Fine. He could take a hint delivered with a two-by-four.
Out of habit, he opened his mouth to start shooting the shit with Christensen; then he realized what he was doing and closed it with enough force to make his teeth hurt. The two of them had spent every road trip debating which was the best Star Wars movie, busting chops about whomever the other was dating, and basically yammering about whatever popped into their heads nonstop until the plane landed or the bus arrived at the hotel. All of that was gone.
Good riddance.
Oh, he’d play nice with Shelby, who wanted to pretend that what had happened at the cabin hadn’t actually happened. He’d fake being able to tolerate Christensen, who’d spent years lying about who he really was straight to Ian’s face. However, that’s all it would be. None of it would mean a damn thing.
He was better off without either of them.
Chapter Nine
Shelby woke up the next morning feeling like she hadn’t just fallen off the wagon, she’d jumped gleefully into the abyss and ended up splattered on the concrete below—and she wanted to do it again, because a drink sounded like exactly the right way to take the edge off.
She’d heard about how amputees occasionally felt ghost limbs. For her, it was ghost hangovers. So even though she hadn’t had a drink in six years, some days she woke up feeling as if she had and craving a little hair of the dog.
Lucky me.
Without getting out of bed, she took her six-year chip off the bedside table and flipped it over her fingers one at a time, going from pointer to pinkie and matching her inhales and exhales to the movement. In and out, slow and easy. The oxygen filled her lungs until her chest couldn’t expand any more and then let it back out until that jagged urge for just one drink eased.
Unable to ignore the sun or the honks from the cars rushing in slow motion to merge onto the Harbor City Bridge just outside her apartment building anymore, Shelby got out of bed. She padded down the barely-big-enough-to-call-it-a-hallway to the galley kitchen, where an automatically brewed cup of heaven called coffee awaited her.
Her cell was in the charger next to the roll of paper towels and her apartment-size fridge covered in Ice Knights magnets. Needing to touch base with the most important man in her life before hitting the road, she pressed one of the four numbers in her phone contacts and poured her coffee while it rang.
“If it isn’t my favorite Mustang,” Roger said, his smile evident in his voice.
If there was one thing Roger Jones had always loved even more than Jim Beam, it was cars. However, he’d learned the hard way that the two didn’t mix. One stint behind bars a few decades ago for his fifth DUI and his third trip to rehab finally changed that. He gave up the bourbon and kept the hot rods. When she’d told him her name was Shelby, yes like the classic muscle car, Roger had grinned up at her from his wheelchair and said they were a sponsor/sponsoree match made in automobile heaven.
“How’s the V-8 running lately?” he asked.
“A little clunky.”
“Meeting?”
There was no reason to specify what kind; she’d been going to AA meetings regularly since rehab. “Yeah, I’m going this morning at the church down the street before I have to pack and go on a road trip.”
“Wait, aren’t you on a trip now? Cabin? Middle of nowhere? Peace and quiet?”
More like anticipation and orgasms, frustration and satisfaction, annoyance and oh-my-God-fuck-yes. “That didn’t work out quite like I’d expected.”
“I can’t wait to hear all about it. I gotta fresh cup of joe and the Charger for that Beckett billionaire can wait for a while.”
That probably wasn’t the case. The waiting list for the model hot rods Roger created in his studio seemed never-ending thanks to an outsider art exhibit he’d been featured in at the Black Hearts Art Gallery. It was very Roger to make it sound like dropping everything to listen to her was no big deal, but still, she didn’t want to take advantage.
“Are you sure?”
“Shelby,” he said in that tone that made it impossible for her not to see the lines in his craggy face deepening as he frowned at her through the phone. “Don’t act like I’m a pint of oil short. If I wasn’t sure of it, I wouldn’t have said it.”
Since arguing with Roger was pointless, she told him everything. By the time she was done, her shoulders were a bit more relaxed, her coffee mug was empty, and that sharp poke of want that only a stiff drink could get rid of had been ground down to a nub.
“Girl,” he said with a chuckle. “When you move, you really do go zero to sixty with things.”
“And now I have to spend the entire road trip with him and his brother—whom he now hates.”
It was going to be awful and amazing and uncomfortable and fun and a million other things that were a lot to take in all at once. Hell’s bells. How in the world was she going to make it through this trip without losing her mind or her panties or both at the same damn time?
“Do you need to talk to that Lucy lady about backing out of the assignment?” Roger asked.
She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t considered it. Last night, while she’d stared at her ceiling and worry turned into an all-you-can’t-sleep buffet of anxiety, she’d definitely given it a lot of thought. But there was too much on the line. She’d worked her ass off for this opportunity. There was no way she’d fuck this up—no matter what.
“No. I can do this,” she
