At Peace by Kristen Ashley
“You have my number?” I asked but she ignored me, her eyes glued to Colt.
“I’m looking for Cal,” Kenzie told Colt.
“How did you get my number?” I asked but she didn’t answer because Colt spoke.
“You want to talk to him, you call his girl. You don’t call Vi’s house and hang up.”
His girl? What girl? Joe had a girl?
I forgot about finding out how Kenzie got my number, the more pressing matter at hand was Joe having a “girl”.
“Lindy won’t give him my messages,” Kenzie said to Colt.
“I’ll let Cal know his secretary is fallin’ down on the job.”
Joe had a secretary?
Joe stayed in hotels with valet parking and had a secretary?
“Now unless you have some business with Violet, might be a good idea you move along,” Colt ordered but did it in a way that sounded like a suggestion except it was a suggestion you couldn’t exactly deny. Kenzie denied it. “It’s important I speak to him.”
Colt stared at her for several long seconds like he didn’t know what to make of her but what he was coming up with wasn’t much. Then he reached into his back jeans pocket, pulled out his phone, flipped it open and hit some buttons.
Then he put it to his ear, his eyes on the deck while it rang then he said, “Yeah, Cal, Colt. Everything’s cool except Kenzie Elise is standing on Vi’s deck. She wants to talk to you.” A second passed and then Colt grinned at the deck and said, “Yeah, I’ll put her on,” then he offered Kenzie his phone.
Kenzie didn’t look at either of us before she took the phone and put it to her ear.
“You let her call you Joe?” she snapped into it without saying hello which, personally, I thought was a mistake.
I watched as she paused, listened, her face grew even paler than her normal pale (there it was, proof her snapping at Joe was a mistake) then it twisted before she said, “I have another situation and only you can help me out,” again she paused then, “I don’t want him, I want you.”
I thought this also was a mistake. Joe didn’t like it much that Kenzie thought she could get what she wanted when she wanted it.
I watched as she was silent for another moment then she said, “No,” another pause then a hissed, “I can’t believe you won’t help me!” Yet another pause while her eyes came to me and she snapped, “I don’t think so!” She listened for about two seconds then she took the phone from her ear, jerked it toward me and bit out, “He wants to talk to you.”
I took Colt’s phone, glancing at her then at Colt then I put it to my ear and announced, “She called me fat.”
“Buddy –”
“I have my own stalker, Joe. I don’t want to have to deal with yours.”
He burst out laughing and I didn’t think anything was funny.
“I have your movie star stalker standin’ on my deck, calling me fat and she’s callin’ my house and hangin’ up. This is not funny.”
Joe’s laughter vanished, he was silent then he said in a soft but scary voice, “What?”
“Your movie star stalker is the one doing the hang ups.”
There was no silence before Joe demanded, “Put Colt on the phone.”
“What?”
“Give the fuckin’ phone to Colt,” he clipped.
I decided to give the phone to Colt seeing as Joe sounded pretty freaking pissed so I sure didn’t want to talk to him anymore.
Colt put it to his ear and said, “Yeah?” then he listened for awhile and said, “Gotcha. Later.” He flipped his phone shut, shoved it in his jeans and looked at Kenzie. “Cal says you aren’t off Vi’s property in five minutes, he calls some guy named Marco. He says you’d know what that means.”
I looked at Kenzie and I could tell straight off she knew what that meant. Her face had bleached completely of color, her eyes had gone wide, her lips had parted and she looked scared.
Then quickly she flicked her cigarette butt in my yard, snatched up her purse and stomped to the stairs.
“Ms. Elise,” Colt called and she turned, foot on the step, hand on the rail and looked at him. “Do I have your assurance that you won’t be callin’ Vi anymore and there won’t be any more visits?”
“Yeah, whatever,” she mumbled and kept going.
“Ms. Elise,” Colt called again, turning fully toward her and Kenzie, now standing in my grass, stopped and looked up at him. “Not whatever. No more calls, no more visits. Yeah?”
“Yeah, right. Fine,” she said and looked at me. “Fine, tell him I won’t bother him anymore or you. Okay?”
When it appeared she actually wanted an answer from me, I said, “Okay.”
“Just make sure he doesn’t call Marco,” she said to me, this seemed important to her so I nodded.
She started away but turned back and looked at me and when she did, she’d changed. Everything about her changed. She didn’t look scared anymore, she looked lost and afraid, a different kind of afraid, a worse kind.
“He made me feel safe,” she said quietly, I blinked at her honest, open admission and she kept talking. “I don’t feel safe very much, ever, really. Cal made me feel safe.”
When she seemed again to be waiting for an answer, I answered, “He has that way about him.”
“He belonged to me, I’d always feel safe.”
At that moment, I realized I knew exactly what she meant.
I walked to the railing, looked down at her and said, “I’m not sure Joe’s the kind of guy who could belong to anyone, Kenzie.”
She stared at me a second and the way she did it I actually felt sorry for her.
“You call him Joe, he belongs to you,” she whispered and before I could say anything or have a reaction to her words other than that feeling of being punched in the stomach, she turned and gracefully ran on the toes of her fancy, shiny, platform pumps across my lawn and around the house.
I watched the space where she used to be for a few seconds before I felt Colt’s arm come around my shoulders and I turned my head to look up at him.
“That was kinda sad,” I told him.
He looked to the side of the house then down at me. “Woman who has everything but really has nothin’.”
I sighed then I nodded. Colt dropped his arm, jogged down the steps and walked out into my yard to pick up the cigarette butt.
He looked at me. “Shame this mars your yard, babe. You do good flowers.”
I smiled at him. “Thanks.”
“I’ll toss this out,” he said, lifting the butt. “You good now?”
“I’m good, Colt, thanks for comin’ over.”
“Anytime, Vi,” he said and turned to leave. “Later.”
“Bye, Colt, tell Feb I said hi and tickle Jack for me.”
“Will do,” he called as he turned the corner of the house.
I stared after him for awhile too. Then I went into the house and all the kids watched me walk to the kitchen.
“She gone?” Kate asked.
“Yep,” I answered, pulling a bottle of cheap white wine out of the fridge feeling this was the time that cheap white wine was created for.
“What’d she want?” Keira asked.
“Joe,” I answered.
“And?” Keira prompted.
I found the corkscrew and looked at Keira through the bar opening. “Joe doesn’t want her.”
“Killer!” Keira hissed, pumping her fisted hand in the kind of gesture you’d use on a trucker to get him to honk his horn.
I looked at Kate. “You think it’s something in the water or is she just touched?”
“She’s just touched,” Kate said, Dane laughed and they hit the play button to restart the movie.
I poured myself a glass of wine and went back out to my deck with my phone in my hand.
I barely had my ass to the seat when it rang, I looked at the display and it was Joe.
I slid it open and put it to my ear. “Hi.”
“She gone?”
“Her manager,” Joe answered.
“She seems pretty scared of him,” I remarked.
“Reason to be.”
“What reason?”
“She’s where she is ‘cause of him. Her problem is, she made a deal with the devil.”
“A deal with the devil?”
“Marco’s bad news,” Joe told me.
“Bad news how?” I asked.
“Bad news, she steps outta line, he yanks her back and he isn’t nice about it.”
That didn’t sound good, that sounded face pale, lips parted, eyes wide not good.
“What?” I whispered.
“He can get physical, buddy.”
“Physical, as in, he beats her?”
“Yeah,” Joe answered. “She’s his cash cow. He skims off the top of everything she does, lives a good life. She does shit that might rock that boat, he doesn’t like it and makes that known however he has to.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yeah, but it isn’t your problem and it isn’t mine. It’s the deal she made.”
A thought occurred to me so I asked, “Why didn’t you call Marco before when you were having problems with her?”
“It was just me, I could deal with it and I didn’t want to be responsible for him gettin’ in her face. Fuckin’ with you and the girls, she wasn’t makin’ it about me, she was draggin’ you into it. I thought I could make my point, fuck, I thought I did. But I didn’t. She fucks with you and the girls, she needs to know I’m serious. Now she knows.”
I took a sip of my wine thinking that my world, not too long ago, even when Tim would come home and talk about some of the shit he’d seen, was a little bubble of goodness. Now the stuff that kept pricking it without Tim to keep that bubble strong and resilient was scary crazy.
“Buddy?”
“Yeah?”
“You all right? She say anything else to you?”
Yes, she did. She told me Joe belonged to me.
But I wasn’t going to tell him that.
“No, just flicked her cigarette butt in my yard and left.”
“Fuck, what a bitch,” he muttered.
“That’s okay, Colt got it.”
He sighed then said, “Good man.”
“Joe?”
“Yeah, buddy?”
“Would you have called Marco?”
He didn’t hesitate before he answered, “Yeah.”
This shocked me and it also disappointed me. “Really?”
“Really.”
“But –”
“Baby, she was callin’ you and the girls were pickin’ up, gettin’ freaked out. It had to be stopped, that was my last option. She forced my hand.”
“Joe –”
“She forced my hand, Vi. She did it to herself with this crazy shit. You back a man in a corner, you gotta bear the consequences when he does what he has to do to fight his way out.”
He was being a sage again.
And it hit me then that she didn’t back Joe into a corner. She tossed the girls and me there. Joe hadn’t threatened that Marco business when she was doing her thing to catch his attention. He thought he could deal with it and he didn’t want to scare her like he just did. But he pulled out the big guns for me and the girls.
I didn’t want to make this into a big thing, I didn’t want to make the same mistake and start to believe but he was giving me no choice.
I took another sip of my wine then changed the subject because this kind of subject you didn’t talk about over the phone.
“Well, thanks for dealing with it all the way from LA.”
“Don’t thank me, I’m the reason she was there.”
“She was here because she has the hots for you. It isn’t your fault you’re hot.”
I heard his soft laughter again, I decided I liked it again then he said, “Baby, you’re killin’ me.”
“How am I killin’ you?”
“You can be sweet and hilarious when I’m close enough to give payback.”
My stomach dipped and I pulled in breath to control my fluttering heart.
“What’s payback?” I whispered.
“Be sweet and hilarious in my bed, I’ll show you.”
“Joe –”
He cut me off. “What’re you doin’ now?”
“Drinking cheap white wine on my deck. What are you doing?”
“I gotta go get food.”
“Oh, okay, I’ll let you go.”
“All right, buddy.”
“You’re back on Saturday?”
“Yeah.”
“See you then.”
“Absolutely.”
I sighed and it was a happy sigh because I would see him, he wanted me to and Saturday was only one-ish day away.
“Bye, Joe,” I said softly.
“Later, buddy,” he replied back softly.
I slid my phone closed and then tapped my forehead with it.
I had, of course, called him to end things but instead we talked, we had phone sex and he gave me about a dozen reasons to believe in him. Then, through various other phone calls, he gave me more reasons to believe.
I put the phone on the table and took another sip of wine.
I needed to call Cheryl or I needed to talk to Feb or I needed to call one of my friends in Chicago.
But it was late and it was rude to call late, especially when the conversation I needed to have would likely take hours.
So I put my feet up in the chair, looked at my gorgeous grass and my pretty flower pots and, as I sipped my wine, I decided to see what Saturday might bring.
Chapter Ten
Talks
Cal turned his truck into his drive but he’d seen Vi as he drove down the street.
She was working in her front yard wearing a pair of very short shorts that showed off her tanned legs, a dark purple tank top that showed more tan skin and her hair was in a ponytail at the back of her head. He’d have been pissed she was working in her yard without him at home next door but he also saw Colt mowing his lawn, so he knew she was safe.
After he pulled into his drive, he turned his head to her and saw she’d straightened from whatever she was doing and looked his way. She swiped the back of her arm against her forehead, she had something in her hand and she was wearing garden gloves.
He grabbed his bag and got out of the truck. After he slammed the door, his eyes went back to her and she was walking toward him. She’d made it across her drive, was in his yard and she’d lost the garden tool and the gloves.
He headed to his front door and waited for her to arrive.
She did, stopping not a foot away and tipping her head back to look up at him, her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun.
“Hi,” she said softly.
“Where’re the girls?” Cal asked.
“At the mall,” Vi answered.
Cal didn’t respond, he turned to his door, unlocked it, opened it, stepped in and tossed his bag to the floor. Then he reached back through the door and yanked her in, slamming the door behind her and backing her against it, his head already coming down to take her mouth, his arms moving around to crush her to him.
She met him, their mouths and bodies colliding, as hungry for it as he was. He moved her from the door and shuffled her across the room to the couch, his hands on her shorts, her hands on the fly of his jeans. Their mouths still going at it, Vi didn’t waste time, pulled him free, her hand wrapped around his hard cock and she was stroking.
He yanked down her shorts and underwear, she stepped out of them and he shoved her back onto the couch, following her down.
In order to distract him while she tried to roll him, she used her tongue on his neck and her nails down his back but he slid a hand from her ass, down the back of her thigh to her knee, gripped it, pulled her leg out and wrapped it around his hip.
“I want the top,” she said into his ear, her voice
“I’m ridin’ you, buddy.”
“No fair, you always get the top.”
“Not always.”
“Most of the time.”
“You can have the top tonight.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah.”
Her mouth came to his, her eyes smiling then he kissed her and feeling her wet, as usual with Vi, his control slipped and he replaced his finger at her clit with his dick in her cunt.
“Joe,” she breathed against his mouth, her breathing his name against his lips forcing him to drive into her harder and she whispered, “I’m glad you’re home.”
Yeah, he was home and it felt fucking great.
He rode her hard and she lifted her hips to meet him, her legs tight around his hips, her fingernails digging into his back and he rode her until she came and longer, until he did.
He stayed buried inside her, his face in her neck, her arms and legs wrapped around him and he listened as her breath steadied.
Eventually, since Vi didn’t seem to be able to be quiet very long, she asked, “How was your flight?”
“Early,” Cal said into her neck and went on, “long.”
“I’ve never been to LA.”
“Not missin’ much, buddy.”
“I heard it’s fun.”
His head came up and he looked down at her, her ponytail spread on his couch, her mouth swollen. Christ, she was beautiful.
He pressed his hips into hers, got off on watching her lips part and her eyelids lower and then he told her, “Never been there for fun.”
She smiled at him and her arm left his back so she could curl her fingers around his neck.
“You should try it.”
“Don’t do much for fun.”
“You should try that too,” she said softly, her fingers coming up to stroke his jaw.
He didn’t reply, just let the tone of her words and her touch settle in.
Yeah, he was home.
He never thought about it, it never entered his mind. He lived his life and went where he needed to be.