“I hand-washed them this morning because I needed a clean pair, and you beat me to the machine, but I figured I could sneak them into your dryer. You wouldn’t want me to show up for my first day of work with damp panties.” She slid the lace into place and glanced back at him. “Would you?” Gold fringe swayed back and forth, brushing her ass, barely curtaining the curves.
It took his mind a moment to rewind her words. “First day of work?”
Her smile made his gut tighten. She straightened, turned, and smoothed an invisible wrinkle from the front of her robe. “I’m DeShay’s newest waitress. Thirty hours a week until Lark Middleton gets back on her feet.”
The plastic laundry bin handles groaned under his white-knuckled grip. What the fuck had he done to piss fate off? “How long before she comes back?”
“Oh, not too long. Thanks for the tumble.” With that, she opened the door leading to her unit and started to walk through.
“Roxy.”
His pumped a full load of warning into the single word. She heard it, apparently, because she paused and looked back at him.
“How. Long.”
“Six weeks, give or take. See you around, neighbor.” Before he could wrap his mind around that timeframe, she walked out, letting the door slam shut behind her.
Six weeks? He sagged against the door as the information sank in. Then he thunked his head against the frame. Hard.
…
Stop poking the hornet’s nest, or you’re going to get stung.
Roxy put in an order, grabbed the pot of freshly brewed coffee, and circulated through her section, offering refills. She didn’t know what had gotten into her, taunting West like she had. Okay, correction, she knew exactly what had riled her. Big, intimidating Officer Donovan standing in the laundry room all chiseled and half naked, scowling at her.
Yeah. Him. She had a regrettable history of wanting things she shouldn’t have, and her new neighbor currently topped the list. Given her situation, deliberately baiting him only courted disaster.
She didn’t know how much her ex-manager had collected when he’d gone behind her back and pawned her daddy’s vintage 1965 Gibson SE autographed by the late, great Tom Petty, but on a bad day, the one-of-a-kind instrument appraised for twenty-five grand. Randy Boudreaux would hock his own dick for a fraction of that amount, and Randy’s shady uncle Billy who owned the pawnshop would no doubt let him.
The monetary value meant nothing to her. Gibson was one of her few tangible mementos from her parents. That guitar had seen her through some very tough times, and she’d beg, borrow, and steal before she’d willingly part with it. But something told her stealing a twenty-five-thousand-dollar anything fell on the wrong side of the legal definition of shoplifting, and the penalty would be far more than a slap on the wrist.
She could argue retrieving something that belonged to her wasn’t really stealing so much as taking a shortcut to prevent an important item of personal property from entering the stream of commerce and sailing out of her reach forever.
Unfortunately, at this very moment somewhere in the Nashville PD, an overworked detective might be squinting at pawnshop security-cam footage capturing her doing what looked exactly like stealing, regardless of the backstory. Plus, Randy and Uncle Billy would surely tell a different version of the backstory. She didn’t have to be a math whiz to calculate the outcome of two against one, but she’d bypassed that whole equation by taking matters into her own hands.
And all would be fine as long as she didn’t give Officer Donovan a reason to look closer.
If she did, the legal consequences of her actions might be the least of her problems. A certain portion of Uncle Billy’s business involved dubious loans to desperate people, and word was he rarely relied on the law to settle debts.
The order-up bell dinged, interrupting her spiraling worries. She shook off the dire thoughts and headed to the window behind the lunch counter to pick up her plates. Everything was fine. She was miles away from Nashville, and in another few weeks she’d head to L.A. with Gibson in hand and honest money in her pocket. A sizable chunk of the contiguous forty-eight ought to be a sufficient buffer between her and the consequences of her most recent mistakes.
Reassured by the plan, she filled her tray, shouldered it, and made her way down the center aisle. Although the hour cruised toward noon, she delivered two DeShay’s breakfast specials—scrambled eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy—to a duo of late-morning stragglers who’d introduced themselves as Kenny and Dobie. The guys looked about her age and a little worse for wear from whatever they’d been up to the night before, but they were friendly.
Dobie—the shorter one with sleepy hazel eyes beneath long sandy bangs—offered her a lopsided grin. “I can’t believe you’re Lillian Belle’s granddaughter. No offense, but that mean old bat freaked me out. When I was a kid, I used to walk my dog past her house. She would stand on her porch and scream, ‘Keep that godforsaken beast off my lawn!’ at the top of her lungs.”
“Yeah,” the taller guy with the dark, shaggy mane agreed. “She called my parents one time when I was maybe nine and accused me of TP-ing her property. I spent a whole Saturday picking butt paper out of her trees.”
Roxy put their side order of frickles on the table and cocked an eyebrow at him, wondering if James Franco had a long-lost younger brother inexplicably living in little, old Bluelick. “Did you TP her house, Kenny?”
“Well, sure. Me and a bunch of other guys, including this jerkoff”—he tossed a biscuit at Dobie, who batted it onto his plate—“but how did she know?”
“She saw it in her magic mirror,” Dobie opined. “You’re lucky she didn’t put a curse on you.”
Roxy shook her head. “Sounds like you two were a couple of delinquents.”
“Stupid shit.” Kenny actually blushed as he said the words. “Thing about growing up in a
