“What’d she want?” Cole swallowed half the bottle’s contents in one drink.
“What doesn’t she want is the question,” Trey quipped, and Cole threw his ball cap at him. Laughing, Trey caught the hat to his chest. “Serious. She’s trying to take you for everything you have. Woman’s crazy.”
“Can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip.” Cole sighed and pulled his cellphone out of his pocket. It was on silent and he’d missed her call.
“Don’t let her manipulate you just because she’s the mother of your kid,” Trey warned, but it was too late for that. Cole made every effort to keep Kensie happy—he didn’t want to give her any excuse to have one of her tantrums and not show for one of his visitations with Micky. She’d tried that shit after she left the first time, afraid Cole would take Micky and not give him back. Like what she’d done to Cole. It’d been almost six months since she left. He missed his son, but he didn’t miss Kensie at all.
“Only one more month and she won’t have a right to demand anything again.”
“And we’re throwing one hell of a party afterward.” Trey raised his bottle in cheers.
Grinning, Cole stood and headed across the shop to the recycle bin. “You make a celebration out of anything. But I think I’ll take you up on that.” He tossed the bottle into the bin. “I’ve got a car to haul. Coming with?”
“Nothing better to do. I tell you what, being unemployed is getting boring. Think I need a hobby.” Trey tossed his bottle into the bin.
“You have a hobby. Thought you were making furniture.”
“That hobby costs a lot.” He followed Cole outside.
“That’s why you’re supposed to sell it.” Cole headed to his pickup truck and the flatbed trailer parked side by side in front of the shop. “Hitch up the trailer, will you?”
“What’d she do to her car, anyway?” Trey stopped beside the nose of the trailer.
“It’s a rental. Probably the fuel pump.” Cole climbed into the pickup and let Trey guide him back.
“Where we taking the car?” Trey called up to him.
He waited while Trey hitched up the trailer. When Trey hopped inside the cab, Cole said, “Figured we’d leave it at Joe’s since it’s on the highway. He won’t be able to touch it since it’s a rental car, but he can call the company and let them know that the piece of crap is broken.” Cole headed out of the driveway. He looked down to the gas gauge. “I’ll fuel up and run inside to let Joe know we’ll be back to drop the car off.
“Wonder how many cars he’s got in the shop. Maybe I should help him out. Poor sap’s always swamped.”
“It’s because he fires all his help,” Cole said. Joe was the neatest mechanic Cole had ever met. He liked things in their place, and when new guys came in and turned out to be shop slobs, Joe gave them the boot. “You might actually last, though. You might be a dick, but you’re not a slob.”
“Thanks, asshole.” Trey grinned and flipped him off. Eight years in the Navy had whipped the guy into a neat freak; a side of Trey not many knew. Most couldn’t see past the guy he’d been before he went in—a hell raising, destructive kid who wrecked every car he owned, and been thrown into the drunk tank a handful of times. He had his own ghosts, his own scars, and joining the Navy had been an escape he needed. Cole was sure the military saved his friend’s life—Trey had been on a downward spiral his last few months before joining.
Joe’s Garage, one of two mechanic shops in town, sat on a corner lot right off the highway. He’d been coming here with his old man even before he could walk. Joe now ran the station, a spitting image of his father, Joe Sr.—a massive man with the heart of a teddy bear. Joe was a couple of years older than Cole and Trey, but they all had a mutual love of hot rods. Cole didn’t trust many others under the hood of his vehicles, but he trusted Joe.
A mint condition pea green LTD was parked at one of the pumps out front. Margie Nelson stood between the pump and the car wearing a scowl to accent her wrinkled brow. The pump towered over her and Cole lost sight of her when he parked the pickup on the opposite side of the pump. He shoved the door open and stepped out onto the pavement.
“How’s it going, Mrs. Nelson,” Trey asked. He shoved his hands in his pockets just as Cole rounded the front of the pickup.
“I’d be a lot better if Joe hadn’t put in this piece of junk.” Margie gestured to the pump with a wave of her hand. “Improvement my butt.”
Trey rounded the pump. “It’s not working?”
Cole looked up to the gas station door. Margie shouldn’t have been out pumping her own gas anyway. The cable across the parking lot triggered a bell inside the station whenever a car stopped at a pump. There weren’t many full service stations in the state, but Joe’s Garage had always been full service. If the attendant inside the shop couldn’t get to the pump, then the cashier came out to check on the customer.
Margie looked ready to beat the pump with the pastel blue handbag she clutched in one hand. “What was wrong with the old pumps?”
“Not a damn thing, ma’am. Pardon my French,” Trey said with a grin.
She narrowed her eyes, as though she might scold him for his language. Then she said, “Exactly. Not a damn thing,” she repeated, and Cole swallowed a smile. “I don’t understand why it keeps asking for a credit card. I don’t own a credit card. That’s the devil’s work and the reason this country’s gone to hell in a handbasket.” She turned to glare at the gas station door, and her culottes swayed around her orthopedic hosiery. “Where is that man, anyway?”
“Probably taking a break,” Trey said, looking as if he were enjoying himself.
Sweat beaded Margie’s forehead and her cheeks were flushed as pink as her strawberry-hued lipstick. “A break.” She looked downright exasperated.
“Mrs. Nelson, why don’t you sit in the car and turn the air up. I’ll get your gas pumped,” Trey said, and Cole opened the driver’s door to the LTD.
“We’ll find out what’s keeping Joe,” Cole promised as she climbed into her car.
“It’s just too hot out here...” There was a note of relief to her voice as she settled in behind the wheel. “I’ve been out here five minutes trying to figure this thing out.”
Cole eased the car door shut.
She cracked the window and tilted her face up to the opening. “Only ten dollars. I’m heading out to Angela’s for a visit. The new baby arrived last week, you know.”
She rolled up the window before Trey or Cole could respond.
Trey chuckled and turned to the gas pump. “I got this,” he said. “You get your rig gassed up.”
Cole went around to pump his own gas.
A few minutes later, Margie called out, “You didn’t go over, did you?”
“No, ma’am,” Trey answered. “I’ll have Joe add it to your tab.”
“I don’t care what they say about you, Trey Thompson,” Margie said, and Cole peered around the pump and grinned in anticipation of what might come out of her mouth next. “You’re a good kid.”
The car fired up with a deeper rumble than the LTD should have. Trey jumped out of the way before Margie ran his foot over. Chuckling, Cole turned his attention back to his own pump.
“Hear that?” Cole said with a laugh. “You really aren’t that bad.”
“She’s a feisty one, that Margie.” Trey shook his head as he rounded the pump.
“Can you top off the tank?” Cole didn’t wait for his answer and walked toward the station. “I’ll run in and talk to Joe.”
“This thing’s as bad of a gas hog as my car.” Trey leaned against the truck, his eyes on the numbers racing upward on the gas meter.
A cold blast of stale air rushed Cole when he stepped into the gas station. The girl behind the counter didn’t look up. She swiped a fingernail with magenta polish then moved on to the next nail. He’d had an idea Tatem was at the register, which explained why no one had come outside to check on the customers at the pump.
“Working hard again?” Cole asked.
Tatem shrugged and went back to polishing her nails. “Not much to do.”
“It’s a full service gas station,” Cole mused. He grabbed two sodas from the cooler against the wall and set them on the counter. “Margie was out pumping her own gas.”
Last fall, Joe’s sister took off with a new boyfriend and hadn’t wanted a teenage daughter dragging her down. Joe drove across the state line into Denver to bring Tatem home. Joe and Melissa didn’t have kids; they’d tried for years. Going from no kids to a teenager wasn’t a walk in the park, Cole guessed. He’d been an asshole as a teenager, oblivious to the world around him and how much growing up he had to do before he became the adult he thought he was. How Joe and Melissa would survive a rebellious teenager was something the whole town wondered.
“Margie?”
“Nelson.”
“Didn’t hear the bell ring.” She shrugged and raised her hand to her lips to blow on the nails. “I don’t know how to pump gas anyway.”
Cole cocked his brows. “Really? Seems to me if you’re going to steal your uncle’s car you should at least know how to pump gas.”
A month ago she’d taken Joe’s Mustang out for a joyride. The sheriff found her and a friend on the county line with a blown tire and a half empty pack of beer. Cole spent a week repairing the damage to the fender.
“I didn’t steal the car, I borrowed it.”
“Borrowed, huh?” Cole dug his wallet out of his back pocket. “The cops didn’t buy that story, either, I'm betting.”
She went back to painting her nails. “This town sucks. Don’t you all get tired of gossiping?”
He smiled. “That’s how we keep you kids in line.”
Tatem rolled her eyes. “Lame.”
Cole counted out bills and set the cash on the counter. “For the pop.”
She screwed the cap onto the nail polish then pinched the bills between her fingertips, careful not to smudge the wet paint. With her other hand she released the cash drawer. “If there was more to do in this dump I wouldn’t have borrowed Uncle Joe’s car.”
“There’s more to do than when I was a kid.”
“Like back in the dinosaur ages?” She raised obstinate brows.
“Yeah, back in the day.” Smiling, Cole stuffed the loose change into the front pocket of his jeans. “There’s a bowling alley. Try that.”
“Bowling?” She sounded as if she’d rather kick rocks.
“Bet you wish you would’ve gone bowling instead of stealing a car—a lot less community service hours for getting caught bowling.” Cole tapped an invoice pad. “Where’s Joe?”
“I dunno. He left somewhere in the truck with his tools. Said he’d be back in an hour or so.”
“Write him a note to take a look at Margie Nelson’s exhaust. Sounds like there’s a leak. Also, I pumped ten bucks into her car. Add it to her tab.”
“I don’t know how Uncle Joe makes any money when he lets everyone and their dog charge gas.”
“Joe knows who’s good for it and who’s not. Let him know I’ll be back with a car for him to look at, too.” Cole turned and walked to the door. He pushed it open. “Stay out of trouble. You’re giving your uncle ulcers.”
“I’m on probation. That’s pretty much jail,” she called after him.
“That’s probably for the best,” he said before the door swung shut behind him and cut off her response. Back when he was her age, he’d been out drinking, smoking cigarettes stolen from Trey’s aunt, and doing his best to get in girls’ pants. He’d say a prayer for Joe’s sanity.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Jay, you up there?”
Jaden opened the bathroom door and stuck her head into the hallway. “Up here!”
A moment later Mia appeared in the doorway with a bob of dark hair and caramel highlights. “Yay! I can’t believe you’re actually here! In River Bend!”
Jaden pulled Mia into her arms. “And I can’t believe I didn’t croak on the way in. I had to shower. I was disgusting.”
“I know. Cole told me.”
Jaden puckered her brows. “He said that?” She unwrapped the towel from her head. “What an ass.”
Mia leaned against the doorframe, her smile widening. “No. He said you were sweaty and irritated.”
“Okay, that part’s true.” She dropped the damp towel into the hamper in the corner. “I like your hair. It’s cute.”
Mia reached up to run her fingers through the short locks. “I wasn’t sure about it.”
“Well, I love it. You’ve never gone short before.”
“I needed a change.” A shadow touched her brown eyes and she looked away. When she dropped her hand from her hair, the locks fell into place a few inches under her chin, accentuating a slim neck. “I don’t know how Lily talked me into chopping it, but it’s growing on me.”
Jaden pursed her lips and studied her. Chopping off her long locks for the first time in her life seemed a pretty big deal. The kind of thing a person might do right before a breakdown. “Change is nice,” Jaden said, but her comment came out sounding more like a question.
“Yeah, it’s nice.”
Jaden nudged her out of the bathroom. “Please tell me you have alcohol in this house. I could use a drink or two. You have no idea how crappy it was being stranded in this heat. My perfume and hair products were gnat magnets. I thought I would either be eaten alive or sweat to death.”
“You’re just not used to it, but you will be by the time you leave.” Mia started down the stairs and Jaden followed. “I thought you were headed to the beach? I can’t believe you gave up toes in the sand to vacation here.”