Time Out Read Free

her hard and shaken her.
    Her father, Rainey guessed. Everyone knew Martin was a mean drunk but no one wanted to talk about it, least of all Sharee, who lived alone with her mother except for the nights her mother allowed the man into their trailer.
    “He called me a scarecrow,” Sharee said, pointing at Todd. “Now his sorry ass is going to pay.”
    “Language,” Rainey said.
    “Okay, his sorry butt. His sorry butt is going to pay.”
    “I said you have legs as long as a scarecrow,” Todd said from behind Rainey. “Not that you are a scarecrow.”
    Sharee growled and lifted the hose.
    “Stop!” Rainey said. “If you squirt him, you’re leaving yourself wide open for retaliation.”
    “That’s right,” Todd said, nodding like a bobblehead. “Retaliation.”
    Rainey turned to shut Todd up just as Sharee let it rip with the hose and nailed him.
    Rainey gave up. They had worked their asses off and deserved to let off a little steam. She stepped aside to leave them to it, but stopped short as a big, shiny black truck pulled into the lot.
    Which was when the entire contents of Todd’s bucket hit her. Sucking in a shocked gasp as the cold, soapy water rained over her, Rainey whipped around and stared at the sheepish teen, who was holding the offending empty bucket. “Oh, God,” he said. “I’m so sorry, but you stepped right in its path!”
    “You’re in big trouble,” Sharee told him. “You got her hair wet. You know how long it must take her to get that hair right?”
    Sharee was right about the hair. Rainey shoved it out of her face, readjusting the Ducks hat on her head. Her wavy brown hair frizzed whenever it rained, or if the air was humid, or if she so much as breathed wrong. She had no doubt it resembled a squirrel’s tail about now. “It’s okay. Just…clean up,” she said, watching as the black truck rolled to a stop.
    “Look at that,” Todd said reverently, Rainey’s hair crisis forgotten. “That’s one sweet truck.”
    Sneakers squishing, Rainy moved toward it. She could feel water running in rivulets down her body as the driver side window powered down. “I’m sorry,” she said politely, feeling like a drowned rat. “We’ve closed up shop. We—” She broke off. The driver was wearing a Mammoth hat and reflective Oakleys, rendering him all but unrecognizable to the general public. But she recognized him just fine, and her heart stopped on a dime.
    The man she’d just been watching on the news.
    Mark Diego.
    He wore a white button-down that was striking against his dark skin and stretched across broad shoulders. The hand-painted sign behind her said: Car Wash—$10, but he pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his pocket. She stared down at it, boggled.
    “No worries on the wash,” he said in a low voice as smooth as aged whiskey, the same voice that had fueled her adolescent dreams.
    He didn’t recognize her.
    Of course he didn’t. She was wearing a ball cap, sunglasses, soap suds, and was drenched to the core, not to mention dressed like a complete slob. Unlike Mark, of course, who looked like sin-on-a-stick. Expensive sin-on-a-stick.
    The bastard.
    “I just need a place to park,” he said with the smile that she knew probably melted panties and temperamental athletes with equal aplomb. “I’m here to see Rick Diego.”
    “You can park right where you are,” Rainey said.
    He turned off the engine and got out of the truck, six feet two inches of tough, rugged, leanly muscled grace. Two other guys got out as well, and beside her, Todd nearly swallowed his tongue. “Casey Reynolds! James Vasquez! Oh man, you guys rock!”
    Casey, the Mammoths’ right wing, was twenty-two and the youngest player on the team. He looked, walked and talked like the California surfer he was in his spare time. He wore loose basketball shorts, a T-shirt from some surf shop in the Caicos, and a backwards Mammoths’ hat.
    James was the team’s left wing, and at twenty-four he was nearly as wild