Patrick was with Alli when I arrived at her house the next morning. They stood on the front porch, having what looked like a friendly conversation.

Good for them.

I hadn’t been able to sleep. I tossed and turned all night, my thoughts moving from one subject to the next with no logical progression. And then I got up to find another of those notes on my windshield. We’re coming for you, it read. The notes didn’t frighten me, but the fact that they’d followed me from the warehouse to the apartment was a little unnerving.

And now I had to look forward to being locked in my truck with Alli all day.

It was going to be a long day.

I reluctantly got out of the truck and approached the porch. Alli was watching me, a slight smile on those sticky lips. She looked like a child who’d gotten its own way. That was exactly what she was.

“Morning,” I said as I joined her and Patrick.

“Alli was just giving me last-minute instructions,” Patrick said. He subtly rolled his eyes at me. “I think we have it all under control,” he assured her with a pat on the shoulder. “Quentin’s already over there, getting everything ready for the day.”

“Good. Just make sure you watch those guys who think they’re being sneaky, wearing those big, heavy coats in this heat.”

We all knew about those guys. It was part of our role as security to keep them from stealing the toys that populated her shelves. We’d been doing this for months. But she was like a mother leaving her infant for the first time. She wanted to make sure there was no chance for misunderstanding.

“We should get on the road.”

She turned and gestured inside the front door. “My things are ready.” She said it like a queen waiting to be served.

I wanted to tell her to go fuck herself, but Patrick was watching. I probably wouldn’t have, anyway.

Maybe.

I walked into the house only to find that she had half a dozen large suitcases stacked up, with several smaller bags nestled next to them. Good thing I drove a half-ton pickup!

Patrick helped me carry them out to the truck, glancing at me as we tossed them over the side of the bed.

“Better you than me.”

“Why are we doing this?”

Patrick shrugged. “Jack feels like he owes her something.”

I couldn’t imagine why. I returned to the house to get the last of the luggage, securing it in the back of the pickup with a couple of straps. It looked like she was prepared for any situation. I was grumbling, but when I turned and watched her walk to the truck, I could imagine it took quite a bit to get herself looking like that. And it was a nice result.

She was wearing a denim mini skirt that barely touched the top of her thighs, a dark, lacy bralette, and a blue blouse that was unbuttoned and tied just above her midriff. Her feet were covered by heavy suede boots with two-inch heels that made her calves look slender and feminine. Woman was beautiful despite her adolescent choice of dress.

“Ready?”

She nodded. “Are we going to stop for breakfast? I’m starved.”

I glanced at Patrick. He smiled with sympathy.

“We need to get on the road. You can pick up snacks when we stop for gas.”

She stuck out her bottom lip in pout, but didn’t say anything as I helped her into the truck.

“Sure you don’t want to go back and get the SUV?” Patrick asked. “A little more space might be preferable.”

“I know my truck. I’m more comfortable with my truck.”

He nodded. “Be careful, and don’t let her drive you nuts. Call the office if you need anything.”

“I will.”

I climbed behind the wheel, and we were off. Ironically enough, the route I’d chosen to take would take us straight through the same route Gloria and I had taken when we left our hometown of El Paso. I hadn’t been back to El Paso since the night we boarded that bus.

As was typical in southern Arizona, we didn’t have a lot to look at. The highway took us through rural areas, with nothing more than dirt and tumbleweeds decorating the sides of the road. New Mexico was no different, the landscape very similar. And the farther west we went, the closer to the border of Mexico we got.

Alli complained the first few hours of hunger. We finally stopped at a gas station even though the truck had a little more than half a tank of gas, and she loaded up on chips and candy and meat sticks that she didn’t eat. She pulled out her nail polish during the third hour of the trip, propping her bare foot up on my dashboard in order to paint her toes. The smell was so strong that I had to open the window and let the heated air inside.

She slept during the fourth and fifth hours of the trip, the best hours in my opinion. But then she was hungry again, unable to eat the things she’d already purchased for reasons I didn’t understand.

“I need a steak,” she announced. “A proper meal with proper proteins.”

“We need to get to El Paso tonight to keep to our schedule.”

“Fuck the schedule. As long as I’m in Memphis by Saturday, I don’t care how long the trip takes.”

“You’re expected on Friday.”

“She’s not graduating until Saturday evening.”

“Alli, I promised to get you there on time.”

“Then we’ll make up the time tomorrow. I’m tired, and I want a proper meal.”

We were just passing the city limits sign for Las Cruces, New Mexico. I sighed, deciding I didn’t have the energy to keep up the argument. I flipped on the turn signal and exited the highway a block from a small roadside motel.

“Thank you,” she said, reaching over to touch my thigh.

I gently lifted it off and set it back in her lap.

We checked in, asking for and receiving two rooms side by side, and then went in search of a steak house. Although we weren’t yet in Texas, it wasn’t a hard thing to find. We passed three franchise steak houses before settling on a local place that advertised its menu on a big plastic cow in the parking lot. Alli found it quaint.

“Party of two?” the hostess asked, looking us over.

“We’re on our first date,” Alli said, moving up beside me and slipping her arm through mine.

“Well, isn’t that nice! Thank you for choosing our humble establishment to celebrate such a momentous occasion.”

The hostess gestured for us to follow her, leading the way to a private booth at the back of the dining room. Alli slid into one side and grabbed my hand, practically dragging me in beside her. The hostess was still smiling as she informed us that our waitress would be with us shortly.

“What are you doing?” I hissed.

“Got us a good table, didn’t it? Otherwise, we’d be over there.” She gestured to a teeny table for two in the center of the room that was crowded out by a couple of families with small children. “We wouldn’t be able to hear ourselves think over there.”

I had to admit she had a point. But I moved over to the other side of the table anyway. Alli’s lower lip came out again, that pout seductive in its own way. I wanted to reach over and bite her lip…but then again, I wanted to smack it away and tell her to grow up a little.

“You need to work on your social skills,” she announced as she perused the menu a moment later.

“Do I?”

“You said half a dozen words to me the whole time we were driving.”

“I thought my role was protection, not entertainment.”

“It’s just a human thing, Crispin. You interact with people because that’s what you do.”

“Maybe it’s not what I do.”

She tilted her head slightly as she studied me over the top of her menu. “Maybe that’s why your kid doesn’t talk to you.”

That was low. I sat up a little straighter and picked up the menu, holding it in front of my face so I wouldn’t have to look at her. But that only lasted until the waitress came to take our order. We both ended up ordering the same thing, a ribeye with all the fixin’s, cooked to medium rare. She demanded a bottle of red wine, while I stuck to water.

“I’m sorry,” she said when the waitress took the menus, and we had nothing to hide behind. “I know that was low. I tend to be brutally honest. It’s a personality flaw.”

“Has anyone ever been that honest with you?”

She shrugged. “Very few people.”

“Probably because you frightened them all away.”

She smiled softly. “That could be.”

I studied her face for a long moment. “How many times have you been married?”

Her chin came up, the light leaving her eyes. She played with her wine glass for a long moment, not looking at me. But then she looked me in the eye.

“I suppose it’s only fair I tell you my story since you told me yours.”

“I suppose so.”

“And we’re going to spend a lot of time together over the next two weeks.”

“We are.”

She sighed, lifting the glass to her lips. “It’s not really all that interesting, to be honest.” She set the glass back down and continued to run her finger over the lip, her nails long and filed to a point that looked almost lethal. But it gave the impression that her fingers were longer and more slender than they really were.

“Tell me anyway.”

She tilted her head slightly. “I’ve been married three times. The second was Sue’s father, the asshole I told you about before. The third was a brief mistake I made when she was four. He didn’t last long.”

“What about Tommy’s father?”

“I was never married to him. It was just…a thing.”

“Will he be at her graduation?”

She shook her head. “He never took much of an interest in her.” She sighed. “Never took much of an interest in me, either. My mistake.”

“Must have been hard, raising two kids on your own.”

“I’ve done worse.” She reached up and pushed a lock of hair away from her forehead. “Made a lot of mistakes. But I like to think I cleaned up pretty good. Don’t you think so?”

“I do.”

I looked her over, realizing that she was looking for just such a compliment. But there was a certain allure about her that I found very difficult to ignore. My eyes moved over her deep cleavage, but there was something about the shadows on her face that kept drawing my eyes. I think this was the most real she’d ever been with me, and I kind of liked it.

“Believe it or not, my mother was a minor politician. She was mayor of the town we lived in, and I heard rumors that she went on to be a state senator a few years ago.”

“Is that right?”

She nodded. “My father was a university professor. Taught history.”

I tilted my head slightly, trying to reconcile the implied upbringing that suggested. I couldn’t.

“I don’t look like the daughter of intellectuals, do I?”

“Not really.”

She smiled, and there was no malice in it. “I tried really hard to shed that impression. From the time I started junior high, I rebelled against them. I wanted to be my own person, to prove I didn’t need anyone. And then I met this guy…isn’t that always the way? Some guy comes along, and you lose your way?”

“Sometimes.”

“Would you be a cop if your girl hadn’t gotten pregnant?”

I thought about that for a minute. “Probably not. But I probably wouldn’t have gone to college, either. Probably would have followed my father into the industrial plant where he worked.”

“Then meeting your girl was a better turn for you. Lucky you.” She again brushed the hair from her forehead. “This guy seemed like a step in the right direction. He was a graduate student in my father’s program. For the first time in my life, I was doing something my parents wanted me to do. I was dressing properly, going to class, doing everything a good, upstanding girl should do. Might have become one of those perfect little housewives, too, if he hadn’t been who he was.”

I wanted to ask, but I waited for her to tell. She played with her wine glass for a few minutes, clearly lost in her own past. And then she looked up, a bright smile on her lips that didn’t touch her eyes.

“It was so long ago. I haven’t thought about it in years.”

The waitress arrived a moment later, our steaks still sizzling on the plates. Alli smiled politely, asking for steak sauce and ketchup like we were in a fast food restaurant. She tucked into her food, making it pretty clear she was done talking about the past.

Was it that painful? Was she afraid of what I might think? Was she just done with the past?

I cut into my steak and savored the first bite, reluctantly grateful she’d insisted on a proper meal. We ate in silence for a while, the low murmur around us the only entertainment.

She poured herself several glasses of wine, but by then was only picking at her food. I reached over and took the bottle as she went in for the last few drops.

“Why don’t we slow down a little?”

“What? Are you the booze police tonight?”

“Do you always drink this much?”

She glared at me. “I do what I want to do.”

I set the bottle back down in front of her, and she poured the last of it in her glass, drinking it down, her eyes never leaving mine.

Stubborn woman!

We went back to the motel after dinner in absolute silence. I walked her to her door and used the card key to unlock it.

“Get some rest. I’d like to leave by eight tomorrow morning.”

She snatched the key out of my hand and disappeared inside, not even glancing back at me. I stood there for a moment, wondering if I should feel bad. It seemed like she was either too friendly, or angry. There was no in-between with her.

I went to my room and checked in with Patrick, letting him know we stopped a little earlier than intended. Patrick didn’t seem surprised.

“Are you going to make it to Dallas tomorrow?”

“I hope so.”

“Well, the graduation isn’t until Saturday night, so you’ve got a little leeway. Just keep me informed.”

“Of course.”

I hung up and paced around the room for a few minutes, filled with nervous energy that I didn’t quite understand. I’d always been a sort of laid-back guy, but being with Alli was bringing out things in me that I wasn’t accustomed to. Her hand sliding into the crook of my arm at the restaurant reminded me of the way Gloria would touch me whenever we were in a crowd together. She wasn’t the type for public displays of affection, but she wouldn’t mind holding onto my elbow when it was appropriate.

It was those little things that I missed the most sometimes.

I felt like an old man tonight, pining after something I had had and lost. I was only forty-five years old, but I felt like a much older man.

Except when Alli touched me.

I sighed. I was just lonely.

I stripped down to my shorts and undershirt, throwing myself on the bed to watch a little television. There wasn’t much on, so I settled on this depressing reality show that followed obese people in their attempts to get surgery to lose weight. Made me feel like not eating anything more than a salad for the rest of my life.

Sleep captured me sooner than I thought it might. Driving all day was exhausting, I supposed, especially when I had gotten next to no sleep the night before. The television was still on when someone started pounding on my door some time later.

“Hey, mister!”

I snapped off the television and stumbled across the room, stubbing my toe on the damn plastic chair.

“What do you want?”

“That girl you checked in with?” The man—whom I’m pretty sure I’d never seen a day in my life—gestured toward the parking lot. “She’s having some trouble with a couple of guys.”

I brushed past him, becoming aware of the sound of Alli’s voice, her words slurred. She was laughing at something someone had said. As I approached, I could see her surrounded by three guys, each one with a hand somewhere it didn’t belong. They were all clearly interested in more than just a chaste kiss at her door.

She’d changed, wearing a soft maroon dress that was much too short and showed much too much skin. She was wearing ankle length cowboy boots, and she’d swept her hair up on her head in an almost classy knot. But her makeup was smeared, and she was unsteady on her feet as she slowly attempted to cross the parking lot with these men all over her.

As I watched, she leaned back against a particularly tall man, and another slipped his hand under her skirt, making her laugh even as she tried to smack his hand away.

“You got me home safe now,” she was saying. “Such gentlemen.”

“The party doesn’t have to stop now, sweetheart,” the tall one said.

“Oh, well, I’m on the road again tomorrow, so I should go in.”

“Don’t leave us hanging, sweetheart,” the one with the hand up her skirt said.

“I really have to go,” she repeated, pushing at his hand again. He was determined to keep his hand right where it was, however. I thought for a moment she was going to just let him feel her up, but then she pushed at his shoulder. When that did no good, she slugged him pretty good against the right side of his jaw. The man stepped back, his hand touching the offended spot like he couldn’t believe what she’d just done.

“That wasn’t nice.”

Alli straightened, stepping forward away from the tall guy. He grabbed her shoulder as the other guy grabbed her hips and pulled her to one side, closer to him. Then the guy she’d hit got up in her face and tried to force her to kiss him. She bit his lip, causing him to jerk back again, a curse flying from his lips.

Alli moved away from the other two.

“I’m going in now,” she announced, digging in a teeny purse for her room key.

“I don’t think so,” the man she’d twice injured announced. He grabbed her by the shoulders and jerked her around, shoving her against the side of a truck. She raised her knee, getting him a third time. He fell to the asphalt, groaning.

His buddy, the one who’d been fairly quiet the whole time, immediately stepped up to take his place. She smiled up at him, pushing her hand against his crotch. But then she twisted, and the man’s face turned red and then purple.

The tall one moved in to take his chances, but I moved just into his line of sight and shook my head.

“I wouldn’t try it, brother.”

“Crispin!” she cried, clearly pleased to see me.

I grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the hotel. Mr. Tall decided to follow us despite my warning. I pushed her against the wall of the motel and turned, knocking him out cold with one punch. I grabbed her again and pulled her to my door, shoving her inside before slamming the door behind us.

“Didn’t I tell you to stay put?”

“You said to get some rest. That was rest for me.”

She laughed as she reached up to take the pins from her hair.

“They could have hurt you.”

“They probably would have if you hadn’t come out.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

She looked up, her green eyes dark with emotion. “No, I’m not okay with that. I would have given back as good as I got.”

I shook my head, brushing past her to go into the bathroom. “I don’t get you. You seem to get off on that kind of bullshit. What kind of woman gets off on being abused?”

“When it’s all you know, it’s what you know.”

“Then you need to learn something else, Alli.” I wet a cloth in the sink and took it back to her, thrusting it out to her. “Clean your face.”

“Thanks, Daddy,” she spat at me, jumping to her feet and marching into the bathroom, preferring to wash at the sink. I stood behind her, watching her scrub the makeup from her face with one of the little bars of soap the motel provided. When she was done, her face was more bare than I’d ever seen it, her skin like cream, her eyes a brighter green than they’d been before. She was actually very beautiful, especially without the tricks of her eyeliner and lip gloss. And her hair was damp around the edges, hanging in strings around her face, making it appear almost innocent.

“Where did you go?”

“There’s a bar down the street. I saw it when we went to dinner.”

“You shouldn’t have gone out alone.”

“You wouldn’t have gone with me.”

“I would have told you to go back to your room and sleep.”

“Yeah, just like a Daddy.”

She tried to move past me, but I grabbed her wrist. “How much did you have to drink?”

“Not nearly enough.”

She jerked free, pushing at my chest in an attempt to get out of the bathroom. Something inside of me couldn’t let her go. I stood solid in the doorframe, my broad shoulders just wide enough to trap her inside. She pushed at my chest again, her nails scraping against my throat.

“Why do you do this to yourself? Why do you insist on hurting yourself?”

“Maybe I deserve it.”

“No one deserves this.”

She looked up at me, startled. “You don’t know shit about me!”

“You don’t have to know what’s in someone’s soul to believe they deserve to be treated like a human being.”

She gasped, twisting her head away so that I couldn’t see her eyes. “Fuck you,” she whispered.

That enraged me. There was just something so self-defeating about it—about her—that really pissed me off. I grabbed her arms and shoved her back against the sink, crushing her back against the hard porcelain.

“You have two children. Do you really think they deserve this? Do you really think that they don’t know what you do when they aren’t around? Do you think they don’t see the evidence of your drinking? Don’t you understand that once you brought a child into this world, you no longer had the right to be this fucking selfish?”

“Selfish?” She glared up at me. “Do you think it’s selfish to want to stop feeling the pain? Do you think it’s selfish to want to be touched and to be loved by someone? Do you think it’s selfish to be tired of the long, lonely nights?”

“I think this is the wrong damn way of dealing with it.”

She jerked her arms, trying to get free of my touch. “You don’t know shit!”

“You keep saying that.”

She looked up at me, her eyes filled with tears. “I think you like it. I think you need to save me from myself. I think you’re just as fucked up as me.”

“Maybe.”

“Who calls you out on your crap?” She suddenly pushed forward, pressing her body hard against mine. “Who tells you how stupid your behavior is?”

“I’m not inviting men to come to a hotel and rape me in the parking lot!”

She tried to slap me, but I still had a grip on her upper arms. Instead, she kicked at my shins and ankles, trying to hurt me the only way she could. I cursed as she made contact with my ankle bone, shoving her back harder than I intended. She slipped a little on the linoleum floor, pulling me nearly on top of her as the sink caught her fall. Our lips were only a breath apart.

I should have pulled away. I should have let her go. But I couldn’t.

I kissed her, roughly, the taste of whiskey heavy on her tongue. She grunted in satisfaction, but then she was moving into me, her tongue an aggressive little snake as it forced its way inside my mouth and began an exploration like nothing I’d ever felt before. She was a damn wildcat, her need explosive.

I let go of her arms and twisted my fingers in her hair, vaguely aware of the wetness that stuck to my palm. I forced her back until she was practically lying in the sink, my hand slipping up under the hem of her dress. She moaned again as my fingers danced along the edge of her panties. I knew the moment my fingertips pressed under the waistband that I was crossing a line I could never uncross. But I think that line was crossed days ago.

She lifted herself up, pulling herself onto the edge of the sink. She grabbed me by the waistband of my shorts, slipping both hands inside. When she gripped me, it was with both hands. It was my turn to cry out.

Her panties slipped away easily, getting caught at her ankles where her boots impeded their movement. It didn’t matter. She was thin and limber, and the panties were made of some material that had no problem stretching quite wide. I held her ass in the palms of my hands and let her guide me to her. Her eyes rolled back in her head when we joined together, our bodies aching with the need that had been awakened by each other’s touch.

I’d never done anything this reckless before. Gloria—God bless her soul—had been an innocent when I met her and remained that way all through our marriage. Lovemaking was for the bedroom, late at night with all the lights turned out. It never would have crossed her mind to indulge in this kind of spontaneous desire.

She had no idea what she’d missed.

I lost myself in Alli, in the scent of her hair and the feel of her hands on my back. Her thighs pressed against me, her ankle boots rubbing against the front of my ankles. And her mouth against my throat was more intimate than anything I’d felt in a very long time.

Maybe ever.

It was quick, but satisfying. She collapsed against me when it was done, her body growing limp in my arms. It took a minute for me to realize she’d passed out. I carried her back to the bedroom and laid her down, fixing her clothes before removing her boots and pulling the bedspread up over her half-naked body. She snuggled into the pillows and sighed, more beautiful than she’d ever been.

What the fuck had I just done?