Surprise rushed through me when I saw who sat behind the wheel. A guy, perhaps in his early twenties, dressed in a black suit and black shirt, no tie. His blue eyes settled on me and heat crawled up my neck from the intensity of his gaze. Strong jaw, dark blond hair, short on the sides and longer on top. He was immaculate, except for a small scar on his chin. And I looked like I’d crawled out of the gutter. Wonderful.
The girl caught my attention from afar, dressed for anything but this weather. Her dress was plastered to her thin body and her hair to her face. She had her arms wrapped around her stomach, and a tacky backpack swung over her right shoulder. I slowed considerably as I approached her, curious. She didn’t look like one of our girls, nor did she strike me as someone who knew the first thing about selling her body. But perhaps she’d only just arrived and didn’t know that these streets belonged to us and that she would have to ask if she wanted to hit them.
I expected her to scuttle off when I came closer. My car was easily recognizable. She surprised me when she held out her hand for me to pick her up.
I pulled up beside her. If she tried to offer me her body, she was in for a nasty surprise. And if this was some insane robbery scheme with her accomplices waiting to catch me by surprise, they’d be in for an even nastier surprise. I put my hand down on my gun before I slid my window down and she bent over to look inside my car. She smiled in embarrassment. “I got lost. Can you take me home perhaps?”
No hooker.
I leaned over and pushed the door open.
She slipped in, then closed the door. She put her backpack on her lap and rubbed her arms. My eyes fell to her feet. She was wearing only sandals and dripping water on my seats and the floor.
She noticed my gaze and blushed. “I didn’t expect rain.”
I nodded, still curious. She definitely didn’t know me. She was pale and trembled, but not from fear. “Where do you need to go?”
She hesitated, then let out an embarrassed laugh. “I don’t know the address.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“I only arrived yesterday. I live with my father.”
“How old are you?”
She blinked. “Nineteen?”
“Is that the answer or a question?”
“Sorry. I’m out of it today. It’s the answer.” Again the embarrassed, shy smile.
I nodded. “But you know the direction to your father’s place?”
“There was a sort of campground near by. It isn’t very nice there.”
I pulled away from the curb, then sped up. She clutched her backpack.
“Are there any markers you remember?”
“There was strip club nearby,” she said, a deep blush tingeing her wet cheeks. Definitely not a hooker.
I humored her and drove in the general direction she’d described. It wasn’t like I needed to be anywhere else. Her ignorance of my position was almost amusing. She looked like a drowned cat with her dark hair plastered to her head and her dress clinging to her shivering body.
Her stomach rumbled. “I wish I knew the name of the club, but I was only paying attention to bars I could work in and that definitely wasn’t one of them,” she said quickly.
“Work?” I echoed, cautious again. “What kind of work?”
“As a waitress. I need to earn money for college,” she said, then fell silent, biting her lip.
I considered her again. “About a mile from here is a bar called Roger’s Arena. I know the owner. He’s looking for a new waitress. The tips are good from what I hear.”
“Roger’s Arena,” she echoed. “Strange name for a bar.”
“It’s a strange place,” I told her. It was an understatement of course. “But they don’t have high standards when it comes to their personnel.”
Her eyes widened, then she flushed with embarrassment. “Do I look that bad?”
I regarded her again. She didn’t look bad, quite the opposite, but her clothes and wet hair, and those worn sandals, they didn’t really help matters. “No.”
She didn’t seem to believe me. Her grip on her backpack tightened. I wondered why she was clinging to it so tightly. Perhaps she had a weapon inside. That would explain why she’d risked getting into the car of a stranger. She thought she’d be able to defend herself. Her stomach growled again.
“You are hungry.”
She tensed more than such a simple question called for. “I’m okay.” Her eyes were glued to the windshield, determined and stubborn.
“When have you last eaten?”
Quick glance my way, then down to her backpack.
“When?” I pressed.
She looked out of the window. “Yesterday.”
I threw a glance her way. “You should consider eating every day.”
“We had no food in the fridge.”
Hadn’t she said she lived with her father? What kind of parent was he? Probably as caring as my own father had been from the way she looked.