Page 36 of The Daring Times of Fern Adair
“Sorry, gals, but I’m going to have to steal Miss Adair for a little while,” he said in mock apology.
The smoky air suddenly seemed too thick to breathe. Cal’s warning to never go with Rodney came back to her.He’s unpredictable…When he wants something, I can’t always stop him.And Cal wasn’t here to even try.
Next to her, Patrice slid her hand to Fern’s seat; she clasped the edge of it. “I’m afraid I promised to bring my cousin home soon,” she said, her voice pitched high.
“Don’t you worry about that, sugar lips. I’ll swing her home when we’re finished.”
Rodney stood and, reaching into his pocket, took out a roll of green. “Let’s keep things copacetic.” He dropped it on the table, dragging all eyes to it. God, there had to be a hundred dollars in the wad.
Rodney stepped forward, intimidating Stephen with a hard glare before Stephen moved out of the way. Rodney chucked Patrice on the chin, and when Stephen started to protest, Francis shoved him in the chest.
“Leave him alone,” Fern said.
Francis checked with Rodney before adjusting Stephen’s coat lapels and brushing off his shoulders.
“Let’s go then, doll,” Rodney said. It wasn’t a request.
Patrice’s eyes glittered as Fern got to her feet, legs warm and rubbery. There wasn’t anything more to be done. Arguing or making a scene might only get her cousin and her friends hurt.
The band was still playing, but the music had softened. Their table had the attention of every eye in theroom. As she followed Rodney and the other man toward the stairs, with Francis behind her, stares pressed against her. Fern kept her eyes down, her pulse hammering wildly.Don’t go with him,Cal had warned.
Her eyes throbbed along with her heartbeat. Where he might take her and what might happen next zipped through her head with dizzying speed. The man who’d opened the door for them only ten minutes before stood aside, giving Rodney plenty of space. In the alley, the smell of rotting refuse from the trash cans made Fern gag. Sweat prickled over her forehead and along the back of her neck.
On the corner, a car waited for them. She seemed only to blink before she was seated in the back with Rodney. His leg touched hers. Too close.
“You got some game friends,” Rodney said, taking out a pack of Chesterfields from his breast pocket as the car peeled off the curb.
They weren’t game. The only reason she’d gone with him at all was to draw him and his two goons away from Patrice and her friends. Belatedly, a blush stole up Fern’s neck and into her cheeks, suffusing her to the scalp. They’d been kind enough to take her out, and she’d brought a criminal to their table.
“Were you following me?” she asked.
He was quiet, the tip of his cigarette glowing in the dark. On his exhale, he said, “You think I don’t have better things to do than follow some broad around town?”
She’d made him angry. Remembering Cal’s warningthat Rodney sometimes lost control stole her next breath.
“Is this about the photographs?” she asked after another few minutes of quiet. Francis, in the front passenger seat, kept sneaking looks back at her. Each time she met his eyes, it felt like the seat was dropping out from beneath her. She wondered if it had been his laughter that she remembered from the haze of that night. Fern didn’t want to know what he was thinking—and whether it was of the ruined skin he’d seen laid bare.
“The judge is in contact,” was all Rodney offered.
He fell quiet again as the driver steered down a street. The triple-deckers along the curb sank in with familiarity.
He’d taken Fern back to the Lion’s Den.
11
The car turned across the oncoming lane and hit the curb instead of the mouth of the driveway. The tires bumped and squealed up onto the sidewalk, the headlamps bobbing frantically over a woman walking with a man on each arm. The trio stumbled back, away from the nose of the car.
“Jesus H., Tink!” Rodney lurched forward and smacked the driver’s ear. “Watch what you’re fuckin’ doing, you maniac.”
The driver, Tink, rubbed his head before reversing the car, straightening out, and pulling forward again. The driveway curved around the back to another lot. Fern’s stomach lurched at the sight of Cal’s Roadster. He was here. Somewhere inside. Her breaths came shallow and quick as Tink got out and opened her door. This house. She’d wanted to forget it, put it behind her for good.
“If my father has been in contact,” she said as Tinknudged her to follow Rodney toward a back door, “does that mean he’s cooperating?”
If he wasn’t, and if those photographs appeared in the papers tomorrow, she’d probably willingly retreat to Zionsville and Young Acres, just as her mother wished.
Rodney winged the door open and propped it with his foot. “It means he’s been in contact,” he snapped.
He didn’t like Fern speaking, asking questions. She thought back to the other night, and the woman who’d been with him in his office. Bessy. Fern supposed she knew better than to ask questions.
