Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 01 - Last Call (6 page)

“Not always for the better.”

“What’s with you? There something you want to tell me?”

He held up his hands. “I’m sorry. I just thought you’d had enough time to come to your senses.”

“I’m not trying to win her back or anything, if that’s what you think.”

“That’s good, ‘cause she’s married.”

“I know that. That’s why she hired me.”

His gaze snapped up. He flinched. I could tell he hadn’t meant to look at me.

“She hired me,” I explained, “to find out if her husband’s been seeing someone on the side.”

Tom laughed, smacked his forehead with both hands. “That’s rich. That’s just beautiful. Do you not see something so sick about this situation?”

“Awkward, maybe. Not sick.”

“Sick. Real fucking sick. What happens if you find out hubby’s banging someone else? Autumn going to get even by banging you?”

I vividly saw myself jamming my fist into Tom’s nose, could even hear the cartilage crunch. I took a deep breath.

Tom said, “I’ve pissed you off.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“All right. Wrong strategy. I’m trying to tell you, though, she’s bad news.”

“Why? Because she made a bad choice on how to break up with me? We were kids.”

“That’s not why.” He twirled the beer in his glass. “Like you said, people change. Fifteen years is a long time. You don’t know her anymore.”

“And you do?”

He rolled his shoulders as if working out a kink. “Will you trust me for once? As your friend, I’m warning you.”

“You’re gonna have to do better than that.”

He finished his beer. “I’ve got to pick up the girls from school.”

“So that’s it? You’re going to leave me with a warning?”

Tom stood, rolled his shoulders again. It looked like the tendons in his neck had thickened. Blotches of red rose up along his jaw line and over his cheeks. I could smell the sweat on him.

He looked me in the eye again. I’d seen more of his eyes in the last thirty minutes than I had the past thirty days.

“I’m not the little nerd you knew in high school. I’m a cop. I know who’s trouble in my town and who isn’t.”

“That’s very wild west of you, Tom. I never pictured you as a cowboy.”

He stared even harder at me. A pair of eyes had never made me feel so uncomfortable. “You should be thanking me,” he said, turned, and walked out.

I tried to finish my beer, but it tasted flat.

Autumn stood waiting for me in the doorway, wearing a sundress with a simple, pale yellow pattern. The white strap of her bra peeked out on one shoulder. The front lawn smelled wet. From behind the house I could hear the faint tick and hiss of a sprinkler.

We ended up in the living room again, this time less awkward around each other, though Autumn’s gaze kept slipping to the envelope I held.

“Sit,” I said, and we both sat on the couch, Autumn smoothing her dress down along the sides of her legs.

I laid the envelope flat on the coffee table and flipped open the top. “They’re photos,” I said.

The color in her face drained. She smoothed her dress again, set her shoulders as if bracing herself for some impact.

“You took them today?”

I nodded.

“Is he …”

“I don’t know what to make of them,” I said. “I wasn’t even sure if I was going to show them to you yet.”

“I didn’t hire you to keep things from me.” She plucked at the edge of the envelope.

I slapped my hand down, pinning it to the table. “Hang on.”

She yanked at a corner, but couldn’t get the envelope free. A crease marked her forehead between her eyebrows. “Stop dicking around and show me.”

I jerked the envelope away from her, slipped out the photos, and lined them up, one by one, across the table.

Autumn leaned forward. I watched her look the pictures over, watched the crease between her eyebrows deepen.

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know. I tried following her, but lost her.”

“You lost her?”

“She spotted me somehow.”

Autumn slapped the table. A photo fluttered to the floor.

“That bastard. That …” She jumped up from the couch and paced the living room. “Why am I surprised? I wouldn’t have asked you to follow him if I didn’t think he was cheating.”

“The pictures don’t—”

She spun on me. “He lied to me about where he was going today. He lied. So he could be with this,” her lip curled and she chopped a hand at the photos, “woman.”

“I know it probably doesn’t help,” I said, “but it looks like a break-up. Maybe his conscience got the better of him.”

She cupped her elbows in her hands, hugging her arms across her stomach. “Who knows how many times he’s come home to me after fucking her?”

“Autumn.”

“Why did you have to show these to me?”

“I tried not to.”

“You smug son of a bitch. Is this your revenge? Does this make you feel better?”

The sprinkler out back clicked like a timer, ticking off seconds to some inevitable end.

“You came to me, remember?”

She turned away. “I wish I hadn’t.”

“Here.” I started scooping up the photos, shoving them back into the envelope. “I’ll take these away and you can delude yourself into thinking you never saw them.”

I bent to pick up the photo that had fallen on the floor, my pulse hot and loud in my ears, gritting my teeth. I couldn’t get the photo to fit into the envelope, kept bending it each time I stabbed at the envelope’s opening.

I stopped when Autumn’s rubber sandaled feet stepped into my view. She crouched down in front of me. Her eyes were wet, though no tear had yet marked either cheek. She reached out and touched my face.

I shook my head, finally jammed the last photo into the envelope, and almost pulled away from her touch. Almost. But I couldn’t.

Her thumb stroked my ear. She opened her mouth like she wanted to say something. She didn’t speak.

I remembered Tom’s words.

What happens if you find out hubby’s banging someone else? Autumn going to get even by banging you?

I thought of the satisfaction I had felt taking photos I knew would weaken Autumn’s marriage. I thought of all the signs I’d ignored telling me where this would end up, and how everyone—Tom, Sheila, Autumn’s father—had all warned me in some way that taking Autumn’s case was a bad idea. All this ran through my head, telling me to wake up from the dream that had started when Autumn arrived at the
High Note
. I didn’t care. I’d rather sleep. I’d rather dream.

I dropped the envelope on the table and pulled Autumn toward me. She didn’t resist, let me draw her to the couch, let me slide my hands up her legs, up her skirt, as she straddled me.

I caressed her thighs, staring at the slight swell of her belly. She cupped my face in her hands, tried to tilt up my chin.

I pulled one of her hands to my mouth, kissed her palm.

The sound of her breath touched me like a caress.

She said my name.

I balled the hem of her dress in a fist. My free hand massaged the gooseflesh on the inside of her thigh, coming inches from the heat between her legs.

“This is stupid,” I said, eyes locked on her belly, watching her diaphragm expand with each breath. I focused on the rhythm of her breathing and forgot my own until my head grew light and I had to gasp.

Autumn tried to tilt my head up again. “He deserves it.”

I twisted my head to one side.

Autumn’s left hand tried to turn my head back.

I opened my mouth and sucked on her middle two fingers. Her breath shuddered like a drum roll.

“Ridley, look at me.”

“Quiet.”

“Please.”

I gently bit down on her fingers.

She rocked against my lap.

My fist full of her dress tugged until I heard tearing fabric. I didn’t stop pulling. I wanted Autumn to tell me to stop, stop tearing her dress, stop pulling, stop, stop, stop.

She pulled her fingers from my mouth and I groaned at their absence. The taste of her remained on my tongue. I resisted the impulse to swallow, didn’t want to swallow away her taste.

Her hand slid over the hand I had under her dress. She tugged.

I felt every inch of her skin like a mile, going on and on, growing warmer and warmer.

“Ridley.” Autumn gripped my wrist, pulled harder.

I inhaled through my nose, the smell of sex rolling into me like a spirit. I sat two breaths away from possession when the sound of the front door opening and closing broke the trance.

Autumn flinched at the sound, slipping backward, the only thing keeping her from falling off my lap her grip on my wrist and my grip on her dress.

Her dress ripped some more. I couldn’t see where.

Footsteps grew louder.

I leaned forward, wrapped my arm around her waist, and twisted, pulling her off my lap and throwing her onto the couch next to me.

Autumn barely started smoothing her dress as Doug stepped into the kitchen and froze.

The ratchet and whirr of the sprinkler in the backyard was the loudest sound in the house.

His lips parted and trembled. His gaze flitted from me to Autumn and back.

I looked away.

“Where were you?” Autumn asked.

“Who is he?” Doug replied.

I stood. “I’ll go.”

A briefcase dangled from one of Doug’s hands. He set it on the kitchen floor. “There’s a thought.”

I looked down at the envelope on the coffee table. I looked at Autumn, twisted on the couch to face Doug, the back of her dress visible. The fabric had split down to the base of her spine, exposing flesh I ached to touch.

Doug’s eyes were red and watered. He licked his lips. “Who are you?”

“Ridley,” I said. “Brone.” Would he know the name? Had Autumn ever talked about me—her first love, the one she’d walked out on, the one she walked back in on?

Doug’s boyish cheeks flushed. “Ridley?”

Autumn’s hand absently went to the envelope on the coffee table. “He’s an old friend.” She picked up the envelope, turned to me. “Don’t forget this.”

I gaped at what she offered as if I’d never seen it before.

She pushed it against my slack hand. “Take it.”

I snatched the envelope, crumpled the edge.

Autumn turned to Doug. “He was just leaving.”

A pressure thrummed in my ears, as if I had sunk to the bottom of the ocean. My jaw ached. I stalked from the living room into the kitchen, paused with a foot between Doug’s chest and my own.

He stared me down.

I went to move past him, hesitated, glanced at his briefcase. I lifted my foot as if to take a step, then gently toed his briefcase and knocked it over. The case slapped against the tiles.

Doug’s nostrils twitched.

“Sorry,” I said and strolled into the hall.

On the porch, I heard screaming begin inside. The sprinkler rattled in the background. The sun forced me to squint, as if I’d stepped out of a dark cave. But I felt like I had stepped into one.

Chapter 5

Hal was on his third song in a row, sweating under the eye-burning disco ball, pumping his arms in the air during an instrumental break. In all this activity, the zipper to his jumpsuit had slipped down a couple of inches, exposing an upside-down triangle of hairy belly.

He got three songs in a row because, despite every table and nearly every inch of floor space crowded with patrons, no one had signed up to sing.

I sat in my usual booth, nursing a Bells pale ale. I watched the swarms of bodies drink, laugh, and cringe whenever Hal tried a
High Note
—or any note really.

It’s a karaoke bar, people. Get up there and sing
.

I hoped this crowd didn’t think I’d hired Hal as the entertainment.

Some movement to the left caught my attention. Mandy made a beeline through the crowd toward my table.

“I don’t know what the hee-haw is going on,” she said, clutching her tray so hard her knuckles turned white, “but what kind of bar doesn’t have Captain Morgan’s?”

I put my face in my hands. “Don’t tell me we’re out.”

“These people are going to start killing me, Ridley. I go to the bar for a drink, Sheila tells me there’s none left, I have to bear the bad news, and Mr. Drunk wants to shoot the messenger.”

Hal dropped to his knees, face red, veins popping out around his neck, and belted the final verse of his song, some country number I’d never heard before. Playing the part, Hal howled like a hound dog doing his version of a country singer.

“Would somebody shoot that guy,” Mandy said. “Why isn’t anyone else singing?”

“Maybe you could encourage them when you bring them their drinks.”

She snorted, giving me are-you-crazy eyes. “Maybe you should get up there.”

I glanced at the stage, short of breath. “I don’t sing.”

“Then why do you own a karaoke bar?”

I slapped the table. “Why don’t you go do your job?”

Mandy’s lower lip pushed out. Her eyes watered.

I took a deep breath, touched her elbow. “Mandy, I’m sorry. I’m stressed.”

“From what? Watching everyone else work their asses off?” She tossed her drink tray onto the table. “I quit.”

“Mandy, wait.”

She turned and marched out.