Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Patch of Light

Daisy

“If you’re feelin’ the love for rock ’n’ roll, tonight at Herman’s Hideaway, hit up a new band that’s made the scene, Stella and The Blue Moon Gypsies. The lead singer has been rockin’ clubs in Denver for a while. But she’s found her groove with the Gypsies. Trust me, I caught them as an opening act at the Gothic last weekend and they blew the roof off. To get you into the feel, I’ll play a song Stella and her crew kill when they cover it. La Grange, by ZZ Top.”

The radio was playing while I was getting ready for Marcus to take me out to dinner.

I was a Southern girl, which meant I was a country girl. I could kick back to the sound of Patsy, Loretta, Barbara, Tammy, Emmylou, Shania, Wynonna, Trisha, Reba, and the best of all time, Dolly.

But there were times in my life when I had to switch to something else with deep Southern roots.

That’s when I hit up my rock ’n’ roll.

And in my getup, it was a rock ’n’ roll night sure as certain.

Obviously, I’d decided to go out with Marcus.

He wanted to convince me we were meant to be together, he’d been kind enough to me he’d earned that shot.

But he was going to know what he was getting.

To this end, I was wearing my leopard print (or one of them). A skintight mini-dress that only went down to there. The back was scooped all the way out and the front was scooped to maximum cleavage potential (and with the maximums of my cleavage, this might be awe-inspiring to some; heck, it was my cleavage and it was still that to me).

I was going to pair this with my sky-high platform sandals with the black patent across the balls of my feet, open toes to show off the new fire-engine-red pedicure I’d given myself (along with the same in a manicure, but on my long talons, I’d added a curve of amber rhinestones all along one side of the outer edge of each ring finger). The platform and heel of the shoes were covered in leopard.

My hair was even more sky-high than my platforms. Teased to mammoth proportions at the top and sides, I’d smoothed that back and then curled the hell out of the rest of my tresses so they fell in soft, defined swirls from a high-rise at the crown all the way down my back (the bangs were blown out straight and brushing my forehead).

My makeup was how I’d do it if I was stripping, which was how I’d do it when I wasn’t stripping. My eyes weren’t smoky. They were smoke. My skin bronzed. The sides of my nose and under my cheekbones shaded. My cheeks a dewy tangerine. My lips a nude-y, super-glossed, glittering peach.

I had in bronze chandelier earrings that nearly swept my shoulders and were liberally dosed with black and amber beads. A bronze statement necklace practically covered my upper chest and I had so many dangly bracelets on, if Marcus got through the night without the noise of them tinkling driving him to murder me, he’d definitely pass an important test.

I thought I looked divine. I had a cute little body, fantastic bosoms, a whole lot of thick hair, and skin to die for, and everything I’d done to augment it only made it that much better.

I also knew that not a lot of people agreed with me.

But Miss Annamae had told me to embrace my style when I found it (and boy had I found it) and not to let anyone cut me down.

Personally, I thought every woman should have at least one leopard print item in her closet. I didn’t care if it was just a clutch and I also didn’t care if that woman usually wore oxford shirts and loafers. She still needed leopard.

If someone didn’t agree with me on that, or my platforms, my big hair, and my heavy hand with eyeliner, they could go fuck themselves.

This was my thought as I leaned over the basin, whisking on one last coat of lip gloss and listening to ZZ Top when I heard, “Daisy.”

I jumped a mile, whirled, and cried, “Lord!”

I also saw Marcus lounging in the doorway to my bathroom.

“You scared the dickens out of me!” I snapped loudly, shoving the wand of the gloss back in the tube.

He sauntered in, reached out to my portable, and turned down the music.

He then leaned a hip against my bathroom counter like it was his bathroom counter, crossed his arms on his chest and stated, “I knocked. For five minutes. To ascertain if I needed to purchase a ticket to Timbuktu, I let myself in. Not easy for you to hear a knock over that music, honey.”

“It isn’t seven yet,” I retorted.

“It’s twelve past.”

I didn’t have a clock in the bathroom and I wasn’t wearing a watch, and further, there was no reason for him to lie. So I just did the only option available to me.

I formed my mouth into a pout.

He grinned at me.

“If it’s twelve past and you knocked for five minutes, either you’re shit at pickin’ a lock or you’re late,” I noted.

His grin became a smile I felt in my coochie.

God!

“Just something to know about me,” he began, “I’m not shit at picking a lock.”

“I’ll file that away,” I replied but didn’t stop speaking. “Just something to know in order to just know it, it ain’t polite to sneak up on a woman and it really ain’t polite to interrupt her gettin’ ready for your date.”

His eyes did a sweep of me.

I felt that in my nipples (and my coochie).

“You’re not ready?”

I was.

I just needed to put my shoes on.

“I don’t have my shoes on.”

“Not sure shoes can make all that better,” he said low. “But I bet if anyone could manage that, it’d be you.”

I tried to remain annoyed; I just couldn’t.

“You’ve messed up the opportunity to see the full show,” I pointed out.

“Trust me, darling, when I get it, it won’t be unappreciated.”

With his response, I finally took him in.

He was wearing a blue suit, a crisp light-blue shirt, and a silk tie in a blue that was three shades darker than the suit and had a matching pocket square. His dark hair was thick. The cut gave him fullness at the top without it looking overly styled, short but not buzzed at the sides and back, and unlike that morning, when it was messy and falling over his forehead, it was now swept back from his handsome face.

He looked GQ.

I looked like Dolly Parton impossibly created a love child with Peg Bundy (no, I rocked that look).

But suddenly, my stomach felt like it was sinking.

“Daisy?”

My focus returned to him.

He’d sensed the feeling I had.

How had he done that?

No. No. Marcus Sloan being scarily adept at tuning himself to me was something I was not going to think about. Not then. Not anytime soon. Maybe not ever.

“Daisy,” he prompted gently.

“We don’t match,” I said quietly.

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re GQ. I’m Peg Bundy.”

He gave one nod, declaring, “Yes, and lose the cigarette, Peg Bundy was gorgeous.”

I stared.

Then I asked, “Are you being serious with me?”

His brows drew together. “Are you being serious asking that question?”

I nodded my head and felt my hair go with it.

Marcus watched my hair. His lips quirked then he looked at me.

“She was supposed to be funny, she was in a sitcom,” he reminded me.

“Right,” I whispered.

“That didn’t make her any less beautiful.”

“Mm-hmm,” I mumbled, wondering if he was real or if I’d slipped into a coma after that jackass raped me.

Maybe I’d slammed my head against the asphalt. I didn’t feel it happen but then I wouldn’t. I’d have been in a coma.

“I prefer blondes, though,” he stated.

Lord, help me.

“You of course know,” he began informatively, “that one of the most attractive things a woman can be is knowing exactly who she is, embracing that entirely, and not giving that first fuck what anyone thinks about it.”

“You’re freakin’ me out,” I informed him right back.

“Freak out in the car,” he ordered, leaning into me, grabbing my hand, and dragging me out of the bathroom. “I skipped lunch. I’m starved.”

I yanked on my hand when we were in my bedroom but he didn’t let it go.

Though he did stop.

“You skipped lunch?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered.

“You shouldn’t skip a meal, sugar. Your body and brain need nourishing regularly to take on the day. My guess, your line of business, you need to stay sharp. Losin’ focus due to hunger pains don’t say sharp.”

Bizarrely, his reply came in a growl.

“You need to put your shoes on, get your bag, and get in my car, Daisy.”

I again stared at him, doing it this time asking, “Pardon?”

“I’m trying to take this slow,” he answered. “You being sweet is not conducive to me taking this slow.”

Yep.

Right in the coochie.

“Oh,” I mumbled.

“Yes. Oh. Get your shoes, your bag, and I’ll meet you in the living room.”

My head (and hair) nodded.

“Fuck me,” he muttered, watching my hair move.

He squeezed my hand, let it go, and sauntered out of the room.

I got my shoes on, dropped my lip gloss in my bag, and met him there.

* * * *

“Tell me something good.”

I was shifting the stem of the glass of my vodka martini this way and that with my red-tipped fingers.

We were at The Broker.

I’d been hither and yon since leaving home, all in the west, but I’d been in Denver for five years. The instant I hit the city limits, the Front Range spread out across the west as far as the eye could see, I knew it was the place where I’d die.

I’d always wanted to go to The Broker but I’d never been.

It was a date place. A special occasion place. A pricey place. A historic place. A place you went on a night you wanted to remember.

I didn’t have many of those.

And there I was, sitting next to the handsomest man I’d ever seen, the kindest, the gentlest, and the most gentlemanly.

This last part in the last half hour Marcus had exercised greatly.

After we’d left my apartment, he’d opened the door of his black Mercedes for me (Ronald was not in attendance that evening; neither was Brady).

He’d opened it again to let me out of his Mercedes.

He’d also done the same when he’d let us in the building and he’d escorted me down the stairs and to our booth with his hand at the small of my back, light, warm, gallant.

He’d let me slide in first on the side I wanted, sliding in right beside me, and he’d asked me what I wanted to drink so he could order it for me when the waiter arrived.

He’d done the same with my meal.

I couldn’t hack this.

I didn’t know what to do with this.

It wasn’t that this was a surprise.

It was just with what happened in that parking lot melting to take its place into a past with a lot of other stuff that wasn’t all that great, precisely how it felt was only now hitting me.

And what that was, was the fact that Miss Annamae would adore Marcus Sloan.

She might look askance at whatever he did to be able to buy his Mercedes. But I had a feeling she’d overlook that simply with the way he’d murmured sweetly, “Watch your feet, darling,” as I’d lifted them into his car.

“Daisy.”

I turned my gaze from my glass to him.

He was watching me closely. “Are you all right?”

No.

And hell yes.

I didn’t give him either of those answers.

I told him, “I’ve never been here.”

“Excellent steaks,” he murmured, still watching me closely.

“It’s very nice.”

Marcus made no reply.

“Did you, uh…” I tipped my head to the side, “ask me something?”

He turned more fully to me, shifting his bourbon and branch closer to the edge of the table in my direction, his long-fingered hand wrapped around it.

“I’d like you to tell me something good,” he said.

“Okay,” I replied readily and launched in. “You look real nice in that suit, sugar. And you got a good haircut. I like it.”

His lips curled up. “Thank you, honey, but what I meant was, about you.”

“About me?”

“About your life.”

I tipped my head to the side even as I dipped and twisted my chin, my eyes drifting away from him.

“Please tell me it wasn’t all bad.”

He sounded like he really wanted me to do that so I looked at him and shared, “Momma had a man once. He was called Stretch. He called me sweetheart. He had broad shoulders, and even if they were fightin’, any time his eyes came to me, he made them sweet. I thought it was like a superpower, him bein’ all kinds a’ mad at Momma, but bein’ able to hide that from me. He used to ask me to go to my room, or if I was in my room, he’d come and close the door so I wouldn’t see or hear them fightin’. It didn’t work. But it sure was nice.”

“Yes, that was nice,” Marcus replied like it was but it wasn’t.

The first part I knew was because at least Stretch had tried. The second was because there was fighting to shield me from.

I looked to my martini. “When he left, he told me I could call him whenever I needed him.”

“That’s nice too,” Marcus said softly.

I looked to him. “He said it then kinda took it back ’cause Momma got up in his shit right while he was sayin’ it. I remember it like it was yesterday and I was ten. But she was screamin’ and carryin’ on and shovin’ him and he had no claim to me. I knew he wanted to try. I reckoned he liked me and he looked after me in his way when they were together, but he didn’t want her in his life. He was done with her and I didn’t blame him. She wasn’t nice to him. She wasn’t nice to anybody. She used him mostly to pay the cable bill and the electricity and whatever she could get outta him. I think he did it at first ’cause she was real pretty and he liked her coochie. Then he did it so I’d have cable and light because he just liked me. But to be done with her, I knew he knew, even if he didn’t like it, he had to be done with me. So he left. And I never saw him again.”

“That’s not nice,” Marcus rumbled, not appearing real thrilled at my story.

I shrugged, looked back to my martini, took in a deep breath and whispered my finish.

“Only man a’ hers I missed when he was gone.”

“That’s all you have that’s good?” he asked, not sounding real thrilled at that possibility.

I drew in another breath, and as I let it out, I looked back at Marcus and shared the real good stuff.

“For a spell, my momma worked as a daily girl for a lady named Miss Annamae. When I call her a lady, I mean she was a lady. A fine Southern woman who lived in a graceful mansion her beloved but sadly departed husband left to her after he died. A mansion he’d grown up in. So had his daddy and so on for a long while. He didn’t rock her world with this. She grew up in one herself, just a different one from a different fine Southern family.”

“You liked her,” Marcus noted, still watching me closely.

“She liked me,” I replied.

“I’m not thinking that’s a good response,” he muttered like he wasn’t talking to me.

I let the stem of my glass go, turned more fully to him too, and reached out, putting my hand to his thigh.

When I did, I realized Marcus Sloan did not only take care of his grooming, he took care of other things too. The muscle beneath the fine material was solid.

My.

I tore my thoughts from what my hand was encountering, somehow found the strength to leave it right where it was, and told him, “She liked me. And she was kind to me. She gave me a tin of cookies she baked herself every Christmas my momma worked for her. And on my thirteenth birthday, she gave me an add-a-pearl necklace.”

“That’s very sweet,” Marcus murmured.

I nodded. “It was.”

“Did she add more pearls after your thirteenth?” he asked.

“She died three days after my birthday.”

“Christ,” he bit out low.

“And I hocked it for a bus ticket out of there when I was nineteen after I caught my boyfriend in the act, sleepin’ with my best friend who was my best friend only to get to my boyfriend. I went direct home and told my momma all about it. I barely got the story out before she slapped me across the face and told me to get over it. Life was shit and then you died so no purpose wastin’ it bitchin’ about men bein’ assholes when there wasn’t a being with a penis who wasn’t all asshole. And furthermore, I was a fool for havin’ any friends. Women were backstabbers and man-stealers. They talked behind your back more than they said anything to your face but when they said somethin’ straight to your face, if it was sweet, you could guarantee it was a lie.”

“This isn’t something good, Daisy,” he informed me, not looking happy.

“It’s all I got, Marcus,” I told him but I gave his thigh a quick squeeze. “And it sounds bad. But Miss Annamae knew. She might not have known exactly what was gonna cut it but she knew somethin’ would. And she knew I was a good girl. She knew I listened to her and she knew all the things she taught me I’d taken in. So she knew I’d need that necklace one day. Now, I think she mighta hoped that I’d wear it at my wedding to a wonderful man who’d help me fill my house with lots of babies. But I reckon she didn’t hold a lot of hope for that and knew I’d need it for what I needed it for and she’d be happy I had it when I needed it and that it was her who gave it to me.”

He kept hold of my gaze for a moment after I quit talking then he looked down at his drink and twisted it side to side in his fingers.

He looked reflective.

And upset.

And I didn’t like that.

“Honey bunches of oats,” I whispered.

His gaze came right back to mine.

And doing so, he made my heart warm right up in a way I knew sure as certain it would never again be cold.

Not ever.

Not ever again.

Not as long as Marcus was with me.

“It don’t sound good but it was,” I told him, real quiet, moved by his look that I felt in my heart. “I lost her but even though she’d been gone for years, she was there for me in that moment when I needed her most. It wasn’t good for me there. And even with what happened to me in that parking lot, since I left that place, it’s never again been that bad. That’s how bad it was. She wanted me to have the means to escape when I’d had enough. It was the most precious gift anyone ever gave me. The time she gave it by handin’ me that box. And the time I hocked it and bought myself freedom.”

“There’s no more good?” he asked.

“Smithie,” I told him.

“Other than him.”

“LaTeesha,” I went on.

“Daisy, you understand me.”

I shook my head and gave his thigh a squeeze. “Sugar, you aren’t gettin’ it. I had her for a short while. But I had her. Do you know where I’d be if I didn’t?”

“No. Where would you be?”

“Back there in a place where every day was hell. I’d probably have a man who drank or gambled or shot up or beat me or all those. Or I’d have a string of ’em, none of ’em treatin’ me right. A job that I hated workin’, doin’ it with people who thought they were better than me. My momma alternately hittin’ me up for money or gettin’ in my face, bein’ ugly. Miss Annamae taught me to keep my head held high, darlin’, and I was strugglin’ with that.” I leaned into him. “Really struggling. They would have beaten me. She gave me the way out when without her doin’ that I’d have no way out, and here I am, in a fancy restaurant in a great town with a handsome man. It’d make her happy. Real happy, baby.”

When I was done talking, his attention moved to my hair, as did his hand. He pulled some curls over my shoulder and stared at them resting there.

“You know why it was,” he murmured to my hair.

“Pardon?”

His gaze came to mine and the hand he’d used to shift my hair he now used to sweep his fingertips across my cheekbone in a whisper of a touch that was there and gone.

But the precious memory of that touch would remain until the day I quit breathing.

“People live lives they hate,” he said, resting his arm along the top of the booth beside me. “They see a patch of light, the only thing that drives them is to snuff it out.”

I gave him a small smile and said, not mean, “That’s sweet, sugar, but that’s like tellin’ a homely girl all the other girls bully her ’cause they’re jealous.”

“So what you’re telling me is that all that’s happened to you is just about predators preying on the weak?”

My head twitched.

“You aren’t weak, Daisy,” he stated.

No, I wasn’t.

I’d been knocked down. Again and again.

I just kept getting up.

And I was still standing, in platforms, with great hair.

I swallowed.

“And those other girls bully the homely girl for one reason only. They’re bitches. And that says a fuckuva lot more about them than that homely girl, and not one single bit of it is good.”

My fingers tensed reflexively into his thigh.

“You’re right, sugar,” I whispered.

“I know,” he returned. “As for you, why would a rich woman in a graceful mansion give the girl you thought you were the time of day?”

I felt the sting before I knew what was happening, and I blinked rapidly to keep them at bay.

Marcus didn’t wait for me to answer.

He gave me his answer.

“Because she was old enough and lived enough life with enough abundance in that life to see you for what you were. Not a beautiful girl who would become a beautiful woman. Not a sweet girl who was strong and smart who would become so much more than her mother, it’s laughable. Not a bold woman a weak man has to beat down to make him feel strong. Or fuck around on before she realizes she could do better and scrapes him off. No, she saw all of that, just without the bad shit leaking in.”

I was now breathing deep along with blinking a lot in order to stop myself from losing it.

But even though Marcus saw it—I knew he even had to feel it—he was still far from done.

“I bet if you went back to that place, all those people would still be in it, living lives they hate. And you’d sweep through looking like a movie star and they’d take one look at you and know they had every right to be jealous of you. To hate you. To beat you. Talk about you. Cheat on you. And they’re so entrenched in their bitterness because they only have themselves to blame that they didn’t make their lives better, the only regret they’d have is that they hadn’t been able to drag you right down to where they are, smother your light, make you go dark.”

His fingers peeled mine from his thigh and curled around tight, holding my hand right there.

And he kept going.

“Miss Annamae didn’t give you those pearls because she thought for a second they’d get close to beating you down. She gave you those pearls because she knew without a doubt they never would.”

“Please stop talking,” I whispered, seeing as he’d gone all fuzzy because my eyes were trembling with tears and I could take not one little bit more.

For a second, he didn’t say anything and he didn’t move.

Then he lifted my hand and touched his lips to my fingers. He put it right back, curling them around his thigh again, and he looked to his bourbon.

He raised his glass and took a sip.

I drew in a shaky breath.

Then I removed my hand from his thigh and reached for my own drink.

After I’d thrown back a slightly unladylike sip, I returned the glass to the table and my attention with it.

“Daisy.”

“Please, please,” I was still whispering, this time to my glass, “I can’t take more of your sweet.”

“Baby, you need to move your glass. Your appetizer is here.”

My head came up.

The waiter smiled benignly at me.

I moved my glass.

Marcus moved his arm to around my back and pulled me to his side so I was tucked close.

I picked up my fork in order to dive into my crab cake.

I had the succulent-looking crab halfway to my mouth when Marcus asked, “Where did you grow up?”

I braced but answered, deciding that was an innocent enough question, and if he pressed for more, I’d shut it down.

He didn’t press for more.

He scooped out some of his oysters Rockefeller.

And we ate.

* * * *

Marcus

Marcus got her drunk.

He did this without remorse.

It bought him a good deal of her amazing laughter.

It also got him the bonus of her passing out in his car, this meaning he didn’t have to have words with her about where he fully intended to spend the night that night.

He carried her to her apartment and took off her shoes, her necklace, her bracelets, and carefully slid out her earrings but left her in her dress when he tucked her into bed.

He left her room, closing the door behind him at the same time sliding his phone out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

He flipped it open and made the call.

“Boss,” Brady answered, sounding mostly alert, somewhat drowsy.

Within a minute, he’d issued his order.

He finished with, “Hopefully that pawn shop will still be open. If it isn’t, maybe someone who ran it will be around and they kept records. But I don’t care what it takes, Brady. Even if you have to pull Nightingale into it. Find those pearls and get them to me.”

“You got it, Mr. Sloan.”

“Goodnight,” Marcus said and hung up.

Then he took off his suit jacket, his tie, shirt, shoes, and socks and he stretched out on Daisy’s couch, tucking a toss pillow under his head and pulling one of her throws over his body.

He closed his eyes, and within seconds, with Daisy resting safe in the next room, Marcus was asleep.