Colorado 03 Lady Luck (9 page)

“
He… did…
not,
” Walker enunciated every word clearly. “The only reason he
didn’t pimp you is because he knew you wouldn’t be pimped. He got
the barest fuckin’ inklin’ he could sell you, he’d have done it.
Now, I got a dick and I assume he had a dick so, seein’ as he and I
have that in common, I’ll tell you, your pussy was
my
pussy I would not be sellin’
pussy, not that I’d do that shit anyway. I would not be sellin’
dope and I wouldn’t do that shit either. What I would do is make
fuckin’ coffee drinks if it meant you could wear your heels and
feel good about sleepin’ in my bed. He didn’t do that. This means
he did not give one shit about you.”

He stared into my eyes and I let him. Then
I looked back at the game. Then I experienced a miracle and that
miracle was the fact that I didn’t get crushed under the weight of
the full understanding I never,
ever
let myself comprehend that Ronnie Rodriguez was a pimp, a
dealer, a loser, selfish, morally void and just plain stupid. He
may have started out loving me but the minute he decided to piss
his future away when he fucked up in Indiana, he stopped loving me
or anyone and I was blind, in love and wanted so badly to belong to
something, anything,
anyone,
I never let him go.

“I’m an idiot,” I whispered to the game.

“You’re human,” Walker said to me, voice
firm and I looked back at him to see he was reclined again against
the headboard.

I tipped my head to the side. “So, no
sympathy for Ronnie for making fucked up decisions, but me, I’m
just human?”

“
You loved him and didn’t want to give up
on him. That is not wrong. He didn’t love you and didn’t give a
shit about anyone but himself. That
is
wrong.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t jive,
Ty.”

“Oh yeah. It does,” he returned. “Think I
explained I have a dick. Think I told you what I’d do if your pussy
was mine. I was fuckin’ up and you weren’t givin’ up on me, I hope
to Christ I’d be the type of man who’d pull my head outta my ass
and earn that devotion. Makes him worse, he didn’t and left you to
the wolves. But you givin’ that devotion, that isn’t wrong.”

“It was stupid.”

“So, you know when the limit’s up on love?”
he asked and I felt my chest depress as the profound weight of his
question hit me.

“No,” I whispered.

“Right. No. No one does. Not you. Not me. No
one. You loved him, you believed in him, far’s you were concerned,
he didn’t take those hits, the day after, he coulda got his head
outta his ass and done right by you. You held onto that belief.
Nothin’ wrong with that except the fact that he never manned up and
that’s on him not on you.”

It was my turn to stare at him and I did
this trying to come to terms with the fact that he was sage.

Then I told him. “I think I’m done
sharing.”

To that, he muttered, “I bet.”

And to that, I replied, “Your turn.”

He jerked up his chin and then stated
immediately, “I’m thirty-six. Never been married. I’m a licensed
automotive mechanic… or I was. My Dad’s alive, a drunk and an
asshole. My Mom’s alive and a bitch ‘cause her husband’s a drunk.
Or maybe he’s a drunk because she’s a bitch. Whatever, they define
dysfunction and I been livin’ with that shit since I had memories.
My Dad’s parents hated my Mom and died doin’ it. They had reason.
My Mom’s parents returned the favor with my Dad but their reasons,
in the beginning, were different and total bullshit. They’re alive
and I had not one thing to do with them when I was a kid, their
choice, and not when I grew up either and that choice was mine. I
got a younger brother who’s a pain in everyone’s ass. He’s
thirty-three and been married four times, got five kids and my
guess, he marries women and makes babies ‘cause he gets off on
bein’ a pain in the ass and wants to spread that shit around far’s
he can. Good news is, he moved to Los Angeles and that proved far
enough away, his talent with being a pain in the ass didn’t reach.
I grew up in Carnal, Colorado and I just got done doin’ a nickel
for a crime I didn’t commit in a state I never stepped foot in
until I was extradited there to stand trial.”

Then he stopped talking.

I waited.

He shared no more.

Then I asked, “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“I shared more than you,” I pointed out.

“How you figure that?”

“
Okay, I didn’t share more but mine was
more personal and included me coming to terms with something I’ve
been avoiding coming to terms with for nearly twenty years. Those
terms are uneasy terms and I’m still processing but still. You
shared a lot and some of it was big, as in
way
big, but there was no detail and hence
that’s
not
it.”

“Said give and take, didn’t say it would be
equal. You picked, I picked. That’s fair.”

It was not.

And because it wasn’t, I asked, “You didn’t
commit the crime you served time for?”

“Nope.”

“What happened?”

His eyes moved directly to the game.

“Ty,” I called and his eyes came back to me.
“What happened? How could you –?”

“What’d I say?” he cut me off to ask.

“What?”

“What’d I say?” he repeated.

“About what?”

He held my eyes. Then, low and more rumbling
than normal, he stated, “That’s it.”

And that, obviously, was it.

“Next time we play this game, you get to go
first,” I declared and then watched with intense fascination as his
lips curved up the minutest bit.

Then they uncurved and he muttered, “That’s
fair too.”

Then his head turned to the TV.

I got off the bed and went to the
champagne.

* * * * *

Ty

Walker’s eyes moved from the TV to
Lexie.

She was curled on her side facing him, hands
under her cheek, knees tucked nearly to her middle, still wearing
her classy but sexy pink dress but she’d finally taken off the
classy but sexy shoes. Her eyes were closed. She was out.

He studied her thinking she was probably the
only woman he’d ever known in his vast experience of women who
could pull off classy and sexy while being married by Liberace.

Actually, truth of it was, she was the
only woman he’d ever known who could pull off classy
and
sexy at all.

Then he studied her thinking that Ronnie
Rodriguez was one serious dumb fuck and this was not evidenced by
the fact that he lost the sweet life God saw fit to grant him
through providing him with immense talent on a basketball court.
But instead, it was evidenced by the fact that the classy, sexy
pussy lying asleep at his side in a king-size bed in Vegas was
lying asleep at his side in a king-size bed in Vegas and not curled
into a living, breathing Ronnie Rodriguez who didn’t spend every
ounce of energy earning the privilege of having the classy, sexy
pussy right then lying asleep at Ty Walker’s side.

On that thought, he moved off the bed, went
to the table and grabbed the tray on which Lexie had stacked their
used dishes. While walking to the door, something caught his
attention, his head turned; he looked into the bathroom and
stopped.

Her bouquet was in the sink resting in a
couple inches of water.

Seeing it, he balanced the tray on one hand,
felt his back pocket, finding the keycard still there, he walked
out the door. He set the tray on the floor by the door and scanned
the hall. Then he walked down it. At the end, he looked right and
saw it on a narrow table between the elevators. He went to the vase
with the fake flowers on top of the table, yanked out the flowers,
put them on the table and walked back to their room, putting out
the do not disturb sign.

In the bathroom, he pulled the bouquet out
of the sink, let out the water, used a glass to fill the vase and
then shoved the stems in it.

Then he walked out of the bathroom, around
the bed and set the flowers on her nightstand.

Then he undressed and didn’t blast the AC
like he wanted to considering she was not covered. Then he slid
between the sheets and turned out the light.

Total Goof. Total Cute.

Ty

The next morning, Walker slid the keycard
into the slot, waited for the green light, slid it out and walked
into their hotel room. He hit the bedroom area and saw the maids
had been through, bed made, vacuum marks on the floor.

No Lexie. But a note on his pillow. The
maids likely made the bed and placed it back where Lexie put
it.

He tossed the sweaty towel he was carrying
on the bed, walked backwards, opened up the closet, crouched to the
safe, opened it and scanned it.

All good.

He closed it and walked back into the
bedroom to the note.

He picked it up and read it.

Hubby,

At the pool. If I don’t return by nightfall,
it’s your marital duty to rescue me. If it goes that late, this
means I’ve passed out on a lounge chair in Vegas in summer so my
advice is to stock up on aloe vera before you launch the rescue
effort.

Lexie

Walker stared at the note thinking that
Alexa Berry…

Strike that.

Alexa
Walker
was fucking funny.

Then he stood there staring at the note
thinking how much he liked the name Alexa Walker.

Then he stood there staring at the
salutation of the note and thinking the bitch was a goof but also
thinking he liked that.

Then he stood there staring at the
handwriting of the note and memorizing her scrawl which was not
girlie or precise but spiky, the cursive words often disconnected
and they had no slant, she didn’t lean this way or that, she sat
comfortably in the middle.

Then he folded the note and dropped it to
the bed. Twenty minutes later, having showered away the sweat from
his workout, shaved, dressed in jeans, a white tee and his boots,
he went to the bags on the desk, grabbed his new shades and then he
went to the note on the bed and shoved it in his back pocket. Then
he grabbed the keycard.

Then he went to the pool.

His first thought after hitting the late
morning Vegas sun was that he did not want to be in the hot as fuck
late morning Vegas sun. Five seconds later, halfway through a scan
of the bodies around the pool, he forgot about the hot as fuck late
morning Vegas sun because his shades had pinpointed his wife.

String bikini the color of raspberries. Hair
still in that mass of thick, wild curls but bunched up at the top
back of her head, long locks having escaped and trailing down her
neck. Skin glistening with suntan oil. Mostly exposed body better
than he expected and he’d expected her body to be pretty fucking
great. She had her shades on and tipped down to a magazine spread
in her hands, her knees bent, soles of her feet in the lounge,
towel draped over the back.

He moved toward her and tagged Bag of Bones
at her ten o’clock making Walker wonder if he’d been wrong about
the guy. He’d suspected closet gay. Since the fucker had chosen to
trail Lexie and not Walker, maybe not.

She sensed him when he was twenty feet away,
her head came up and he knew she knew Bag of Bones was there
because, the second her shades hit him, her gorgeous face split
into a blinding smile.

She flipped her magazine closed and tossed
it to a table beside her that held a rapidly melting iced coffee
drink.

Five feet away, she called, “Hey,
hubby.”

There it was again. Fucking goofy but the
way she did it, he had to admit, also fucking cute.

He jerked his chin up and the instant he
arrived at her side, her hand shot out, closing around his and
tugging. He didn’t resist her pulling him down to sit on the side
of her lounger as she shifted her hips and legs so her bottom half
was resting at an S on its side in order to give him room and she
curled her thighs around the back of his hips.

“Woke up alone. Where’d you go?” she asked,
her hand still in his, her head tipped back to look up at him and
he was glad he was wearing sunglasses because, at her question, his
eyes moved from her tits to her face and he didn’t think she
noticed.

“Workout.”

“Dude,” she said low, her mouth still curved
up at the ends.

Dude.
Yeah, total goof.

“Dude?” he prompted when she said no
more.

“We’re in Vegas,” she stated.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“Is it legal to work out in Vegas?” she
asked, her head tipping, the bunch of hair at the back of it
shifting with the movement.

“They got a gym so I’m guessin’… yeah.”

This got him another bright smile then her
shades did a head to lap and back again before she observed, “You
aren’t in swim trunks.”

“Lexie, I’m half black. My tan is permanent.
I don’t need to work on it.”

“Right,” she muttered, still grinning.

It was then he cast his mind back to try to
pull up Ronnie Rodriguez. Rodriguez had fucked himself the middle
of his sophomore year but saw a shitload of playing time the season
and a half before he did it. Therefore Walker could pull him up but
not much except the fact the brother was lean, tall and black. How
he got the last name Rodriguez, Walker didn’t know. Then again,
Shift had the last name Martinez and he, too, was black. Maybe it
was some Texas thing.

What Walker did know was that a lot of white
bitches didn’t mind playing with black but they sure as fuck didn’t
take it home to Daddy and black was black even if it was full, half
or a nuance.