Keep It Simple (MMG Series Book 4) (25 page)

Sarah

‡

I
stared at
my swollen eyes in the mirror and wondered if the cucumber remedy really worked. As Lyndsey would say, I looked like warmed over shite this morning.

“What are you doing, Sarah?” I asked my reflection. When it failed to answer, I stuck my tongue out, flipped it the bird and escaped to the comfort of my bedroom.

After Cas stormed out last night and I had a good hard cry, I thought about everything we talked about. I knew he had been holding something back, but never dreamt it was a drug addicted wife and a dead son. My heart hurt just thinking about it. Sally eventually came home and I told her Cas and I weren’t together. When I explained why, she thought I had lost my mind. At that point I still held tightly to my convictions. Cas was married and that was that. After hours of tossing and turning in my bed, though, I was beginning to doubt myself. Two months was not that long, but even I knew a lot could happen between now and then.
What if Cas decides I’m not worth it?
He’d been tied down for so long. It would make sense if he wanted to be free to play the field. He told me he loved me more than once, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him how I felt. I wanted to tell him I was in love with him when he was free to be with me. Now, I was second guessing myself.
Maybe I should have told him I loved him
? Finally, sick of thinking it to death, I pulled myself from my bed an hour earlier than I normally got up, and took a long, scalding hot shower. After getting dressed, I trudged down the stairs for a much needed cup of coffee. As I doused it with creamer, I thought about the other pain in my arse.

Max.

I can’t believe I told Cas about my father
. At the time I was simply trying to make a point. I realized later how big a point it was and felt bad. That was a lot to lay on someone. I was torn about telling Max. I always knew the day would come when I would have to tell him, but how? In the beginning, I held my tongue to protect him. I knew what Dad was doing was wrong, but nothing ever came of his drunk fumbling. Some nights he didn’t even try, while others resulted in a drunken confession of how much he loved us and how sorry he was about how our lives turned out. The nights he drank hard liquor were the ones that scared me the most. I learned to sleep lightly and when I heard him stumbling in the hall, I would grab blanky and pillow and lock myself in the closet before he made it to my room. He wouldn’t dare yell for me or he’d wake up Max. On the few occasions Dad’s drunken stumbling woke Max, I prayed Max would figure out what was happening so I wouldn’t have to tell him, but he never did. I knew if I told Max, he would confront Dad and Dad would hurt him, or worse.

Then something both good and bad happened. Dad was killed and we had to run. After that, there never was a proper time to say, “By the way, Dad beat me and tried a hundred different times to get in my pants while you were away.” Neither Max nor I wanted to talk about life with Dad after we ran, especially not me. Max sent me to a therapist and expected her to straighten me out. I never got up the nerve to tell her about what happened. I was too scared of what she would say. When I was finally ready to talk to Max about it, he sent me away. At least, that’s what I thought. After that it was too late. I was hurt and angry. If life has taught me anything, it’s that nothing is as it seems and everything has another side to it. I wasn’t sure how I was going to tell Max about Dad, but I knew I had to.

A knock at the door startled me from my thoughts. I checked my watch and was surprised to see Max was fifteen minutes early.
Should I talk to him now?
Just the thought made my stomach cramp. Squaring my shoulders, I shouted, “The door’s open!” Instead of Max, Gage strolled through the door. I relaxed down in my chair with a sigh of relief and smiled. “Well, hello there stranger. What brings you to this side of town?” Gage’s lips tilted up into a smile and I could completely see why Piper was so crazy about him. From his blonde hair to his biker boots, Gage was the whole package.

“Max asked if I could swing by and get you for work,” he answered.

“Is he okay?”

“Dunno,” he shrugged. “He just texted and told me to get you.”

“You want a cup of coffee for the road?”

A sexy grin appeared on his face. “Can’t drink coffee on a bike, although, I did try once and nearly burned my nuts off.”

A visual of Gage’s nuts popped into my head, and I quickly dismissed it.
Yikes!
Then I thought about what he said and excitement took over. “Does this mean I get to ride on your bike?”

He poured himself a cup of coffee and leaned back against the counter to take a sip. “Sure does, but you’ll have to switch into jeans and wear head gear.”

The jeans were no big deal, but head gear?
I don’t think so
. When Max was a senior in high school and on the wrestling team, he wore this squishy I’m-in-a-psyche-ward padded looking thing that covered over his head and face and snapped under his chin. He had to wear it for all his practices and matches and it smushed his face up like a sausage. I scrunched my nose at the thought.

“Ummm, can we please skip the head gear? I mean, no offense, but your bike is really cool. Me on the back of your bike wearing a wrestling helmet is not,” I confessed.

A strange look appeared on his face right before he bent over and spit his coffee across the kitchen. I kid you not, coffee shot out of his nose and mouth as he burst into howls of laughter. After what seemed like forever, he pulled it together enough to tell me to go get changed. When I made it back to the kitchen, it was spotlessly clean and Sally was pouring herself a cup of coffee. In typical Sally fashion she had on a t-shirt that said, “Video Killed the Radio Star” and rainbow colored knee socks. She also appeared to be wearing a kilt. I thought about asking, but quickly changed my mind. Sally was not a happy morning person.

“He’s outside,” she mumbled.

“Thanks. Have a good day, dear,” I said, as I headed for the door.

“Yeah, yeah, fuck you, too,” she replied, and I laughed.

Sure enough, Gage was waiting on his bike. In his hand was a tiny pink thing that looked like a turtle shell. I skipped down the steps and asked, “What’s that?”

“Your head gear,” he dryly replied.

“Oh,” I mouthed, and he burst into laughter for the second time.

Yep, I’m an idgit.

The ride to MMG was amazing. The paperwork waiting on my desk was not. In fact, it was downright daunting. I was wondering where Max expected me to order hose pump thingy’s from when he walked through the door.

“How am I expected to know where to order everything from if you don’t write it down?” I asked. When he failed to respond, I glanced up from the papers I was organizing and gasped. “What happened to your face?” Both of his eyes were purple and his nose was three sizes bigger than normal.

“Nothing, I’m fine,” he nasally answered.

I couldn’t take my eyes off his nose. “You don’t look fine.”
I didn’t know a nose could get that big.
Of course, I did not say this out loud.

“Look, I’ve already heard it from Ellison. I don’t need it from you, too,” he grumped.

“Tough, now tell me what happened?” I had a bad feeling I knew exactly what happened.
Cas.

“Stop talking to my nose,” he whined.

“I wasn’t,” I told him, trying not to laugh. I so totally was. It was too hard not to. “Are you going to tell me what happened?” Instead of answering me, Max walked across the hall to his office and slammed the door in my face. “Fine, be that way, you big nosed baby! You are going to have to come out for your meeting this afternoon and I’ll be waiting!” I yelled after him. As usual, he ignored me.
Stupid arsed man.

I was so overwhelmed with paperwork and errands I didn’t get a spare second to myself, much less time to talk to Max. An hour before I could leave for the day, I was in the middle of placing a complicated order when Max stormed from his office and asked if I could get a ride home. Before I could answer, he was gone.
So much for talking to him today.

Sally came to get me and halfway home informed me we had to make a pit stop by LASH to pick up some papers. Needless to say, I was less than thrilled about this.

“Take me home first,” I told her.

“Relax. Bobby said Cas is staking out some old man who is supposedly cheating on his wife. He won’t even be there,” she promised.

I relaxed back into the seat and sighed. I wasn’t ready to see Cas again so soon. Knowing me, I would take one look at him, burst into tears and confess my undying love. No, I needed to put some space between us in order to gain better perspective, or in my case, any perspective.

As we pulled up in front of LASH, the front door opened and a woman stepped out. She had on a canary yellow dress with green floral heels. Her blonde hair was swept up in a fancy knot on top of her head. She looked as if she’d stepped straight off the set of Mad Men.

“Jaysus,” Sally whispered, “Will you look at those babies?”

I stared at her heels and wondered how in the world she walked in them. I did not do heels well, at all.

“Seriously, if I had tits that big, I wouldn’t bother wearing the dress,” Sally’s awestruck voice made me realize I was looking in the wrong direction. My eyes shot to the front of the woman’s dress and my jaw dropped. Mad Men was instantly replaced with Penthouse.
I mean, seriously?
The woman’s dress barely covered her enormously large boobs. As she passed by the car I got a good look at her face and gasped.

“Oh my God, that’s Cas’s wife!” I screeched. The second the words left my lips, her head turned in our direction and we both ducked. “Did she see us?” I whispered.

“No. She looks pissed off, though,” Sally replied.

“What is she doing here?”

“I have no clue. Oh, I am so jealous. Not only does she have epic tits, the bitch is driving an M5.”

“At least she has good taste in cars,” I rudely stated.

“I’m following her.”

“What? No!” I shouted.

“Too late!” she shouted. As we peeled out of the parking lot and sped after Cas’s wife, Sally let out an evil cackle. I closed my eyes and held on for dear life.

“This is a really bad idea,” I warned.

With another maniacal laugh, Sally reached down and flipped on the boom box she’d rigged through her car speakers. My Chemical Romance’s,
Na Na Na
blared full blast at us and we both jumped in surprise. Then we looked at each other and busted into fits of laughter. My pulse pumped with adrenaline as we raced after Alexandria, while screaming the words to the song like two rat arsed lunatics. Finally, she slowed down and pulled onto a rather sketchy looking street.

Sally flipped off the music and asked, “I thought she lived in Wilmington? Who the hell does she know on this side of town in Charlotte?”

“I was wondering the same thing,” I admitted.

We slowed down long enough to see Alexandria turn into a driveway halfway down the street. Sally turned the next street over and slowly cut back up to the house we saw Alexandria park in front of. The house next door happened to have two large trees and several untrimmed bushes jutting halfway out into the street, which made for the perfect hiding place. Sally rolled up her window and pulled as close to the bushes as she could get. The foliage shielded us from being seen from the house, but still afforded us a perfect view of the front door and windows.

“Roll your window down and see if you can hear anything,” Sally instructed.

I rolled down my window and was immediately accosted by a woman’s shrieking voice.

“Is that her?” I asked. I honestly couldn’t tell. The only time I’d heard Alexandria speak, she had a slow southern drawl. There was nothing slow or drawly about this woman’s voice.

“Shhhh, listen,” Sally whispered as we both strained to hear what was being said.

“I spent weeks in that fucking awful place, and for what? He won’t even let me through the door. He talked to me like I was white trash!” she screamed. Sally gave me an Oh-Shit expression, which I returned. I could make out the base notes of a man’s voice, but couldn’t hear what he was saying. “Nothing has gone as planned! Not one damn thing! I did everything he asked and he still didn’t give me the fucking money!” The man said something and she screamed, “Fuck Cas! I want my fucking money!” Suddenly, as if someone pushed the mute button on the television, they both fell silent.

After a few minutes of nothing, I whispered, “Why can’t we hear them?”

Right as the words left my mouth, Alexandria shot from the house. A heavily bearded man with blonde hair wearing no shoes or shirt followed after her.

“Duck!” Sally whispered, and we both dropped down in our seats. I heard Alexandria’s car start and then nothing.

“Is she gone?” I whispered.

Sally peered over the dash to make sure the coast was clear. “She’s gone,” she confirmed.

I sat up to look around and there were no signs of Alexandria or the guy. “Should we go after her?”

“No, hopefully the guy follows her, so we can get inside and find out who he is.”