“Yes,” I answered.
“And you’re payin’ him back by fuckin’ him?”
I sucked in breath.
Clearly, even the female Hardys didn’t shy away from that word.
I didn’t get into that.
I said quietly, “No.”
“You sleep on the couch?”
“No.”
“You sleep with him.”
“Yes.”
“What, you only do blowjobs as payback for protection?” she asked snidely.
I held her eyes.
I pulled breath in through my nostrils.
Then I said softly, “Never, in my life, have I met a good man. Not in my life. You’re lucky, Tatiana, you were born to one, so you’ll keep being lucky because you know what to look for. I wasn’t that lucky. Not until now. I get you, honey. I get what it feels like to wake up every day and be in a place you don’t want to be. I totally get that. What you need to get is that, as terrible as that is, you know, right to your soul, that there’s someone out there who you mean to the world to, who cares about you, who worries about you and who likes you close, even though he can’t have that and he can’t give it to you. You know that you can’t wake every day feeling safe, knowing that person is in the house, but you can get to him. I’m sorry things aren’t good at home, but you’ll one day rest in the knowledge that you had something good and you’ll be grateful for it. You don’t have to be nice to me, but you and me, we can keep that between us. For your dad’s sake, though, I’m asking you to pretend. He deserves that, and I’m just guessing here, but I think you know it.”
I didn’t give her the chance to respond.
I stopped talking, turned and walked right out of her room, closing the door quietly behind me.
I went to the living room, stretched out on the couch and clicked through programs, looking for reruns of Dynasty.
The time wasn’t right, so I had to make do with CHiPs.
I preferred Dynasty because Alexis Carrington Colby Dexter had a great wardrobe and was good with a catty one-liner.
But it had to be said, Officer Poncherello was not hard on the eyes.
So I was back with as good as I could get.
And again…
It didn’t stink.
15
Do You Need CPR?
Tatiana emerged in time for Buck to take us to the Valley Inn for dinner.
I had never had occasion to frequent the area where Buck lived (in other words, until I found myself living there, I’d never been).
Thus, I found the Valley Inn was a no-nonsense but comfortable place that catered directly to the local clientele.
This being, as far as I could see, bikers, cowboys and mountain people, all who maybe worked in the city, but they didn’t want to live there.
In other words, they served two things at the Valley Inn: Mexican food and steaks.
And I would find, on the Mexican food side of things, they did it really well.
I had chili rellenos and topped up my body’s supply of margaritas.
Tatiana didn’t throw attitude and was mostly silent.
Buck matched her silence, and I suspected he did it to concentrate on his Badass Biker Dad Attitude-o-Meter. I suspected this because he kept a close eye on his daughter and seemed prepared to take her down a notch should she mouth off or act in any other way like a brat.
This left me and Gear carrying on the conversation, which, as it had in the beginning, came easy, mainly because Gear was easygoing, easily likeable and easy to talk to.
I learned that Gear was playing the field, never had a steady girlfriend, and after he graduated from high school, he wanted to join his dad’s MC and work with the guys in some capacity at Ace in the Hole.
Though, not in the store.
On the contracting side of things.
“Thinkin’ electrician,” he said between huge bites of prime rib. “Though might do it all, ’cept plumbing, ’cause…gross.”
On my side of things, Gear (and Tatie, if she was listening) learned I’d divorced a jerk, was between jobs, and my best friends were a woman on the run and a Mexican American woman old enough to be my grandmother.
Gear suggested that Mrs. Jimenez be invited up to Buck’s house the next weekend they were there so she could give her cultural stamp of approval to his dad’s enchiladas. Though I sensed he did this only partly because he was a friendly, sociable guy and wanted to meet Mrs. Jimenez, but mostly he did it as an excuse for his dad to make enchiladas again.
That said, I was uncertain enchiladas were genuinely Mexican, seeing as Mrs. Jimenez definitely was, and she’d never made them. Therefore, I made a mental note to check on that (I was a librarian, albeit not a practicing one, we did research like no other—in fact, the only people who beat us in research were attorneys and thriller writers, of which many of the latter were both).