Dirt: A Sexy Small Town Romance (Copperwood Book 1) (4 page)

One more thing to add to my list of disappointments. Which ironically, wasn’t all that disappointing.

I stumbled along the uneven wooden floor to the ancient bathroom. Not as though the shower could disappoint me any more than my bed, or the town, or my father, or Mike, or Shane fucking Crawford.

I should have known better. As soon as I twisted the ancient bath handles to start the water through the spigot and pulled up the release to start the shower, an uncomfortable gurgling noise rumbled up from the basement. The sound culminated with a boom I swore shook the foundations, but it might also have been my knees buckling.

I’m not sure which surprised me more, the noise, or that I could hear the noise from the basement. Stopping the water, I turned back around and raced down into the basement.

Yet another surprise welcomed me in the basement. This one wasn’t so unpleasant though. My father, crouched down in front of the water heater, stared at the pipes looking for the problem.

He looked up at me from his studying and for the first time in what felt like years, there was a sense of recognition in his eyes. The water heater broke him out of his obsession with the past. The fucking water heater. Not his loving daughter. Not his best friends at the Elk’s lodge. Not even the death of his good friend, Tom Crawford, could pull him out of his funk. But an ancient inanimate object succeeded where we all had failed.

“It might be on its last leg.” He turned back to ratcheting the wrench around the connector between a pipe and the heater.

Of course it was. I mentally scratched everything off my shopping list that wasn’t a necessity. Replacing the water heater was going to cost hundreds of dollars. Hundreds of dollars we didn’t have.

For a moment I flashed to the hundred dollar bill still stuffed in the pocket of my jeans. It could help with the water heater. No, I couldn’t use it. I had to give the money back to Shane. I wasn’t going to take his money just because he felt bad for me. I wasn’t a charity case.

My dad cursed under his breath. Part of me was torn between letting him continue and stopping him to send him off to bed. “Leave it till the morning, Dad.”

“Hmmm?” He didn’t bother to look up at me. Not that I really expected him to. Ever since mom died, I turned into a ghost.

“Go back to bed, dad. You don’t need to try to fix it.”

“It’s fine.” The tone of dismissal in his voice couldn’t have been more obvious.

I turned around and went back up the stairs. At least I could make a pot of coffee. By the time the coffee maker announced its completion with a beep, the idea of trying to lie down in my bed and sleep started looking more and more like a good idea. Even if I couldn’t sleep, at least in bed, nothing bad could happen and I could bury myself under the heavy comfort of the blankets.

I poured two cups of coffee and carried them down the basement. “I’ll call Mike later on, he’ll come over and help you.”

Dad took a sip of the hot coffee and grunted around the rim of the cup. Ignoring my suggestion, he set the cup down on the cement floor by his knee and resumed using the wrench on the rusty bolts holding the pipes in place.

I leaned against the wall, holding the cup between my hands. “I saw Shane Crawford tonight.”

Dad looked over at me and lifted his eyebrows with his eyes wide, but he quickly turned back to his task. “For the funeral?”

“He said he wasn’t staying past Sunday.” I lifted my shoulder up and considered all of the possible answers to his question.

“How’s he doing?”

Leave it to dad to ignore the obvious questions, but then he was always good at finding out what drama filled event was ruining my life when I hit puberty. “He seemed okay.”

“You didn’t ask, Mya?”

I didn’t need to hear his chastisement. He checked out of our lives after he got laid off. No that wasn’t true. He checked out when mom died. When he got laid off, he went through the motions of living, but it was like he already knew mom was going to die and was practicing. And then when mom died, he fell deeper into his fog of hopelessness. It wasn’t even like he was sad, it was worse because he didn’t show any emotion.

“It really wasn’t the place. I was working, he was drinking.”

Dad nodded his head. It was the cue from when I was teenager and he knew there was something more, but he would wait until I was ready to say it.

“He said he might give me a call, I’ll ask him then.”

Another one of his knowing looks. When Shane left town, dad knew what it did to me. He also knew that for all of Shane’s reputation as being fast with the girls, he never tried anything with me. Even though I wanted him to. Well, I don’t think dad knew that part. God, I wanted to be one of the girls Shane paid attention to, but me wanting it and Shane giving it wasn’t in my cards. Plus, dad never really saw Shane leaving town as abandoning me. He saw Shane leaving as an opportunity and promised me he would be back someday.

Turned out dad was right. I didn’t think either of us expected it to be ten years later, but he wasn’t wrong.

I sipped at my coffee, stalling before I said anything more. If I wasn’t careful, I might admit to my dad that I still wanted Shane. That I was still in love with Shane, even though he never loved me back the way I wanted him to.

“We talked about getting together before he leaves town.” I didn’t add that I was going to hunt Shane down if he didn’t call me. I had to give him back his money.

“Well then, we should probably get this water heater fixed so you can take a shower before Shane stops by.” Dad lifted the coffee and emptied its contents in a few swallows.

“He’s calling me, not stopping by.”

“Go back to bed, Mya.”

He didn’t correct my correction, but then growing up, he never said what I wanted to hear. “You should too, dad.”

We both knew neither one of us would take the other’s advice. We so rarely did in our current state. But I headed back up the stairs, at least I could pretend to take his suggestion.

7

Shane

I
kicked the rough sheets off my legs. I left Pick’s before closing, intending to go back to the motel and sleeping — I refused to sleep in my dad’s house — but everything about the motel was uncomfortable. The lights from the parking lot leaked through the curtains. The sink faucet in the bathroom dripped. The blankets and sheets scratched against my skin from too many washes with a too harsh detergent. But the worst offense was the empty feeling in of the bed, even though I hadn’t actually slept next to another person since college.

I finally gave up and got out of bed. I fired up my laptop and turned on the giant hanging lamp that hadn’t been updated since the seventies. If I wasn’t going to sleep, at least I could get work done.

My latest client was a gubernatorial candidate from a southern state and the voters of the state wouldn’t want to learn about any of the shenanigans he got into when he went away to college north of the Mason–Dixon line. So far, nothing I hadn’t dug up anything too bad, but I could tell he was hiding something when I interviewed him. A few hours digging up contacts on the Internet and I’d have a list of people to call when the sun finally came up in a few hours.

I’d make the calls, then I’d meet with the lawyer. I was actually looking forward to the meeting. Not because I wanted to look over the papers I needed to sign, but it meant I could spend the rest of the afternoon with Mya catching up with one another.

Who was I kidding? I wanted Mya Sydony. I wanted her back in high school, I just didn’t realize it until I left town and didn’t have her hanging around all the time, but by that time I already let her down.

The only thing I ever regretted in life was telling her I liked her as a friend. What can I say? I was young and stupid and hadn’t realized just how spectacular she was. I was an idiot.

I leaned back in my chair, folded my arms behind my head, and closed my eyes. I didn’t expect her to be working at Pick’s. I figured she’d have gotten married and ran far from town as possible, not necessarily in that order. But life happened to her and she was tied to Copperwood. And I was a very lucky man.

She wasn’t over me. I knew she wasn’t over me. It was obvious from the way she tried to avoid me during the night, but never quite managed to succeed at. I shook the thoughts of Mya out of my brain and made a half–hearted attempt to get back to my researching.

No matter how hard I tried to focus on untangling the college connections of the candidate to at least six degrees, I couldn’t get past the second degree. Images of Mya invaded my brain. Bad images. Images that made my cock harden. Thank God I had on a loose pair of pajama pants, anything tighter and I might have gotten an injury.

After several more minutes, I finally gave up and went to the bathroom to take a shower. I turned the water on and adjusted the heat before stripping my clothes off and leaving them in a pile on the floor. Just like everything else in this town, the motel was well past its expiration date and the shower took several minutes to heat up to a comfortable temperature.

I spent the time staring at my face in the mirror. How did Mya see me? Did she still see the stupid boy who broke her heart? Or did she see the man who left the boy far behind? I stared at the dark lines drawn over my chest. As long as I hid the tattoos under the refined clothes of a professional, no one guessed where I came from. But Mya knew where I came from. I never had to hide from her.

The tattoos were recent acquisitions since leaving Copperwood. Mya hadn’t seen them yet, and I wondered what you would think. She’d probably think I was the same troublemaker she tagged along after as a teenager.

Steam billowed out from the top of the shower and fogged up the cool surface of the mirror. I pressed my hands down on the counter and pushed my face close to the mirror. My nose brushed against the glass, and my breath mimicked the steam from the shower. I could still walk away from it all. I could leave Copperwood and handle my father’s estate from a distance. I didn’t have to stay. No, I didn’t have to stay, but I wanted to. I wanted to stay, because I wanted to spend time with Mya Sydony.

With a deep breath, I pushed myself back from the counter and stepped into the waiting shower. I bent my neck forwards so the water could fall down over my back. The showerhead would have hit my forehead if I stepped any closer to it, and the plastic shower curtain was well–past its due date, but at least the water was warm. Bracing my hands against the tile in front of me, I stared down at the water flowing down the drain and tried to avoid looking at my hard cock.

Thoughts of Mya caused it. I’d never seen her naked, hell I didn’t think I had ever even seen her in a bikini, and yet the thought of her denim–encased ass and her firm breasts under her snug t–shirt did more for my libido than Alene did rubbing up against me in her skimpy outfit.

It would have been so easy to wrap my fist around my cock and jerk off. It wasn’t as though I had never done it before. But for some reason, the thought of jacking off to Mya bothered me. It didn’t bother me when I imagined her when I was with other women, but somehow that was different. Or at least I tried to tell myself it was different. Thinking about Mya while I fucked another woman wasn’t exactly a romantic gesture.

Eventually, I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I wrapped one hand around the base of my shaft and cupped my heavy sack in my other hand. I didn’t have to work too hard. As soon as my fingers tightened around the smooth skin, my cock jerked in my grasp and I came hard. Christ. I wasn’t any better than a twelve year old boy who just learned his dick was good for more than pissing.

I watched the evidence of the lack of my self–control slip down the drain before snatching the bar of soap up off the holder. The soap wasn’t any different from anything else in the crap motel room that was my home for the next few days, but at least I be would clean. Too bad my mind wouldn’t be.

8

Mya

I
must have fallen asleep because the sound of men cursing and metal clanging against metal woke me up. The bed might be an uncomfortable slab of too soft crap, but I dreaded leaving it every time I woke up. I kicked the nest of blankets off my legs and stretched out before struggling to my feet. Grabbing a sweatshirt and pulling it over my head, I headed down the stairs. Even in my state of not–quite–being awake, I managed to avoid the loose step on my way to the kitchen.

A fresh pot of coffee welcomed me and I didn’t ask questions as I poured myself a cup of coffee. I followed the voices down into the basement and found Mike bent down on the ground with my father. Flipping over an empty bucket, I sat down on its bottom and sipped at my coffee while I watched the two men.

“Why are you here, Mike?” No real point in beating around the bush.

“What? I can’t stop by and visit my best girl?” He looked over his shoulder at me and winked before returning to his tinkering with the water heater. “You missed the donuts?”

Donuts? He brought donuts? I didn’t remember seeing them in the kitchen, but then I rarely saw anything but coffee when I first woke up in the morning. “Custard filled?”

“It’s a Bavarian. Sheesh woman, you live in the heart of where all the Germans landed when they first came here and you can’t remember that it’s a Bavarian.”

I shrugged my shoulders and took another sip of coffee. He was right. We were a town full of good German descendants who liked their beer, cheese, and sausage. I even delved into home brewing, before dad lost his job and my paycheck didn’t have to support us. I glanced over at the equipment covered with an old canvas tarp, but couldn’t stand to look too closely at it.

I’d finally have to cave and sell it now that the water heater decided to add to my woes. I might not be able to afford to dabble with my hobby, but at least I knew it was waiting for me. Unless we became the recipients of some miracle, I wouldn’t even have that.