Reckless Road (Torpedo Ink 5)

He forced himself to drink the coffee so he wouldn’t make more of a fool of himself.

Hannah nodded. “I see. Tell me more about her. Anything at all. That will help me.”

“She manages the grocery store in Caspar, and she has a great work ethic. I wanted to close the store down for the weekend, but she refused, even though she’s exhausted, because she said people counted on the store being open on the weekends. Our club has always worked when we felt like it. We don’t think about things like that. She’s teaching me that we’re responsible to others for those things.”

Hannah nodded, sipping at her tea. Both pretended to ignore the growing heated exchange between the clerk and Preacher.

“She totally loves her grandmother. Zyah gave up an amazing, great-paying job to come here and take care of her after she was robbed and beaten.”

Hannah gasped. “I read about those robberies. How terrible. Her grandmother was one of the victims?”

Player nodded. “Yeah. Zyah quit a lucrative job with an international food chain and came straight home to take care of her grandmother. She’s that kind of woman. No regrets. She smells like this exotic combination of very subtle but definite jasmine, with a distinctive cinnamic-honey background.” He looked up at her. “It’s not perfume. I’m not kidding. It’s her skin. I know I sound like an idiot, but we learned all this stuff from Alena, all the different types of herbs and spices. The citruses. When I get close to her or . . .” He trailed off. He wasn’t about to start talking sex with Hannah.

“Is there more to her scent?”

He didn’t want to sound like an idiot. He looked around the shop and dropped his voice almost to a whisper because unless you were a chef, you didn’t talk like this. “Sort of a cassis-raspberry facet blending with rich green floral mimosa. All those scents blend together very subtly. I’ve got a really heightened sense of smell.”

“And it isn’t perfume?”

He shook his head.

“And she’s on her feet all day?”

“She’s a dancer. She likes to be barefoot. She has an affinity with the earth. A gift. She feels things when she’s barefoot. And she can heal when she’s dancing.”

“So, on top of everything else, she’s gifted. She really is special, which means you are as well or you wouldn’t have recognized that in her,” Hannah murmured aloud. Her mind was already moving away from him and around her shop, clearly looking at the various things she had on her shelves.

Player hadn’t meant to reveal anything about himself, and yet he’d given away quite a bit. He turned his attention to Preacher, who was usually one of the most easygoing of all the Torpedo Ink members. At least on the surface he seemed so. Right now, he seemed so furious, Player feared the shop might explode, blowing the walls from the inside out.

“I told you to stop tearing off the packaging. The ingredients are clearly marked on the outside of the packages,” the clerk enunciated.

“And I told you, if you had the IQ of more than a donkey and could actually listen, that I would pay for all of these products, so it doesn’t matter if I take off the packaging, that you haven’t listed the amounts. I need the exact amounts. I know the ingredients you’ve put in. Well, not you. Clearly, you had nothing whatsoever to do with making these products because you can’t tell me anything at all about them.”

“If you tear off the packaging on one more item, I’m calling the sheriff.”

“You already called the sheriff the moment we walked into the store because we’re wearing Torpedo Ink jackets and you’re a fucking coward.”

Player sighed. Preacher rarely swore. Most of them did, but he hadn’t wanted to swear around Lana, and he had never really gotten into the habit. Player was going to have to defuse the situation before it really got out of hand.

“Don’t you dare call me a coward. You can’t possibly know I called the sheriff when you walked in. And give me that bath bomb right this minute.”

There was a little scuffle. Preacher won, yanking the package. “I told you, I’m buying these things. You can’t deny a paying customer. Go find something to do until the cops get here. You’re annoying the holy hell out of me, and you’re worthless as far as being a salesman.”

“Probably because I’m a woman and not a man, you moron. Can’t you tell the difference? A woman, for your information, has breasts and a vagina. A man has a penis.”

Player nearly spewed coffee across the table. He was very thankful that Hannah had gone into the back room.

“Well, thank you very much for that enlightening information,” Preacher said. “I’m glad you have an education in something. I should have known it would be in sex.”