AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER TWO
Apparently, the good Lord hadn’t totally forgotten about Tim Dowd’s earthly trials and tribulations, as He sent him rescue from his current strife in the form of a chatterbox realtor who always managed to be the perfect distraction.
“Tim!” Carine called from the front door. “My car won’t start. Can you give my friend and me a ride back to Shora? The two smokestacks out here on the porch summarily dismissed me.”
“Poor baby,” the hot mess at Tim’s right elbow purred.
He’d been married to that hot mess for a while before they both agreed that Tim wasn’t the right man for her. Actually,noman was the right man for Heidi, and it had taken her seventeen years to decide that she far preferred the fairer sex. Tim couldn’t find it in him to take it personally, but all the same, he was tired of being chick bait. The women who arced toward him at events like Clay’s were always so confused when Heidi swooped in for the kill. Their confusion usually played out well for what Heidi wanted, but Tim would have rather been fishing or…hell, watching paint dry.
He pushed off the wall he was holding up and tossed his empty beer bottle into the recycling bucket. “I’d be happy to drive you home,” he said to Carine.
He’d been looking for any excuse to leave.
Everyone expected him to show up, not only because he was Clay’s big brother, but because they were well aware of his proclivities. But Tim wasn’t trawling for a submissive anymore. Submissives got attached, and he wasn’t really in the market for anything but a casual relationship. He wasn’t wary because his divorce had left him so wrung out—it hadn’t—but because he knew that in the end, a relationship just wasn’t going to work. He had too much baggage, and most nice Southern ladies’ idea of bedroom adventuring was sixty-nining with the lights on.
They didn’t want to play with men like Tim, and if they did, they sure as shit never admitted it.
He turned Carine swiftly by the shoulders and guided her toward the door before Heidi could decide that her favorite color that day was red.
“What’s wrong?” he asked Carine as they passed Frank and Hal. “Forgot to put gas in the tank before driving out here?”
“I think I know how to read a gas gauge.”
“That same gas gauge that stopped working three years ago?”
She stopped at the bottom step, and muttered, “Damn,” under her breath.
“What happened? Did it start working again for a little while?”
“Yep. Right before I was going to take it to the shop to get looked at. I had some extra cash after I sold the old Parker place.”
“Maybe putting gas in the tank is the first thing we ought to try, then. I’m pretty sure Clay keeps the gas can full for his riding mower.”
“I’ll go ask him. Here.” She dropped the keys into Tim’s palm and started up the stairs. “My friend’s roasting in the car. Go be hospitable or whatever. Maybe turn on the charm and see if she’ll stay for longer than five minutes.”
Frank and Hal scoffed in chorus.
“Like y’all are doing so much better at it,” she said before snatching open the screen door. “Keep waiting around for someone to fall into your lap. Pleated khakis will come back into style before that happens.”
Tim gave his head a shake and struck out in search of the Miata. He’d been telling Carine to get rid of that car since right after she bought it, but she was attached to it the same way some kids were attached to their baby blankets.
He spotted the compact thing in the back row closest to the trees and squeezed his way between the tightly packed vehicles ahead of it. He recognized every one of them on sight. They belonged to folks ranging from casual deviants like him to honest-to-goodness pillars of the community who hoped and prayed their secrets never got out. Most folks in attendance at Clay’s events fell somewhere in the middle, but Tim was guessing this friend of Carine’s didn’t even make it onto the freak spectrum if she was having such a hard time getting out of the car.
She was staring down at her phone when he reached the driver’s door.
He knocked gently so as not to startle her, but she jumped anyway, sending the cell flying out of her hand. She clutched her chest and reached across the car to pull the handle…then she seemed to change her mind.
She narrowed dark-as-night eyes at him, pursed her lush, pink lips, and shook her head. She held up her index fingers, crossed them, and held the banishing sigil up to him.
Well, that’s just plain ridiculous.
“Oh, so it’s like that, huh, honey?” He drummed on the top of the car and pondered his lot in life. The one woman who’d shown up at one of Clay’s “Lowdown Dirty” events who’d ever made Tim stand up straight and take notice had just insinuated that he was a demon of some sort.
He stooped a bit and caught that dark gaze again. He wished she would hit the dome light so he could get a better look at her. There was too much shadow obscuring her features, but he liked what he could see. High cheekbones. Sandy skin. Thick curly hair that seemed to be giving its clip a real workout.
Probably around thirty.
It wasn’t his intention to size her up like a state fair sow, but hell. He was efficient at it. Being keenly observant wasn’t what made him a dominant, but it sure as hell didn’t hurt.
