For You (The ‘Burg #1)(121)
Author: Kristen Ashley

“Colt!” she hissed, her eyes darting around.

He put his hand to her knee, gave her a firm squeeze and her eyes shot to his.

“Baby, let’s just get home.”

The anger budding in her eyes died away before she whispered, “Okay.”

Colt stepped back, slammed her door and headed to the driver’s side.

* * * * *

Feb went directly to the stereo while Colt went directly to the alarm panel to stop the beeping.

“Can I put on a CD?” she asked as she hit the overflowing CD cabinets around the stereo, cabinets that had been overflowing before but now he saw CDs stacked on top and at the sides and he made a note to buy more cabinets when this shit was over.

“You can make that the last time you ask if you can do somethin’ in this house,” Colt replied when he successfully stopped the beeping.

She turned and stared at him before asking, “What if you aren’t in a music mood?”

Colt started to the kitchen, shrugging off his jacket along the way, saying, “Feb, my ass is in a recliner, a game on or I’m watchin’ a show, the stereo is off. Other than that, you got free rein with music.”

She liked music, always did. When she was a teenager she drove Jack and Jackie up the wall, playing her music as loud as she did and as often as she did it. When she was in a car, you could always hear her coming. Even now, when she was forty-two, Colt heard her rock blaring from her car stereo speakers, she was known for it. And he’d seen her move her ass behind the bar when a song came on the jukebox that she liked. Hell, if he was honest, in the last two years he couldn’t count the times he fought the urge to hit the box and select Mellencamp’s “R.O.C.K. in the USA” or the Doobie Brothers’ “Jesus Is Just Alright”, two of a dozen songs he’d noticed she particularly liked, just so he could watch her move.

He swung his jacket over the back of a dining table chair when she announced, “There’s somethin’ you should know about me.”

He turned his head to see she was still standing by the stereo watching him.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve taken to listening to Gregorian chants. I find it soothing.”

Colt burst out laughing and went into the kitchen. She was so full of shit.

“I’m serious,” she called.

The girl he took to a Springsteen concert over twenty years ago, who screamed out every word to “Born to Run” and “Born in the USA” and the woman he’d seen not a month ago in her car with Jessie, both of their lips moving to Nickelback’s “Something in Your Mouth” while the car windows shook with the sound did not listen to Gregorian chants.

“You feel like somethin’ soothin’, baby, go for it,” he called back and stared at her mail.

He had to check in at the Station and it was likely she’d want to get to the bar but they needed to get her mail out of the way before they did it.

He heard Fleetwood Mac’s “Monday Morning” fill the room and he smiled. Gregorian chants his ass.

He’d pulled loose his tie so it was hanging around his neck, undone the top three buttons of was shirt and was sorting through what appeared to be mostly a big pile of junk mail when he heard her heels clicking on the tiles of the kitchen floor.

She had her hands to one of her ears and her eyes on the mail when she stopped beside him.

“Not feelin’ in the mood to be soothed?” he teased.

“‘Dreams’ comes on after this song, then ‘Rhiannon’,” Feb offered as explanation, setting her earring beside the mound of jewelry she left in the kitchen last night and she went for the other one.

“‘The Very Best of’?” Colt asked, watching her put the back on the earring and drop it next to the other.

“Yeah,” she answered, picking up a flier for something, flipping it back to front without reading it, then setting it aside.

“Stevie Nicks, I reckon, is more soothing then Gregorian monks,” Colt told her.

Her eyes came to his. “You called my bluff, babe. Now be a good sport.”

He returned his attention to the mail but he did it smiling.

She reached into the pile and pulled out a small package, a bubble wrap envelope. Colt watched it slide across the counter before she lifted it up. In that time he saw the postal stamp and he dropped the catalogue he was setting aside and nabbed the package.

“Colt –”

He looked at the stamp, shut his eyes and bit his lip.

“Colt.”

That time she said his name quieter and a tremor slid through it.

He opened his eyes and looked at her.

“Stamped Colorado,” he told her and she looked down at the package. “You want me to open it?”

Her arms crossed her front and she grabbed her biceps, like Cheryl, protective. She did this never tearing her gaze from the package.

“Feb –”

“Open it,” she whispered.

He did and he slid out of the bubble envelope something wrapped and taped carefully in layers of tissue. He tore it away, cautious to keep tissue around his fingers and he looked at a frame which held a picture of Feb with a man he’d only seen dead in crime scene photos, tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed, good-looking. They were standing behind a bar and she had her arms around his middle, her front pressed to his side. He had his arm around her shoulders, tight, keeping her close. She had her head tipped back, her long hair splayed along his arm and running down her back and her lips were pressed to the underside of his jaw but, even so, she was smiling. He was smiling too, big and broad, straight at the camera, a man who, by the expression on his face, had everything he’d ever need held tight in the curve of his arm.

Across the glass written in black marker were the words, For you.

Colt felt his stomach roil and his blood heat as he turned it upside down and put it on the counter.

When he looked at her, Feb was staring at it.

“You don’t need to see that, baby,” he said softly.

She shook her head but said, “I know what it is, Butch kept that frame on his nightstand. It was there before I moved in and I left it there when I hauled ass.”

“February –”

Her eyes never moved when she cut him off, whispering, “He kept it.”

“Feb –”

“He kept it,” she repeated.

Colt slid his hand under her hair and wrapped it around the back of her neck, giving her a squeeze and her eyes lifted to his. Her face was bleak with pain and confusion.