Dark Notes

“But you have a customer.” Her sigh drifts from behind a tall shelf filled with books.

I step into view and find her sitting on the floor, back to the wall, and bare legs stretched out before her. My hands flex as I silently thank the fashion Gods for short-shorts. She’s a half-naked fantasy of bronzed skin and devious curves. An illegal fantasy.

Lids lifting, her eyes collide with mine and widen. The textbook in her hands tumbles to the floor to join the dozen others surrounding her. “Mr. Marceaux?”

“Miss Westbrook.” I’m struck with the wild urge to grin like a jackass, but I manage to maintain a stoic mask.

Her gaze sweeps from my disheveled hair and t-shirt to my dark jeans and Doc Martens. I wish I could read her thoughts as she takes me in for the first time without the pageantry of waistcoats and ties. She makes another head-to-toe pass, nibbling her lip and stirring a torrent of sensations inside me.

The old man beside her sits taller on the metal chair. A frayed baseball cap perches high on his bald head, and horizontal wrinkles crease the broad bridge of his nose, deepening into more lines on his dark-skinned brow. His closed-mouth smile is the kind men wear when they’re toothless and…eighty? Ninety? I don’t know, but this guy is ancient.

His arm trembles as he reaches for the wall in an attempt to stand.

“Don’t get up.” I step toward him, offering my hand to shake his. “I’m Emeric. You must be—”

“Stogie.” He clasps my hand with a surprisingly strong grip and sits back.

Ivory bends to stand, and her tiny tank top flashes me a sinful view of her full tits. Jesus, fuck, if she doesn’t adjust that shirt, I’ll be swinging from six to midnight with no way to hide it.

Clutching the low neckline in a subtle tug, she studies me with a bewildered expression. “What are you doing here?”

I meet Stogie’s watchful gaze and let him see the questions in mine. Do you know who I am? How well do you know Ivory?

He hooks his thumbs under the elastic of his red suspenders and blatantly stares me up and down. His smile fades, and his skeletal frame locks up. Apparently, his cloudy eyes see a lot more than they let on. “Ivory, why don’t you go on in the back and warm up one of them frozen meals?”

She crosses her arms, eyes narrowed. “Oh, now you want to eat?”

“I’d love a fresh pot of coffee and some of that cobbler you made, too.” He grips the seat of the chair and scoots forward. “Don’t keep an old man waiting.”

She huffs and steps out of the pile of books, pointing a finger at him. “Be nice.”

Then she looks at me, her expression vulnerable and hesitant, as if begging me to do the same.

The moment she disappears in the back room, he makes a painfully-slow attempt to climb to his feet while holding my gaze. “I know your kind.”

My hackles go up, but the manners my mother ingrained in me has me reaching out to help him stand.

He glares at my hand, scoffs at it, and rises on wobbly legs.

I swallow down my irritation. “Enlighten me on my kind.”

His hunched frame shuffles past me and toward the front of the store. I follow, glad to be moving out of Ivory’s range of hearing.

He circles behind the front counter and settles on a tall stool. Unhurried, he examines my expensive watch, fit physique, wide-stance, and raised chin. I know what he sees. A wealthy, cocksure man in his sexual prime standing in a run-down neighborhood for one reason.

He’d be right.

Finally, he stoops forward and rests weathered forearms on the counter. “That girl has had a rough go of it, and you’re the kind of man that’ll make it worse.”

There’s a treasure-trove of answers beneath his words, and I need to discover every one of them. “Explain.”

“You’re the kind of man that sets his sights on something and doesn’t let go till he possesses it.”

He’s far too shrewd for pretense, so I don’t bother playing dumb. “Doesn’t matter what I’ve set my sights on. I’m her teacher.”

“Yes.” Judgment creases his eyes. “You are.”

I measure my breaths, expressionless. “She talks to you. About me.”

“She’s said nothing incriminating, but she doesn’t have to. She’s mentioned you more in the past week than all her other teachers combined in three years.” He drums gnarled knuckles on the glass counter. “Whatever you’re doing with her, she wants to trust you.” His hand quiets, eyes unblinking. “The kind of trust she gives no one. But once you have what you want and discard her like your kind do, her distrust in men will be irreparable.”

An ice-cold wave of dizziness overtakes me as my mind jumps to sickening images of older men, brutal men, raping her.