Hot Mess (An Iron Tornadoes MC Romance Book 5) (6 page)

I
take
a step closer to her and put my hands on her shoulders. She looks up at me and blinks furiously to chase the tears pooling in her eyes.

"He's really out?" she asks.

I nod and she looks down at her hands folded as in a prayer. My eyes are on her luscious mouth waiting for her answer.

She bites her lower lip and hesitates. The seconds tick away in silence until she comes to a decision.

"Yes," she finally answers. "Yes, I would very much like to tell you my story from the start."

It takes all my willpower to refrain from hugging her. The urge to take her in my arms and comfort her is so strong that I force myself to take a step back and look away.

"Good. Now get dressed and meet me at the table near the pool when you're ready." This comes out a lot harsher than I want, but she doesn't seem to notice.

"I'll be out in two minutes," she says.

Rushing out of her room through the French windows, I return to the kitchen and pour the rest of the coffee into two mugs. I set up another pot to brew and pick up a couple of donuts. By the time I return to the patio, plate and cups in hand, she's already there, standing by the table.

She's wearing one of those large dresses my sister favors. It's fitted on the upper part of the body, putting "the girls" forward, then goes wide, hiding the rest. Ice and I never cease to tease her about those, but secretly we're happy she wears them. Where our sister is concerned we're regular cavemen, happy she hides her beautiful figure instead of flaunting it to the world.

Yet, right now, I find the dress frustrating because it hides too much of this mermaid's perfect shape. Same dress, opposite reactions. The delicious irony of life.

Kristal's eyes light up as she looks at the plate I set on the table.

"Sit and eat," I say as I pull out a chair for her.

The corner of her mouth twitches and I wonder why she's amused. Is it the absurdity of my good manners in our situation?

"Thank you," she says pulling the chair closer to the cast iron table. She stares at the plate and asks, "Which one do you want?"

"I'm fine, they're both for you." I take a chair and sit on the other side of the tiny table, directly across from her. She reaches greedily for the Bavarian cream. A bite and she closes her eyes to fully enjoy the savory goodness. A drop of cream stays on her lips and as she licks it away. My pants become awfully tight.

When she's done demolishing the two pastries, and drinking her coffee, Kristal folds her arms in a protective stance. The joyful demeanor that was hers a few seconds ago when she was attacking the food has now vanished.

"So what do you want to know?" she asks.

"Everything."

My answer is absurd, but it's the truth. My curiosity about her is immense. I truly want to find out everything there is to know about her.

She gives me a sad smile and starts talking, with her eyes staring at a distant point over my shoulder.

"You already know my name," she says. "I was born in Florida, but I've spent most of my life in New York. My mother moved there when I was a toddler. She was the headmistress of a private school, and until a few weeks ago, I thought she was my only family."

She takes a deep breath and unfolds her arms. She brushes imaginary crumbs from her dress as she continues telling her story with a tone so detached, it's as if she's talking about someone else.

"I had no memory at all of my dad so, of course, when I was younger I asked my mother a thousand questions about him. I could see it annoyed the heck out of her, but I couldn't help myself. I needed to know more. With the bits and pieces she gave me, I built myself a perfect father, a handsome hero. A tragic one, obviously, since he had died young in a motorcycle accident.

“And even though she kept repeating that if I had any sense I would do well to stay away from bikers, I had this crazy fantasy that one day I would also fall in love with a modern version of Prince Charming, a handsome bikers who would sweep me away on his roaring machine."

I repress a chuckle. Her mother's advice was sound. I picture her as a wise woman who wants to spare her daughter the hardship she's been through.

Kristal blushes and waves a hand chasing away the image of her crazy childhood dream she just invoked. For a second, she looks young and innocent. It doesn't last. Her shy smile vanishes as she gets to the saddest part of her story.

"Last spring, Mom got sick. One day she was fine and the next she felt so bad she couldn't get up. I took her to the hospital and they ran all sorts of tests." Kristal takes a big breath, forces her hands flat on the table in a poor attempt to hide the fact they are shaking. Her emotions are raw. "Three weeks later she was dead."

I reach out for her hands and she lets me hold them in mine. Has she let anyone comfort her yet?

Selfishly, I hope not. I want to be her refuge. She gives me no time to analyze this unfamiliar urge as she dives back in her story.

"The school gave me a week to move out. Thanks to a college friend, I moved into a tiny sublet, took the first job I found, and managed to keep it together."

So she hasn't been a dancing barmaid that long. Good.

"I lived in a haze for a bit and it took me a few months before I allowed myself to think. That's when I remembered Mom bitching about some life insurance contract she was always paying. I wanted to kick myself for not thinking about it sooner. I went searching through her papers hoping she'd taken a policy that would, you know, give me a sort of starting block if something happened to her."

She squeezes my hands in hers and I squeeze back gently to encourage her.

"That's when I found out!" She spits out each word. "There was a contract all right, but the beneficiary was John F. Russel." She looks up from our hands to my eyes and the mixture of sadness and anger on her face is heartbreaking.

"See, my mother was a very organized person. You can't run a school with hundreds of kids if you're not meticulous and able to keep up with the paperwork. I knew right away that his name on the contract was no accident. She couldn't have postponed changing the name of the beneficiary for more than twenty years. No way."

"So you searched for your father." Who wouldn't? I would have gone looking as well. I try to imagine how I would have felt in her place. Hurt. Yeah, hurt and betrayed.

"I looked up the address on the contract in the white pages, found a phone number and called. Guess what? Not only do I still have a father, but I also have a grandmother. She lives in the Pink Flamingo community of Point Lookout. She's old and she's lost a few marbles, but when I called, she knew right away who I was and she promised she would let my father know I had called."

Kristal pulls her hand from mine and wraps her arms around herself as she tells me about the letter I found in her bag last night, how she quit her job, cashed her savings, and drove all the way to Florida to meet her grandmother and help her father.

That still doesn't explain how she ended up running drugs, but I'm now confident we'll get there.

I just need to give her a little time.

* * *

"
H
ow did
it go with your grandmother?"

A huge smile grows on her face. She stops bracing herself and answers with passion.

"She's incredible," she says. "She's in her nineties and still going strong. She's tall and so big." Her hands spread wide to indicate a very large woman. "It must have skipped a generation 'cause in the picture, Dad's so rail thin, it makes me want to cook for him."

I laugh good heartedly. I love that she's the caring type. I keep to myself the fact that, with such genes, it's probably her father's drug habit that has kept him on the skinny side.

"She was a teacher, just like Mom. Of course, she's retired, but she barters tutoring kids against some housekeeping and stuff. That's how she's managed to stay in her home."

I nod to encourage her to keep going while wondering if the pension of a retired schoolteacher is enough to pay for the maintenance in the Pink Flamingo community. It's a rather fancy over fifty-five gated community with serious security. Maybe the drug money her son does is going to some good use. Somehow I doubt it. That sort is more the taking than the giving type.

"She had many sisters and brothers and so she's got a bunch of nieces and nephews who had kids as well. I guess that makes them my second cousins or something, I've never been big on family stuff..." Her smile vanishes again and she rolls her lips together riding on a rollercoaster of emotions.

Discovering an instant new family sure must be overwhelming, especially for someone who's still mourning her mother and never knew her dad.

"You know what the strangest thing is?"

I shake my head. I have no idea.

"She doesn't blame my mother one bit for running away with me. She said she would probably have done the same."

"But you still do?"

The surprise in her eyes is kind of cute. She didn't expect me to get it, but I do. That's my thing. I don't read minds, I feel. Yeah, that's what I do, and most days, empathy is a curse.

"I'm so mad at her." She's almost screaming in frustration.

"And you have every right to be. She did lie to you."

"But she thought she was doing the right thing."

"She probably did, but it doesn't change the fact she lied to you for years."

"So I should be mad at her?"

I smile and take her hands in mine again. "I didn't say that." She gives me a puzzled look and sighs. "We're not talking cold hard logic here; we're talking about feelings."

"And?" she says.

"And feelings are just feelings. They're not right or wrong. Feelings bubble or simmer inside no matter what you think. The logical part of you gets it. When you think about it, you understand that your mother thought the best thing she could do for you, and maybe for her as well, was to take you away and make you believe your dad was dead.

“And you know what, if your grandmother doesn't blame her for doing it, chances are your mother was right." Kristal tilts her head. "But understanding what she did doesn't make it hurt less. You're in pain 'cause your trust was betrayed and that's painful. Especially since your mother passed suddenly, without giving you a chance to talk it out with her. So there you are, mad at your mom and even more mad at yourself for being mad at a dead woman who can't fight back and justify her actions."

"Yep, that's about it."

Her shoulder drops as if she's abdicated.

"Of course, now I made it even worse by telling you your father lied to you as well."

She chuckles sadly. "Yeah, he did that too."

"Will you help me figure out why?" I ask softly.

"Why would I do that?" She's sincerely wondering and I can't blame her. If I were in her shoes, I would seriously consider packing up and leaving without a backward glance.

"I could you give you a whole bunch of reasons, but as far as you're concerned, there's only one relevant one."

She raises a questioning eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"Those people, the one who made you carry the drugs," she opens her mouth to protest but I don't give her a chance to do so, "they'll be looking for you 'cause you lost them a bloody fortune and they can't let that go."

Kristal attempts to pull her hands away, but I don't let her. I need the physical connection to get my message across.

"You're in danger, Kristal, and there's no way I can protect you from them if you don't help me." Her entire body stiffens as if attempting to prevent the idea from entering her mind.

"Listen to him, Kristal. He's telling you the truth." Ice's voice startles both of us as it resonates in the patio. He's standing by the door, a mug of coffee in hand. "You're in trouble, little girl, deep trouble and unless you help figure out who the source of that crap is, you're the one who's gonna take the fall."

"But my father ..." she leaves her sentence unfinished.

"What about your father?" I ask.

Ice spells it out for her, demonstrating that he's been listening to our conversation for a while.

"As far as I can tell, there are only two possibilities. Worst case scenario, he took advantage of your innocence to make you do his dirty work." My brother raises his hand to indicate he's not done. "That's one possibility. The other is that he's in a bad spot and that, possibly under duress, he sold you out to save his own skin."

We give her a few seconds to digest the information. Both possibilities are bleak, but she's not stupid, so why would we try to sugarcoat the truth. She needs to understand what a mess she's in.

"Why would you want to help me?"

That's a reasonable question.

"’Cause I want to find the source of that product and you're our best lead in this case." That's the first reason that comes to my mind. "Also 'cause I think you got tricked into delivering those packages without realizing what their contents were." She nods slowly.

"You're forgetting the most important reason," Ice interjects.

We both turn to look at him and he pauses for effect. When he thinks he’s built up enough suspense, he stares at Kristal and adds one more reason.

One I would rather have kept to myself.

At least for now.

* * *