The Derby Girl Read online

“How deliciously ominous. It better be good after an introduction like that.”

  He ran a hand over Max’s short, wiry fur. “It’s not. I’m going to have to cancel our date tonight.”

  Max understood. Max understood everything. The dog knew that Jared would overfill his bowl in the morning to make up for a long day at the office, that heading out for a run had equal chances of ending in a great burst of adrenaline or six hours spent staring out at the creek. Jared had tried getting rid of the dog, some kind of hairy pit bull mix, but the pound had taken one look at the poor guy and announced his chances of survival at almost none. People just didn’t adopt pit bulls—especially ones that cowered at loud noises and shrank from human touch.

  Non-ideal owner though Jared might be, he was still better than a week of solitary confinement and inevitable euthanasia. And he knew all too well what it felt like to be the last man standing, the one no one wanted to take home and feed.

  The dog let out a world-weary sigh and tucked his head on Jared’s knee, soulful eyes turned upward. He knew exactly how the dog felt.

  “I know it’s short notice, but something came up and I can’t make it.”

  “Is this an important doctor thing?” Gretchen asked, her voice surprisingly cheerful. “Or is there a slightly aging woman on the street you need to bring down a few pegs? I don’t know how you keep up. You must be exhausted.”

  “I thought I already apologized for that.”

  “Oh, you did. But if I have any say in the matter, you’ll be presenting me with apologies for at least another two weeks. I’ll take one right now, actually.”

  He leaned back in his chair, an overstuffed floral thing that had come with his house. So far, every sparse piece of furniture in the place had either come with it—courtesy of an elderly woman with a love of chintz—or sat in unpacked boxes in one of the bedrooms. He’d had crates of stuff shipped from his international travels: a Dayak ancestor statue on a black pedestal, a fierce ceremonial mask that gave him nightmares, hand-woven blankets smelling of time and trials. He’d tried hanging some of it up, but the incongruity of the dainty wallpaper and the crude yet gorgeous handicrafts was too much. Somewhere, there existed a balance between his past and his future.

  He just hadn’t found it yet.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it. “I’ve been looking forward to our date like you wouldn’t believe. I even woke up this morning with a smile on my face, just thinking of you. I never do that.”

  A brief pause. “Damn, that was good. Apology accepted.”

  As the tension ebbed out of his shoulders and some of the pounding in his temples came to a halt, Jared realized he’d failed to remember that this woman wasn’t like the others. Gretchen was harder, somehow, more self-aware.

  It was probably the tattoos that did it. The colorful, seedy tattoos and the pinup girl hair and the unapologetic way she carried herself. Like a treasure map on her skin, the tattoos showed him where to go, how to proceed, what was waiting at the end of the snake trail.

  The snake trail. That had to be the most incredible thing ever crafted by an artist’s hands. He’d never be able to look at scaly skin the same way again.

  “If it makes a difference, it is a doctor thing.” He wondered how much in detail he needed to go. “I’m doing a pro bono burn reconstruction on a little boy tomorrow, and I have to do some extra prep tonight. After all my years working in makeshift hospitals, I’m a little out of practice with the latest revascularization techniques.”

  “Clever,” she said, startling him with a laugh. “I like how effectively you were able to sneak in charitable work, intimidating medical lingo, small children and your travels in one breath. Just so you know, this means I get to pick the date.”

  There she went again, offering absolution at virtually no charge. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “You say that now. But I’m going to make you come see the retro horror marathon with me—the one they’re playing at the Odeon—and you have to sit through the entire thing with a smile. Also, I get to put Milk Duds in the bag of popcorn to get all oozy and you can’t complain about it.”

  Jared and Max shared a look. That didn’t seem so bad. “You want me to go to a horror marathon with you?”

  “Yes. It’s all the good oldies—six hours straight. Lake monsters, giant tomatoes, killers in the shower. They show it every year, and every year my friends wimp out about halfway through. We usually end up at a sports bar down the street instead.”

  “Are bathroom breaks allowed?”

  “Only between shows.”

  “What about meals? A man can’t live on oozy Milk Duds alone.”

  “I’ll bring my big purse. We can smuggle in some sandwiches. If you’re really good, I might even pack a few of those tiny bottles of wine. How do you feel about Sutter Home?”

  Jared laughed and relaxed even more. It didn’t faze Gretchen that he was altering plans at the last minute, that he was putting work first. And his punishment for it? Her. In some miraculous twist of fate, he’d met a woman whose sole objective was spending time with him. Six whole hours of time. In a dark movie theater. With cheap wine.

  “I accept my penance,” he said, feeling lighter than he had in...months? Years? Too long. “When did you have this in mind? I might have to reschedule a few patients.”

  “There you go again, slipping in those fancy doctor references to put me in my place. I’m appropriately humbled by your attentions.”

  “You don’t sound very humble.”

  “Look who’s talking,” she said dryly. “It’s this weekend. How does Sunday work? The first show is at two.”

  “I’ll be there,” he promised.

  And that was it. Done. Date set. Effortless. Treasure map in hand.

  Of course, then she added, “You’ll recognize me as the woman with all the makeup on to cover her wrinkles. I’ll be carrying a cane.”

  * * *

  “What should I tell your dad about next week?” Tanya, the front desk receptionist at New Leaf, looked up from the stack of messages with a combination of inquiry and trepidation in her eyes.

  Jared stifled a sigh. Tanya didn’t look at any of the other staff with trepidation—they all got the serene smiles and upbeat effervescence that matched the spa’s interior. He really needed to start smiling more.

  “Tell him that I won’t be able to give him nearly as much time as he requires.” If he had his way, he wouldn’t give his dad any time at all. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d met face to face without Jared eventually giving up and stalking off in fury. “No—you know what? Tell him I’d rather not see him this week. Or the week after, for that matter.”

  Tanya winced. “Do you think maybe you could tell him that yourself? He...yells.”

  “It’s the Fine temper.” Whitney strolled up and snatched the pink paper out of Tanya’s hand, giving it a quick scan. “It’s all bluster. He’ll rant and rave and demand his due, but inside, he’s just a sad little boy searching for his father’s approval.”

  Red flashed in Jared’s vision, a warning sign he knew all too well. “I am not searching for my father’s approval.”

  Whitney made a playful tsking noise, and Jared had to remind himself to breathe. Sometimes, away from the life-and-death decision-making that had kept him busy for so many years, he found it hard to remember that no one’s life hinged on his orders being followed out.

  “I meant the elder Dr. Fine,” Whitney said. “You forget how close he and I used to be. Sometimes I wonder if it was really him I was attracted to all that time.”

  He didn’t twitch a facial muscle. He didn’t dare. With this woman, a little bit went a long way.

  And he should know—he’d dated her.

  They’d been little more than kids when they’d first gotten
together, dewy-eyed and starry-skinned and all those things that made him think they could tackle anything the Fates threw at them. He’d mistaken her enthusiasm for life as enthusiasm for him and acted accordingly, convincing her to give up nursing school to follow him to Guatemala for his first assignment with Make the World Smile.

  Unfortunately, some relationships weren’t meant to stand the test of time. Theirs had barely even survived the plane ride over.

  “Wow. You still really hate that man, don’t you?” Whitney asked. “I’ll call him back for you if it’s that big of a deal.”

  “No.” He took the slip from her hand and shoved it deep in his pocket. “I’ll handle this. Thank you, Tanya. I’m sorry he yells when he calls—and that I do too. Maybe we should give you a raise.”

  Whitney let out a loud snort as she brushed past him and continued on her way. “If we give the staff raises every time one of us yells, we’ll be out of business by next week.”

  He didn’t bother replying. The chances of them being out of business by next week were actually pretty slim—something he noted with pride when he sat down at his desk and looked over the rest of his week. When he’d come in as a fourth partner at New Leaf, there had been some question of the spa’s feasibility in a community that shunned outsiders and the trappings of excess their company invariably supported. The townspeople didn’t like change. They didn’t particularly care for Whitney either.

  Fortunately for him, Pleasant Park did have a soft spot for a hero.

  Call it pride, call it narcissism or, like Whitney, call it smug, but Jared felt good knowing that a large portion of the credit lay at his door. When a man only had external successes to keep him warm at night, he held on to whatever victories he could.

  Ten thousand rights could eventually transform a handful of wrongs.

  They had to.

  Chapter Five

  Gretchen stood staring at her closet’s contents, basking in the glow of colorful fabrics and flowy scarves. The four-by-four patch of wardrobe heaven she called her own sat at the front of her bedroom, serving as her one concession to the family tendency toward greedy packrathood. Furniture she could do without. Paintings could be burned for all she cared—though she’d always have a place in her heart for Mr. Mutton Chops upstairs.

  But no one could take away her clothes or her makeup. Like her ink, they were her armor, her visible F-you to a world that seemed to be constantly judging, always disapproving.

  “I can’t decide between the schoolgirl outfit or full-on pinup girl mode,” Gretchen mused. “Which do you think is more likely to prove my point?”

  Caitlyn looked up from where she lay on Gretchen’s bed, glancing through a textbook on valve replacement. “I don’t remember...what is your point again? Are we still mad at him for calling us old?”

  Gretchen rifled through the closet’s contents and pulled out a vintage mint-green skirt and jacket. “You’re right. We don’t want to remind him about my wrinkles. I’ll go with classic Hitchcock heroine for this one.” Cool and poised on the outside, forged of hot, unbridled determination when it came time to battle the monsters. They just didn’t make female horror leads like that anymore. “And would you please not lose my place in there? I have a test tomorrow.”

  Her friend and derby wife, a tall, well-built blonde whose size made her one hell of a blocker, tossed the book aside and put up her hands. “Excuse me. I didn’t even know you were taking automotive repair this semester. What happened to landscape design?”

  Gretchen shimmied out of her robe and stepped into the form-fitting skirt, which was supposed to hit at the knee but went almost all the way to mid-calf on her petite frame. With her gold heels, she might actually near Jared’s head.

  Oh, how I love short men. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gazed longingly into a man’s eyes—if it had ever happened. Neck cricks were a real problem in this world. And they hurt.

  “Zip me?” she asked her friend, tossing a casual look over her shoulder. “Landscaping was too frou-frou and messy. I like the nitty-gritty of engines better—how everything has to function just so to make it work.”

  “Don’t you think maybe it’s time you go ahead and quit going to school already?” Caitlyn yanked on the zipper, packing Gretchen neatly into the trim skirt. For all her lack of padding upstairs, she had enough muscle below to make dressing in feminine clothing a real delight. “It was quirky before. Now it’s starting to get odd.”

  “I just want to keep my foot in the door and my mind sharp,” Gretchen protested. “Besides, until I finish my culinary arts degree, it’s not like I have anything else to do.”

  They both looked over to the fish tank that sat in the corner of Gretchen’s room. Air bubbled to the surface of the fifty gallons of water, where colorful rocks and grasping seaweed outshone the lone inhabitant, a three-pound clawed lobster with one of his legs missing.

  “How’s Wally doing, by the way? Nearing his demise yet?”

  Gretchen tossed a shoe at her friend. “He doesn’t like it when we talk about his future like he’s not there. It makes him depressed and he won’t eat for days. Not even his favorite brand of shrimp pellets will cheer him up.”

  Caitlyn’s mouth firmed. She’d never shared Gretchen’s concern for poor Wally, though Gretchen couldn’t understand why. He was a scrapper. Who didn’t love a scrapper?

  “You know lobsters can live for like fifty years in captivity, right? You could be waiting until you’re older than your grandmother to turn that Incomplete into a passing grade.”

  Gretchen ignored her. Despite the fact that she wouldn’t technically graduate from her culinary arts program until Wally was served up on a platter—and even then she’d have to get on her knees and beg the program director to push the paperwork through—she considered him a nonnegotiable roommate. He’d seen her through a lot.

  Naturally, Caitlyn persisted. “You can’t keep making coffee and playing in a swimming pool forever. Look around you, Gretchen. This is the same room you’ve lived in since you had braces. Don’t you think maybe—”

  “That reminds me,” Gretchen interrupted. “Don’t let me forget to hide Gran’s arthritis meds inside one of her cupcakes. Freddy has convinced her that vitamins and holistic remedies will juice her joints the natural way, so she refuses to take them now. It’s easy for him to say. He’s not the one who has to run around the house fetching her things because she’s in too much pain to get up.”

  Caitlyn, who knew all about her grandmother’s companion and the strange power he wielded, accepted the change of subject. “Gross. Please tell me he didn’t actually use the terms juice and joints in that context.”

  Gretchen placed a hand over her heart and held three fingers aloft. “Scout’s honor. I seriously don’t know whether to laugh or cry when he opens his mouth. Sometimes I do a little of both.”

  Caitlyn watched her for a drawn-out moment, not moving except to braid and unbraid her hair in an unconscious tic she’d had for as long as they’d known each other—which was longer than ladies of a certain age cared to admit. Like Gretchen, she lived in Pleasant Park and made the commute two times a week to Philadelphia for their roller derby practice, which was held in a skating rink that had seen its heyday in the eighties and still had the shag carpeting to prove it.

  Unlike Gretchen, Caitlyn also had a career she loved as a production assistant at the community theater. Most of the women on their roller derby team had that—the great job, the better spouse, the even more incredible family.

  Gretchen alone was the straggler. The late bloomer. The thirty-one-year-old without a single real accomplishment to her name.

  Immature, Gran said. Irresponsible, her sisters said.

  Screw ’em all. That’s what she said.

  “Well, you look amazing, I’ll give you that,” Caitlyn even
tually said. “Is Dr. Delicious picking you up?”

  “Dr. Delicious didn’t even offer.” She twisted her hair up in a quick knot and began lining her eyes with her favorite black liquid eyeliner. “I think he’s doing it to toy with me.”

  “Then why are you going out with him?”

  Gretchen looked at her friend in the mirror’s reflection. Their eyes met, and a moment of understanding—underlined with laughter—passed through. There was no need to explain it. When the hottest thing to hit Pleasant Park in a decade decided to make a pet of you, you either bit his hand or rolled over and let him scratch away.

  And this man made Gretchen itch. Big time.

  “It’ll be interesting, that’s for sure,” Gretchen said. “I’m definitely getting a hot-cold vibe from him already. One second he’s offering to beat up your roller skates to defend my honor and the next he’s canceling our date at the last minute. Then he’s calling me old but checking out my ass like he’s never seen one before.”

  Caitlyn fell in a mock-swoon onto Gretchen’s bed, bouncing the textbook onto the ground. “I think that’s what they call a God complex. He’s yanking you around because he can. Man, I wish he’d yank me. I haven’t been yanked in forever.”

  Gretchen switched the eyeliner for her mascara. She’d only been half joking about showing up with wrinkle protection. Her makeup was part of her look—both on the rink and off it—and she still had that nasty yellowing bruise to contend with. “Well, if he thinks I’m going to just simper and take that kind of behavior, he’s got another thing coming. I don’t care how many children he’s saved. They don’t call me Honey Badger for nothing.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  She clasped a silver bracelet around one wrist and grabbed her bag. “I haven’t decided yet. But it will be good. And he’ll apologize—or the only yanking that will be taking place will be in a sad, cold shower for one.”

  “I think we officially took that metaphor too far.”

  Gretchen kissed her friend on the cheek. “We always do.”