“I could see how that could be a problem,” he said, looking hungrily at my tots.
“Do you want some of my tots?” I asked, noting he’d mowed through his.
“Please.” He reached over toward my box.
I smacked his hand. “You should never touch a lady’s tots without permission.”
His eyes widened. “Oh, I don’t usually need permission. I know how to read a room.”
“So you’re saying I’m asking to have my tots touched?” Flirty banter was so much better than serious talk about my family and my precarious future. Yep, let’s just do innuendos.
“Oh, I’m not just going to touch your tots. I’m going to devour your tots.” He struck fast, swiping two and popping them into his mouth. He made an exaggerated face of ecstasy. “Oh yeah. Your tots are soooo good.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at the sexy, silly Ty who had been chipping away at my defenses and keeping me enough off-kilter that I found myself tumbling toward him. If things kept going in this direction, I would have to tell him about my time in the clink and about my family that sometimes skirted the law. I couldn’t keep hiding who I was. It was as bad as not telling someone you’d been married or that you had herpes or something. If one got to a certain point in a relationship and hadn’t come clean, it looked deceitful. And that was something I didn’t want to ever be. I wasn’t going to blast my past mistakes to the treetops of Shreveport, but neither was I going to treat what I had done . . . or rather hadn’t known I had done . . . like a black mark. I tired of carrying shame. My back was bowed from it.
“Take my tots,” I said, sliding my box of delicious golden potatoes his way.
“You’re a girl who gives it up easy. Nice.” He wriggled his eyebrows, his pretty eyes dancing beneath the lurid fluorescent lights.
“I can’t believe you said that,” I said, balling up my straw wrapper and throwing it at him.
He caught my hand and lifted it to his lips. “I know you’re not easy. But that’s okay. I like a challenge.”
And that did it. My heart sort of tipped over on its side in a good old-fashioned swoon. I realized that I wasn’t falling in love with him. Nope, not ready to go there yet. I hardly knew him. But I was falling into serious like . . . with a guy I could never imagine in a million years would fit with me. But here he sat. And here I did, too.
He released my hand and went back to polishing off my tots. I finished my burger, wiped my mouth like a lady, and squelched a burp. “You know what’s nice after a cheeseburger?”
“Marathon sex to work off the calories?” He slurped his cherry Coke and tried to keep a straight face.
“Okay, you know what’s nice after a cheeseburger other than marathon sex?” I amended with a giggle. Lord, I had just giggled. Who was I, even? “Playing blackjack at the casino. I mean, I’m wearing this dress, and you look mighty fine in that tux. We might as well pretend we’re high rollers.”
“Blackjack, huh?”
“If you’re willing to take a gamble . . .”
Ty started clearing up his place. “I think I’ve already established that.”
I smiled like a doofus because I knew he meant me, and something about being wanted by Ty was doing things to me, making me feel like I was worth loving. Normally, I would run from that feeling, but here I was at 11:42 p.m. embracing the hell out of it. “Let’s go. I’m feeling lucky tonight.”
Three hours later and forty dollars lighter, I slipped into my bed.
Alone.
Oh sure, there was that moment as Ty walked me to my door when I could have very easily said Want another drink? and let him inside for more than just a glass of vino. But something held me back. I wasn’t ready. So I enjoyed my kiss good night on the porch and thanked him for letting me be his date to the gala. Then I let myself inside my apartment alone, ignoring the disappointment in his eyes.
I had just tugged on my oversize, ratty fun-run T-shirt and cotton boxers when there was a knock at the door.
“Seriously?” I muttered, wondering how Ty had not gotten the message that our evening was over. Then I wondered if I had left something in his car. I spied my clutch on the table sitting next to the roses Ty had sent me earlier, so that wasn’t it. I looked down at my baggy sleepwear and rubbed my makeup-free face, knowing that I looked ridiculous, if not comfortable.
Amelia would have worn a peignoir, I’m sure. Whatever that was I wasn’t quite sure. I had seen it in a book once and wondered, but it sounded like something slinky and sexy.
Because I lived by myself in a part of town where crime sometimes spilled over, I grabbed the baseball bat I kept next to the door and carefully pulled the blinds back to peer out to my front porch.
Cricket?
What in the hell?
I hurriedly unbolted the door and pulled her inside just in case someone was lurking in the bushes, waiting to pounce. Which was a weird thought, but one I had often. Hey, my two years in a women’s penitentiary had made me paranoid about being jumped. Cricket yipped in surprise but came with me. I noted she was a little wobbly and that she had thankfully not driven herself. The car pulling away from my curb had an Uber sticker on the windshield.
Gone was the dress I had made Cricket, and in its place she wore a sweatshirt, jeans, and running shoes. And she seemed to be (a) a little drunk, (b) in a state of shock, or (c) both.
“Cricket?” I said, relocking the door.
She turned to me. “Huh?”
“What are you doing here? How did you know where I lived?”
“I’m your employer.” She looked around, somewhat dazed. “I like your place. It’s very cozy.”
I glanced around, taking in my small apartment through her eyes. A couch I had recovered with ticking, bright-orange pillows with daisies, scuffed but clean wood floors, and indigo velvet drapes. My furniture had been obtained from secondhand shops, with one piece from Cricket’s store. I had chalk-painted a buffet and had some cheerful daisy plates on display. The overall effect was slightly bohemian with a punch of modern mixed with desperation. I had economically pieced together what I could, but Cricket was correct—it was cozy.
She continued to look shaken, so I steered her toward the kitchen. “Here. Let me get you some water.”
“No. I’m fine.”
“You’re standing in my apartment on the opposite side of town at”—I glanced at the clock on my microwave—“one eighteen a.m. I think you need some water and a place to sit down.”
She lowered herself onto a barstool. “Okay.”
I fetched a glass and filled it with purified water from a pitcher in the fridge. Setting it in front of Cricket, I pulled a stool around to the other side and sat down. “So what’s wrong?”
My boss hadn’t been crying; in fact, she still wore mascara. Her lips had been chewed bare, and she looked decidedly paler than she had earlier when she’d been determined, jovial, and intent on making Scott eat his words.
“He stole it all.”
I hesitated, trying to decipher what that meant, before giving up and asking, “Who stole what?”