Eden

“So are you likin’ this job?”

It’s been a shitty day. I’m tired, hungry, and emotionally drained for reasons I’m trying (and obviously failing) not to focus on. Sucking it up, I force myself to smile and nod at Randy, the trucker with OCD who rents room one on the third weekend of each month. This is his second time through since I’ve been here and since he’s a regular, I feel like I need to be extra nice to him.

“I love it up here,” I answer with forced enthusiasm as I slide his credit card across the counter to him. It’s true, I do love it here. This job is a gift from above and Margie and Ron’s job offer saved me at a time when I felt like I was being pushed under. Any other day my response would be real and heartfelt. Not today, though.

Randy avoids eye contact as he uses his right thumb and forefinger to pick the card up. Once it’s in his grip, he taps the left lower corner of the credit card on the counter nine times in a row. He stops, counts to three under his breath and then taps the right lower corner of the card nine times before he slides it into his wallet, careful not to touch it with anything other than the two fingers he’s held it with the entire time.

“We’re all lucky to have you here,” he says. Looking down at his left wrist, he taps on the first of the two watches there. “On average, check in time with you concludes two minutes faster than it does with any of the other girls. Only Margie is faster. She’s got you by about twenty-three seconds.”

I let out my first real smile of the day. It’s weak, but it’s genuine so that’s a plus. “Now that you’ve set down a challenge, I’ll work on it.”

Randy chuckles as he takes four steps back from the desk. “No rush,” he says kindly. “I like talking to you.”

It’s hard to tell if he’s flirting because his anxiety tends to keep him uptight. Uncertainty freezes the smile on my face, but I’m saved from having to say anything else when he pivots and heads out. “Later, Eden,” he calls over his shoulder.

I wave at his retreating back. “Bye, Randy.”

I breathe a sigh of relief when the glass door closes behind him. In the time I’ve been here, only two guests have hit on me. Both were easily rebuffed and there was no discomfort to it. If Randy starts flirting with me, it could quickly get problematic. For starters, he’s a regular. But more importantly, I don’t want to trigger his anxiety in any way. The bottom line is that I’m not attracted to him and he’s at least twenty-five years older than I am. I’ve never even looked twice at older men until recently, and even that is confined to one man in particular.

Biting my lip, I sit on the stool behind the desk as my thoughts wander to the older man I do find attractive. There’s no way for me to find out without asking him but my guess is that Donovan Beckett is in his early thirties. He acts like he’s one hundred and eighty-five, though. If I thought he was chilly to me before I accused him of watching me, I was wrong. Since then he’s all but ignored me completely. Which is a good thing, I remind myself for the five hundredth time.

Picking my cell phone up off the counter, I navigate to my email box. My heart speeds up when I see the number two next to my email icon. Clicking the inbox, I deflate when I realize both emails are nothing but sale alerts, one for a store in Jersey City, the other for a magazine subscription. Scowling, I toss the phone onto the counter. I thought I’d prepared myself for this, but that was wishful thinking. Today is the four-year anniversary of the deaths of my mom and grandmother. My dad has always, always been there for me on this day—even if only by email, which is what he did last year. He knows how hard this anniversary is for me. Knows, and still doesn’t care enough to reach out—and that’s a bitter pill to swallow considering I’ve emailed him dozens of times since I realized he skipped out on me. What happened to the father who held my hand during the funeral and promised me we’d get through it together? Where’s the dad who cheered when I graduated high school? Gone, gone, gone.

I know I’m being an idiot. Not because I’m upset—obviously that’s entirely understandable—but because I let myself believe for even one moment that he’d make contact today. I need to accept that he doesn’t give a crap about me anymore. He’s made that abundantly clear by stealing my money, ignoring my emails and ghosting on me like he never existed.

When my lower lip starts to tremble, I bite down to stop it. I can’t cry at work and honestly, I need to stop shedding tears over this at all. I could cry a river and it wouldn’t make one bit of difference. God, I hate feeling this way. Sniffling, I swallow past the lump in my throat and run my fingers under my eyes to catch any stray moisture. As I do, I sense something in the air. Something that damn well shouldn’t be familiar but somehow is, despite my best efforts to ignore it. Donovan is here, and the fact that I don’t see him means he came in the rear door that only the staff use. In the weeks since I made a fool of myself at the bar and then outside when I accused him of watching me, he’s ignored me completely and I’ve followed his lead. I normally see him once or twice a day and each time we both act like the other person is invisible.

Feeling his eyes on me, I turn to look at him as he comes to a halt in front of the desk. He stares at me in absolute silence for several seconds—almost like he’s looking for something.

If he won’t break the silence, I guess it’s up to me. “Do you need something?”

He frowns as he continues staring at me. The normal coldness in his eyes has been replaced with something I can’t place.

“Yeah. I need you to tell me who upset you,” he demands gruffly.

“I’m not upset,” I lie.

He looks at me skeptically and props his forearms against the counter. “Bullshit. You look like you’ve been crying or are just about to. Tell me who fucking upset you. Are they still here?” He looks around suspiciously, like he thinks he might catch someone sneaking out.

My brows head up toward my hairline as it hits me. Holy crap—I think Donovan is concerned. About me. Am I dreaming?

“No one here did anything to upset me.”

“Then who did?”

“Why are you asking?” I counter.

He runs his hand through his hair and grimaces. “Just answer the damn question, Eden.”

Hearing him say my name gives me the chills. Looking down, I set my index finger on the screen of my cell phone and start spinning it in a circle. “It’s stupid,” I mutter.

“Boyfriend problems?” he asks. The terse quality to his voice and the unexpectedness of the question make me pause, but the biggest reason for my surprise is down to him asking if I’m having relationship issues.

“Uh, what?”

“Noticed you heading downstairs to the dance area with Kyle Withers that night at the bar. I figured you got yourself a man.”

My eyes widen. I had no idea he saw me before I saw him.

“No. I met Kyle that night and haven’t seen him since. It wasn’t like that—it was just friendly. I don’t have a boyfriend.” I don’t know why I just clarified that much, but it is what it is, I guess. “The reason I’m upset is stupid.”

“Not stupid enough that you weren’t sitting here crying before I walked in,” he says gruffly.

I shrug one shoulder and do my best to look like I’m not upset about anything. “It’s no big deal.”

He lets out an exasperated sigh. “Eden.”

There it is again. Why does hearing him say my name make me feel even more jittery than usual? The way he’s staring at me isn’t helping either. Squaring my shoulders, I lean forward to tell him to mind his own business.

“My dad took all my money and ghosted on me in January,” I blurt out in a rush. “I have no way to find him and normally I do my best to deal with that but today is the anniversary of my mom and grandmother dying and he always calls or emails. Nothing this year though.”

What. The. Hell?

I swear I was going to tell him to go pound sand, but somehow I ended up giving him the real story. I have no idea why.

“You have a good relationship with him before he took money from you?”

I bite my lower lip to keep it from trembling as I shrug. I’m surprised at how patient he is in waiting for my answer because it takes several seconds for me to get myself under control. Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I take a deep breath.

“I thought my dad and I were pretty close until he met his new wife, Sharon, a little over two years ago. It was obvious from the start that there was something off about her, but I’d never have expected him to ditch me. I was home at Christmas break and yeah, things were weird, but never for one second did I think he’d go to the bank two days later and pull out the hundred and fifty thousand dollars in my account. When I got home after my spring semester was over, I discovered our house had been repossessed by the bank. Dad and Sharon were long gone, no forwarding address. When I called his work, I found out he got fired in November. I have no clue where he is or more importantly, how he is. I don’t even care about the money at this point. I just want to know where my dad is and why he rolled on me.”

Donovan’s face grows more and more severe as I explain the situation. Now that I’m finished he looks like his head might explode. “What the fuck kind of father does that to his kid?” he growls.

I’ve thought the same thing at least eight dozen times but hearing someone else say it in such a blunt way hits me hard. “I think it’d be easier to accept if he hadn’t been a good dad for nineteen years. It’s like someone else moved into his body the day he met Sharon.”

He’s shaking his head before I finish. “He fucking bailed on the most important job in the world. Your dad’s priorities are whacked.”

As Donovan speaks, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out his cell phone and swipes across the screen a few times. I blink up at him in confusion when he extends the phone to me.

“Take it and put his info and anything you’ve got on your stepmother in. I’ll look into it.”

If I had to guess I’d say I probably look like a deer caught in the headlights right now. The only thing keeping me from falling over is that my butt is firmly planted on this stool.

“You want to help me?” I ask incredulously.

He stares at me blankly for several seconds, his expression unreadable. Finally, he nods. “Don’t make a big deal of it. I’m a skip tracer. Finding shit is my job.”

He gestures at me with the phone, reminding me that he’s holding it out to me. Taking it, I get to work entering information in his notes app. I put in Dad’s full name, email, date of birth, and our old address. All I know about Sharon is that her maiden name is Stewart and my dad met her at a speed-dating event, one it makes me a little ill to remember I encouraged him to go to. He’d just seemed so sad whenever I called home that I thought it might help. I was wrong.

When I’m finished typing in what I know I hold the phone out to Donovan. I let out a strangled gasp when our fingers touch. It’s like our fingertips have created a magnetic field, his fingers being the north, mine the south, and the magnetism between the two fuses the tips of our fingers together. My eyes dart up and meet his as the heat working its way through my body becomes volcanic lava. The feral look in his eyes makes it hard to breathe and impossible to think. Everything around me seems distorted because the focus of my entire being is on Donovan, who it feels like I see in Technicolor.

I’m dizzy from the rush of sensations zipping through my body. This connection between us is palpable, and I know he’s feeling it, too. This, what I see right now, is Donovan Beckett out of control. His carefully constructed mask has slipped and for the first time, I’m truly seeing him. When his eyes flare the frozen tundra I’m used to from him gives way to the warmest ocean. Something heavy and illicit passes between us, a carnal force I can hardly wrap my mind around. And then, he blinks. Just like that, the moment is over. The ice in his eyes is back, the connection broken like it never happened.

Yanking the phone back, he jams it into his pocket as he takes a step back from the desk. “I’ve got shit to do. Wanna hand over my mail, Shortstack?” he asks, his tone brisk.

The loss of that brief burst of warmth from him is devastating. I know I’m blushing as I nod. Pulling out the desk drawer where Margie keeps the mail, I grab the small rubber band bound stack that has a post-it note with Donovan’s name on it.

Closing the drawer, I hold the bundle out to Donovan. His jaw tics as he pointedly looks from my hand down to the counter. I’m not surprised that he won’t risk touching me again, so I say nothing as I set the mail down. Picking it up, he spins on his heel and strides toward the exit.

“I’ll let you know when I find something,” he says without looking back at me.

I don’t look away from his retreating form until he’s out of my line of vision. When I do, I cup my face with my shaky hands and let out a whoosh of breath. Donovan Beckett is a tidal force and for a second there he let me ride the wave. For reasons I can’t readily identify, that feels like a victory.