I fired up the engine and let the rumble run through me. Never failed to calm me down. You want to soothe a big, tatted-up motherfucker like me? Put his hands on the wheel of a muscle car with 425 horses under the hood. Worked every time.
“Buckle up,” I said, my eyes cutting to Elle. But she was already belted in. Shifting into first, I pulled out of the garage, reaching up to hit the remote to lower the overhead door. I slowed in the alley to make sure it closed all the way before punching the gas again.
“So, you were going to tell me how the hell you ended up with a name like Lord?” Elle asked.
I kept my eyes on the road, sliding into the flow of traffic.
“You tell me where you live first.”
“The Quarter. You ever heard of a vintage clothing store called Dirty Dog?”
“Yeah.”
“I live right above it.”
Like most any real estate in the Quarter, it wasn’t cheap. I slowed to a stop at the light.
“So … Lord? Not a nickname?”
She was like a dog with a bone. It wasn’t a story I particularly liked telling, but then again, I didn’t particularly like sharing anything about my past or myself. But on the scale of shit I didn’t want to share, this fell on the mostly harmless side.
“My mom was a junkie; she ran off when Con and I were kids. I was six, and he was three. Con doesn’t remember her at all, but I do. Pop told me a few months later she OD’d in a gutter.” At six, it was the stuff of nightmares—and I still vividly remembered mine about walking home from school and finding my ma’s bones in a gutter.
“Oh.” The sound was more of an exhale than an actual word.
I accelerated when the light turned green and headed for the Quarter. Even though it was only a couple miles away, it was a completely different world from the one I’d made my home. I continued, “And if that’s the truth, then she OD’d just like her idol—Janis Joplin.”
“Janis Joplin?”
“Yeah, Ma came from Texas, and Janis was the girl who’d made it big. To hear her tell it, she’d listened to that song ‘Mercedes Benz’ over and over while she was pregnant. She named me Lord because she wanted me to grow up and buy her one someday.” I huffed out a humorless chuckle. “Just one reason you’ll never see me drive or buy anything but American muscle.”
“You made that story up, right?” Elle asked. “That can’t be true.”
I changed lanes and glanced over at her. “You really think I’d go to the trouble of making that up? I could just as easily have given you some bullshit excuse about her thinking I was going to be a prophet. Probably would’ve sounded better.”
I slowed to dodge the people already clogging the streets near the Quarter.
“It’s not a bad story … just surprising, is all.”
We finished the rest of the ride in silence, and I parked in front of Dirty Dog. A few mannequins—one with jeans and a ripped T-shirt and one with a funky dress—stood in the front window. “Charlie used to work here, didn’t she?” I asked, remembering the tatted-up badass of a girl who’d worked for Con at Voodoo Ink.
“Yeah, but not anymore. So, I’ll see you Monday?” Elle said as she pushed open the door.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
She climbed out of the car and ducked her head back in. “For my first shift. At Chains. I told you I wasn’t leaving without a job—and you’re giving me one.”
“We’re not open Monday.” It wasn’t an invite, but apparently she didn’t get that.
“See you Tuesday, then.” Elle shut the door without waiting for an answer, and I was left staring after the sway of her hips and that goddamn green dress.
Shit.
I thought about jumping out of the car and chasing her down to make her understand—in no uncertain terms—that she did not have a job. But something kept me in my seat. She won’t show, I told myself. Don’t even waste the headspace thinking about it.
I checked my mirrors and pulled away.
What the hell would I do if she did show up?
On Tuesday morning, I got called out to look at a bike someone wanted to sell and completely lost track of time. I’d put the odds of Elle actually showing up at Chains between slim and none. Which was why, when I walked in the back door of the shop, I didn’t expect to hear Adele pumping on the sound system, and I sure didn’t expect to see a fine as hell ass bent over and wiping down one of the glass display cases.
I stopped in the middle of the shop because—first, I had to appreciate the view, and second, I needed to decide how I was going to handle this.
“You do realize you can’t just decide you work somewhere and show up, right?”
Dark red hair swung as she looked over her shoulder.
“You do realize that’s how I got my last three jobs? I don’t exactly go through the whole interview and offer process.”
“You’re not normal, you know that?”
Her bright smile hit me in the gut … and lower. “At least you didn’t call me an entitled rich bitch, so I’ll take not normal as a win.”
I looked at the coffee filter in her hand. “I don’t know many entitled rich chicks who’d come in and start cleaning my display cases with coffee filters. Did we run out of paper towel?”
“They were spotty. I couldn’t see the sparkle, and if I couldn’t see it, customers couldn’t see it. You’ve got beautiful stuff, but it’s all about presentation. Besides, my mother’s housekeeper always told me cleaning with coffee filters would leave fewer streaks than paper towel. For the record—she was always right.”