Wildly Inappropriate (18 page)

Dan folded his arms around her, hugging her tightly. People were coming out of the store to see what the commotion was about. More than one white face showed their disapproval, he thought. Black faces looked unhappy too, given the fact he'd just decked two. He still glared at the hooligans as they limped to their car, but his heart sank at the knowledge he'd hurt her. Again. He couldn't seem to stop stepping on his own dick. All he'd been trying to do was to help her.

"What am I gonna do, Daniel? What can I do? I can't let my grams sleep in the street or go to some shelter!"

Rage and shame twisted hotly in his chest. Testosterone had started to pool in his shaft, but the sound of her sobs seemed to soothe the beast raging inside him. The Buick burned rubber getting off the lot, the squealing sound underscoring his vow. "I don't know, sweetheart, but I promise you, I'll think of something." That was what he did. He solved problems, for his customers, for his brothers, and he'd solve hers, somehow. He placed her gently in the wrecker, patting her thigh while he tried to think of a way to apologize for… all the things he needed to apologize to her for. She wouldn't look at him.

The long drive back to the shop to drop off the wrecker and pick up his truck before finally heading to the farmhouse seemed interminable. Daniel listened to her choked sobs and every time headlights swept past in the dark, he saw her shoulders shaking. He tried to soothe her with one hand and keep the wrecker on the narrow roads with the other. At the shop, she remained mute, but the security lights showed him her wet face before she climbed into his truck and turned away from him once again. While he wasn't responsible for the mess she found herself in, he wasn't quite a big enough bastard to use her the way he had, then leave her to find her way out this mess alone.

Not even Rafe had been that kind of bastard.

An hour after they silently got into bed, he knew she was still crying. Although she had her back to him, Dan felt the mattress shaking from Cynda's silent sobs. The last person he wanted to think about tonight was Rafe, but the man wouldn't shut up inside Dan's head.

"The only known antidote for an estrogen storm is testosterone. If your woman can't control her emotions, then she's needin' you to be a man. You can fuck her or you can pour gasoline on that fire smolderin' inside her, but when she's all strung out cryin', that's when she needs you to be a man the most. Women try and take on too much, the good ones anyway. I don't mean in their heads—they can handle that—but when something strikes at their heart, well, you gotta help dial that back sometimes, and to do that, you have to love her more than you hate shoulderin' your responsibility to her as her man."

He knew he wasn't Cynda's man, but he did feel a responsibility toward her. "Cynda, you need to sleep, sugar. Calm down." He caressed her hip, feeling the way she trembled.

"I c-c-can't c-c-al-m d-o-o-wn." The mattress shook harder. He looked at the luminous dial on his watch. She'd been crying for nearly two hours straight, and tears weren't going to solve any of her problems. When she wore herself out, she was going to wake up and still be a black woman living among ignorant rednecks, and there was still going to be loan shark trying to take her grandmother's house.

Maybe Rafe had been wrong. Maybe Colton was the stronger man, but Dan sat up and turned on the light. Throwing the covers back, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, rubbing his face before he stood. Each step he took past the carved cedar chest at the foot of the bed that Cammie had called her hope chest felt like one more step toward his own extinction, but he didn't have it in him to let her continue to suffer from the grip of her emotions.

His heart was heavy when he tugged the covers out of her tightly clenched fists. Sliding his arms under her shoulders and knees, Dan scooped her off the bed, sat down, and held her in his lap. Pressing his lips to her forehead, he tightened his arms around her, but her response was to curl into a ball. Tears trickled from her eyes and she shook like a leaf in his grasp.

There didn't seem to be anything he could say to explain what he meant to do. Maybe after she stopped crying, he'd find the words.

Dan turned her over his knees. Her body went rigid. He raised his hand, hating Rafe more in that moment than he ever had, even more than the nights he'd cleaned up the old bastard's puke. He let his hand fall, knowing the blow would be harder than she'd expect. She cried out, but Dan raised his hand again. And again. And again. Until she was sobbing so hard Daisy jumped the gate and came to stand at the end of the bed. Dan heard the dog growling above Cynda's cries.

Growling at
him.

Tears stung his eyes too, but he reprimanded Daisy, raising his voice above Cynda's violent sobbing. "Get back to your pup." He went back to spanking her, gauging her outrage by the tension he felt in her spine with the hand he used to hold her down and the way her ribs dug into his thighs with every rapid breath. Her sobs became shrieks. Daisy's growling grew louder, and the setter took another step closer.
Rafe had been wrong. Didn't I suspect all along the old man was full of shit?
Dan recorded another black mark against his soul, halting his blows to rub her abused curves, in the idiotic hope of comforting her.

And then he felt it happen.

Cynda relaxed, her rigid muscles went limp. She spoke, but not to him, her voice choked by her tears. "It's okay, Daisy girl. I needed this."

Immediately, Dan helped her turn. He cradled her to his chest, placing kisses on her wet cheeks.

"Thank you," she whispered when he wiped away her last tear.

There was no trace of facetiousness in her eyes.

He made them comfortable in the center of the bed, and she curled into him, putting her head on his shoulder and her arm around his waist, offering her lips for him to kiss. He took them eagerly, but made a point to keep his kisses tender and undemanding. In truth, he felt wrung out and wanted nothing more than to stroke her and cuddle her. In a matter of minutes, she was sleeping like a lamb, with Daisy standing guard. The setter dared to put her paws on the bed and stretched her neck to lick Cynda's bare foot, but when she raised her head, it seemed to Dan she gave him a look out of her blank eyes that made him wonder whose dog she was now.

Long after a mewling cry from her pup called Daisy away, Dan counted the pleats in the canopy overhead, and his only comfort was the peaceful sound of Cynda's breathing.

Chapter Fifteen

Not many cars passed the three trucks backed onto the sidewalk on the northwest end of Magnolia Street. A train rushed by about a block or so up the street and Cynda wished it were closer. Maybe it would've stirred up a breeze. The heat and humidity made walking in a straight line feel like pushing a revolving door; the drag seemed to sap her energy.

She hadn't put much thought into what a building about to be demolished might look like. Most of the lobby's fixtures had been ripped out, along with the banisters on the steps leading to the upper floors. Chunks of brick were scattered across the mosaic floor she'd come to see. Lila, a tall blonde with her hair plaited into a French braid and friendly blue eyes, used the side of her tennis shoe to rake aside the debris. Beneath their feet, bright cobalt tiles framed medallions of gold and russet picturing mythological animals.

"The floor was a WPA project, back in the late thirties," Lila explained. "Can't figure out how a private hotel got this kind of work done and paid for by the government. The building might've been government offices at the time, but I can't find any record of that online." Sighing, she pushed at the wet tendrils sticking to her neck. "With everything going on, I didn't have time to research it properly." She kicked at a small piece of brick, then pointed with her flashlight to the elaborate plaster ceiling. The gold paint was streaked with grime and the floral swags strung between fat cherubs were chipped and cracked. "It's such a shame someone couldn't have restored this place."

Cynda murmured her agreement, moving her light along the floor, trying to see the next fantastic creature. Lila stepped farther into the dim lobby. The men had gone straight up the stairs as soon as the security guard had gotten each of their signatures on a release and unlocked the door for them.

She didn't find Lila intimidating, but she didn't feel a need to speak. She was still musing on the reason when Lila set her foot on the wide staircase. "Wonder which floor they started on?"

Cynda didn't care. She wasn't about to go up those steps. There were sure to be bats up there and she'd had her fill of rabid critters.

"Coming up?" Lila asked.

"Nope. I'll be right here thinkin' about how it would feel to ride a half-mermaid, half-unicorn across the ocean when you get back."

She preferred the time alone. Not because she didn't like Colton's girlfriend, but because she had stuff to think about. Lila's bright shirt disappeared in the gloom. Cynda shook her head, recalling the way Colton had ordered her to stay in the lobby with Cynda.

She gingerly rubbed her butt. Daniel had stunned her by getting up to turn her over his lap. He'd made her cry harder, but those cries had been more like a heavy storm that couldn't sustain its fury and her sobbing had soon burned out.

In the wake of that, rather than feeling angry, a sense of peace seemed to fill her. He wrapped her in his huge arms and she'd drifted to sleep listening to the steady whisper of his heartbeat. The feeling was still present when he'd awakened her this morning, asking whether she still wanted to see the hotel or would prefer to sleep in.

She wanted to be wherever Daniel was. Just not enough to defy him by climbing those stairs. She used her flashlight and the camera on his cell phone to take pictures of her favorite medallions. Grams had taught her to appliqué, and she thought she might turn the designs into quilt someday. She forwarded each image to her cell number, regretting that Grams couldn't see well enough to help her with the project.

Lost in her thoughts, Cynda had no idea how much time had passed when she heard quarreling. Two beams of light presaged Colton coming down the stairs, his hand firmly around Lila's arm.

"Cynda, Dan says you have a perfect driving record." He strode across the lobby, half-dragging Lila. Releasing her arm, he pressed Daniel's keys into Cynda's hand. "Now, what I want is for you two ladies to go pick up lunch. We don't need a supervisor, Lila. We need to be fed." He pressed a firm kiss to Lila's downturned lips. "Under no circumstance is she to drive, Cynda. By the time you get back from, oh, say Wade's, we'll be ready to drop the last two tubs in the back of Daniel's truck and get the hell outta here."

"I like their fried chicken," Cynda said, referring to the restaurant Colton mentioned.

"I think it's greasy," Lila said mulishly, her eyes narrowed on Colton's disappearing back. "If I have to eat that, I think I'll puke. It's too hot for fried chicken," Lila declared. They crossed the lobby and stepped outside. Cynda blinked in the bright sun. "How about the Southside Café? You know where that is?"

Every black person in town knew about Miss Abby's restaurant, where for four dollars, you got five vegetables and a meat, cornbread and dessert. There wasn't a menu. You ate whatever she was fixing that day. Cynda sighed.
Why do some white people try so hard to show they aren't prejudiced?
"Of course."

She was taken aback when Lila stepped behind the faded red Formica counter, grabbing the older black woman in a tight embrace. "Lila Walker, how you been doin'?" Abby demanded, giving the white woman a long hug before pushing Lila firmly out of her domain, but not smacking her with a spoon the way she would've anyone else Cynda knew.

"Cynda Avery, how's Miss Coralinne?" Abby asked about Grams, pointing to the counter where a row of chrome-plated stools awaited.

"Still fair to middlin', Miss Abby. She needs that surgery on her eyes, you know." Cynda replied, taking a seat. Unabashed, Lila ducked around the counter again, fixing two glasses of tea. Abby shook her head, but smiled at the blonde. They sipped the tea and chatted while the best cook in town made them six plates heaped with fried chicken livers and turnip greens, mashed potatoes that weren't made from powdered flakes, fried okra and fresh sliced tomatoes and cantaloupe, putting each plate in a little cardboard box. Lila jumped up again to make an equal number of teas in foam cups and fastened lids on them. The adept way she navigated the space behind the counter implied a familiarity Cynda couldn't have equaled.

"How do you know her?" Cynda asked, leaning forward to whisper.

"Lila, Cynda here wants to know how we got acquainted," Abby said loudly, to Cynda's chagrin.

Lila grinned over her shoulder. "An old college boyfriend brought me here the first time. I ditched him, but I sure kept Miss Abigail. Thanks to her, I didn't starve trying to eat the cafeteria food down at the women's college."

Abby laughed loudly as she sat the containers on the counter. "She only tellin' half the tale. If it weren't for me, Pete woulda kicked her butt out that first year they was married. Lila started hangin' out here, jus' to learn how to boil water without scorchin' it." Abby's brown eyes filled. "Been 'bout a year now, hasn't it, Lila?"

Lila's eyes suddenly brimmed, too. "Be a year tomorrow." She shook open a plastic bag violently before placing it on the counter and began setting the drinks into it.

Pulling a twenty and a ten out of the back pocket of her jean shorts, she stuffed them into the old pickle jar Abby used instead of a cash register. Grabbing the teas and one bag holding the plates, she bolted out the front door.

"My poor chile done forgot her bread n' desserts." Abby shook her head and doled banana pudding into six containers. She tucked a piece of aluminum foil filled with cornbread into the top of another bag, then set all the bags into a cut-down cardboard box. Cynda somehow managed to get out the door, weighted down like a pack mule.