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The woman beneath him sounded like a CD with some lint that caused it to stick, and Joe Wayne Fuller found it mighty distracting. Maybe if he changed things up a bit...rolled over to his side...
The room whirled as he eased to the left, but Ramona’s sturdy thigh shoved him back into place. Her legs locked tighter around him, and she began to buck harder, drumming his ass with her heels. “Oh, yes, baby. Just like that. Give me more of that.”
“You like this?” he panted, trying to stay focused and not think about how much his head was spinning and how much pain her heels was inflicting. He’d have bruises, for sure...and a helluva hangover. “You like—ow! Sunshine, you got to—oof!...take it easier. You’re making me lose—”
“No! Don’t stop!” Her teeth sank into his shoulder.
“Shitfire! No more biting. You promised.” A week with Ramona had left his neck and shoulders looking like he’d been to a damn vampire convention.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “Just don’t stop. Don’t stop.” The last word came out on a snarl that sounded like a rabid dog.
He hoped to hell when this was over, he didn’t have to put her down like they did Old Yeller.
“Oh Joe Wayne...oh Joe Wayne...”
Speaking of “yeller”...
“Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”
Joe Wayne squeezed his eyes shut, reminding himself to keep Ramona far away from the Wild Turkey tomorrow night...if there was a tomorrow night...if he lived through this beating.
“Don’t stop. Don’t. Stop! Stop!” Ramona sucked in a gulp of air and hurled him off of her and the bed.
“What the hell?”
A car door slammed.
“My husband!”
“Husband?” Joe Wayne scrambled to his feet. “You never told me you—”
“Oh, shut up and leave.” She was out of the bed now with a wild look in her eye, and Joe Wayne’s gut told him this wasn’t a good time to argue. Ramona snatched clothes from the floor and shoved them into his arms as she pushed him toward the bathroom.
The front door opened slightly, wood cracking as it slammed against the chain lock, followed by a man’s roar. “Ramona! Get your ass out of bed and let me in!”
“Your only chance to make it out alive is through that window,” she whispered and then let out a yell. “I’m coming, baby!”
Joe Wayne pushed it open and sized up the opening...a mighty small chance, by his way of thinking.
“Don’t stop to dress.” The warning in her tone sent prickles up his spine.
“What about Patsy?” He threw the clothes out the window and climbed onto the toilet to hoist a leg through. Ow! He ground his teeth to keep from crying out as his private parts scraped across the rough wood. “I can’t leave without my bike.”
“Get it tomorrow.” Ramona gave him a helpful push, sending him tumbling to the ground, then closed the window behind him. A second later, the window opened again, and his boots thumped him in the head.
Joe Wayne grabbed the clothes and boots, gripping them to his chest, and took off behind the neighbors’ houses, his heart chugging for all it was worth. He ran like a jackrabbit under the cover of darkness until his lungs felt like they was gonna bust. When he couldn’t take a breath without a hot poker stabbing his side, he finally gave up and stopped to dress. Leaning on the side of a garage, taking in huge gulps of air, he rammed one leg into his jeans and then the other and jerked hard.
The waistband stopped its upward movement at the top of his thighs, pinning his legs together and not letting them move. “Shitfire!” He gritted his teeth as his right hip connected with the ground.
Jerking the jeans off, he examined them. Not his. Ramona’s. And even though she was a curvy woman, there was no way his ass was gonna fit into her jeans. A snatch of color caught his eye. Her orange thong hung on his foot.
Dread filled his gut as he grabbed the T-shirt. Yep. Just as he’d ’spected. Hers, too—the black V-neck with pink sparkling letters that proclaimed A Hard Man on the front and Is Good to Find across the back.
He took a deep breath, running his hands through his hair. No keys. They were in his jeans, which he hoped to hell she’d somehow managed to hide. He couldn’t even get into the compartment on his bike where he kept his stuff. His only hope was to get to the beach house.
He stood and pulled the T-shirt over his head. It was tight, and the shoulder and sleeve seams groaned under the pressure. It was also just a couple of inches shy of keeping him from getting arrested for indecent exposure if he happened to be seen, which he didn’t plan on.
He’d been pondering ways to get some publicity shining on his almost nonexistent career, but being arrested roaming the streets, half-drunk and half-dressed, in women’s clothes wasn’t the image he was going for.
A hefty punch of self-loathing hit his gut as he slipped on the thong.
But thank God for his boots.
He glanced down, shuddering at the sight—just another weirdo roaming the streets in the middle of the night.
He remembered that EmmyLou had booked renters into the beach house for the week.
He hoped to hell they had a sense of humor.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_a20cdc08-8600-504b-b349-387580989ebe)
THE SHOWER IN Sol’s bathroom was difficult though not impossible to navigate as long as he held on to the hand bar. But the water wasn’t helping the jellyfish stings. If anything, it made them worse. The intense stings had morphed into an intense itch.
Sol had searched the kitchen cabinets for meat tenderizer—wasn’t that supposed to be the go-to miracle cure?—but found none. He’d remembered hearing somewhere that urine would ease the sting, also, but he wasn’t that desperate.
He turned off the water and dried inside the shower, then got out and reattached his prosthesis. The itch was annoying enough that sleep would be an absent friend, which really didn’t matter because he could spend the entire day tomorrow in bed if he wanted. So instead of slipping into pajamas, he pulled on a clean pair of cargo shorts. After so many years in long pants, he’d forgotten how cool, loose and unfettering shorts could be.
Without meat tenderizer, bourbon was sure to be the next best thing for his stings, provided it was applied internally. He went to the bar in the large common room and found a new bottle because he’d finished the dab that was left in the old one.
The first sip went down smoothly. The second caught in his throat when a sound caused him to flinch. A cough sent the bourbon several places where it shouldn’t have been—onto the bar, down his bare front and, most irritating, up his nose. It burned up into his sinuses making his eyes tear. Great! Between the jellyfish and the bourbon, he was literally burning and itching from head to toe, inside and out. And the fact that someone was knocking on his back door...at two-thirty in the morning...did not bode well for this situation improving.
But he chose to ignore the knock. Probably just some drunk anyway.
Coughs continued to wrack his system until the liquid cleared from the passages it wasn’t meant to come into contact with.
Whoever was at the sliding glass door must have heard, because the knocking grew more persistent.
“Hey!” A male voice. “I need help.”
The word help called Sol to action. He grabbed his phone in case he needed to call 911...or the police...and hustled toward the hallway.
The kitchen light gave him a fairly good view of a man standing at the door that led to the deck on the beach. The guy needed help all right—but not the kind Sol could give.
Some kind of crazy-ass, scantily clad cross-dressing dude.
But he broke into a smile when he saw Sol. “Hey, man! Oh, thank God.” He dropped his head back in a relieved gesture. Then he straightened and pressed his forearms and face against the glass. The gesture pulled his T-shirt up, revealing an orange lace thong that basically covered nothing.
The man wasn’t bloody. He stood upright. He obviously wasn’t hurt. And he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get away from anybody.
“Go on.” Sol yelled from several feet away. “Get out of here.” He started to turn.
“Wait!” The nutcase pounded the door with his palms. “No, man! Hey! Don’t go!”
Sol moved closer, but only to flip the light switch on the wall. The deck light remained on, putting the visitor in a spotlight. Someplace he was used to being, no doubt.
“Look, I’m Joe Wayne Fuller. My family owns this house.”
Sol pulled up straight, pausing to study him a moment.
“My sister, EmmyLou Fuller, arranged your stay. Ain’t that right?” The guy’s head bobbed up and down, answering his own question.
EmmyLou Fuller? Sol had never heard her use that last name, but the name EmmyLou was too distinct not to refer to her. If this joker was her brother, she’d probably put him up to this.
The woman had already proven she’d go to great lengths to try to best Sol Beecher.
“Call her. She’ll tell you I ain’t dangerous or nothing. I just got into a situation.” He crunched his fingers in the air, forming imaginary quotation marks around the word. “I...uh... I lost my clothes, and, oh hell, man. Just call EmmyLou. She’ll vouch for me.”
“I’m not calling her. It’s two-thirty in the morning.” Sol put his hands on his hips and stood his ground.
Joe Wayne—if that was really his name—pressed his forehead against his arm and took a deep breath. “Well, would you at least get me some clothes from the family suite? I can’t go nowhere else like this.”
So he knew about the family suite.
Sol blew out an angry breath and jerked his phone up to find EmmyLou’s number.
* * *
A CALL AT two-thirty was not a rare occurrence in Emmy’s world.
Her two younger brothers, both single, were forever calling her when they came in after a night of drinking and carousing. And even the two older ones, both married, called after spats with their wives or when they needed help understanding the female gender.
But a call from Sol Beecher at this time of night hadn’t occurred in fourteen years. She blinked at his name on the caller ID, and her heart did a strange triple beat. But then she remembered he was at the beach house—he was probably calling to complain about something that didn’t suit him.
She fumbled with the button and pressed the phone to her ear. “If you’ve stopped up the plumbing, you’ll have to wait until morning. Just think of the beach as your private litter box for the night.”
“Yeah, well, the plumbing’s held up so far. But the litter box is going to come in mighty handy for your brother, who’s standing on the deck.”
Emmy shot straight up in the bed. “My brother? Which one?”
“Says his name is Joe Wayne Fuller.”
The edge of a groan seeped out. “Oh good Lord.”
“He’s wearing a black woman’s T-shirt—”
Oooo, that could be good news. “Is she with him?” She hadn’t realized she’d fisted the sheet in her hand until it relaxed.
“Who?”
“The black woman, because it’s probably my friend Shirley, and—”
“A black woman isn’t with him.” There he goes getting snippy. “He’s wearing a woman’s black T-shirt, an orange thong and cowboy boots...nothing else. And he’s beating on the door to the deck, saying I need to let him in to get some clothes.”
Emmy plopped back into her pillow, pressing a finger and thumb against her eyes. “Let me talk to him.”
“I’m not opening this door.” She could visualize Sol shaking that stubborn, shaggy head of his. “He looks crazy.”
“Is he drunk?”
Sol’s voice grew louder. “Are you drunk?”
“Not no more. But I wished to hell I was,” came the reply, slightly muffled, but she’d recognize that drawl anywhere.
“Listen, tell her me and this friend was having a little fun.” Emmy strained to hear her brother’s story. “But her husband came home and I hauled ass out of there and I got the wrong clothes and no money and I had to sneak all the way across town in the dark half-nekkid and I need some damn clothes!”
A loud smack told her he’d hit the glass door.
“So there you have it.” Sol again. “Straight from the crazy-ass’s mouth.”
“You could use a few lessons in anatomy.” She’d left herself wide open for another one of those been there, done that quips, so she hurried on. “Look...would you mind letting him in long enough to grab some clothes? And maybe loan him a few dollars? I’ll pay you back when you get home.” God, she hated asking him for a favor. But when it came to her brothers, she’d grovel if she had to. Besides, she owed Joey. He was the one she’d let down the most. Well, him and Mama. Always Mama. “Joey’s harmless. Even when he’s drunk, he’s a lovable drunk.”
She heard the door slide open and drew an easier breath.
“Thanks, man.” Joey’s voice kicked up a notch. “Thanks, EmmyLou. Love you.”
“Okay. He’s in,” Sol growled, and the sexy sound caused a flutter in her belly. “You can go back to sleep.”
“Sol...um... I’m sorry about this.” Emmy chewed her bottom lip. “But...thanks. I owe you.”
“Yes, you do.” He didn’t sound like he was kidding. “Hey, by the way, do you know if there’s any meat tenderizer in the house?”
Emmy’s brain stuttered at the abrupt change in topic. Sheesh! People said she had strange thought processes! “I...don’t...know. But if you buy your steaks at Campbell’s Meat Market—it’s only a couple blocks away—you won’t need tenderizer.”
“Oh man!” Emmy heard the shock in Joey’s voice. “What happened to y—”
“Okay, EmmyLou. Thanks. G’night.”
The phone went dead, and for a brief moment, emptiness surrounded her bed before the familiar voice chided her. “Why would you buy such a big house? You’re probably never going to get married now. All your friends married a long time ago.
“Boys are so much easier than girls. If you ever get pregnant, pray for a boy. Of course, it’s getting too late for you to have any children now.”
“Shut up, Mama.”
Emmy folded the pillow around her head as if that would silence the voice.
“Your brother’s down there with no money and probably no place to stay except with one of his no-account friends. He needs help, missy, and you more than anyone else owe him...”
Emmy threw the pillow on the floor and climbed out of bed. It was a nine-hour drive to Gulf Shores. Probably more like ten with stops to gas up and stretch.
