The parking lot was all but empty with the exception of an old red pickup truck parked off to the side and a small Ford Fusion that sat next to it.
She pulled into the spot next to the Fusion and busied herself looking at her phone, as if waiting for someone. Seconds turned to minutes and minutes to half an hour before she heard the rumble of an engine and saw an old rusted-out silver pickup truck pull into the parking lot.
She sank lower in her seat and stared through the slats in the steering wheel as the vehicle pulled around the back and disappeared.
Fifteen minutes passed painfully slow before the truck reappeared. It rumbled past and she strained her eyes to see the driver. It wasn’t a face she recognized and she knew it wasn’t going to be as easy as discovering that it was, indeed, someone she already knew. She was going to have to go to a lot more trouble if she wanted to find out the man’s identity.
The truck pulled out of the drive and headed down the road. Brandy counted to five and then she started the car and followed. She stayed a decent way back as the truck neared the interstate and prayed that he wouldn’t get on and haul ass.
He didn’t.
Instead, he pulled into a small convenience store that sat on the left. She felt a surge of victory.
She swerved into a parking spot while the man eased up to a gas pump, killed the engine, and climbed out. Sure enough, she’d never seen him before. He was tall, with dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, a jaw that was three days past a five o’clock shadow, and dark-brown eyes. Tall. Attractive even, if Brandy had been looking to hook up.
She wasn’t.
She needed a name. An identity.
She watched him walk inside. The glass door rocked shut behind him. A few minutes later, he strolled back out, a bottled Coke in one hand and his wallet in the other. He climbed into the old rusted-out truck, gunned the engine, and then pulled out. A few seconds later, he hit the entrance to the interstate and disappeared down the highway.
Brandy drew a deep breath, climbed out of Bertha, and walked inside. While she might not know the driver, she most certainly knew the clerk standing behind the counter at the Pac-n-Save.
Ivy Earline Sawyer-Hilstead had bright-red hair teased into a perfectly coiffed beehive that had gone out of style decades ago, along with her cat’s-eye glasses hanging from a gold chain around her neck. But since she was just this side of seventy, no one had enlightened her to that all-important fact. The glasses slid down her nose, revealing bright-blue shadow and heavily rimmed eyes.
“Well, lookee who we have here,” Ivy said. “If it ain’t Brandy Tucker.”
“Hi, Miss Ivy.”
“Stopped by your place a few days ago and had one of them brownies. Wasn’t nearly as good as the ones I make at home, mind you, but I guess it’ll do for most folks around these parts that ain’t never had a decent batch.”
Ivy wasn’t just old, she was mean, too. Add a heavy dose of snobbiness courtesy of her last name and the one-hundred-year-old feud that had been raging between the Tuckers and the Sawyers, and to say Ivy was unpleasant would have been a huge understatement.
Still, the woman was old. That is, just this side of heaven and so Brandy minded her p’s and q’s even though she wanted to tell Ivy that a box of Betty Crocker Fudge Brownie Supreme couldn’t hold a candle to her award-winning chocolate nirvana brownies.
“I’m sure you could teach me a thing or two,” she told Ivy. “You’ve got so many years of baking on me, after all. A lot of years.” The emphasis on lot wasn’t lost on the woman and she stiffened. “But I didn’t come to swap tips,” Brandy added. “That gentleman, the one who was just here in that old pickup truck, he lost something on the road back there,” she blurted out—the first thing she could think of. “A blanket flew out of the bed and fell on the side of the road. I grabbed it. I was hoping to return it but he pulled out of here before I could stop him.”
“A blanket?”
“A horse blanket,” Brandy nodded, feeding the lie with an ease that actually surprised her. “You know how expensive those things are. I’d hate for him to get to wherever it is that he’s going and realize it just blew away. If you knew his name, I could get it back to him.”
“Ain’t got time to play the Good Samaritan, little girl. I got work to do.” Ivy indicated the half-answered crossword puzzle on the counter next to her. “Find out yourself.”
“Okay, if you’re not interested in a reward, then I guess I’ll just figure it out on my own—”
“Reward? What reward?”
“The one I’m offering for information.”
“And why would you offer a reward just to return a smelly old horse blanket?”
“Because I don’t want to be saddled with someone else’s belongings.” When Ivy didn’t seem the least bit convinced, Brandy added, “That, and he’s awful cute.”
“So now we get to the real reason.” The old woman swept a glance from Brandy’s head to the sizable chest pressing against her bakery T-shirt. “I should have known what you were up to the moment I saw you.”
The dig sliced through Brandy, but she wasn’t about to flinch. It didn’t matter what Ivy thought. What anyone thought for that matter. She knew the truth. She knew she wasn’t the slut that everyone believed her to be.
But if playing the part now would help get her that much closer to Kenny Roy’s moonshine connection …
“What do you say? You don’t want to stand in the way of true lust, do you?”
The woman’s gaze narrowed. “What’s in it for me?”
“I’d offer brownies, but yours are so much better—”
“I’ll take ’em. Not ’cause they’re better than mine, mind you. But I’m so tired after being on my feet all day that I don’t get much time to whip up any. They’re a damn sight better than store-bought, I suppose.”
“Great. Stop by tomorrow and I’ll have a dozen waiting for you.”
“Make it two and you’ve got yourself a deal.” Brandy nodded and Ivy added, “Never seen him before.” She turned toward the register. “But he used a credit card. Let me see…” She licked her finger and started picking through the small stack of receipts. “Here we go. Name’s Ryder Jax.”
The name echoed in Brandy’s head, pushing and pulling at her memory. He was one of the bootleggers her grandfather had done business with on occasion and part of the infamous trio of moonshine runners who delivered from here to Houston, and every county in between.
While she’d never seen the man firsthand, she’d heard his name mentioned more than once by her gramps. Ryder and his buddies were local legends, and more than a little dangerous. But then, that was the nature of the business. “Thanks, Miss Ivy,” Brandy said as she turned to walk out of the store.
“Don’t thank me,” the woman called after her. “Just make sure my brownies are boxed and ready by two.”
* * *
She had a name.
While it wasn’t much, it was enough to fuel her hope despite the crappy day at the bakery. She made one last stop at Sweet Somethings to box up some muffins before leaving them on Kenny Roy’s doorstep and heading home.
Home, she vowed. She’d spent two nights with Tyler already. It was time for a break.
She held tight to her decision as she started down Main Street. Besides, it was way too early. Barely eight o’clock. She couldn’t very well show up now.
That’s what she told herself. No way did her reluctance have anything to do with the fact that she was starting to like Tyler McCall. Instead, she turned left and hit the road toward home.