Four Men & A Lady Read online

  The floor was a mess beneath the trampling feet. Heidi felt just as stepped on.

  Reaching the end of the senior hallway and the door, she shoved through into the bright May afternoon. The sunlight blasted down, adding fire to the fuel in her belly.

  The letter crushed in her hand wasn't helping any, so she shoved it into her satchel.

  One more letter to add to the we're sorry to inform you stack of financial aid rejections stuffed between her mattress and box springs.

  Her counselor had been so certain this last-chance application to this last-chance institution would answer her prayers.

  Now Heidi's last chance was a fat chance.

  She'd desperately needed this student loan, dang it, any student loan, to meet the costs left uncovered by the few grants that had miraculously materialized.

  But she came from the river. And her mother was an unemployed drunk with a credit report worthy of a good flush down the toilet.

  The amount of money she'd applied for wasn't a large sum. It really wasn't. But the money men looked at so many things. Things like the fact that with her family history she wasn't a good risk.

  Her grades had been decent, but not stellar. Her attendance pretty much the same. The only extracurricular activity on her record was band.

  She'd won awards, sure, but awards didn't go far on a credit check. On top of that she'd never held a job and her mother rarely did.

  And she was surprised she'd been turned down?

  She cut around the teacher's parking lot and trudged toward the bicycle racks behind the school.

  Ha. The surprise was that she'd actually made it to her senior year, what with the odds against her.

  Hell, during her four years at Johnson High, there'd never even been but a dozen or so bikes chained up to the metal pipes next to hers. Johnson just wasn't that type of school. It was a Camaro school. A TransAm school.

  A Corvette type of school.

  She'd been so stupid to come here. She could've lied about her address and gone to school with most of the kids who lived down by the river. Like anyone in the system would've cared enough to check that she'd crossed the dreaded boundary lines.

  But she'd thought that those who held the purse strings might take her high school into consideration. That at Johnson she'd have a better chance for escape.

  Right. She'd just escaped from a four-year-long dream. Now she'd be going nowhere but to a home that wasn't one and a future postponed indefinitely.

  Think, Heidi, think. Okay. Tomorrow she'd start looking for a summer job. Between now and August she should be able to earn enough money for the community college's fall semester and get a head start on the costs for the spring.

  She was eighteen, she was out of school. Her mother would no longer forbid her from working. Of course, she could kick her out of the house.

  But Heidi doubted that would happen. Not when her mother had been waiting for the day when Heidi could finally contribute to the household income.

  This was where it was going to get tricky, she realized, slapping her satchel against the bike's pannier. But, dang it, she had to make it work.

  She had to find a job that would earn her enough money to save for school, enough extra to help with the rent and the beer, enough hours to keep her away from the house.

  Away from the mother who'd insist she was now old enough and educated enough to attract the type of man who'd pay well for her virginity, who'd continue to pay as long as Heidi made him happy.

  Oh, that was a life she was looking forward to, Heidi thought, yanking the chain from between the spokes on her wheels. Oh, yeah. Her future really looked bright.

  She heard the low rumble of a car approach behind her and stood. No way. She was not in the mood. Not now. Not ever again. School was over. And as far as she was concerned, The Deck was history.

  Silently she waited for Ben to drive on, drive away, drive off to wherever it was legitimate Johnson High grads celebrated their last day of high school.

  Heidi snorted. She'd be surprised to find out Ben wasn't having a pool party and even more surprised if Maryann Stafford hadn't bought a new two-piece for the occasion.

  The Corvette stopped and the door opened and Ben killed the engine. The silence made it easier to hear the thoughts which were now screaming at the top of their lungs to be heard.

  That picture made Heidi laugh. Thoughts with lungs. Screaming. Which meant they had mouths and voices as well. Did they have feet, too? As many as a centipede?

  Is that why there was such a racket in her head? All these big-mouth thoughts running around screaming hysterically on hundreds of feet?

  She'd gone absolutely buggers. Out of her mind certifiably nuts. She doubled over to keep her stomach from reminding her that she hadn't eaten lunch. To keep it from turning inside out at the truth.

  Her life had just bottomed out.

  “Heidi? You okay?"

  Sure. If contemplating what the earth looked like from six feet below counted. She straightened, kept her eyes on the ground. "Just looking for my contact lens."

  "I didn't know you wore contacts."

  She rolled her eyes his way. Why did he have to look so good? "I don't. What do you want?"

  Confusion passed through Ben's green eyes. "I didn't know if, well, a bunch of kids are coming over and we're gonna swim and just chill and watch MTV and stuff."

  "Yeah? And?" Why couldn't he just say it and be done with it? And why did she feel this ugly urge to give him a hard time?

  "You don't have to be such a bitch." Ben shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and shrugged. "I just thought you might want to come over."

  Heidi scowled. She was in such a mood for a fight. "Why would I want to come over when you think I'm a bitch?"

  "I don't think you're a bitch—"

  "You just called me one."

  "I said you were acting like one."

  "No. You said I was being one."

  Ben scrubbed a hand back over his hair. This year fashion called for tightly cut sides and length in back and of course Ben had answered. “Look, Heidi. Whatever's bugging you—"

  She laughed. "Bugging me. That's funny."

  Ben didn't seem to think so. "Do you want to come over or what?"

  “How will I get there?"

  He looked at her bike. “You can ride with me and pick up your bike later."

  She'd never ridden in his Corvette. “I don't have a swimsuit."

  “I can take you home to get it."

  Her chest rose and fell harder as she spit it out again. “I said, 'I don't have a swimsuit."'

  "Oh, well." He shifted from one foot to the other. "There're always extras in the pool house."

  Hand-me-downs. She didn't have anything against them. Except when they came from a Tannen. "I think I'll pass."

  "Suit yourself," he said, but then came right back with, "What're you going to do?"

  She shrugged. "Same thing I do every day after school. Go home."

  "Cripes, Heidi. You can't just go home. You have to celebrate. To party. There's only one last day of school in your entire life."

  Last time I can be sure of a safe place to spend the day. Last time I can be considered a schoolgirl.

  Last time I can he comforted by your face, your laugh, your eyes which look at me like I mean something.

  “Yeah." She pulled the hat from her head, worked the brim with shaky fingers and prayed he couldn't see the nerves that wouldn't stop. "I can celebrate no more bad news from the counselor's office."

  He slowly nodded. "I wondered about that. I saw you in there today. What's up?"

  "Not my future, that's for sure."

  "Whaddaya mean?"

  "Nothing. I don't want to talk about it." She jammed the hat back on her head.

  "You never want to talk about it when you want to talk about it." He came closer, stopped when she backed away. "I know that about you."

  Her eyes burned. "You think you really know me?"

&nb
sp; "Yeah. I do. You can't spend as much time with a person as you and I have spent together and not get to know them."

  She didn't want him to know her. She didn’t want anyone to know her. "You don't know anything."

  "I know that there's no reason for you to go home."

  "And there's a reason I should go to your house?" She pressed a finger to her chin. "Let me think. What would that be? Because all my friends are there? Oh, wait. I don't have any friends. So, that can't be it."

  "You have friends, Heidi."

  "Do I, Ben? Do I really? Let's see. I go to school with a bunch of kids who barely tolerate me. I play in a band with a bunch of kids who have to put up with me."

  He shoved a finger in her face. "That's bullshit about band and you know it."

  She didn't care what he said or what he thought. She didn't, dammit! She just cared that her entire life was falling apart. "I don't spend hours on the phone talking to anyone about hair and clothes and who lost their virginity last week and is pregnant this week.

  “Of course, that would be hard to do anyway when I don't even have a phone. I don't hang out at the mall because I have no one to hang out with, no way to get there, no money to spend."

  “Cripes, Heidi. You don't have to have money to hang out at the mall."

  She glared at him, she hated him for making nothing out of what he couldn't understand. “You have no idea what my life is like, Ben. So I am not going to listen to anything you say."

  “I do know what your life is like, Heidi. I've been to your house, remember? Yeah, one time. But that was plenty. I'm not going to let you stand here and say you don't have any friends. Because you have me. And you have Randy and Quentin and Jack.

  “We've asked you a lot of times to hang with us. At the movies, or hell, we could've taken you to the mall. It's not like you had to stay home all the time. Maybe we should've asked you more, but you always said no when we did."

  Of course she'd said no. What was the point of even sticking a toe into a world that would toss her back, a world that would only let her in because of who she knew. No. She didn't work like that.

  She wasn't going to ride anyone's coattails into a world that wouldn't accept her on her own. She'd always made her own way. She had to. That instinct for survival was all that kept her alive.

  "Thank you but no thank you. To the mall, to the movies, to the pool party. I'm going to go home and practice. Maybe I can get a job playing blues in a club, save up my tips, go to law school when I'm thirty."

  "I don't know why you didn't apply for a music scholarship."

  "A music scholarship would mean I would have to play music. I want to study law, Ben. And I wouldn't have the time to do both. Yes, music has been important."

  She couldn't even begin to tell him how important, how playing the sax was sometimes all she had. "But now I want to do more. I want to help others. Not everyone has a sax."

  Tears filled her eyes, burned as she tried to hold them back. She didn't want to cry in front of Ben. She didn't want to cry at all. She wanted to scream, to kick the spokes out of her bike, to yank out the straw she called hair.

  But she couldn't do any of it in front of Ben. Not with him standing there looking like...a college freshman.

  "What do you want me to do, Heidi? What do you want me to say? Tell me how I can help."

  "I don't need your charity, Ben. So just take your pool party, your car and your UT tuition and shove it all."

  She turned her back on him, straddled the five-speed's crossbar, gripped the handlebars until her fingers went numb. Numb, yes. Numb was good.

  She heard Ben's footsteps scrape over loose gravel as he walked back to his car. Finally. She kept her eyes closed until she heard his door open, then waited for it to close. More than anything right now she wanted to get out of here, but she wouldn't leave first. She would not run. Not in front of Ben.

  She waited and waited and when the car didn't start she almost turned. But she didn't. And then he was coming back. Oh, no. Why did he have to come back right when she'd let the tears fall?

  He approached from her left side.

  She grabbed the chain to wrap around her handlebars, but worried it through her hands instead, working it palm to palm from one end to the other, never getting anywhere. And wasn't that just about the way of her life. Never getting anywhere.

  She sensed him there and waiting, sensed an uncomfortable impatience, but didn't have the presence of mind to separate her building fury that he was still there from his stubborn refusal to leave.

  "What?" she finally screamed, snapping her head up to bite his off. "What do you want? Why are you still here? I told you to leave. I'm not coming to your goddamn party."

  Her voice rose with every word until even her blood raced at the speed of a shrieking banshee. Her fingers curled around the chain and held it tight because she had a really sick urge to claw out his rich-boy eyes.

  She wanted to make him understand what it was like to be Heidi Malone without pool parties and malls and movies. She wanted to make him hold her, to stroke her hair and soothe the pounding of her heart and tell her everything would be okay.

  Tears were streaming down her face, her nose was running. Salt stung her lips and she swiped the back of her hand across her mouth, wiped it on the seat of her jeans.

  She was a blurry salty drippy mess when he finally spoke. And then it was only one word.

  "Here." He held out a piece of paper.

  She eyed it warily. "What is it?"

  He waved it at her. "Just take it."

  She reached for it, looked at it, forgot how to breathe. It was a check, signed by Ben, made out to her, and it had a whole lot of zeroes under the dollar amount. The zeroes were what got to her the most.

  "What am I supposed to do with this?" Her attempt at indifference failed miserably. Her hands shook even more than her voice.

  "You're supposed to go to school."

  School. This was for school? "This is for school? School? As in college?"

  "Unless you want to go back to high school. But I think that's still free."

  If high school was free, why had she paid so dearly? An amount that seemed to have more zeroes than this check. But her zeroes wouldn't get her into college.

  And this would. Damn him to hell, this would.

  She held it out. "I can't take this. I don't want it."

  Ben crossed his arms. "I don't care. I want you to have it."

  "Why? So your angel wings will have diamond-crusted feathers?"

  "Nah. I just want to play drums in heaven's band." He shifted from one foot to the other. "Cripes, Heidi. Give it a rest. The money's part of the trust from my grandfather. I got it when I hit eighteen. It's just sitting there waiting for a worthy cause."

  "You think I'm a worthy cause?" Two dozen lending institutions hadn't thought so. The paper rattled in her hand.

  "Yeah. Sure. Why wouldn't I?"

  "Why would you?"

  He took a deep breath and blew it out. "Because you're my friend. And because you need it."

  What was he doing? Why was he just standing there doing nothing? He wasn't taking back the check. He was just looking at her as if she was insane.

  He wanted insane? She'd show him insane. "How dare you tell me what I need!"

  She screamed at him, screamed like her chest had been turned inside out. Sobbed as if she would die if she tried to stop. Her throat was ripped open and her heart was torn apart to bursting.

  And it was all his fault.

  If he hadn't stopped, she'd have been on her way home. She wouldn't be facing one more chance at the future she so desperately wanted—the worst, most hopeless chance of all because this time she was going to have do the turning down.

  She lifted the hand holding the bicycle chain. In the back of her mind she heard Ben tell her to swing, to go ahead and swing. And she would've stopped, but her arm was already moving, her elbow was up and her hand heading his way.

  The c
hain hit the side of his face. She felt the bone give and crack, saw the blood gush, heard his cry as he went down to the asphalt parking lot. He didn't move. He just lay there. Sprawled out and silent and not moving.

  Oh, God. Oh, God. What had she done? She jumped on her bike, grabbed the handlebars. One hand held the check. One hand the chain. Her head whipped from Ben to the school to Ben to the road. She couldn't see anything. Her eyes were a mess. Couldn't think anything but, "Run!"

  Ride. She had to ride. She pushed down with feet that wouldn't move on a bike that wouldn't move. Brick feet on flat tires. She pedaled harder. She pedaled faster.

  Pedal, pedal, pedal, pedal.

  Oh, God. Oh, God. What had she done? She huffed and puffed, huffed and puffed. Out of the parking lot, onto the road, past the school.

  Pedal, pedal, pedal, pedal.

  She was over the railroad tracks and halfway home when she heard the peal of the ambulance. She closed her eyes and kept pedaling.

  Pedal, pedal, pedal, pedal.

  And she was upstairs in her attic room when she knew that, if the cops didn't show up to drag her away, she was going to cash the check.

  Chapter Twelve

  HEIDI BLEW OUT a dissatisfied breath. "I don't know, Georgia. This subpoena may not be enough."

  "C'mon, Heidi." Georgia propped both hands on Heidi's desk and leaned forward. She lifted a wicked brow. "We both know it's not the size of the subpoena. It's how you use it that matters."

  Heidi lifted her head slowly and glared up with one eyeball. "That's not funny."

  "You would've thought it was funny a month ago," Georgia said, backing away to cross both arms over her chest.

  That was true enough. Since Heidi had come back from the reunion in Sherwood Grove, she'd lost her sense of humor. Among other things...

  She grimaced. If she'd known sex would turn her into this frustrated ineffective unfocused knot, she'd've never given Ben her virginity. Of course, it wasn't sex, or the lack thereof, that was the issue here.

  The issue was loving Ben.

  She looked up, smiled extra wide and blinked her eyes theatrically, like the breeze from her lashes would blow Georgia away. "I solemnly swear to do my very best to laugh at all of your funnies from now on."