Charmed and Dangerous Read Free Page A

and allowed himself a small shudder. “You get attacked by lace or something? This is a fucking nightmare. No wonder Jimmy’s always gone out on the rig.”
    Roy knew without being able to see her that Dora had poufed out her collagen-enhanced bottom lip, pouting.
    “Nice doorknobs, though,” the larger man said, and Roy grimaced. If he was in a bar, and really really drunk, he’d fight a guy that size for mentioning Dora’s boobs. Even if you’re boinking another guy’s wife, there was a certain etiquette to maintain.
    “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout Roy,” Dora insisted.
    “You know where he is,” the smaller of the Muscles said. “Roy’s got something we want, and we know he came here.”
    “Yeah,” the other mountain of muscles chimed in. “He always
comes
here. Don’t he, Eddie?” He broke into a giggle, and although the Mountain was almost double the smaller guy’s size, Roy pegged him as younger and a little simple, maybe; despite the fact he lost at poker every other Friday, Roy considered himself a pretty good judge of character. Whoever they were, they couldn’t be here for his bookie debts because he was kinda sorta caught up, and the three he still owed usually didn’t send knee breakers until you were more than a couple of months past due (he still had eight days). And he was pretty sure the guy who bought that boat hadn’t figured out that Roy hadn’t owned it in the first place. No, these guys had to be here about something personal. Nothing he couldn’t talk his way out of. God knows he’d done it a hundred times before.
    Roy saw Dora’s calf contract as she inhaled quickly. Past her very fine calf, Roy could see that the smaller set of Muscles, apparently named Eddie, had a gun aimed at her.
    The seat creaked as Dora shifted above him, and dust fell into his twitchy nose just as Roy’s cell phone, adjusted to maximum volume so he could hear it in the bar, vibrated against his jean pocket and trumpeted the LSU fight song. His heart ramped up three billion beats in .02 seconds as he frantically tried to slap the phone off.
    And managed to turn it
on
so everyone in the room could hear Bobbie Faye’s shout, muffled, but not nearly enough, by his jeans.
    “Roy! You sonofabitch! You promised you would fix this washing machine for me and I even
paid
you already! Now get your
ass
—” He slapped it off and stayed very still, pretending to himself it hadn’t really happened and no one heard it.
    Bedroom light flooded into the window seat as the lid snapped open and Eddie bent over, grinning, his horribly disfigured face inches away. Roy flinched at the grotesque features where his nose zigzagged from having been broken too many times and the right side of his face looked slightly caved in and sagged lower than the left.
    “H’lo, Roy. I know somebody who wants to see you.”
    “Uh, well, um, thanks. But see, that was my big sister on the phone and I gotta get over there and fix that thing, or she’s gonna kick my ass.” Roy eased out of the window seat, trying for nonchalant, until Eddie pointed the gun at his chest.
    “Seriously, guys. She’ll kill me.”
    “If there’s anything left of you when we’re done,” Eddie said, “we’ll pay to watch.” He jammed the gun into Roy’s side and Roy turned to Dora with a pleading gleam.
    “Babe? Can you call Bobbie Faye and tell her I might be running late?”
    “No calls,” Eddie told her. “You stay quiet, we don’t need to come back. Got that?”
    Dora nodded, clutching her robe around her as they hustled Roy out of the room.
    “Man, I hafta call her,” Roy said, turning his charm smile onto full wattage. “You have no idea how crazy Bobbie Faye is.”
    “That’s the least of your worries,” Eddie said.
    “Hmph,” Dora said, following them down the hall. “Y’all don’t know Bobbie Faye.”
    By five in the morning, as she banged a wrench against the shut-off valve of the washing machine, Bobbie Faye