Something Unexpected by Vi Keeland
CHAPTER 6
Beck
“SERIOUSLY, GRAM? WHAT the hell?”
“Don’t you use that language with me—or any woman, for that matter.” She turned to her partner in crime and smirked. “Except maybe in the bedroom. I like a little dirty talk.”
I closed my eyes. “Where’s a hot poker to stick in my ears when I need it?”
“Oh, don’t be so uptight. What the heck are you doing here, anyway?”
“You called and told me you got arrested.”
Gram shrugged. “So? I asked you to see if you could get someone to bring bail to the clerk, not hop on a plane.”
“I’m concerned about you.”
“Well, that’s a waste of energy. You don’t need to be.”
I held my hands out, motioning to the room full of police officers. “Look where we are, at the police precinct in a foreign country.”
“It’s the Bahamas, not North Korea,” Gram protested.
I turned to Nora. “Can you help me out here, please?”
“How? She’s right. It’s not North Korea.”
“I should’ve gotten drunk on the plane,” I mumbled.
Outside, I directed Bonnie and Clyde to my rental car, where my grandmother got in the front seat and Nora slid into the back.
Gram clicked her seatbelt. “We need to make a stop on the way to the hotel.”
“Where?” I asked.
“At the clerk’s office. The place you posted the bail.”
“I already posted your bail.”
“This is for Frieda.”
Nora leaned up from the backseat. “And Mad Dog. I’d like to spring her, too. Oh, and do you think we could also stop for some dog food?”
I squinted. “What the hell are the two of you talking about?”
“Language!” they answered in unison.
I scrubbed my hands up and down my face. “I feel like I’m in a Three Stooges skit and we’re all having different conversations. Who is Frieda, and why do we need to pay her bail?”
“And Mad Dog,” Nora once again chimed in.
“Of course.” I rolled my eyes. “We can’t forget Mad Dog.”
It was only six thirty in the morning, yet it had to be at least eighty-five degrees out. I needed to turn the car on to run the air conditioning. I’d traveled half the night and was running on no sleep, so I started the engine and decided it would be faster to just do as they said.
When we arrived at the clerk’s office, Moe and Larry got out of the car and marched inside. I followed to make sure they didn’t get themselves into any more trouble. If I hadn’t been so exhausted and pissed off, the sight of them together would’ve been comical. Nora was wearing pants that looked like they would’ve been too big for me, tied up in the front, and an oversized polo with the name of a hotel embroidered on it. And my almost-eighty-year-old grandmother was sporting an orange inmate jumpsuit. Neither seemed to notice or care.
“Hi,” Nora said to the clerk. “We’d like to post bail for our two friends.”
The man behind the desk looked them over. “Okay… What are the names?”
“Frieda,” my grandmother said emphatically.
“And Mad Dog,” Nora yet again chimed in.
The guy looked to me. I shrugged. “Not a clue.”
As crazy as it was, it only took about five minutes for the clerk to figure out Frieda was Frieda Ellington—a woman frequently arrested for illegal gambling, and Mad Dog was Elona Bethel, picked up for shoplifting dog food. Once that was squared away, the clerk told them bail was seven fifty for Mad Dog and fifteen hundred for Frieda. They looked at each other before turning to me.
Nora bit her lip. “Could I borrow a little money until we get back to the hotel? I forgot I don’t have my purse.”
“And I need some cash, too,” Gram announced. “But I’m not paying you back. You’re going to be getting plenty from me soon enough.”
I shook my head, more at myself than these two, as I got out my wallet. When we were finally done, we piled back into the car.
“Thank you, Beck,” Nora said. “For bailing us out and for loaning me the money to help the lady I met.”
I looked in the rearview mirror. “Where did you meet this Mad Dog?”
She smirked. “In the clinker.”
I laughed. “You just bailed out a woman you didn’t know before getting locked up?”
Nora shrugged. “She was really nice. And she rescues dogs.”
I had no idea what the fuck to do with that, so I started the car.
“What hotel are you at?”
“Paradise Found. Sorry, I can’t even look up the address for you since my phone is gone.”
“Gone?”
“Stolen. By rotten teenagers.”
My lip twitched. “Of course.”
Paradise Found was a fifteen-minute ride from the police station. I figured I’d get a room and decide what I was doing after I crashed for a few hours. But when we walked into the resort, and Nora and my grandmother asked the front desk for new keys to their rooms, the guy behind the desk disappeared and came back with a man wearing a suit.
“Hello, Ms. Sutton, Ms. Aster. I’m the manager, Alan Harmon. I’m sorry to inform you that we can no longer allow you to stay at this property. We’ll refund any charges that we’ve advanced for the remaining nights.”
Gram’s hands flew to her hips. “Why can’t we stay here?”
“Because of the incident.” The manager’s eyes dropped to Nora’s uniform—the one she’d apparently stolen from the hotel. “We’ve taken the liberty of packing your things for you. We have them in the back. Just give me a minute to get them.”
“I cannot believe this,” Nora said.
“I can’t say I blame them.” I shook my head. “You were arrested for public indecency on their grounds, and you’re currently wearing evidence that you stole from their property.”
“No.” Nora shook her head. “I don’t mean that. I get that they have a reason to toss us out, but they packed our stuff for us? That means someone touched my vibrator.”
“Mine too,” my grandmother added.
I shut my eyes. First dirty talk and now a vibrator. It was shaping up to be a great day after traveling all night. I shook it off, taking out my cell to text my assistant. Except I only had one bar. Thinking it probably wasn’t a great idea to ask for the hotel’s Wi-Fi password, I excused myself and stepped outside.
The service there wasn’t much better, but at least I was able to shoot off a text asking Gwen to find a decent hotel somewhere. When I returned to the front desk, the manager was wheeling two bags around the counter.
“We also have two glass jars,” he said. “We didn’t want them to break, so they weren’t packed into the suitcases. Let me grab those.”
He came back out carrying two Mason jars. Both were filled with little pieces of paper.
“Are those yours?” I looked to Nora.
She nodded. “One is mine and one is Louise’s.”
“What are they?”
“Our gratitude jars.”
“What the heck is that?”
“Every day we find fifteen minutes to close our eyes and reflect on the good things that have happened. We write down at least one on a slip of paper and put it in the jar. That way, when life gets us down, we can take out the slips to reflect on how much good there has been in our lives.”
I stared at Nora.
She turned to the manager. “You will not be making it into our jars.”
Gram raised her pointer finger into the air. “But we should write about our prison friends!”
Jesus Christ, it felt like I was in some sort of bizarro world with these two. Shaking my head, I grabbed the handles to both pieces of luggage. “Is this everything?”
“I don’t know,” Nora said. “How do we know they packed everything?”
The manager put his hand on his chest. “I took the liberty of inspecting the rooms after the bellman was done. I can assure you, there was nothing left.”
“Did you check the end table?” Gram asked.
The man sighed. “Yes, ma’am.”
Feeling like we were about two seconds away from these ladies opening their bags in the lobby and taking inventory, I intervened. “Do you have a card, Mr. Harmon? In case there’s anything missing once we get to a place where they can check?”
He reached over the counter, extending it to me. “I’m sure you’ll find everything in order. But just in case, here you go.”
“We also have a rental car here,” Nora said.
“Did you sleep last night?” I asked her.
She shook her head.
“Is it parked in the lot?”
“Yes.”
I looked at the manager. “Can you keep the car until tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you.”
I looked between Nora and Gram. “We’ll deal with it then.”
Outside, I stowed the luggage in the trunk of my rental car and slipped behind the wheel, just as my phone buzzed.
Gwen: Three rooms booked at The Four Seasons. Let me know if you’d like me to make any other plans.
At least something had gone right today.
***
Later that evening, I was sitting in the bar answering emails on my phone as I downed my second whiskey, when Nora walked in. She slid into the seat next to me and smiled. I didn’t return the sentiment.
“I’m sorry about today,” she said.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
She shook a finger at me. “Your grandmother wouldn’t like that language.”
“Her, I have to respect. You…not so much.”
Her jaw dropped. “Why not?”
“Well, for starters, you’re not my grandmother. Everyone else has to earn it.”
She frowned. “I really am sorry you felt you had to come all this way.”
“So you’re not sorry you did what you did, just sorry you got caught and I had to make the trip?”
“Well… Yes, that’s right.”
I shifted in my seat to face her. “My grandmother is seventy-eight years old. Did you really think it was a great idea for her to strip naked in public in the Bahamas?”
“Oh my God. You’re such a jerk.”
“I’m a jerk?”
“Yes. You have a problem with an older woman taking off her clothes, but not a younger one.”
“I didn’t say that…”
“So if I told you I wanted to find a quiet little area of the beach and take off all my clothes, you’d be okay with that?”
“It might be the only thing that could change my mood right now.”
Nora pursed her lips. “Well, then I guess you should get comfortable with your mood. It’s going to be around for a while.”
The bartender walked over and motioned to my drink. “You want another?”
“Double, please.” I shook my thumb at Nora. “Put it on her tab.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. And I’ll take a cabernet, please. Whatever you have open is great.”
“You got it.” He walked away.
“Have you ever tried skinny dipping?” Nora asked.
“Not since becoming an adult.”
“Maybe that’s your problem. You need to have a little fun.”
“I wasn’t aware I had a problem.”
“Oh, you definitely do. You’re an uptight ageist with a stick up his ass who acts like a dick whenever your grandmother wants to have a little fun.”
“Very nice. Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”
She squinted at me. “My mother’s dead. But I do give really good head with it.”
Her comment caused a twitch in my pants, though I was still pissed off. “I’d ask you to demonstrate, but I don’t want whatever you picked up in prison.”
Nora’s pouty mouth formed a solid line of fuck you. I waited for the comeback, but instead, her eyes dropped to my lips.
Is she fucking with me?Trying to knock me off my game by pretending she was interested, or was our arguing working for her? Or maybe I was seeing things. I had no damn idea, but I knew one way to find out.
I leaned closer. “You’re a giant pain in my ass.”
Her eyes widened, then narrowed to pissed-off slits. She glared at me for a solid ten seconds before she leaned over and crushed her lips to mine.
It took me a heartbeat or two to get over the shock, but when I did, I sucked her bottom lip into my mouth and bit down. Hard.
“Oww...” She tried to pull back, but I had a pretty good hold on her with my teeth. “That’s for the name calling,” I growled, not letting go. “Now give me your fucking tongue.”
She definitely liked that. Fisting two handfuls of my shirt, she got out of her chair and pushed her big tits up against me, the same big tits I might’ve jerked off to, thinking about the bathing suit shots she’d sent me. And she also gave me her tongue.
Damn, who knew lust and rage combined into Viagra. I was hard as a rock, sitting in the middle of a damn bar. Somewhere deep down, I knew I should pull back, be the voice of reason, but I was incapable. Instead, I slid my fingers into her hair and wrapped a clump of it around my fist. She moaned through our joined mouths when I tugged.
Fuck me.
I needed more.
More of her.
All of her.
I was just about to toss her over my shoulder and drag her back to my room, when the sound of someone clearing their throat interrupted. Dazed, I tried to pull back, but Nora bit my lip this time. Hard.
Oh fuck.
She liked pissed off. Well, that I could do…
“You’re so infuriating,” I grumbled.
“Yet you want to fuck me anyway.”
“I’d like to put you over my knee first.”
“Oh, I like the sound of that.”
I considered trying to fuck her right here. It was probably just the bartender interrupting anyway. Let him watch. I jumped back into the moment, ignoring everything around us. Never in my life had the chemistry with someone been so strong.
But then came another throat clearing. And this time it was followed by a voice, a man’s voice.
“Jesus Christ, Nora. You’re going to get arrested for public indecency again.”
That snapped me out of it. Nora too.
We turned the direction of the voice, and Nora blinked a few times. “Richard. What are you doing here?”
“Watching you dry hump, apparently.”
“Seriously, what the hell?”
I really hoped this guy wasn’t her boyfriend, or husband even. Because getting into a fight with a hard-on wasn’t going to be fun.
“You called me, remember? To bail you out of jail?”
“And you told me to go fuck myself.”
“Yet I showed up anyway…like I always do for you.” The guy looked at me for the first time. He lifted his chin. “Who are you?”
“Beck Cross. And you are…”
He motioned to Nora. “Her fiancé.”
“Ex-fiancé,” Nora clarified.
Perfect. Just fucking perfect.
