Down & Dirty by Tracy Wolff

Author:Tracy Wolff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Loveswept
Published: 2017-05-23T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

My phone vibrates as I’m walking back to the car. I pick it up, see that Lucy has texted me again, asking when I’ll be home. I fire off a quick text to her, telling her I’m on my way. Then I jog the rest of the way to my car.

I’ve just pulled out of my parking space when I get another text. This one’s asking for ice cream, and I pull over to the curb so I can ask what kind she and Brent want me to bring home. I’m waiting for the answer when I happen to glance up and see Emerson walking across the parking lot.

She doesn’t see me—I’m in the shadowy part of the lot, about halfway to the street—and I start to open my window, to call out to her. But she stops a few car lengths in front of me, right under one of the dim parking lot lights. And I watch, confused, as she opens the driver’s side door of a beat up–looking Corolla.

Confused, I watch as she slides into the driver’s seat. It doesn’t look like she’s planning on going anywhere—she keeps the door open and one foot on the asphalt parking lot—but that just confuses me more. Especially since she told me her car was in the shop.

It’s only as she tries to turn the car on—to no avail—that I realize what’s happening. It’s not that her car is in the shop. It’s that it’s broken down in the parking lot. And judging from the defeated slump of her shoulders as she climbs back out of the Corolla, it’s been that way for a while. The fact that she hasn’t had it towed tells me she can’t afford to fix it and that hits me where it hurts.

I know she’ll get a good commission from me buying the La Jolla house, but the sale won’t go through for at least thirty days. How is she going to get to work between now and then? And what would she have done if I hadn’t met her yesterday morning and demanded that Kerry let her work with me?

I can’t stand the idea of her living in this shithole, and I really can’t stand the idea of her waiting for a bus or asking someone for a ride in this neighborhood. God only knows what could happen to her.

Speaking of which…I watch as she makes her way back across the parking lot and up the stairs. And while I have the answer to the question I texted my niece earlier—rocky road—I don’t pull out of the parking lot until I see Emerson disappear into her apartment, shutting the door firmly behind her.

I spend my twenty-minute ride home worrying about her, trying to figure out what to do about her dilemma. I’d buy her a new car, no strings attached, if she’d let me. I’m pretty sure she won’t, otherwise she wouldn’t have lied to me about it. But what am I supposed to

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