The Lonesome Young (21 page)

I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Fifteen minutes. I kept my lips clamped shut, almost superstitious, until I’d pulled out onto the main road, but then I couldn’t keep it in anymore.

“Yes!”

There may even have been happy seat dancing involved.

Chapter 28

Mickey

I
’d had to scrub beneath my fingernails three times to get all of the grime that had built up in there during ten solid hours of cleaning out the garage. We were either going to have a yard sale or I was taking a truckload to the dump, because there was no way I’d hauled all of that crap out of there only to turn around and put it back. Broken equipment and tools, rusty parts, half-used bags of lawn fertilizer and potting soil—it was a nightmare, and I’d only made it through about a quarter of the job, so Pa hadn’t been kidding about the four days.

Damn it.

I grabbed a shirt out of the closet and did a smell check to be sure it was clean—usually, the ones on hangers were—and threw on a newish pair of jeans and my boots. I’d heard my folks heading out for the party just before I got in the shower, so nobody was around to wonder why I was getting all dressed up. Usually I’d be wearing one of the dozens of free T-shirts vendors left us at the gas station and my oldest jeans to kick back on a Friday night, but I didn’t think a motor oil shirt would impress Victoria.

I froze, suddenly realizing I’d been about to
comb my hair
.
I was
trying to
impress
Victoria
. I dropped the comb and watched as it seemed to fall to the floor in slow motion.

I was out of my league with this girl. League, hell. I was out of my fucking mind. Any day now, she was going to wake up and realize that she could do a hell of a lot better than me. Her folks probably had a bunch of rich horse-people friends with sons named Biff and Chad and what-the-hell-ever who’d make a lot more sense for her. Guys without the baggage I carried around with me from my family and my name.

“Fuck
that
,” I said viciously, and I kicked the comb across the room. “They’re not getting anywhere near her, and I’m not trying to turn myself into somebody that I’m not. She’ll have to take me as she finds me.”

I closed my eyes and groaned. Talking to myself in an empty room. Yeah, I was losing it.

The sound of motorcycles roaring up the street knocked me out of my crazy thoughts, and I walked over to the window to see that Ethan, Jeb, and a few of their flunkies had pulled up to my house. Worse, Ethan was getting off his bike and looking up at my window.

Pretending I wasn’t home wouldn’t work, or at best would only delay the confrontation, so I headed downstairs and met him at the front door.

“Pa’s not here. I’m on my way out.” I stepped out on the porch, because there was no way I was inviting him inside. “What do you want?”

He’d been drinking, or sampling his own product, or something. His eyes were wild and aggressive, and his body was bunched up and twitchy all at once.

“I want you, little brother. Got a party going on tonight.”

I pointed at Jeb, who was drinking a beer right there on his bike. “If you’re thinking of crashing the Founders’ Day party, I’d think again. Pa won’t like it if you guys show up wasted.”

“Wouldn’t be crashing, would it, since the party is for everybody?” He started laughing before I could answer that. “Hey, no worries. We have a different party to go to, and I wanted to stop by and bring you along. Do you good to get out of your head a little bit. Quit being the perfect son and let loose.”

“Perfect son, my ass. I got kicked off the football team, suspended from school, and ordered to spend four days cleaning out the garage.” I swept an arm toward the evidence, all neatly stacked on the lawn next to the garage and covered in tarps.

Ethan whistled. “He never got rid of that busted riding mower? Hell, he had that when I was a baby.” A flash of some indefinable emotion crossed his face.

Anyway, I had plans, and Victoria must be almost to the school by now. It was on the other side of town from the town hall and town square, where the night’s festivities were taking place, which was why we’d picked it as a meeting place.

“I need to get going.”

Ethan raised an eyebrow and gave me the once-over. “New jeans? Nice shirt that actually buttons? You got yourself a hot date, little brother? I know it’s not with Paula, because she already told us she’d be waiting for you at the party, and I told her she was nuts.”

“It’s not with Paula. We were over a long time ago,” I said evenly. “You made sure of that.”

Ethan had warned me that Paula wasn’t faithful, but I hadn’t believed him, too full of myself to believe she’d cheat on me. He’d made sure I walked in on the two of them in her living room one evening. She’d been sitting on his lap. I might not have minded so much if either of them had been wearing shirts.

I let myself enjoy the memory of punching him in the face.

“I let you hit me, didn’t I? And all I was doing was trying to protect you from a cheating slut.”

I pushed past Ethan and headed for my bike. “Right, Ethan. Funny how I’ve never had anybody to protect me from you.”

He stopped me with a hand on my arm. “We need to talk. I have a job that would be perfect for you.”

“I won’t deal drugs for you, Ethan.” I shook off his hand. “I don’t know how many ways to say the same thing, over and over. I won’t do it—not now, not ever. I’m going to college, which will be hard to do if I’m in jail or dead.”

“I don’t want you to deal drugs. I want you to be a kind of procurement manager,” he drawled.

“What? What the hell is that? A pimp? You gonna run girls now, too?” This was more than I had time or patience for right then, but hearing the words “procurement manager” come out of my brother’s mouth had definitely caught my attention.

“No, idiot,” he said, but a speculative gleam came to his eyes. “Although that might be a great idea for the future. Anna Mae has all those empty trailers. . . . No. Forget that. I need somebody fresh-faced and criminal-record-free to manage my supply chain. Everybody’s cracking down hard on the sale of pseudoephedrine.”

“What?”

He grinned, trying to play it casual, but I could see the fear skittering behind his eyes. Something or someone had him running scared.

“I just need you to round up a chain of kids to buy cold medicine.”

Now I got it. Cold medicines contained the main ingredient necessary to cook meth, and there were limits on how much you could buy at one time or in one place. Mom had complained that she’d had to give her drivers’ license at Wal-Mart to get some cold medicine one day, and Pa had filled us in on the reasoning behind the new rules. The stricter the regulations governing buying the cold meds, the smaller the state’s problem with meth labs, he’d said.

Now my brother was offering me a way to get my name on a rap sheet and my fingerprints in state and federal police records.

I was touched.

“Not a chance in hell,” I said.

“You owe me,” he said calmly. “I could have let your girlfriend’s sister get really and truly fucked up that day. I let her go for you.”

“Fine. I owe you one. Tell me when you want me to clean out
your
garage,” I said impatiently. “I’m not turning into a criminal because you didn’t assault Melinda Whitfield.”

Jeb, apparently bored, smashed his bottle on the sidewalk in front of the garage and wandered over.

“I just cleaned that sidewalk, asshole,” I told him.

He wobbled a little—I guess that hadn’t been his first beer of the evening—and glared at me. “We heard you stood up for that Whitfield girl at school after her pa fired all the Rhodales, and we’re here to tell you that you’re on your last fucking chance with us.”

I looked at Ethan. “What’s with all this ‘we’ and ‘us’ shit? Does the drunken idiot speak for you now?”

Before Ethan could answer, Jeb took a swing at me that didn’t come close to hitting me. “I’ve had enough of your holier-than-thou bullshit, Mickey,” he shouted.

“Whatever, Jeb. Why don’t you go climb inside another bottle?” I turned away, but Ethan’s warning sound stopped me.

“Jeb, put the gun down,” Ethan said calmly.

I slowly turned around, no sudden movements, and discovered that Ethan and Pa weren’t the only Rhodales going around strapped. Jeb had a Glock in his shaking hands, and he was pointing it right at my stomach.

“Say you’re sorry,” he demanded.

“I’m sorry,” I said instantly. Only a damned fool would argue with a drunk with a gun.

“You better be sorry,” he blustered. “You better—”

“He said he was sorry, Jeb,” Ethan said. “Give me the gun.”

Jeb moved the gun so now it was pointing at Ethan. Since Ethan was standing only two feet away from me, this didn’t reassure me at all.

“You shut up, too! I’m tired of taking orders from you, like you’re the big damn king of the world,” Jeb shouted.

“You’re right,” Ethan said reasonably, and Jeb faltered in his tirade.

“What?”

“You’re right. Screw it, we’re brothers. We should be nicer to each other. Let’s go get drunk and leave Mickey up to whatever junior high bullshit he’s into tonight.” Ethan said. He took a couple of slow steps as he talked, so Jeb had to turn a little to the right to keep an eye on him, and then Ethan moved three fingers against the side of his leg in a signal we’d worked out when we were kids playing pickup games of football in the neighborhood.

Go for the interception.

Ethan started talking about how Paula’s older sister had the hots for Jeb, which distracted him enough that he lowered his arm a little, and I tackled his ass, making sure I got the gun before it hit the ground and accidentally discharged.

“Good job,” Ethan said, but when I tried to hand him the gun, he wouldn’t take it.

“You keep it. Consider it an advance on salary.”

Jeb moaned and slowly worked his way up off the ground, and I tensed for a fight. Ethan knocked Jeb out with a fast, powerful, right hook, and then gestured to his flunkies to pick our unconscious brother up and put him on one of the old lawn chairs I’d cleaned and set out to dry.

“He can sleep it off,” Ethan said grimly. “If he’s lucky, I won’t kick his ass later for this.”

“Take this gun, Ethan, or I’ll give it to Pa,” I warned him. “You’ll be out hundreds of dollars and in a world of hurt, because we both know this is not registered.”

“Do what you need to do, Mickey. We’ll talk more later,” Ethan said, glancing at his watch. “I’m outta here.”

He and his thugs took off, leaving me standing there holding the gun. I hid it in a dark corner of the still-untouched part of the garage, stared at it for a while, thinking, and then changed my mind and took it with me. No time to change my now grass-stained and ripped-at-the-knees jeans for my date. Victoria would have to take me for who I was, and it was sure as hell no squeaky-clean, country club Biff.

If she hadn’t already given up on me because I was late.

When she didn’t answer her phone, I broke the speed limit all the way to the school.

Chapter 29

Victoria

H
e was fifteen minutes late. No, seventeen.

He wasn’t coming.

After everything it had taken for me to get out of the house, I couldn’t believe it. I started the truck, because neither my wounded dignity nor my pride would let me wait for him to be twenty minutes late.

Mickey roared into the parking lot before I could put the truck in drive, taking the turn at a breakneck speed that left me gasping. Before I could even turn the ignition back off, he hopped off his bike, strode over, threw the truck door open, and pulled me to him. Then he kissed me until I melted against him and had to cling to his shoulders just so I didn’t fall out of the truck.

“I—what was that?” I was feeling as dazed and breathless as I sounded, and I looked up into those beautiful blue eyes for some kind of explanation.

“You waited for me,” he said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Would you like for me to drive, since I know where we’re going?”

I liked that he didn’t automatically think he was driving my truck, just because he was a guy and I was a girl, but I was happy to have him drive. I slid over to the passenger seat, and I caught his gaze on the top of my thighs, bared almost up to my panties when I scooted.

I yanked my skirt down, and he closed his eyes and muttered something under his breath that sounded oddly like “forget it, Biff,” but I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know. I was having a hard enough time breathing after those kisses, and every time I stole a glance at him, so darkly delicious in his navy blue shirt, my pulse raced, and I realized again that I might be in over my head with this boy.

We headed out, and he kept turning to look at me.

“You’re not even bruised?”

I touched my cheek. “I am, but the arnica and ice helped, and Melinda—well, she’s a genius with the magic of makeup. I think all the times she had to hide a hangover made her an expert.”

He looked at me again, this time for so long that I started to worry.

“Hey! Watch the road, or I’m going to drive.”

“How do you expect me to watch the road when you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen?”

In anybody else, it would have been a line, but from Mickey, the words had such fervent sincerity that I melted a little bit more.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “I feel beautiful tonight—I love this dress.”

“It’s a great dress. I’m trying really hard not to stop the truck and take it off you,” he said bluntly.

“Mickey!” My face felt like it was on fire.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I’m sorry, Victoria. I’m not smooth, or much of a gentleman. You make me crazy, and just looking at you in that little dress makes me want you more than I’ve ever wanted any girl in my life. I’ll try to be more delicate about saying stuff to you, but I’m not sure how much success I’ll have.”

I didn’t know what to say. I’d tried very hard not to think about what sexual experience he’d probably had, with pretty much any girl he wanted, especially since I hadn’t had any. This was definitely not a conversation I’d thought we’d be having in the first ten minutes of our first date.