The Perfect Match: A New Adult Erotic Romance (Inseparable Book 2) (14 page)

His phone was on and sitting on her night stand. She stared at it like it was a snake, but the noise of the running shower made her feel brave. Picking up the phone, she noticed the smudges on the screen in the shape of a numeral three. Waking it up, she dragged her finger along the smeared pattern to unlock it.

Her heart was pounding in her throat, but she had to know the truth. Opening up his text app, she saw it had been completely erased. There were no messages at all, not even from her. Bringing up the call logs, she saw they had been wiped as well. Feeling dizzy, she was just about to lock the phone and put it back when a new text arrived.

Since the screen was unlocked, she saw the message text in the notification pop-up. It was from someone named Jennifer and said, “Thanks for the call this morning. Just finished for the day. I miss you so much. Love you!”

Putting the phone to sleep again, Polly sat it back where she’d found it as a numb confusion overwhelmed her. It wasn’t a US phone number, because she recognized the same ‘011’ international prefix she used when she called her parents overseas.

Telling herself it might have been a relative or a friend, she went back to the kitchen to pour another cup of coffee. It didn’t work, though, she couldn’t make herself believe the lie long enough to reach the table. She collapsed into a chair and stared at the wall.

I’m a fool
, she thought as she fought back tears.
What the hell do I do now?

T
he delivery run ended with Kurt feeling sad that he wasn’t really going to work for Johnson and Abernathy. Bo Tidewell was a funny, skilled captain who seemed genuinely glad to have Kurt around. The other crew members were the same kind of hard working guys he’d been around for years, despite their lack of appreciation for Cajun food and music. Spending their off time playing cards and wild telling stories had made them fast friends over those two days.

After putting his smelly duffel bag in the trunk, Kurt drove back to his Uncle Jack’s house feeling a deep sense of satisfaction. He had a date on Sunday with two of the most wild, sexy women he’d ever met. He’d managed to find out something that might help his Uncle Jack solve the problem he had at work. And most importantly, the secret fear he’d been carrying in his heart for years was gone.

He’d never realized that working for his Uncle Charlie was a kind of crutch. Since he’d failed out of school, working for his uncle wasn’t so much a choice as a last ditch option. During those early years, he’d needed lots of extra help getting around his difficulties reading and writing. Since his uncle knew about dyslexia first hand, having had the same problem himself growing up, learning from him had been easier.

In the beginning he’d memorized things with his uncle’s help to avoid reading, but somehow in the last decade the words had started coming easier without him really noticing. Bo Tidewell had no clue how hard he used to struggle with forms and checklists, but for Kurt, the last two days had been as exciting as going on a bike without training wheels for the first time. The fact that he could tell himself it wasn’t
really
a new job had made him unafraid to fail.

His phone rang while he was at a stop light, but when he saw Polly’s name he pushed it to voicemail.
I don’t need you, girl,
he thought with a chuckle. A moment later his phone rang again, but this time with his sister’s name on the screen. He accepted the call and put it on speaker.

“Hey, sis!” he said as he drove off from the light.

“Hello, brother mine,” she said with a cheery tone. “Are you back safely?”

“Yup, and you best not be callin’ to tell me Kendall is there at Uncle Jack’s house.”

Her ringing laughter made him smile at his own joke. “No,” she said. “I have a favor to ask you, though.”

“Yes, you can borrow my car when I get home. I’m gonna shower and then kick you out of Jen’s room to sleep the day away. That mean ole captain made me work all night last night and I’m beat.”

“No, I was wonderin’ if you’d be the designated driver tonight for our girls night out.”

“I ain’t a girl,” he said, not really wanting to get caught in that hellfire cross-wind of drunk women and sobriety. “Besides, being on a ship for two days makes a man mighty thirsty.”

“Please?” she begged. “I’ll owe you
huge
for this.”

“You already owe me huge for not leavin’ your ass in Morgan City!”

“Okay, how much will it cost? Are we talking Jacksons or Franklins?”

“I’ll do it if you cook me a chicken gumbo for lunch on Sunday. I’ve got a date Sunday afternoon and need all the strength I can get. Well, assumin’ I ever get out of the confessional after the last date.”

She laughed again and said, “You’re on!”

“See ya in a bit,” Kurt said and dropped the call.

* * *

A
s he was setting the alarm to play chauffeur, Kurt noticed there were two voicemail messages waiting. The first was from Polly asking for a call back, which he deleted as soon as he got the gist of her message. The second was from Uncle Jack hoping his new job was going well. Kurt took that as an invitation and called him back at work.

“Hey, I was hoping to hear from you today,” Jack said when he answered.

“I just got back and cleaned up before I saw your message. You ready to take some notes?”

“Shoot,” Jack said.

“My captain was Bo Tidewell, spelled B-O and T-I-D-E-W-E-L-L. He gave me some shit work to feel me out. My first job was to double check the manifest against the inventory in the hold.”

“Okay,” Jack said. “What’d you find out?”

“For some reason they listed the base cost-per-ton rate for each item on their manifest. All Deep Drilling inventory was around twenty-two cents a ton, which is insane. Truck shipping is only around thirty-five cents per ton, and the highest I
ever
seen Uncle Charlie go is twelve cents, and that was for some ole skunk who cheated him at cards.”

“Hold on, I’m writing this down...” Kurt could hear Jack scribbling in the background of the call. “Okay, go on.”

“There were three other vendors with inventory on the ship. Two were about ten cents per ton, which is what I’d expect. But one had a base rate of
five
cents per ton, some outfit called
MJP Engineering
.”

The scratching stopped and Jack was silent for a moment before saying, “That son-of-a-bitch.”

“Mean something to you?”

“Yeah,” he growled. “It sure does. Did you happen to bring any proof out of the ship with you?”

“I dug a copy of the manifest out of the trash before I left. Since Bo was asking me to look for things that were off, I pointed out the weird base rates. He said someone recently invested in the company and part of the deal was to stop doing business with Deep Drilling. He still wanted them to give a quote, just make it high enough to lose the business. Bo said he was amazed someone would pay that much and that the boss, Evan Johnson, thought it was hinky.”

“Did he say who the investor was?”

“Nope, but when I pointed out that the
MJP Engineering
stuff was basically shipping at half cost, he clammed up. It was kind of obvious there was a connection, but he wouldn’t say any more and I didn’t want to push it.”

“Have I ever told you that you’re my favorite nephew?”

“No,” Kurt said with a laugh.

“Okay, just checking,” Jack said and hung up.

After that, Kurt went to sleep dreaming of Cathy and Camden.

* * *

F
eeling someone sit down gently on the bed roused Kurt to yawn and stretch. Polly was sitting with her hands fidgeting in her lap, and kept glancing at him only to looking away again. He rubbed his face and asked, “What time is it?”

“Six,” she whispered.

“I guess I need to get up then,” he said as he sat up, watching her glance at his bare chest with a frown. He was only wearing boxer-briefs, but didn’t really care if she got an eyeful anymore.

“I need to talk to you,” she said without moving.

“We both said all we need to say to one another,” he said, unable to hide his irritation at her presence.

“I think I fucked up,” she said.

“That ain’t exactly news to me,” he said as he crossed his legs under the sheet and leaned forward. “So which lie did you catch him in?”

She flushed and bit her lips for a moment. “There’s a girl named Jennifer, somewhere overseas, I think.”

“Yeah, his girlfriend is spending a semester in Europe and he said he gets
lonely
at Christmas. You prolly ain’t the only fish he got on that trotline either.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she pleaded with tears in her eyes.

“What, and have him deny that he told me? You know you wouldn’t have believed me. You had his hook in your mouth from day one.”

Polly sobbed into her hands while Kurt watched impassively. A few days ago he would have given anything for her attention, but things had changed. After a few moments she wiped the tears off her face and stood. “Thanks for telling me the truth,” she said as she stood up to get a tissue from the box on the dresser.

“I always will, like it or not. What are you gonna do?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I told him I was sick last night so I’d have time to think. It didn’t help much.”

“You prolly need to talk to Charlotte or Julie about this. I ain’t much good at dealing with Trey’s kind of bullshit.”

“I can’t,” she said and shook her head. “I can’t tell them this.”

“Why, cause they’re gonna think you’re a fool?” he asked with a sad chuckle. “Hell, Charlotte already thought that from when you
started
datin’ him! Ain’t nowhere to go but up from there.”

“This isn’t funny,” she hissed at him, her face twisted in anger.

“And that’s half your problem right there,” he said sweeping the sheets off his legs and standing up. “You ignored
everyone
who told you how he is because you’re so smart. You read books about politics, after all,” he said with a mocking tone.

“Stop it,” she whispered, but he didn’t miss her glance at the bulge in his boxer briefs.
Typical
, he thought.

“No, I’m still telling you the truth. Being tricked and lied to ain’t your fault and it ain’t nothin’ you need to be ashamed of.”

“But I
am
ashamed,” she whispered and started crying again.

“You need to get mad,” he said and lifted her chin to look in her eyes. “You need to get mad at
him
.”

The bedroom door opened at that moment and Trey walked in saying, “Polly, are you—” He froze when he realized who was in the room. Kurt felt the hate pouring off of Trey as his face flushed and fists clenched.

Polly squared her shoulders and turned to Trey. “We need to talk.”

* * *

B
y the time Kurt had cleaned up and gotten dressed, Trey was gone. He saw Polly sitting at the dining room table with Julie and Charlotte, but didn’t want any part of that mess. Turning into the living room, the kids were piled on their father watching some cartoon movie.

“Hey,” Kurt said as he wandered to the overstuffed chair next to the couch. He felt like a real part of the family when the kids began to ignore him occasionally.

“Welcome back,” Jack said with a tired smile. “I hear you’re the designated driver tonight.”

“I’d rather hang out with you on the back patio and smoke cigars.”

“Sophie is picking up the girls at six, so it’ll just be me and Jackson tonight,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ll think about you when I have my scotch and stogie.”

“Don’t rub it in,” Kurt said as he let the movie distract him.

After a while, Julie, Charlotte, and Polly walked through the room and out the front door without a word. Kurt was curious about what happened, but didn’t want to discuss it in front of the kids. When Julie came back in, she crossed toward the kitchen and said, “Kurt, are you busy?”

He got up and followed her until she stopped at the sink to wash her hands and splash a little water on her face. “I want to thank you for being supportive with Polly.”

“She’s family as far as I’m concerned,” Kurt said with a shrug. “That’s all the reason I need.”

“I want to kill Trey,” she said with the kind of mother bear expression that made him worry how serious she was. “But I’m a mom now and can’t go to jail.” She cracked a smile after a moment to clue him that she was joking.

“I know the feelin’,” Kurt said.

“We’re still going out tonight. Polly went home to change and Charlotte went along in case Trey tries to cause trouble. I don’t want her alone for a few days, so Charlotte’s gonna stay with her. We’ll pick them up on our way to get Cathy and Camden. Are you sure you don’t mind driving?”

“It’s fine,” he said.

“I’ll feel better if you’re around tonight. Trey got a little crazy when Polly talked to him.”

“So what happened?” he asked, glad his curiosity wouldn’t come off as morbid.

“Apparently he was pissed because she was in there with you half-naked, but that all went out the window as soon as she mentioned a Jennifer somewhere in Europe. He tried to play it off like you were telling lies about his ex-girlfriend, but Polly stuck to her guns.”

“Good for her,” Kurt said. “I’m glad she didn’t let him snow her again.”

“Then when she mentioned looking on his phone to read his texts, he went completely mental and started accusing her of sleeping with you today. She tried to explain you were wrecked after working all night, but he wasn’t having it. After he stormed off, Charlotte and I had to calm Polly down for a bit.”

“So I’m the bodyguard and driver?”

“Yes, it was the only way we could get her to go out. She needs some liquid perspective, and frankly, so do I.”

“I’m ready to go when you are,” Kurt said and Julie hugged him tight.

* * *

K
urt wasn’t worried about Trey trying anything directly. For all his big talk, fighting wasn’t his thing. Spending a decade on a ship learning how to command working men taught him to read people pretty well. And if push came to shove, Kurt had enough experience with tough guys on the docks to handle himself with Trey.