needs to change her bra and panties in a store?” Katy had just said, “Never mind,” and figured she’d change at the McDonald’s down the road. She knew Randy would like the matching black lace bra and panties. Randy liked it when she took extra care to dress for him. He liked most everything she did, except taking something without asking. Once it was just a cigarette from his pack on the table. And then the shirt. He’d been really pissed about her taking it when she’d left his house that night. But he was asleep, and there was a cool rain falling, and she needed something over her tank top. So she just picked up his shirt from the floor. She told him she’d return it, and he said that wasn’t the point. Now it was in the truck, just picked up from the cleaners because it was a Brooks Brothers. She’d take it back, and she’d surprise him with a nice clean shirt and new black lace underwear. The clerk came out of the store, said, “Miss, why are you standing here?”
Katy laughed. “Ma’am, I’m just standing here thinking about a man. Don’t you remember just standing and thinking about a man?”
“Well, I’d be more comfortable if you did your thinking someplace else.” Then she gave Katy a look that meant nothing but business and went back inside.
Katy laughed and headed for her truck. She hoped Billy would work late. She’d need the time to get to Randy’s, the grocery store, then home to clean up and make that lasagna and run him a bath that would make him forget they’d ever had a fight. The good wife. She’d make him the good-wife meal. Just like her mother. But she didn’t want her mother’s life. So what the hell was she doing?
She got in the truck, found her keys, and wished she had her cell phone. If she had her phone, she’d call Randy to say she was coming, and then maybe she’d call Billy to tell him she was making the lasagna he liked. She knew it was messed up. She looked at the keys in her hand, realized she was sitting there in a sweat, an idiot in a truck, baking in the heat.
Katy flinched when Jesse opened the passenger door and jumped in.
He tossed the hundred-dollar bill in her lap and smiled. “Mind giving me a ride?”
“What?” The plastic bag of clothes crumpled to her feet.
“I need you to follow that car. It’s kind of an emergency, and taxis won’t run to where we need to go.”
She studied his face. Good-looking and smooth. “You’re sitting on my boyfriend’s shirt.”
He lifted the shirt, smoothed it across his lap. “Sorry,” he said. Then he smiled a smile that was just a little bit devilish. “Come on.” He gave a little shrug like a boy. “It’s just a little drive.” Yeah, he was cute, and he knew it.
She glanced back at the white Datsun rumbling behind the Dumpster. The driver looked like a kid, soft round face, big dark eyes staring at the man beside her.
“Come on,” he said. She turned and looked into his eyes, green flecked with black and looking straight at her. She’d always had a thing for green eyes. She tried to guess his age, early twenties, she figured, younger than she was, but worn. He was hard-looking, like a man who didn’t eat enough real meals, a man who worked out in a basement. He had a scar on his cheekbone, a little crescent shape. But what a mouth, pretty lips that curved in just the right places. The kind of mouth that knew just how to kiss. Pushy but firm and soft.
He smiled, leaned a little closer. “Yeah, I know. You like my face. I get that.” He picked up the hundred-dollar bill. “But I’m not looking for a date right now. I just need you to follow that car.” She liked the smell of him, clean but that man smell underneath.
“Why should I follow that car?” she asked. Katy had tended bar for years. She was used to guys wanting things. Asking questions was the best way she knew to make them stall. Men, no matter what they were after, always liked a little time to talk.
“Why?” The bill dropped into her lap, and he eased back into the seat beside her. “Don’t you need the money?”
“Well, sure, but—”
“Well, sure. Yes, you need the money. The thing is, my friend there, his name is Ronald, and I’m Brad.” He offered to shake her hand, and she almost took it, but she kept her hands on the steering wheel. “Okay, then, I understand your caution, some strange dude jumping in your truck—”
She laughed. “Well, yeah.”
He smiled. “You see my friend there, Ronald, he’s a little nervous. His granny, she’s sick, and she lives way out there in Whitwell. Out by Lake Waccamaw.”
Then she grinned, sat up, looked around. “Is this a joke? Where’s Randy?”
“I don’t know no Randy,” Jesse said. “What you talking about?”
“Randy. My friend. He likes to play little tricks on me. He lives out by Lake Waccamaw. I drive out there sometimes.”
“That’s nice,” Jesse said. “It’s real pretty country out there, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Yeah, there’s something pure out there. No tourists. Just trees and water and sky.”
“And Randy,” he said. “But I guess you just drive out there for the nature and all.”
She turned to him. “Look, I’d like to help you out, but I gotta get home.”
Jesse shook his head and leaned closer. There was a softness to him, but a confidence. She liked that soft confidence in a man. She breathed that scent of him. He definitely knew what he had. He sat back and looked out her windshield as if this were just another conversation. “You got a chance to do something good here. I saw your license plate—POSITIV.’ You like to think positive, right?”
“I try,” Katy said.
“You like to do good things, right?”
She nodded, looked back at the other guy in the car.
Jesse sighed. “Well, Ronald’s granny, she’s sick, and he’s got these groceries in his trunk, and he’s gotta get the stuff to her, and if he makes it there, he can get a neighbor to work on the car.” He nodded, rocking in the seat beside her. “See, she’s waiting, and we’ve got these groceries in the trunk, and it’s a long ways out there through farm country. And that car, it’s always stalling out, and you got no idea how bad that can be in this heat.”
It sounded like a good story, but there was something off. “I need to get home,” she said. “My fiancé—”
“What about Randy? Nah, Randy isn’t your fiancé.” He said the word mean and teasing. He lifted the hundred-dollar bill and held it to her face. “For your gas and trouble. It’s just forty-five minutes from here. But then, you know that ’cause Randy lives out there, and you like to drive out and see him.”
She studied her hands on the steering wheel. The engagement ring shone in the sunlight. Something was wrong. This felt like a joke. It had to be a joke. Maybe it was Billy’s joke. Maybe Billy had found out about Randy. Maybe Billy somehow knew where Randy lived. “Is this a joke?”
“Nah, man,” Jesse said. “This is serious. Listen to that car of his.”
She listened to the chugging, staggering sound of the engine. “I’m sure it’s something simple,”
