “I’m standing by my brother.”

Ryder tilts his head back, taking in the info he clearly has been too
busy practicing “bad cop” to research. “That makes
more sense,” he says. “I was beginning to wonder how a
punk like him keeps a woman like you satisfied.” He studies me.
“It’s a shame he didn’t offer you as collateral,
too,” he says. “That’s a trade I might have taken.”

Collateral
. That’s not a word that ever means anything
good.

Oh, Jamie. What’d you do this time?

“Collateral for what?”

“The debt he owes me,” he says. “Ten grand. Plus
interest. And since he can’t pay in cash, he’s offered to
pay with this house.”

I shake my head. My muscles tense and I can hear my heart beating in
my ears, working extra hard now to fuel the anger welling inside me.
Really, Jamie?
“No, he can’t,” I say, louder
than I expect to.

“But he did.”

“You don’t understand,” I say, “It belongs to
me, too. You’re not taking it.”

Ryder tsk-tsks, sliding his hands to my upper arms. “I’ll
take whatever I want, tiger.”

“Is that a threat?”

He bends his face toward me. “It’s a promise.” His
mouth is so close to mine he could bite me or kiss me.

Holding
onto me still, he leans back, his eyes running the length of my body.
“You know,” he says, “you shouldn’t sleep
dressed like this. Might give people the wrong idea.”

“This might surprise you, but usually when people come over,
they give a little notice so I can get dressed first.” “What
if there’s a fire in the middle of the night?” he says.

“I
guess the rescue team will get a show.”

He
raises one eyebrow. “Makes it hard for them to concentrate on
saving you.”

I
lock my eyes into his. “I can save myself.”

“I
bet you can,” he says. “Since I can only assume you got
all the brains in the family, when you tell your brother I came by to
get my money—because I always get my money—make sure you
speak slowly so he understands.” He pushes away from me.

“Leaving so soon?” I say sarcastically. “But we
were just getting to know each other.” I fold my arms over my
chest and glare at him. Sure I’m putting up a tough front with
this guy, returning every hit he sends my way in this stupid verbal
sparring match, but the reality is, regardless of what he thinks he
can do, I’ll never give up this house. No matter what it takes.

“It’s late,” he says, crossing to the bed and
smoothing out the sheets, pulling them to the side like he’s
waiting for me to crawl in. “I don’t want to wear you
out.”

I cross my arms and cock my head. “You couldn’t if you
tried,” I say, making sure he doesn’t for one second
think he has the upper hand.

“Is that a threat?” he says.

I sit at the edge of the bed and cross my legs toward him, leaning
back on my hands, as if I’m relaxed. “It’s a
promise.” I put all the intimidation and menace I can muster
into my words, but he remains unfazed.

He approaches, bends toward me, putting his hands on either side of
my hips. “Promise me one more thing,” he says. His lips
almost brush my ear, the proximity a tease, like a ghost of a kiss.
“That the next time you try to suffocate me, you’ll use
your thighs instead of a pillow. It’d be a much more pleasant
experience for us both.”

He exits and I exhale. I hadn’t even realized I was holding my
breath.

I fall back on the bed, seething, listening for the end of Ryder’s
footsteps or the close of a door—if a door is even how he got
in here. I was careful to lock up everything before I went to bed,
but something tells me this man isn’t deterred by something as
temporary as a little lock. He strikes me as the kind of guy who
finds his way into anyplace or anything or anybody he wants.

I don’t know what time it is. I don’t know where the hell
Jamie’s hiding out. And I don’t know why on earth he’s
borrowing thousands of dollars from a hot thug in an expensive suit.

Damn it, Jamie.

A hot thug in an expensive suit with sexy, broad shoulders and big,
strong hands and the most perfect jawline I’ve ever seen.

Those are the things I do know.

Welcome home, Cassie.

CASSIE

Home Depot must sell about a thousand doors, so finding a replacement
for the one Ryder and his minion kicked in last night should only
take me a year or so. At least the sales guy in this department is
kind of cute. It’s the little things.

While sorting through all these twenty-first century doors feels
kinda like trying to pick the best grain of sand at the beach, our
house is thirty years old, so I guess on the bright side, I’m
giving the place an upgrade. Our mom deeded the house over to Jamie
and me about four years ago, a couple years after our dad died of a
heart attack. They had bought the house not long after they got
married, right after it was built. Our parents were the first people
ever to live in it, and I think without Dad there, Mom didn’t
really recognize the place, or herself in it.

She stayed with Jamie while he finished high school, and then the
summer before he started college, the same summer I finished college,
Mom finagled a job transfer to Florida and started over. She married
a man named Bill last year. They bought a little place within walking
distance of the Atlantic Ocean, and she sounds pretty happy these
days when I talk to her. I wish I’d been able to fly home for
the wedding, but getting away from England was never easy.

Not even yesterday, when I left for good.

The cute sales guy, whose nametag says Danny, has dark hair styled
into a fauxhawk and the standard-issue orange Home Depot apron clings
to his barrel chest over his white V-neck t-shirt. “Are you
looking for something prehung?” says

Isn’t every woman?
I resist the urge to say, instead
shrugging my shoulders and smiling. “I guess I was hoping you
would tell me.”

Danny explains the difference between slab and prehung doors, and we
determine I need the latter, since the hinges on the one at the house
are busted—not that I tell Danny how they got that way. I’ve
been back in town for fewer than twenty-four hours and already I’m
lying to someone to cover for Jamie.

Some things never change.

Danny walks me to the prehung doors and I flip through the endless
options. It’s sort of weird to see doors out of context like
this, leading to nowhere, knowing that eventually each of them will
be bought and put to use, like
this one
will become the front
door of someone’s childhood home that they will remember
forever, and
that one
will be the back door that always
squeaks when you try to sneak out at night. How things go from
meaningless or unknown to significant with just one purchase, one
decision, one encounter one night with the one right person. Or the
wrong one.

What can I say? Home Depot brings out my existential side.

Plus, I get kind of philosophical when I’m tired, and I’m
still jet lagged. But even though Atlanta’s time zone is, like,
half a sleep cycle behind London’s, and I am beyond worn out
from the day of travel, I couldn’t fall back asleep this
morning after Ryder left. At first, I thought I should call the cops
to report the break-in and harassment—
Yes, officer, he was
about six-two, two hundred pounds of pure muscle, and a smile that
would melt your panties right off
—but it occurred to me
maybe I should first talk to Jamie, get the details from him to find
out more about who he’s dealing with here.