Chapter 3
Abigail
I’M POURING OVER YESTERDAY’S WANT ads—or maybe it’s from two days ago, I don’t know—with my music pounding in my ear from an old iPod I found in the bottom of a drawer. Reba’s “Fancy” is blasting in my ears and I’m dancing along.
This song speaks to me for a number of reasons, one of those being my dad really did run off and leave us destitute after my grandparents passed away. He left my mom with a lot of nothing but debt and empty whiskey bottles and sports betting tickets. Shortly after he bailed, the collectors came and took my grandparents’ ranch turning us out in the process.
It turns out, my grandparents were the glue holding it all together. They had somehow kept him on the straight and narrow as much as they could, but it was like trying to plug the hole in the Titanic with a wad of chewing gum—it didn’t hold. They had held his feet to the fire and managed to make him walk the family line, making him marry Mama and then be around for me when I came along. They had known all along that my dad had some pretty big demons he couldn’t seem to exorcise.
After they died and dad hit the road, Mama and I had some pretty big heart to heart conversations in our little trailer. She had told me how my grandparents had made him take care of us or there would be no bailing him out when it came to his bookies or his dealers—he was on his own—or at least he was until they died and the title on the ranch fell to his hands. Mama and I had watched him blow through all the money and desert the livestock and the land faster than you can say “Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care.” Only problem was Mama and I cared but we were helpless to do anything about it.
Personally, I just think he was selfish.
Mama did her best to keep us going for as long as she could, but it just wasn’t enough. When the bank foreclosed on the ranch, Mama moved us to a two-bedroom trailer house on the other side of town. We ate a lot of spaghetti and bologna sandwiches and occasionally the power got turned off when we were late on the bills.
From an early age I knew that I had to pull my own weight. Mama had never asked anything from me, but even as a little kid I knew that I couldn’t sit back and let her do all the dirty work. So, I had a paper route, I mowed lawns, I carried groceries, and when I was old enough, I babysat the neighborhood kids. Every penny I made went to Mama to keep us going.
By the time I was fifteen, I had more than my fair share of curves in all the convenient places, and when I was seventeen and fresh out of high school I knew how to work a pole to bring home the bacon and also how to throw a decent right hook. Both were important for a successful career in the club. I hated it but it made the money we needed to support our little family of two. Unfortunately, by the time I was nineteen, I was married to a bastard and completely forgot the latter. Mama was eager for me to grab onto Brandon as a meal ticket, to her he was an express train ride out of the trailer park and she aided that trip by turning me out. No “thanks for the memories” she said “marry him or move on but you’re not going to live like this forever.” If only she could see me now in my ratty clothes and living in a motel. Of course she would be so proud to find out that her daughter was a murderer.
Nevertheless, I had just circled a promising want ad for a motel maid when I felt tingles up the back of my neck and I knew that someone was watching me. I let my gaze wander without moving, not wanting to giveaway the fact that I know someone is nearby.
A pair of brown leather cowboy boots catch my eye. I follow them up a pair of thick, muscular legs encased in tan slacks all the way up to a white dress shirt tucked into a tooled brown leather belt. It’s the matching gun belt slung around his trim hips that give me pause.
I can’t help myself, so I continue my pass up his body—up his flat abs and broad chest, his blue tie and crisp collar wrapped around a corded neck—and up to his chiseled jaw covered in dark stubble, his high cheekbones and copper skin. His bright hazel eyes shoot of sparks of smoke and heat and my skin burns. Did someone turn up the heat in here? Maybe the Air Conditioning went out because it’s getting hot in here, cue the Nelly song minus the taking off all my clothes part. I haven’t done that shit in ages and it didn’t earn me any prizes when I did. That’s for sure.
I barely keep myself in check and almost fan myself in response to the way he licks his bottom lip. I drop my gaze to avoid the blatant eye porn happening next to my table in the small country cafe, when I see the shiny silver star on his chest and blanch.
What was I thinking letting myself get lost in the vision of a good-looking man? I, of all people, know that good-looking men might promise you white picket fences and full bellies, but really, they’re full of nothing but empty promises and black eyes. I’ve had my fair share of wolves in sheep’s clothing. I’m not saying this man is the same, I’m just saying I’m not interested in the research project.
I shrink back into myself. It’s a reaction born after five years of yelling and beatings, of fear of the smallest thing that might set him off, and living in terror for the nights he came home smelling like whiskey and someone else’s perfume . . . or even just mean because he could be.
Mama was right when she said no man likes a weak-willed woman, or at least not this man because his smoky eyes freeze over when he sees me try and hide.
“What kind of trouble are you in?” he says in his deep, rumbling voice and I freeze. He couldn’t possibly know, could he?
“N-n-no trouble,” I stutter.
“Oh, you’re trouble alright,” he pauses. “I just can’t decide if you’re the kind that’s worth it in the end.”
“I’m not,” I whisper.
His hard gaze rakes over my face as he studies me, like he’s trying to draw all of my secrets to the surface. But he can’t have them. My secrets ruin lives and my life is finally mine to live again.
“I don’t want to hear that you’re mixing up trouble or anything to harm the people of this town,” he warns.
“I won’t,” I swear.
“I highly doubt that,” he says to me like I’m the bug on the bottom of his shoe before he touches the tip of his index finger to my tabletop and then walks away.
Well hell. So much for keeping a low profile.