Real Dirty (Real Dirty #1)

Stan shakes his head. “No, you don’t. And I take it he never bothered to mention that fact to you.”

Slouching back in the chair, I lift a hand to my face and pinch the bridge of my nose. “How much?” I whisper.

“A hundred thousand.”

My mouth drops open and my hand hits my lap. “You’ve gotta be joking. What did he use it for? It sure didn’t go toward paying off his hospital bills, or any of the bar expenses. He lives in that senior community, which I pay for. What else . . .”

A thought dawns on me, one I’m afraid to give credence to by speaking it aloud.

He wouldn’t.

“You can’t think of anything else he would’ve used the money for? Booze? Gambling? Drugs?” Stan asks.

I’m not proud, but I answer, “I pay for the booze. As far as I know, he doesn’t gamble. He’s never done drugs beyond smoking the occasional joint.”

“So where would the money go?”

I reply with another question. “Has he at least been making payments on the mortgage?”

Stan’s expression turns rueful. “He was. But he stopped two months ago.”

When he asked for an extra $500 every month, and I told him I couldn’t spare it.

God, the hits keep coming.

“Is it . . . is it already in foreclosure?”

Stan shakes his head. “No, I called the lender this morning, as soon as I got off the phone with the other bankers, and I did you a favor. I told them your dad has been having some issues and has become more forgetful, and the payments never got mailed. I paid them over the phone, Ripley. You’re current now, and they’re not going to foreclose as long as you keep writing them a check every month.”

“You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip, Stan. You’ve seen the numbers. My budget can’t handle another five hundred a month.”

Stan leans back in his chair, crossing an ankle over his knee. “I know.”

But he doesn’t know know. I doubt Stan has ever had to worry about where he could find an extra five hundred bucks, not when he slid right into Daddy’s profitable accounting firm where the vast majority of clients don’t have as much trouble paying their bills as the Fishbowl.

“What am I gonna do?”

“Look, you’ve got a few options.”

At the word options, I sit up straighter. “Like what? Because I’m pretty sure I’ve considered every damn option I could have.”

Stan nods and leans forward, resting both elbows on the desk. “Can you get more customers in the door? Is there any way you can increase receipts at all?”

“I’m trying. I wanted to start some new marketing and promo, but that takes money. And when I told Pop I was thinking about asking a few friends to come in and play so I could charge a cover, he about lost his shit.”

Stan knows all about my family’s dirty laundry, along with the fact that the most traffic I get on a weekend is the gawkers who come with their guidebooks, peek into the bathroom, and leave without buying a single drink.

But how do I keep them out if there’s a possibility they’ll even spend two dollars on a bottle of water? I’m desperate enough that I can’t.

“Look, Ripley, we’ve known each other a long time, and you know I’ve always had a thing for you, right?”

I jerk my gaze up to meet Stan’s. “What?”

“Come on, Ripley. You know that practically every guy that meets you goes home thinking about what it’d be like to have all that fire in his bed.”

The chicken pot pie I had for lunch flips in my stomach.

“Are you trying to make a point here, Stan? Because this is not helping matters.”

“All I’m saying is that if you really want my help, I’m happy to give it, and I don’t think what I want from you would be any hardship on your part.”

My mouth drops open for the second time since I stepped foot in the office, but I quickly shut it and spring to my feet.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that.”

“Come on, Rip. I’m not trying to be crude, but I did just lay out a grand this morning to save your ass, so I think that buys me a little room to speak my mind. Unless you want to work it off a different way.”

I swallow back the bile rising in my throat. Stan’s not ugly. No, with his pale blond hair and brown eyes, he’s actually attractive in a bland starched-shirt kind of way. That’s not what’s making me sick.

No, it’s the picture of his wife and two kids sitting on the credenza behind him, and his assumption that he can throw this offer at me because of who I am.

“Go f*ck yourself, Stan.” Silently I add, I’m nothing like my mama.





14





Ripley





“Did you kick him in the balls?” Hope asks as she slides another drink across the bar to me.

When was the last time I was on this side of the equation? Forever ago, is all I can come up with. Which explains why I’m already buzzed after three drinks.

“No. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of having any part of me touch any part of him.” I swirl the cocktail straw in the glass, mixing the booze and soda. “But I did tell him to go f*ck himself.”

Hope throws back her head and laughs. “Nice. I bet that wasn’t what he was expecting. He comes in here at least once every other week and leaves with his arm around some girl barely old enough to drink.”

I jerk my gaze to hers. “Seriously?”

Hope, my best friend since bartending school over a decade ago, runs the bar at the White Horse Saloon, one of the most successful honky-tonks in town. It’s always packed with tourists hoping to get a glimpse of a few country stars, and the amount of money and alcohol that flows through here in any given week could probably pay off the mortgage I didn’t know Pop had taken out.

“Dead serious. A few months back, he spent all night flirting with one of my new waitresses, hanging around until she was done with her shift. Not more than fifteen minutes after she walked out with him, she comes storming back in, pissed as hell.”

I suck down a swig of my Crown and Coke, on the house or I wouldn’t be drinking it. “What happened?”

“His MO is to get them into his cherry-red ’Vette and tell them the party doesn’t start until his dick gets sucked. Normally, the girls he leaves with are blitzed, so I’m guessing they fall all over themselves to do it. But she was totally sober and told him he could suck his own dick to get the party started.”

“Burnnnn.” I tip back the glass for another sip. “Why’d she go with him to begin with if she wasn’t up for . . . that?”

Hope leans forward on the bar, her boobs threatening to spill from her low-cut shirt, but I avert my eyes.

“Apparently, he had blow and she wanted it. Just not bad enough to blow him.”

My eyebrows shoot up. “Blow as in . . .”

“Yep. Coke. And not the kind you’re drinking.”

“But he’s an accountant. How does that make any sense?”

Hope straightens and laughs. “Honey, it doesn’t matter if he was a priest. Everyone’s got a vice.”