Wet and Reckless (Private Pleasures 4)

Roxy shook her head. “No thanks. I appreciate the offer, but I try to keep my THC levels within legal limits.”

“No worries there.” He held the rollie out to her. “It’s strictly tobacco. Scout’s honor.”

“You weren’t a Scout, remember?”

“Even so, you can trust me on this. I’ve been looking into other ways to, you know, relax during the day because one of Roscoe’s conditions for hiring me at the Gas ‘n Go was that I stay straight.”

“Um, I don’t know how to break this to you, Dobie, but no matter what’s in your roll, you can’t smoke at a gas station. That’s pretty much rule number one.”

“Which is why I’ve got this with me now, before I clock in. Good old Kentucky shag, courtesy of Jeb, who’s got a side-hustle growing his own with the idea of selling private label stuff for fancy prices at the pub. It’s smooth. It’ll help you chill.”

She took the cigarette, eyed its tight, skinny contours, and then gave it a sniff. Her senses registered a blend of soil, dried wood, and leather, yet the underlying scent of tobacco was still distinctive enough to bring a thirsty tightness to her throat. No, she shouldn’t, especially if her last smoke break offered any lessons on the Karmic cost of giving in to the cravings of the body. But if she didn’t get her nerves under control, Addy was going to send her home early, and that might kick off a domino effect of rotten luck right when things seemed to be going her way.

She inhaled again and decided it was bad form to reject a gift. Better to treat it as a farewell present to her nicotine habit and silently promised God, fate, and the universe the cigarette in her hand would be her last. No more “trying” to quit. On the final puff, she would be an ex-smoker.

“Thanks, Dobie. You’re an angel.” An angel giving away coffin nails, but who was she to question?

He pulled out two more of his hand-rolled specials, gave one to Kenny, and pointed the other at her. “The alley’s private if you’re worried about busybodies giving you shit. Be out to join you soon.”

She sent them a thumbs-up then slipped through the kitchen, stopping by the small room where employees stowed their stuff to get her lighter, before heading to the rendezvous point. Heat rose from the asphalt and surrounded her as completely as if she’d stepped into a super-humid sauna—otherwise known as Kentucky in August. Undaunted, she put the cigarette between her lips, flicked the lighter, and inhaled deeply. Her eyelids drifted down as she breathed the soft, earthy smoke. “Good-bye,” she whispered on the exhale.

“Hey now, Rox. That ain’t no way to greet an old friend.”

Her heart leaped to her throat and then tumbled to her stomach. Despite the fear turning her blood cold and clumsy, she managed another drag off the cigarette, released it slowly, and strove for outward calm before she looked toward the man she’d spent the last six weeks convincing herself she’d never cross paths with again.

“I consider you many things, Randy—a bullshit artist, a thief—but the one thing I’ve never considered you is a friend.” Satisfied with the matter-of-fact tone of her delivery, she took another puff and blew the smoke into his face, obscuring his deceptively innocent features.

His clear hazel eyes looked a little narrower, but maybe that could be blamed on the face full of smoke she’d just served him rather than his sneaky nature starting to show. His clean-shaven jaw was just as strong and seemingly trustworthy. The sandy hair waving back from his temples contained stray grays, and that high, broad forehead that had fooled her into thinking he was open and intelligent bore a few new lines. Had he spent some long hours worrying about how he was going to square things with Uncle Billy after she’d taken back what he’d stolen from her and then taken off? She hoped so.

“Fine, Rox. If that’s the way you want to play it. I come to you as a friend. Someone with your best interests at heart. But if you prefer to keep things strictly business, I can do that to. You stole from Uncle Billy. I know it. He knows it—”

“You stole from me, you thieving bastard.”

His lying mouth curved into a smug smile. He folded his arms across his chest and shook his head. “Women. All emotion. Absolutely no brains for business. Read your contract, Roxy. You committed to pay me management fees for representing you.”

“Fifteen percent of the pay I received from gigs you booked for me. Maybe I don’t have a good head for business, but I know basic math. Fifteen percent of nothing is nothing.”

“Playing Friday nights at the Saddle Peak Lounge is not nothing. Playing Saturday nights at Winchester’s is definitely not nothing.”

Her panic burned away in a wildfire of anger. “I got those gigs. I saw the open auditions. I went on my own. I received those offers directly.” She ticked the points off on her fingers. “You didn’t ‘manage’ a damn thing. And I still paid your lazy ass fifteen percent of my Saddle Peak shows, so we are more than even.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re rehashing old arguments here. Read the deal. It covers all your earnings for the term of the contract. You owe me every penny of the fifteen percent on the other gigs, plus damages for the gigs you refused.”

Indignation momentarily strangled her. “First off, I told you back in April I tore up that contract. Second, gigs? What gigs? Playing bachelor parties where they expect me to take off my clothes and perform a…a…”

“A personal duet with the groom-to-be,” Randy supplied.

“That’s prostitution, you sl

eazy pimp, not music management. And now we are re-hashing old arguments. Like I said before, I never agreed to that, and I never will.”

“You deprived me of my percentage for those bookings, and you hurt my reputation with clients who trusted me to bring them talent. It cost me, Rox. It cost me big. That’s on you. Since you refused to pay me my due, I exercised my contractual right to collect my fees in non-cash form. I took that tired, old guitar, hocked it for fifteen hundred, and wrote off the rest of the two grand you owed me.”

“You swiped my guitar while I was on a break during a gig.”

“Careful who you’re calling a thief, Rox. I got a contract that says I get paid, ‘cash or other valuable consideration agreed upon by the parties.’”

“I never agreed to Gibson.”