The bald guy gave her a wicked look before he joined his buddies.
Brand slid his half-empty beer across the table and stood. “Get your guitar. I’m taking you home.”
Marcie managed to force a smile proving she wasn’t afraid. “Brandon, that won’t be necessary. I live across the street in the trailer park. I can walk home.”
“It’s not a suggestion, it’s a favor, and I told you, I’m not picking you up. That trailer park isn’t safe to walk through in daylight, much less after midnight.”
She looked up and for once she could see his coffee-brown eyes. He looked worried, almost as if he cared. “I’m not your problem.” Marcie laced her fingers without making any move to follow his orders. “I’m no one’s problem. I don’t think you even liked me, so why act like you care now?”
She’d slept with some truck driver a few months after Boone went to jail. The trucker had bragged that she told him all kinds of things about what Boone did in bed and then she claimed the trucker was better. The trucker must have known she wouldn’t say anything when he bragged. If she had, no one would believe her.
She looked up at Brand Rodgers, wondering if he was looking for a story to brag about. No, not quiet Brandon. He seemed to have turned into a six-feet-four tree wearing a Stetson. Silent. Waiting beside the table.
“Oh, all right,” she said as if they’d been arguing. “I’ll let you drive me home.”
A few minutes later as they walked past his pickup, Brand placed her guitar in his truck bed. The black case vanished in the shadows. “I never said I didn’t like you, Marcie. I’m older. You were just a kid.”
“I’m grown-up now.”
“I noticed.”
She thought of telling him they could easily walk to her trailer, but somehow after her day, riding home seemed a treat.
Brand was safe. She’d never heard a bad word about him. Marcie swore under her breath. Thinking Brand was better than most men she knew wasn’t saying much.
She gave him directions to her place back in the tree line near the end of the trailer park. She’d grown up here. Lived with her folks until her mom left when Marcie was seven. Then her dad ran the bar for a while until he got sick. She took over managing the place before she was out of high school. Ordered supplies. Cleaned the bar after closing time. Hired the help. Wayne had been a drunk who needed a job. She’d hired him to bartend with the understanding he wouldn’t drink on the job. He’d kept that rule until he finally bought the place. Now and then Marcie saw the signs he was drinking again, but she doubted the customers noticed.
Once she thought she had a chance of breaking free of Someday Valley. She’d left to make her way with her songs. Three years later she was back. Her dad was dying and her brother had disappeared. The only good news, she guessed, was that Wayne now let her work for him.
Wayne wasn’t a bad boss. He paid fair and she did most of the work while he drank away most of the profits, but he did pay her extra for singing. Twenty an hour and tips. Which tonight had been seven dollars and a quarter.
The lone yellow bulb blinked through the trees as Brand drove toward her ten-by-thirty home. The place didn’t seem so bad when she walked through the trees in the dark and slipped inside. But now, with the headlights blinking on the rusty sides and the broken window glass covered with cardboard, the small trailer looked like something abandoned to decay.
“This is far enough,” she whispered. “You might get stuck in the mud if you go much further.”
He stopped and got out.
She did the same. “I can make it from here.”
He started walking beside her. “I’ll walk you to your door, Marcie.”
Brand didn’t seem to notice the mud or the slow drizzle of rain. He was a man who worked outside. He was used to the weather.
She had a feeling she’d be wasting her breath if she argued about him coming to the door. She didn’t want to tell him that no man had ever walked her to her home. Boone used to call and wait at the park entrance until she came out. He’d said he didn’t want to get his car dirty on the bad roads, but Marcie always thought it was more that he didn’t want anyone to see him picking her up. She was small-town trash and he was Austin rich.
Marcie stepped on the first concrete block that served as a step. She turned back to Brand. “Thanks. I’m home safe now.”
He touched the brim of his hat and stepped away without a word. It was so dark in the trees that she wondered if he’d find his way back to his truck.
Marcie slipped inside and locked the door. Loneliness closed in around her like a heavy fog, making the air so thick she had to work to breathe. All her life she’d felt alone. Even when her mother was around she never had time for her. Or, when her father was ill and never left the trailer. And now, people only talked to her when they had to.
She curled up on her couch and just sat in the dark. There were times she’d had dreams. This place seemed a pod where she could imagine a future, as a singer in Nashville or a rich man’s wife. She could mold herself into anyone. All she had to do was break free of this place, and bloom.
She was almost asleep when she heard movement in the brush outside. A stray dog. Maybe a coyote looking for a late-night snack.
Then she heard mumbling loud enough to pass through the cardboard that blocked her view. What good did it do to lock the door if anyone could come through the broken window? Cardboard wouldn’t stop a rat.
“You in there, Marcie?” A voice sounding very much like Joey Hattly yelled, then giggled. “Me and the boys thought we’d come by and talk to you. We brought beer.”
“Go away,” she said too low for them to hear.
Someone knocked on the door. Tried the knob.
Joey’s voice came again. “Now come on, Marcie. You don’t want us to have to break the lock. We thought we’d pay you a visit. Just to be friendly, you know. Let us in.”
Laughter came from the shadows.
“Go away,” she said a little louder. Tears slipped down her face. She was all alone. There was no one to help her. No one.
The knob rattled again, then someone pounded on the door as if she might not know they were there.
The man on the other side of the door cussed. His buddies snorted. Another yelled, “Hurry up, we ain’t got all night.”
The man at her door added, “You’re going to pay, tramp, for making us wait out here in the rain.”
Marcie moved to the window slit in the thin door and peeked out. Four, maybe five men, moving around in the moonlight. More creatures than humans, if only in her mind.
“Kick the door in,” the bald man in the yellow glow of the light growled, then threw his empty beer can against the trailer. “Let’s get this party started. She’ll play along after I rough her up a bit. Women like that. Lets them know who’s boss.”
Joey’s voice sounded a bit panicked. “Marcie. Come out. We ain’t going to hurt you. We just want to have a little fun.”
She heard the roar of an engine before she saw a black truck seem to fly from the trees. Branches broke and mud sprayed as tires hit the dirt.
Brand!
When he was ten feet away he hit the brakes, cut the engine, and jumped out with both boots hitting the ground with a thud.