Chapter 13

I hate you more than I love chocolate.

-Ruthie’s secret thoughts

Ruthie

“I’m sorry, Ms. Comalsky, but I can’t risk another one of my properties. You’ll have your deposit returned as of Monday morning, and I’ll be waiving your contract,” Carol, the woman I was renting the property from, said.

Tears stung my eyes as what I’d feared would happen, happened.

I opened my eyes as a sob tore out of my mouth.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Thank you for calling.”

Without waiting for her to continue, I pressed the red ‘end call’ button.

Then turned the whole thing off completely.

The new phone that’d been delivered to me about twenty minutes before hadn’t stopped ringing since I’d gotten it.

This one was much nicer than the one that burned up in the fire.

And I knew that Sterling was responsible for getting it, as well as the ten bags of clothes.

I just wished he’d been the one to deliver them instead of the biker prospect…something he’d called himself that I was extremely interested in understanding what it meant. But not in the right state of mind to handle a full-blown conversation about biker business and hierarchy.

With single-minded determination, I walked out of the hotel room with only the phone and one set of clothes I’d gotten out of the bag.

The cheapest thing in the entire bundle.

Sterling hadn’t skimped.

Or whoever had purchased the clothes on Sterling’s behalf hadn’t skimped.

It was all very expensive…or much more expensive than my Wal-Mart tastes.

With the door opened, I was unsurprised to find that there was a biker prospect sleeping against the outside wall.

He’d get reamed later for sleeping and letting me out of my room, but that wasn’t my problem.

Right now, what my problem was, was that nobody wanted me here, and my mind wasn’t in the right place to stay.

So, closing the door to my hotel room quietly, I headed in the opposite direction of the elevator since I knew it was loud and would probably wake up Mr. Biker Prospect.

Instead I took the stairs, and about had a freak out when I saw the wall of leather that was half way up the stairs I was about to go down.

I didn’t know him, though, and I was glad.

“Hi,” I said, passing him.

“Hi,” he muttered.

I didn’t wait to see what he did as I passed, only hurried down the three flights of stairs to the very bottom floor.

After scanning the lobby behind the closed stairwell door, I hurried out and took the exit at the side that would spit me out by the pool.

Something I’d noticed this morning…or last night.

Hell, I didn’t even know what time it was.

I skirted around twelve kids who were playing around the open area in front of the pool, threading in and out of the lounge chairs covered in colorful beach towels.

“Hey,” one of the mother’s on the lounge chairs said. “Did you hear about that baby being found?”

Another woman on the next lounge over made an affirmative noise. “Mmm-hmm,” she said, not opening her eyes. “Some lady found him at the scene of a fire. Wonder what happened.”

You don’t want to know what happened, because my life is depressing and is bound to put anyone in a horrible mood.

I kept walking, not making eye contact with any of them.

I finally came to a stop at the side gate and lifted up the latch that would allow me to exit out into the parking lot.

This was a really nice hotel, and yet another thing Sterling had to cover for me.

I didn’t have any cash or credit cards…only managing to grab the one bag that had nothing in it but my most important documents.

Although I was happy to have those, and would need them to access my driver’s license and bank accounts, it would’ve also been smart of me to grab my purse that was on the same damn hook.

“Watch your step,” a man said in front of me.

I looked up and smiled at the man.

He was wearing a black polo and jeans, and on the black polo it denoted him as a member of KPD SWAT.

“Thanks,” I said, stepping down off the curb.

“No problem,” he muttered.

I kept walking until I arrived at the bus stop that I’d spied last night, then took a seat.

My car had been totaled right along with my house, and with only liability insurance on it, I wouldn’t be getting a new one anytime soon.

I watched as car after car drove by, so lost in thought that I didn’t realize some man had stopped his car in front of me until he finally yelled.

“You need a ride?” He asked.

I blinked.

The man looked familiar.

Very familiar.

“No thanks,” I said automatically.

Then with a shake of his head, he left, and I was left to contemplate the cars once again.

I wondered how long it would take the bus to get here.

Couple of hours? Twenty minutes?

I was in Shreveport; surely the bus ran constantly.

Then the bench shifted as someone sat, and I looked over to see the man who’d stopped his car in front of me earlier.

“I saw you at that club, Halligans and Handcuffs, the other night,” the man started.

I nodded. “I saw you, too.”

And I still thought about the man, even a week later.

There was just something about him that had me curious.

He reminded me of someone from my past, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

“So I did some research and found out you worked there,” he said.

I nodded.

Did work there. In the past tense.

Not that he’d know that.

I also couldn’t figure out why it didn’t freak me out that this man had stopped to talk to me, and had looked into me.

I just knew that he was a good man.

A nosy one…but a good one nonetheless.

“Okay…” I said.

My bus chose that minute to pull up, and I stood. “Well, I gotta go. It was nice talking to you.”

However, I dropped right back down on my ass the moment the next words came out of his mouth.

“And I realized that you were who I’d been looking for fifteen years,” he said. “My daughter.”