“Actuallyâ Ow!” Layla glared down at Fox when he pinched her foot. “Actually,” she began again, “Fox mentioned a place that seemed to fit that bill. A bar across the river with live music on Saturday nights.”
“We're so going there.” Cybil pushed to her feet. “Who's stuck being designated drivers? I nominate Quinn from our side.”
“Seconded,” Layla called out.
“Aw.”
“You're getting sex,” Cybil reminded her. “No complaints will be registered.”
“Gage.” Fox mimed a gun with his thumb and forefinger.
“Always is,” Gage said.
Even with the agreement it took thirty minutes for such vital matters as redoing makeup, dealing with hair. Then there was the debate over who was riding with whom, complicated by the fact that Cal remained adamant over not leaving Lump unattended.
“That thing came after my dog once, it could come after him again. Where I go, so goes the Lump. Plus, I ride with my woman.”
Which left Fox squeezing into Cal's truck with Gage behind the wheel and Lump riding shotgun.
“Why can't he ride in the middle?” Fox demanded.
“Because he'll slobber on me, shed on me, and I'll smell like dog.”
“I'm going to.”
“Your problem, son.” Gage slid a glance over. “And I guess it might be as the pretty brunette may object to being slobbered on by you scented with eau de Lump.”
“She hasn't complained yet.” Fox reached over to let the window down a few inches for Lump's sniffing nose.
“I can't blame you for moving in that direction. She's got that classy waif with brains and an underlayment of valor you'd go for.”
“Is that what I go for?” Amused, Fox leaned against the bulk of Lump to study Gage's profile.
“She's right up your alley, with the unexpected addition of urban polish. Just don't let it screw you up.”
“Why would it?”
When Gage didn't answer, Fox shifted. “That was seven years ago, and Carly didn't screw me up. What happened did, for a while. Layla's part of this, Carly wasn't. Or shouldn't have been.”
“Does the fact that she's part of this worry you at all? You two have the connection, like Cal and Quinn. Now Cal's picking out china patterns.”
“Is he?”
“Metaphorically speaking. Now here you are moving on Layla, and getting that cocker spaniel look in your eye when she's within sniffing distance.”
“If I have to be a dog I want a Great Dane. They have dignity. And no, it doesn't worry me. I feel what I feel.” He caught a glimmer. He couldn't help it; it was just there. And it made him smile as only brothers smile at each other. “But it worries you. Cal and Quinn, me and Layla. That leaves you and Cybil. You afraid fate's going to take a hand? Destiny's about to kick your ass? Should I order the monogrammed towels?”
“I'm not worried. I factor the odds in any game I play, make the players.”
“The third female player is extremely hot.”
“I've had hotter.”
Fox snorted, turned to Lump. “He's had hotter.”
“Plus, she's not my type.”
“I didn't know there was any woman who wasn't your type.”
“Complicated women aren't my type. You tangle in the sheets with a complicated woman, you're going to pay a price for it in the morning. I like them simple.” He grinned over at Fox. “And plenty of them.”
“A complicated woman will give you more play. And you like play.”
“Not that kind. Simple gets you through. And plenty of simple gets you through a lot. I figure going for quantity, seeing as we might not live past our next birthday.”
Reaching over, Fox gave Gage a friendly punch on the arm. “You always cheer me up with that sunny, optimistic nature of yours.”
“What are you bitching about? You're going to eat, drink, and possibly make Layla, while I settle for club soda and bad music in a crowded West Virginia bar.”
“You could get lucky. I bet there's at least one simple woman inside.”
Gage considered as he pulled to the curb near the bar. “There is that.”
IT WASN'T WHAT HE'D PLANNED, FOX THOUGHT. He'd had the idea of sitting with Layla at a corner table, well in the back where the music wasn't loud enough to hamper conversation. A little get-to-know-each-other-better-as-regular-people interlude, maybe followed by a little low-key necking. Which, if done right, might have led to some fooling around in his truck, and ended with her in his bed.
He'd considered it a pretty damn good plan, with room for flexible options.
He'd ended up crammed with five other people at a table for four, drinking beer and eating nachos while the juke blasted out twangy country.
And laughing, a lot.
The live music wasn't bad when it started. The five guys stuffed in the stage corner managed to pump it out pretty well. He knew them and, feeling generous, bought them a round on their break.
“Whose idea was this?” Quinn demanded. “This was a
great
idea. And I'm not even drinking.”
“Mine, technically.” Fox clinked his beer to her glass of diet something. “I routinely have great ideas.”
“It was your general concept,” Layla corrected. “My execution. But you were right. It's a nice bar.”
“I particularly like the Bettie Page wall clock.” Cybil gestured toward it.
“You know Bettie Page?” Gage wanted to know.
“Know of, certainly. The fifties pinup sensation who became a cult icon, partially due to being the target of a Senate investigationâread witch hunt in my opinionâon porn.”
“Cybil met her.” Quinn lifted her soda, sipped.
Gage peered over his drink. “Get out.”
“I helped research the script for the biopic that came out a couple of years ago. She was lovely, inside and out. Are you a fan, Mr. Turner?”
“Yeah, actually, I am.” He took a sip of club soda as he studied Cybil. “You've got a lot of unusual avenues in there.”
She smiled her slow, feline smile. “I love to travel.”
When the band came back, two of its members stopped by the table. “Want to jam one, O'Dell?”
“You guys are doing fine without me.”
“You play?” Cybil poked him in the shoulder.
“Family requirement.”
“Then go jam one, O'Dell.” Now she gave him a push. “We insist.”
“I'm drinking here.”
“Don't make us cause a scene. We're capable. Q?”
“Oh yeah. Fox,” she said. “Fox. Fox. Fox.” Letting her voice rise a bit on each repetition.
“Okay. Okay.”
When he rose, Quinn put her fingers between her lips and whistled.
“Control your girl.”
“Can't.” Cal only grinned. “I like 'em wild.”
Shaking his head, Fox lifted a guitar from its stand, held a brief conference with the band as he slung the strap over his shoulder.
Cybil leaned over to Layla. “Why are guitar players so sexy?”
“I think it's the hands.”
His certainly seemed to know what they were doing as he turned, tapped out the time, then led with a complex riff.
“Show-off,” Gage muttered, and made Cybil laugh.
He went with “Lay Down Sally,” an obvious crowd pleaser. Layla had to admit it had a tingle working in her when he leaned into the mike and added vocals.
He looked the part, didn't he? she thought. Faded jeans over narrow hips, feet planted in run-down work boots, shaggy hair around a handsome face. And when those tiger eyes, full of fun, latched on hers, the tingle went right up to the top of the scale.
Cybil scooted over until her lips were a half inch from Layla's ear. “He's really good.”
“Yeah, damn it. I think I'm in trouble.”
“Right this minute? I wish I was.” With another laugh, she leaned back while the song ended, and the bar erupted with applause.
Fox was already shaking his head, taking off the strap.
“Come on,” Cybil called out. “Encore.”
He kept shaking his head as he came back to the table. “I do more than one in a row, they have to pry the guitar out of my greedy hands.”
“Why aren't you a rock star instead of a lawyer?” Layla asked him.
“Rock starring's too much work.” The music pumped out again as he leaned close to her. “I resisted the more obvious Clapton. How many guys have hit you with âLayla' over the years?”
“Pretty much all of them.”
“That's what I figured. I've got this individualist streak. Never go for the obvious.”
Oh yeah, she thought when he grinned at her. She was definitely in trouble.
Ten
THE RAIN HUNG AROUND, IRRITATINGLY, INTO the kind of gloomy, windswept morning where sleeping in was mandatory. Or would've been, Fox thought as he shut his apartment door behind him, if a guy didn't have demon research on his Sunday morning schedule.
Despite the damp, he opted to walk the handful of blocks to Layla's. Like juggling, walking was thinking time. Apparently the other residents of the Hollow didn't share his view or had nothing much to think about. Cars crammed nose to ass at the curb outside Ma's Pantry and Coffee Talk, windshields running, bumpers dripping. And inside, he mused, people would be tucking into the breakfast special, getting their coffee topped off, complaining about the windy rain.
From across the street, he eyeballed the new door on the bookstore and thought, Nice job, Dad. As Layla had done, he studied the Going Out of Business sign on the gift shop. Nothing to be done about that. Another business would move in. Jim Hawkins would find another tenant who'd slap fresh paint on the walls and fill the place with whatevers. A Grand Opening sign would go up; customers would wander in to check it all out. Through the transition, people would still be eating the breakfast special, sleeping in on a rainy Sunday morning, or nagging their kids to get dressed for church.
But things would change. This time, when the Seven came around, they'd be more than ready for the Big Evil Bastard. They'd do more than mop up the blood, put out the fires, lock up the deranged until the madness passed.
They had to do more.
Meanwhile, they'd do the work, look for answers. They'd had fun the night before, he mused. Hanging out, letting music and conversation wash away a long, hard day. Progress had been made during that day. He could feel all of them taking a step toward something.
So while he might not be sleeping in or tucking into the breakfast special at Ma's, he'd spend the day with friends, and the woman he wanted for his lover, working toward making sure others in the Hollow could keep right on doing the everyday, even during the week of July seventh, every seventh year.
He made the turn at the Square, hands in the kangaroo pockets of his hooded sweatshirt, head ducked down in the rain.
He glanced up idly as he heard the squeal of brakes on wet pavement. Fox recognized Block Kholer's truck, and thought, Shit, even before Block slammed out of it.
“You little son of a bitch.”
Now, as Block strode forward, ham-sized hands fisted, size fourteen Wolverines slapping the pavement, Fox thought: Shit.
“You're going to want to step back, Block, and calm down.” They'd known each other since high school, so Fox's hopes of Block doing either were slim. As tempers went, Block's was fairly mildâbut once Block worked up a head of steam, somebody was going to get pounded.
Since he sincerely didn't want it to be him, Fox tuned in and managed to evade the first swing.
“Cut it out, Block. I'm Shelley's lawyer, that's reality. If I wasn't, somebody else would be.”
“I heard that's not all you are.” He swung again, missed again when Fox ducked. “How long you been doing my wife, you cocksucker?”
“I've never been with Shelley that way. You know me, goddamn it. If you got that tune from Napper, consider who was whistling it.”
“I got kicked out of my own goddamn house.” Block's blue eyes were bright with rage in a wide face stained red with more. “I gotta go into Ma's to get a decent breakfast because of you.”
“I wasn't the one with my hand down my sister-in-law's shirt.” Talk was his business, Fox reminded himself. Talk him down. So he kept his voice cool and even as he danced back from another punch. “Don't hang this on me, Block, and don't do something now you're going to have to pay for.”
“You're going to fucking pay.”
Fox was fast, but Block hadn't lost all the skill he'd owned on the football field back in his day. He didn't punch Fox as much as mow him down. Fox hit the ivy-covered slope of a lawnâand the rocks underneath the drenched ivyâand slid painfully down to the sidewalk with the enraged former defensive tackle on top of him.
Block outweighed him by a good fifty pounds, and most of that was muscle. Pinned, he couldn't avoid the short-armed, bare-knuckled punch to the face, or the punishing rabbit jabs in his kidneys. Through the vicious pain, the blurred vision, he could see a kind of madness on Block's face that had panic snaking in.
And the thoughts sparking out were every bit as mad and murderous.
Fox did the only thing left to him. He fought dirty. He clawed, going for those mad eyes. At Block's howl, he rammed his fist into the exposed throat. Block gagged, choked, and Fox had room to maneuver, to jam his knee between Block's legs. He got in a few punches, aiming for the face and throat.
Run
. That single thought bloomed like blood in Fox's mind. But when he tried to roll, crawl, fight his way clear and gain his feet, Block slammed Fox's head against the sidewalk. He felt something inside him break as the steel-toed boot kicked viciously at his side. Then he fought for air as meaty hands closed around his throat.