Welcome to Last Chance (Last Chance #1)(3)
Author: Hope Ramsay

She needed to get out of here before the fiddler woke up. He was a bad boy, like the bad boys in her past. She had made a huge mistake last night. She had known it was a mistake even before he’d slapped that ten-dollar bill down on the bar.

When would she learn?

Jane pushed herself up on the hard motel mattress and looked over at the digital clock on the nightstand. It was almost eight in the morning.

She rolled out of bed, collected her clothes and purse, and tiptoed into the bathroom. She gave the shower a longing look, but she didn’t have time. She ran enough water in the sink to dampen a washcloth for a sponge bath. She brushed her teeth with the toothbrush she kept in her purse for emergencies and pulled her hair back in a long ponytail.

She looked at her reflection in the mirror and almost cried out loud when she saw the mark at the base of her throat.

A little strawberry bruise—tender to the touch—marred the skin right above and to the left of her clavicle. She blinked at it for almost a minute, feeling something hot and cold run through her system.

Last night had been, without question, the most amazing sex she had ever had in her life. And looking at that bruise reminded her that, for a little while at least, the fiddler had managed to make her forget just about everything, including her moral code and her self-respect and even Woody West.

Hoo boy, she needed to get out of here. She was not a slut, but standing there looking at that bruise made her feel like one. How on earth had she let herself do this? Desperation was not an excuse, although it was an explanation.

Jane put on her less-than-clean clothes, squared her shoulders, and opened the bathroom door. She paused a moment, hearing the slow, steady sound of his snores.

She stole into the room, trying not to look at him as she tiptoed toward the door. She got to the corner of the bed and lost the battle.

The feeble light from an overcast day edged the window and gave the room a monochromatic feel. She looked down at him, and in the colorless light, he seemed almost like a fantasy. He was handsome, and male, and big, and strong, and silent save for the deep susurration of his breathing.

She reluctantly turned away and took one step toward the door before tripping up on his blue jeans. They lay crumpled in a heap by the bed, his wallet peeking from the back pocket. She could have his name, at least. All she had to do was look in his wallet.

She knelt on the carpet and took the wallet from the jeans. She flipped it open and stared down at a Tennessee driver’s license with a photo of a much younger and more hopeful-looking man than the one curled up on the bed.

Clayton P. Rhodes.

His name was Clayton.

Something tugged at her chest, and she could have kicked herself for succumbing to her curiosity. It would have been better if this encounter had been anonymous.

She clamped her back teeth together and told herself to move on. She was wasting time.

She turned the wallet over, and peeked into the billfold. He had about eighty dollars on him. She could almost feel the Universe tempting her. With that much cash, she could get a bus ticket to a bigger city—Charlotte maybe—where she could find a job waiting tables or working in a beauty shop. She could take care of herself.

It might be easier to find work in Charlotte. She allowed herself to think about it.

Then she rejected the idea. She had stooped to something low last night. She didn’t need to add stealing to the list.

She was about to return the wallet to his jeans when Clayton P. Rhodes captured her wrist in his powerful fingers and bent it backward far enough for it to hurt.

Panic crashed through her. “Lemme go.” She tried to twist herself out of his grasp, but the man had leverage and strength on his side.

“No, ma’am,” he said in a drawl as broad as a double-wide trailer. He pulled her up onto the bed and then turned on the bedside lamp. They squinted at each other in the sudden light. He had the advantage there, since his eyes were silver and hard to read. Her heart fluttered inside her chest, and she started thinking about routes of escape.

“I’ll take that,” he said, plucking the wallet out of her fingers.

“Please let me go.” She hated herself for begging like that. Guys who got physical scared her.

The pressure of his fingers lessened a fraction. “Honey, didn’t anyone ever teach you wrong from right?”

“I wasn’t trying to steal from you.” Her voice came out as a choked whisper.

“Uh-huh. Then why did you have my wallet in your hands?”

“I just wanted… you know… to know your name.” She tugged against his hold, but he wasn’t letting go.

“Yeah, well, you could have asked me, and I would have told you my name.”

She pulled a little harder, and he released her wrist. But before she could put distance between them, he leaned forward and pulled her purse off her shoulder.

“Hey,” she shouted. “Give that back.”

He shook his head, then loosened the bag’s drawstrings and dumped her possessions onto the thin cotton blanket. The flotsam and jetsam and loose change of her life spilled out with a jingle and a jangle. How humiliating.

“What are you doing?”

He started pawing through her things. “Same thing you were doing a minute ago.”

“Well, stop it.”

He ignored her command and picked up one of her self-help cassette tapes. He frowned down at it and read the title aloud: “Manifesting a Better Reality by Dr. Franklin Goodbody?”

He looked up at her with one of those male stares that confirmed that men were from Mars. “Little gal, I’d say you need to get your money back for this. You don’t believe this crap, do you?”

“You shouldn’t laugh at things you don’t understand,” Jane rejoined, folding her arms across her chest.

“I wasn’t laughing. I was pointing out the obvious. What is ‘manifesting’ anyway?”

“Thinking positively about the things you want so you make them manifest in your life.”

“Uh-huh. Sort of like Norman Vincent Peale and the power of positive thinking only without bothering with prayer, huh?”

“What?”

“You have no idea who Norman Vincent Peale is, do you?”

She shook her head. She had obviously failed some kind of test.

He gave his head a weary shake and put the cassette tape back in her purse. He picked up the player and fiddled with it for a moment. “This thing is an antique. And your battery is dead.”

She responded by hugging herself and refraining from any explanations about how she couldn’t afford an iPod, had bought the tapes secondhand, and had burned up the batteries on the long bus ride from Atlanta as she practiced her manifesting techniques. Somehow all that positive thinking had not turned Last Chance into Camelot, or Clayton P. Rhodes into Sir Galahad.

Dr. Goodbody said that to manifest a better reality, you needed to know what you wanted and the reasons why. Jane had a feeling that manifesting Clayton P. Rhodes was the result of seriously muddled thinking on her part.

“You know,” he said, as if they were having a conversation. “I find it interesting that most women will nag a man to death about tracking in dirt and messing up the house, but not a one of you can keep your pocketbooks organized.”

“Are you trying to be funny?” she asked, avoiding eye contact and trying to keep the waver out of her voice. “Because it’s not working.”

“No, I think I was aiming for irony.”

She turned her head. He was smiling at her. He had a winning smile, and she wondered why he didn’t use it more often. “Irony?” she asked.

He looked back down at her things, reaching this time for her wallet. He hefted it in his large hands as he inspected the green leather with the pink flower embossed on one side.

“Kind of girlish, isn’t it?”

She said nothing. It was kind of girlish. She had owned it for a long, long time. And even though it was worn out, she had been unable to part with it. It was the last remaining vestige of the life she had left behind in West Virginia seven years ago.

He unsnapped it, flipped it open, and stared down at the ID she had been using for the last seven years. “Mary Smith?” He aimed another disbelieving look in her direction. “Gimme a break. It says here you’re twenty-eight. How old are you really?”

She shrugged.

He squeezed his eyes shut. “I swear, if you’re jailbait, I’m going to shoot myself right here.”

“I’m not jailbait. I told you that last night.”

“Maybe so, but you’re not twenty-eight and your name is not Mary Smith.”

“Are you only thirty-four?” she countered, thinking he looked older than the birth date listed on his license.

“Yes, ma’am. I am. And if you’re eighteen that makes me almost old enough to be your daddy, which is a thought I find disturbing.”

“I’m not eighteen.”

“Right. Why am I starting not to believe anything that comes out of your mouth?”

Because you are tapped into the negative energy of the Universe. She wanted to throw it in his face, but she had a feeling he would laugh at her.

He continued to work his way through her wallet, inspecting her Fort Myers Library card and Florida State Cosmetology license. Both bore the name Mary Smith—the name she had been using since she ran away from home. She had been doing okay in rebuilding her life, when Woody came striding into the Shrimp Shack six months ago.

She was such a fool.

Clayton P. opened up the little change purse on the side of the wallet. “What’s this?” he asked aloud as he held up her expired West Virginia license. “This is interesting. How many girls carry two driver’s licenses? This one says Wanda Jane Coblentz, and it’s seven years out of date. Wanda Jane?”

“Yeah, well, your name is Clayton Rhodes, and I’ll bet everyone calls you Clay, so don’t get so high and mighty, okay?”

He laughed. It sounded like his singing voice. He had a positive-sounding laugh, she would give him that.

“Look,” she said. “I would appreciate it if you could forget you saw that license, okay?”

He stopped laughing and shook his head. “Not okay.” He glanced down at her photo ID and then back at her. “Doesn’t look like you.”

“Thanks.”

“So you’re twenty-four?”

She nodded. “Not jailbait.”

He put the license back into the change purse and peeked into the billfold section. “Five bucks, huh? And I don’t see any credit cards.”

“Okay. You’ve humiliated me enough now. Can I take my five bucks and leave?”

“And go where?”

“Anywhere that isn’t with you.”

“That bad, huh?” he said with a little glint in his eye.

“Yeah, well…” She shrugged. What was she supposed to say? She didn’t think telling him that he was incredible between the sheets was a good idea under the circumstances.

He dropped her wallet back into her purse, then looked up at her out of his pale gray eyes. “Look, I’m sorry about last night. I should have asked you if you needed a place to stay instead of…” His voice faded out, and he looked away.