Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 63445 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 317(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 211(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63445 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 317(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 211(@300wpm)
“Go home,” he told her. “Maybe I’ll call you if I get an itch.”
“You bastard!” she shouted at his back.
He couldn’t argue with that. She had a point.
Chapter 5
Daisy sat in Maria’s office, her pride and her feet hurting in equal measure. With the look Maria was giving her, she suspected her nose might be hurting too, when the older woman decided to finish what the other girl had started. “Guess I didn’t mention the part where you don’t bang the customers in the bathroom- didn’t think I had to.”
Daisy felt heat creep up her face. “You don’t. Usually.”
“So, you just came face to face with a tall drink of water and went at him like a woman lost in the desert?”
A laugh escaped Daisy, and immediately she was sorry for it. “Um,” she mumbled. “Yeah. Kind of. I mean, pretty much exactly like that, actually.”
The blonde woman raised an eyebrow.
“It’s... um... it’s been a while,” Daisy admitted. “And I just, whew,” she said, leaning back in the chair. “I was there, and he came in, and... I lost my head. I’m sorry, Maria. And that girl, I have no clue who she is. I don’t know who he is. I swear I’m not usually like this.”
Maria sat back in her chair and gazed at the ceiling. “Well, I can’t say I blame you, coming off a... dry spell,” she said with a smirk. “And running into a guy like that.”
“What’s his name?”
Maria raised the same eyebrow again. Daisy thought if she kept talking, Maria’s eyebrow might get stuck all the way up there.
“He mentioned it,” she lied. “But I forgot.”
Maria rolled her eyes. “His name’s Jimmy. Goes by ‘Easy’.”
Daisy snorted. “That part’s right.”
Maria laughed. “He’s from New Orleans, but yeah, the name works both ways. He gets around. But you want my advice, don’t take up with him. He’s got some darkness around him. He oughta work it out of his system before he drowns in it. And you know what they say about drowning men. They’re likely to pull you down with them.”
Daisy moved forward in the chair. “Is he... dangerous?” She frowned. She definitely did not need anything like that in her life. Never again.
But Maria shook her head. “No. Not that I’ve ever seen. Though he’s ex-Special Forces, so he could be, under the right circumstances. No, he had a bad tour a few years back. Lost his leg. I didn’t know him before, but I get the sense that he might’ve lost more than that.”
Daisy blew out a hard breath. “God. I didn’t even notice.”
Maria shrugged. “Not much call to strip down in my bathroom. And if you want the job, by the way, you’ll never do it again.”
“The job?” Daisy held her breath. She needed money, and a place like this was definitely her kind of place, crazy, jealous girlfriends aside.
“We’re slammed like this every weekend,” Maria told her. “I lost two waitresses, and I’m in a bind. You seem to be able to handle yourself. If you can manage to keep your paws off my customers, we could work something out.”
“I can,” Daisy insisted. “I can definitely do that.”
“You’ll have to pass a drug test, too.”
“Not a problem,” Daisy said confidently. “The only needles I like have ink in them.”
“Yeah, I see that.”
“They’re mine,” Daisy told her, holding out her arms. “I mean, I drew them myself.”
“Oh, yeah?” Maria said, duly impressed. “They’re good.”
“They’re damn good,” Daisy corrected.
The older woman could sense the pride in Daisy’s voice and nodded. “That they are.” She reached into the desk drawer and pulled out a blank employment application. “Fill this out,” she instructed and handed Daisy a pen. “I’ll give you the address of the testing facility before you leave.”
Daisy couldn’t believe her incredible luck as she hastily filled in the empty boxes. Maria went to help her husband, Thomas, finish closing down the bar. Daisy was ecstatic. The tips she’d made tonight were far and away more than she’d ever made at the Silver Spoon. She smiled to herself as she thought things would turn out fine in Rapid City, just fine. She’d save some money, find a place. Maybe by the end of the summer she’d have enough saved up for a car. It wouldn’t have to be anything fancy, just something that-
She paused. Her pen hovered just above the page as she gazed at the application.
Have you ever been convicted of a crime?
Daisy’s enthusiasm faltered. She could sense all her earlier plans fading away, slipping through her fingers. She couldn’t go home, no way, not back to the trailer park and that boring, old town and those boring, old townspeople, who had always looked down on her.
Here was a job, where no one minded her tattoos or her nose stud. Here, in one night, she’d earned more money than she’d made in a week at the diner. She shifted in her chair. Here was Home, she decided. And that was that.