Steady Rain [Suncoast Society] (Siren Publishing Sensations) Read online

“Did you get into your place?”

  “No. Everyone says our neighborhood is still too flooded. Not even with my truck.”

  “So…where’d pupper come from?”

  Jessica told her and Brenda started crying as she hugged her. “Oh, my god. I would have done the same thing. Poor guy. At least he’s friendly.” Stanley had figured out where the water bowl was and drank half of it while Topper and Herby watched and waited for him to start playing with them again.

  “Look, I’m sorry to dump him on you like this, but with him, I didn’t get to see if I can get over to Brad’s place yet.”

  “You still want to try that?”

  “Yeah. If he’s in Dallas, and his neighborhood’s flooded out, I want to get my stuff out of the house.” If what she wanted was even still there. It wasn’t much, but it held a lot of sentimental value, and she still kicked herself in the ass that she hadn’t grabbed them when she’d moved out.

  “All right. Go on. I’ll dogsit. And I’ve got an old crate I’ll give you for him. It’s in the garage. It’s not pretty, but it’s more than big enough for him. I’ll get the dust hosed off of it for him.”

  “Thanks.” She hugged her tightly. “Sorry about this.”

  “I just wish I could offer you long-term digs.”

  “I know. I appreciate you letting me crash here, though.” Brenda and Jim’s twin son and daughter were away at college in their last semester, and would be returning to Houston after graduation. Brenda and Jim had graciously offered to let Jessica stay there indefinitely, but she knew she couldn’t impose on them like that. They had a family, and while they were good friends, she needed to get back into a place of her own.

  Except Jess knew housing would be iffy in the area now. Her primary job was gone, because the small, family-owned restaurant she’d worked for had literally been destroyed. A fire in the middle of the hurricane, due to a suspected natural gas line rupture, had burned it down.

  A horrible job market and little chance of finding affordable housing…she wasn’t sure what her next step was, but she knew she’d have to make it soon.

  “Hey, you got the expensive and irreplaceable shit out and safe,” Brenda reminded her. “Furniture and clothes, that you can buy new with insurance money, wherever you end up moving.”

  “Thank you for browbeating me into getting the renter’s insurance policy.”

  She grinned. “What’s a friend for?”

  Jess went to change her clothes first. She was soaked to the skin and smelled like a combination of wet dog and funky, middle-aged angry woman.

  Brad and his toothpick of a girlfriend were still in Dallas right now, where they’d evacuated to her family’s house.

  The whore he’d cheated on Jessica with, and had moved into the house practically before Jessica had finished getting her own shit out.

  When she’d first met Brad, he’d loved her curves, said it made her sexy, loved the way she looked in his ropes. She wasn’t a size zero—she was a healthy size sixteen, and at five nine, there was nothing wrong with that. She had an hourglass figure and just enough boobs to give her a nice rack without needing to take out a loan to afford a pretty bra that would actually tame the girls, or giving herself a concussion if she ran without wearing one.

  He’d also claimed he admired her artistic bondage and fetish photography, something that was more than a hobby but not something she could live off of full-time.

  Apparently, Brad’s taste in women had changed sixteen months ago, five years after meeting her in Florida and dragging her halfway across the country to Texas a few months later. Now he wanted a tiny, bendy, nubile, twenty-one-year-old pixie-stick who barely stood five feet tall, and who could apparently wrap her ankles behind her neck during sex, instead of Jessica’s thirty-six-year-old tall and curvy self.

  Or maybe he just wanted a woman young enough and stupid enough to fall for his bullshit, and who’d put up with him.

  Joke was on him—Jessica was pretty sure his new piece was only using Brad for now. She’d seen hints of things online that looked like the woman was already searching for her next sugar daddy, since Brad was far more like a Splenda uncle.

  Not exactly rich. Hell, he was barely even lower middle-class.

  At least he wasn’t her problem anymore. If she could just get in there and get her last things out of the house, she could write him off for good.

  Maybe this storm was the best thing to ever happen to me.

  Chapter Two

  Kyle felt ready to collapse. It’d been a long-ass workday and didn’t get any shorter as the day progressed. He’d started work at six a.m. and was supposed to have been out by three today. Yet here it was, nearly seven thirty, and he was just now dragging his exhausted ass out of his truck at home.

  At least the worst of the afternoon rain had let up. It was now only sprinkling. When he stepped through the front door, a mouth-watering aroma smacked him across the face. “Damn, what is that?” He walked into the kitchen with his lunch box to find his roommate, Tristan, standing at the stove. “That smells great!”

  “When you texted me you were going to be late, I decided to hit the grocery store on my way home and take pity on your ass.” Tristan stood at the stove, barefoot, khaki slacks and a button-up shirt, his usual work attire. Well, except for the barefoot part.

  Tris cast a smile at him over his shoulder. “Cube steaks.”

  “Yum!” Kyle’s stomach, which woke up and howled with hunger upon walking through the front door, growled again and reminded him that a ham and cheese sandwich and a banana didn’t go very far, especially when eaten at eleven in the morning.

  “Yeah, I know I haven’t made it in a while. Sorry.”

  “No, that’s great, thanks. I appreciate it.” He emptied his lunch bag and washed his sandwich container, leaving it in the drainer to dry. “Is Louisa eating with us?” It wasn’t unusual for her to miss dinners, depending on her work schedule.

  He wouldn’t have seen it if he hadn’t been watching Tristan’s back, but the man’s shoulders tensed and his head dipped a little.

  “No,” Tris said, more than a tinge of anger in his tone.

  “What happened?” Kyle now carefully watched his friend.

  Tris took a deep breath, and when he turned, he wore a forced smile. “So, heeeeyyy. Remember how glad you were when she moved in, because it meant we both paid less every month?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Um, about that…” He didn’t continue.

  Kyle leaned back against the counter and propped his hands on the edge. “My rent just went up again?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. She dropped that on me this morning. I had to call in a sub for my morning classes so I could supervise Louisa moving out, and then change the damn locks.” He tipped his head toward the counter. “There’s your new key, by the way. Deadbolt and knob. Matches the set on the side door.”

  Kyle reached for it, where it sat on the counter next to the old locksets, which were in a zipper-topped baggy, and swapped it out on his key ring. “This sounds serious. She didn’t say anything about it at dinner last night.”

  “That’s because she waited until this morning to drop it on me that she wasn’t going to pay me her share of the rent this month, because she was moving out next weekend. That I was okay with that, right? Even though she was supposed to have the money to me last week, and I told her the last time she was late with the rent that I wasn’t giving her any more extensions. Pissed me off so much how she did it that I told her no problem, she could move out today.”

  Kyle winced. “Yikes.”

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “Well, didn’t tell her that at first. I left like I was going to work, called them while I ran down to Lowe’s, bought new locksets, returned in less than twenty minutes, changed them out, and then the fun began.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Because I knew you’d be busy at work, and that was before your day went to shit. Besides, by the time I finally thou
ght to do that, I already had half her shit dragged out into the driveway.”

  He turned back to the stove. “Besides, this one’s on me. I’m the one who invited her to move in. I’ll cover her share this month. Not fair to ask you to do that at the last minute. At least she’s gone, and no excuse for her coming back. I dragged her bed and dresser and shit out into the driveway myself, and she called her newest fuckboy to come help her get her shit.”

  “Well, could be worse,” Kyle said.

  “How?”

  “Neither of us were fucking her.” Tristan turned again, his delayed laughter making Kyle smile in reply. “See?”

  “Yeah, dude. True. You have time to grab a shower, if you want. About fifteen minutes.”

  “Thanks.” Kyle tucked the old key into the baggy with the old locksets and headed to his bedroom to grab what he needed for his shower. At least now he could start leaving his shit in the bathroom again without worrying if she—or one of her frequently rotating list of overnight “guests”—would use his soap or shampoo and not bother replacing it.

  Plus I won’t have to dig her damn hair out of the shower drain anymore.

  * * * *

  Thank god neither of us were fucking her.

  Hadn’t been hard for Tris to keep his dick in his pants regarding Louisa, because he really hadn’t been attracted to her like that. That was exactly one of the reasons he’d thought she’d be a good roommate, and not bring a messy entanglement with her, because neither of them wanted in her pants.

  If there was anyone’s pants he wanted to get into, it was Kyle’s.

  That wasn’t exactly a secret, although he hadn’t yet made a point of directly approaching Kyle. He wasn’t sure Kyle would say yes, and a no might make things uncomfortable. They were friends first, and then roommates.

  He needed the money Kyle kicked in every month to make sure his budget didn’t rip at the seams. Public school teachers made shit for pay, but he only had a couple more years to put in before he could retire and then look for a new and better-paying career with his mathematics degree. He’d excelled in math in high school and had landed college scholarships that got him out of his shitty home with even shittier parents, and helped him get a degree in something he could use in the real world.

  Didn’t mean he wanted to teach it for another twenty or thirty years.

  For fun, they taught rope classes together, and were the co-founders of the local monthly rope group, named Knotty Fun, that called Venture home.

  So getting into Kyle’s pants wasn’t his first priority, although it was an attractive one. There were too many other things at risk than orgasms.

  While he knew Kyle was bi-curious, he didn’t want to push him too hard. There’d been some slightly drunken flirting on Kyle’s part a few times, like he was testing the waters. Tristan absolutely wanted him, but he wanted him all-in with a clear head, not some one-night thing Kyle would regret in the sober light of the next morning. Kyle knew Tristan was bi, with a decidedly strong leaning toward men over women most of the time.

  Tris couldn’t help it that he managed to piss off most women when he dated them if they weren’t exactly his “type.” The women he was attracted to tended to get and keep good men. He liked earthy, real women who didn’t make their looks and superficial things the number one priority in their lives.

  No, he didn’t want to date a damn troll with a chin full of warts, but he wanted a woman who preferred taking a walk on the beach to spending an hour in a pedicure chair, or a woman who didn’t need to take an hour putting on makeup just to go grab a pizza.

  Like he didn’t mind staring at a Corvette, they were pretty and everything, and he might not mind test-driving one, but he damn sure didn’t want to own one. He’d prefer his reliable Ford Edge SUV. Maybe it wasn’t the newest or sexiest car, but he could do what he needed to do with it, it was comfortable to drive, and it never left him feeling less-than.

  Plus it was paid for.

  He grabbed himself a beer from the fridge and worked on it as he finished cooking the cube steaks. This had been a shit day, and he’d earned it. The beer, and the dinner.

  Although making Kyle’s favorite dinner for him was as much an apology for Louisa’s bullshit as it was a reward for not ending up needing to call Kyle for help making bail after the morning he’d had.

  Thank god we never told Louisa about our extracurricular activities.

  They’d kept Louisa in the dark about that, because they’d met her outside the lifestyle, a friend of a friend who worked at a restaurant they frequented.

  When they were sitting at the kitchen table, Tristan risked a glance across at his friend and roommate. Grey-blue eyes that always made Tristan’s cock twitch with interest, brown hair barely threaded with grey yet, and sun-ironed creases at the outer edges of those sexy-as-fuck eyes from Kyle’s years working mostly outside for the concrete company. He’d started there after high school on the mixing crews, working up to getting his CDL and being a driver, and then now as a supervisor.

  Although as Kyle related his own shit-show of a day to Tristan, it was apparent he was still a jack of all trades.

  “Two trucks broke down on the road today. On top of that, I had three drivers who all went to the same buffet restaurant last night call in this morning with food poisoning. So being three drivers down today—and because I also needed the two who were broke down to stay with their trucks until the wreckers hauled them back—and having a full schedule of deliveries this morning, guess who had to climb into a truck to make deliveries?”

  Kyle sliced through a section of breaded cube steak and forked the piece between his full, sexy lips while Tristan’s cock struggled to rise up and say howdy the entire time.

  “I told the plant manager today he’d best not give me any grief about my overtime this week,” Kyle added.

  “What’d he say?”

  “He agreed, and actually apologized. At least we saved the drum on one of the break-downs. The other one, we’re going to have to chip the batch out of the damn thing because the engine went down.”

  “What happened to the other? The one you saved?”

  “Rear end gears stripped. But the driver could keep the drum spinning, so he was able to dump a bag of sugar in it.”

  “Sugar?”

  “Yeah. We keep an emergency bag in all the trucks. They mix it in a bucket of water and dump it in. Keeps the mix from setting. Better to be out ten yards of mix than having to spend days inside a damn drum chipping it out with a jackhammer. We had the wrecker back it into the field behind the plant so the driver could dump the load, rinse it out, then they moved it into the shop for us.”

  “That’s…crazy.”

  “Right?” He grinned. “What’s funnier is when I go and buy replacement bags every month, in case a bag got damp and hardened up in the cab, or we’ve used it. We have an account with a restaurant wholesaler. The clerk checks me out and sees the account name come up, and if they’ve never checked me out before it confuses the hell out of them.”

  Tris smiled. “Sadist.” He could totally see his friend evilly giggling over that.

  “Hey, I’ll take my sadism when, where, and how I can get it.”

  * * * *

  Normally, the household rule was whoever cooked didn’t have to do dishes. But tonight Tris waved Kyle off. “I got it. Seriously. The whole ‘I owe you’ thing.”

  “You didn’t know she’d flake,” Kyle said. “I signed off on her, too.”

  Tristan owned the house, but having roommates meant he could eat things other than ramen, and had been able to pay off his SUV and credit cards, as well as his student loans from college.

  And it meant he was able to actually put a little money into savings every month, which was a big deal when several months out of the year he wasn’t actually drawing a paycheck, unless he picked up a part-time summer job.

  Kyle had been living with him the better part of five years now, and they’d known each other for
even longer than that. They’d grown extremely close as friends.

  Although Tristan would love it to be more.

  Much more.

  He suspected Kyle was about to argue with him over the chore, insisting on helping, when his cell played the Looney Tunes theme.

  Tris snorted. “Does she know that’s her ring tone?”

  “No. Shh.” He answered. “Hey, what’s up? … Yeah, sure. I’ll be there in a few. … No, no problem. Yeah, bye.”

  Tristan fought back the surge of jealousy that caught him off-guard. “What is it this time?”

  “Marilyn’s car won’t start.” He slid his phone into the pocket of his shorts. “Sorry.” He headed for the front door.

  “Why are you apologizing?”

  “I…” He stopped and turned. When he spoke again, Tristan didn’t miss how Kyle sounded…subdued. “You put up with a lot with me and what I went through with her and…everything. I appreciate it.” His grey-blue gaze settled on Tristan, meeting his, holding steady for a moment.

  Tristan’s mouth went dry and he actually had to swallow before he spoke. “No problem, I told you. Go on, white knight, and save the damn damsel. Where’s her louse, anyway?”

  “At work, apparently. And she doesn’t have AAA. She’s at the grocery store with Dillon. I can’t not help her.”

  Tristan took a deep breath and nodded. Dillon was only nine, and while Kyle wasn’t his biological father, the two loved each other like father and son since Kyle was the only “father” Dillon had ever known.

  Marilyn’s current “louse,” Tristan’s generic term for her boyfriends, apparently wasn’t very fatherly, in Dillon’s eyes.

  “Go,” Tristan gently said, sensing a moment slipping through his fingers before it could even become something more. “Kid needs you.”

  He held his breath until he heard the front door shut behind Kyle, then stood at the kitchen sink and watched his truck back out of the driveway.

  Yeah, I have it bad for the guy.

  The problem was, he’d eventually need to nut up and say something, or risk watching him end up with yet another woman who wasn’t right for him.