Lady Sings the Blues (Brimstone Lord MC Book 1) Read online

  “You puked.” I chuckle.

  “No. Puke would suggest a normal amount. I erupted. Like, a high pressure geyser. All over the seat, the dash, Beau and his steering column, Logan, the floor.”

  She pauses her story to pile her napkins on the burger wrapper, ready to throw them away. I watch mesmerized as she stretches her arms above her head, arching her back, which of course makes me think about other ways to get her back to arch.

  “Hey, eyes up here.” She laughs as catches me staring. But when she arched her back, her chest pushed forward. And Elise has a fuckin’ fantastic rack. I’m a grown man. Grown men have these thoughts regularly. Don’t want her thinkin’ I’m an asshole, though. But, that’s how I notice the other customers around us quickly turning their heads away.

  Her story had an audience. Minds clamor for a look into her world. What with one Hollister father being the mayor and the other being county commissioner, along with both boys being lords of the football field, a look which included Thornbriar’s most fortunate sons.

  And cute, petite Elise Manning got the inside scoop firsthand.

  “Let’s go.” I grab up our trash and walk the three steps to the trashcan before she joins me.

  “Mark, I’d like to hold your hand. Just while we walk. You have very strong hands. They look like good hands to hold. Would that be okay? I can even explain it to your girlfriend in case it gets back to her, that you were just comforting a friend.”

  Smooth move, Elise. Shouldn’t that be my line? And with more spunk than I gave her credit for. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  The little coquette tips her head down, one corner of her mouth up in a playful smirk, watching me out of the corners of her eyes. “You don’t?” She asked with an obviously fake innocence.

  I shake my head no.

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Don’t much care for one of those. No judgment, just not my thing.” Her boldness earns her a smile back. “And Elise.” I stop to make sure she’s looking at me full-on this time. “You can hold my hand any time you want. It’s yours to hold so long as you’re here.”

  Replaced is my little coquette from a moment ago. I think I knocked her off her game because she lets out a shaky breath as she nudges at my bicep.

  “I don’t know why you’re being so nice to me, but thank you.” The woman does what she wanted to in the first place and links our fingers together.

  Her hand feels right in mine. Warm. Soft. We walk back in the direction of her father’s house because we’ll need to drive out to my bar. We’re silent for several minutes before she interrupts the stillness by speaking again.

  “Okay, I didn’t want to say this while so many ears were listening, but I feel like I should say it now. I’m sure you’re tired of hearing about Logan and Beau Hollister. But for some reason I feel compelled to talk with you.” The warm breeze picks up, rustling her hair, sweeping a few of the strands over her cheek. Elise nibbles her bottom lip. “Why do you think that is?” She asks.

  “Don’t know. Maybe because I’m a bartender. I hear lots of dirty little secrets.”

  What’s hanging between us is how desperately I don’t want that to be the reason. Part of me wants nothing more than for her to recognize it, while the other half hopes like hell she don’t. Not yet.

  And Jesus, the lavender scent from her shampoo is kinda making me dizzy. It a smell that if she were mine, I’d be burying my nose in her hair as I held her close because that ain’t the kind of scent you grow tired of.

  “What didn’t you want anyone else to hear back there?” I shake my head to clear it, slowing our pace to draw out our time together.

  “I’m not talking bad about him, so please don’t take it like that. But um—Logan was always jealous of Beau.”

  “What?”

  “I know. Cousins—practically brothers—and best friends. But it’s true. Logan and I actually broke up for a couple of days because of it.”

  “Wow. What was it about, if you don’t mind me askin’?”

  “Well, it was the start of our senior year. Beau had already left for UK. He’d been fixing up this sweet Mustang. The thing was a piece of crap when he bought it. Someone had wrecked it. But like I said, get Beau around an engine and magic happened. He restored it to showroom condition. He’d brought it to school with him, storing it at a friend’s garage. When he wasn’t in class or at football practice, he’d work on it. Already had a buyer lined up and everything. Beau and I talked on the phone all the time back then. He missed me and Logan. I missed him, something fierce. Without anyone Hollister enough to keep him in check, Logan’s ego started getting out of control. We were seniors now, after all, and ruled the school anyway.” She stopped talking to take a breath.

  But of all the Logan Hollister lore I’ve ever heard, this is new, even to my ears. “Go on.” I urge her.

  “The week before homecoming—Beau was our standing King and per tradition, as you probably know, would be handing off the crown to the new king, which everyone knew would be Lo.

  “Beau had finished the Mustang and wanted to try it before he sold it. Man, it was beautiful. Cherry red. White soft top. I’d never wanted to take a ride as badly as when I saw him roll up with the top down. Without me even having to ask, he held out his hand. Of course I jumped at the opportunity. Logan preferred muscle to speed in his cars. Funny, as he was the quarterback signed to play for UK the following fall. Speed was his job.”

  “There ain’t nothin’ like it.”

  “Right?” She agrees.

  “I love the feel of the wind on my face,” I tell her, and notice the brief smile which appears and disappears just as quickly.

  “Then you can probably picture me plastering myself to his side from the excitement.”

  Yep. I could absolutely picture it. In detail.

  “Logan saw us. He saw us leave. We were gone for a couple hours, the weather had been perfect that weekend, and the leaves were changing colors. I got to enjoy time with my friend without having to put on a show. Logan loved the show. He wanted everyone to envy us. I just wanted my Lo back. Seems I’d already started losing him.” She shrugs. “But he saw us come back, too. And he was pissed. That was the only day I’d ever been scared of him. Thought he might hit me.”

  “Sonofabitch,” I murmur.

  Her head snaps up to look at me with wide eyes and face drained of color. “Nothing happened between me and Beau,” she says quickly. “I’d never have cheated on Logan. I’d never cheat on anyone.”

  Elise, you say this like I’m judging you, like that’s why I’d say it?

  “So he broke up with you?”

  “Yeah. Which let me tell you, was awkward. We were each other’s homecoming date. So we went together as expected, but he was hostile to me the whole time. Only danced with me for the required dances. He was crowned king, and I’d made queen. Since he’d shown up, I spent the majority of the evening dancing with Beau. I just couldn’t tell him about me and Lo. I mean, they were cousins. What if he didn’t want me around anymore, either?

  “Then Beau took off back to school. He kissed my cheek and took off that night. Lo grabbed my hand and hauled me to his jeep. We ended up at this cabin the families owned off the river on route eight.”

  “The family still owns it.” I offer because, well, she’s been gone a while. It might make her feel better to hear the place has yet to leave Hollister hands. “Did he hurt you?”

  “What? No. Without the audience, he got real lovey, admitted to me how much my friendship with Beau bothered him because it just came so easy with Beau. He was afraid of losing me to his cousin.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “As a stroke.”

  “I think it’s as a heart attack.”

  “Does it matter? They’re both serious.”

  Touché. “So what happened next?”

  Beautiful Elise bites her lip, lookin’ to her feet, her face reddening to almost strawberry. “We um…got back tog
ether.”

  “That’s it? Very un-climactic ending to your story.” Yeah, I tease her because I gotta hear how this ends.

  “It wasn’t. Trust me.”

  We stop at the curb and wait while an old Impala with half its muffler hanging down rumbles by us leaving a trail of thick, black, noxious air for us to choke on. She uses the collar of her shirt as a facemask while we continue on to cross the street, through the smog.

  “Then what happened?”

  She blows her bangs from her face, exasperated. “I lost my virginity that weekend, if you must know.”

  “But I—I mean everyone thought—”

  “I know what they thought. Because we’d been together all of junior year. We’d done other stuff. I just wasn’t ready to take that next step. Course, once I let him score the touchdown, it was game on.”

  “TMI, Elise. T.M.I.”

  3.

  Elise

  Though I’m glad to be out walking with Mark, as he’s managed to turn what started out as a craptastic day into something tolerable, I can’t shake this prickles on the back of my neck feeling. A being watched feeling.

  By who? Who knows? Too many people have grown tired of my presence, despite my only arriving this morning, and would like nothing more than to lay claim to being the hero who ran the traitorbitchwhore out of town.

  What I do know, I’m here for the week whether they want to run me out of town or not. And I’d like nothing more than to let Mark help me forget, even for a short while, that it’s because I have to bury my father. He’s the first man I’ve felt such a strong attraction to since my heart was broken by a Hollister man so many years ago. And not by the one who should have. That ship had sailed. The one part to the story the town actually got right. Although I was never the traitor, bitch or whore the town accused me of being. No one would listen to the truth, no one that is, except for Beau. Too bad we had so many strikes against us.

  Too bad the same goes for me and Mark. Poor timing, poor location. We’re a Shakespearian tragedy waiting to happen. He’s a Montague and I’m a Capulet.

  Maybe he’d be willing to visit me in Chicago. Long distances can work, right? Especially in the face of such an immediate connection. I feel it. He feels it. I see it in the way he looks at me. His eyes convey that same heart stuttering, knees buckling, hard to catch a breath sensation I’ve been plagued with since our first meeting. Though, it’s more than that. When we talk, when I held his hand for the first time, he brings with him a sense of history aside from the obvious physical attraction. One I really don’t understand, but if he were willing, I’d be willing to try too.

  Scarily, it’s the same kind of connection I’d felt locking eyes with Lo seven years ago, only without the history. Apparently I’m a sucker for a bad joke. That’s when it happened, I connected with him the minute “A duck walked into a bar.” Thank goodness Mark’s a bartender and not a comedian, or I might never get myself to leave.

  Sure I started dating again, I mean, once I actually began leaving my apartment. But most of those were first dates only. Not because any one of them came to the date with exaggerated quirks. Not a one still lived with his mother, only ate yellow food or owned an abundance of “kitties” he had to run home and tend to. Generally speaking, they were perfectly fine men, just… Sitting through dinner made me feel more like I’d been dining with a distant cousin than a potential mate. Mark’s the first man I’ve met in five years who I’ve felt like touching, and not in an innocent, ‘Welcome to Thanksgiving dinner, Cousin Jackie’ kind of way.

  I actually never thought I’d entertain the idea of sex again, either. But honestly, if Mark asked me home with him right now, I don’t know that I’d turn him down. What does that say about me? Probably that I need to get laid.

  As we walk back toward my dad’s house, Mark pulls a smooth, black rock from his pocket. He continues to hold my hand while flipping the rock up in the air and catching it in his other hand on a continuous loop. Or action. Whatever you want to call it, he does it.

  “What’s with the rock?” I finally venture to ask, tearing my eyes away from the hypnotizing movements.

  There’s something fun and almost naughty the way he leans into me. “It’s my sex rock.”

  I totally stop walking. A sex rock? I’ve never heard of a sex rock. “What exactly is a sex rock?” I ask in a low voice, ready to be let in on his secret.

  With his crooked smile growing, doubling in size, I wait.

  The anticipation just about to kill me when he opens his sexy mouth to speak again. I know I’m about to be let in on something big.

  “It’s just a fuckin’ rock,” he says, and he winks at me.

  “Asshole!” I shout, drop his hand and stomp off, more upset with myself that I’d fall for something so obviously stupid. But I don’t get far as he snags the back of my shirt pulling me to a stop.

  “Wait. Wait. I was just teasin’ you, darlin’.”

  “What did you just call me?”

  “Darlin’. Why?”

  “Someone used to call me that a long time ago.”

  “Well, you are quite the darlin’. But if you don’t like it, I won’t do it again.”

  “It’s fine. You just caught me off guard.”

  “You still mad at me?” He quivers his bottom lip, flutters his eyelashes.

  “No. But my car’s just there.” I point to the street where I’d left my car parked while we went to lunch. I wish we hadn’t gotten here so soon. “I have to find a hotel before I do anything else. Had been hoping when I rolled into town that Hadley would let me stay with her. She wouldn’t even let me in the house, so I really have no choice now.”

  “Okay, come to the bar when you’re checked in.”

  Mark pulls me closer resting his hands on my upper arms, not a hug but it could be if he shifted those arms just a bit more. His eyes scan my face, watching my eyes anticipating his kiss then they drop to my lips which suddenly become so dry I have no choice but to lick them. Then his gaze drops lower to my chest raising and lowering with slow exaggerated movements mirroring that same anticipation he sees in my eyes. Finally. Finally he bends his head in a slow descent, and I just know I’m about to get my first kiss in five long years to actually mean something. Look at him, how could a kiss by this man not mean something wonderful?

  But then he stops, lips hovering a good five inches from mine, he closes his eyes, swallows hard then shoves back away from me, dropping his hands from my arms and everything. What just happened?

  I’m still standing in stunned silence when he clears his throat. “Right…” he starts. “Go find your hotel.”

  “Finally realize who you’re with?” I whisper, angry now for having wanted it so badly and for allowing myself to want in the first place.

  The tears forming in the corners of my eyes, they’re from dust. And if anyone asks me, that’s what I’ll tell them. Although nobody is going to ask me because the one person in this town who acted like he cared just shot me down.

  “Elise,” he calls after me as I hurry away, but hell if I’m going to turn around. As much as I’d like him to, he doesn’t come after me either.

  We both know I won’t be at the bar tonight or any other time. Get in, bury my father and get out. That’s the plan.

  I climb inside my car and wrotely buckle my seatbelt. Instead of starting the engine, I lean my head on the steering wheel letting those “dust” tears unabashedly fall. I haven’t even cried this hard over my dead father yet, which makes me cry even harder.

  Guilt’s a bitch.

  The tears for Mark go on for exactly five more minutes. That’s as much as I’ll allow myself, and wipe my eyes—checking the level of splotches and puffiness in the rearview mirror—then turn the ignition and drive.

  This town has exactly two motels. Not hotels. These are motels which haven’t been updated since probably the early nineteen sixties. I don’t need updated. I’m on a business trip not a vacation destination.
>
  When I walk into the small lobby of the first motel I’m greeted with about five seconds of a welcoming smile before the old man behind the desk realizes who just walked into his place of business.

  “Hey, Mr. Ritchie. How are you?”

  “Elise,” he says my name as if choking on a sour lime.

  Pretending to ignore his tone I continue on as if he’d welcomed me with a bear hug. “I need a room. Just a single will be fine.”

  “We’re out.”

  “Okay, I’ll take a double, then.”

  “Sorry, we’re all full up.”

  “But the sign out front says vacancy.”

  “Don’t care what the sign says. We’re all full up.”

  “I get it,” I say to him as I turn to leave.

  But over my shoulder I hear him say, “Your poor father.” So Mr. Ritchie is team hate-me-for-my-dad.

  Of the two motels in town I’d rather stay at the Twilight, but as that’s now out my only other choice is the Daniel Boone. I should at least be able to get a room though. They aren’t known for being picky about their clientele at the Daniel Boone. It’s the kind of place you go if you’re having an affair, shooting up or trying to get your date out of her prom dress.

  Forget about being updated, I’m not sure this place has been cleaned since the early nineteen sixties. Located on the outskirts of town it has two stories, with rooms over the lobby in the front and then a row of single story rooms behind the lobby.

  I walk past the crumbling stucco which used to be white, through the door with the frame eaten away by termites. I’m only hoping I don’t leave with bed bugs as a souvenir from my time here.

  A little bell jingles over the door when I enter. And a big head of brown, curly hair and boobs about a cup smaller than mine but packed tight into a white blouse about a size smaller from them and only buttoned at the fourth button down, hot pink bra showing through along with the cleavage spilling out of it, moves from a back room to behind the desk. That’s when I know it doesn’t matter if the bed has bugs or not because there’s no way I’m getting a room here today.