Dana Marton - Broslin Creek 05 - Broslin Bride (2 page)

“If it can’t wait…” Thinning hair in a comb-over, cheap black tie in a disorderly knot, he scowled at the schedule and counted up her hours. From the top of the hour, even though the maids were required to show up fifteen minutes early to stock their carts. The end of their workday too was usually rounded back to the nearest hour.

Luanne shifted on her feet. “I appreciate it.”

She figured she, and the other girls, could take home at least a hundred extra bucks per month if they were paid for all their time, money they all desperately needed, but Earl wouldn’t hear about that, so she tried for what she might actually receive. “I worked those five hours for Jackie.”

Jackie moonlighted as a cashier at Arnie’s gas station and she got stuck there Tuesday when the second-shift girl didn’t come in.

Earl looked up. Frowned. Patted his hair into place. “I don’t remember.”

“You can ask her.”

He made some noncommittal noises. Then he wrote a check for her regular hours with a half-mumbled promise to check into the extra time later.

The Pennsylvania minimum wage for tipped employees like waiters, hotel maids, and bartenders was $2.83 per hour. The law also required that tips and wages added up to the real minimum wage, $7.25 in PA. Since the maids at the Mushroom Mile Motel made roughly $3.50 in tips, Earl had to pay them $3.75, about which he griped, moaned, and groaned regularly.

He owed Luanne $18.75 for the five hours. A small windfall. Which he wasn’t going to pay today, or ever, if he could help it.

She stood there, disappointment washing over her.

The twins were turning four tomorrow. The real bakery in town had always been out of her reach, but she could have sprung for a grocery store cake. The girls had been begging for weeks for the ladybug cake from the grocery store’s bakery. For the first time, she planned on them having something fancy, something better than the boxed cake mix she made every year, the cake flat and square and frosted in the pan. This year, she’d planned on real candles, not the old tea lights she’d been reusing. With an extra $18.75 in her pocket, she could afford all that
and
ice cream.
 

All of which she’d stupidly promised already.

She put on her nicest smile. “Are you sure I couldn’t have the extra hours now? I wouldn’t ask.” She swallowed. “I’m sorry if I sound pushy. It’s just that I kind of promised something for the kids.”

Earl shot her a black look of disapproval. “Now’s the time to save on them. No sense wasting your money. They won’t even remember these years.”

He had five kids with three ex-wives, decades of dubious experience he doled out freely to his employees, usually to convince them that they didn’t need to get paid.

He pushed to his feet and shuffled around the table. Stopped too close to Luanne, his coffee breath hitting her face. “If you’re looking to pick up some extra, I still need someone to clean the house.” He put a hand on her arm and rubbed the inside of her elbow with his thumb.

Cold dread crawled up her spine as she held still.

Some of the more desperate maids had fallen for Earl’s trap over the years. Work at Earl’s house included hours on their knees, scrubbing floors, tub, toilet—all of which Luanne could handle—then more time on their knees in front of Earl—which she couldn’t.

She stepped back. “I wish I could. But I already clean at the library. Two jobs are all I can handle for now. I have to take care of the twins too.” She hoped she sounded appreciative of the offer and full of regret that she couldn’t take advantage of Earl’s “generosity.”

He watched her with a calculating look. “I might have to cut hours here for some of the staff. You could pick up those hours at my place.”

She flashed one last smile, then fled the office, bumping into Jackie in the hallway.

The other maid took one look at her face and raised an eyebrow.

Luanne shook her head:
You don’t want to know.
 

“Weatherman’s calling for a storm later this week,” Jackie, a hardworking black woman in her forties with a heart of gold, announced cheerfully.

Luanne grinned. The maids had a running joke about their hopes for lightning to strike the general manager. “Cars drive off the road every day,” she countered with her own favorite revenge fantasy. Earl lived nearby and walked to work and back since sitting—in an office chair or in his car—was hard on his hemorrhoids. He’d rather walk, even in bad weather. Plenty of chances for an inattentive driver to skip the curb.

Jackie grinned back at her. “That’s the spirit.” Then they went their separate ways.

Veronica, Earl’s third ex-wife, was back in her place by the front desk. She must have been on a break earlier. She was a Jersey girl, with Jersey girl hair from the eighties. The big hair went with her electric blue eye shadow.

Earl came out of his office and passed by Veronica, looked her over, winked. “Hey, I think I need to put my mouth where my money is.”

His standard joke for his ex. He was referring to the breast implants he’d paid for when they’d been married.

Veronica narrowed her eyes and puckered her lips in a confused-blonde look. “Are you talking about that expensive hemorrhoid surgery of yours? Honey, you ain’t that bendy.”

Luanne choked, holding back laughter.

Earl focused his displeasure on her, his eyes narrowed to threatening slits. “Are you still wasting time here? I’m not paying you to hang out in the hallways. People are waiting for their rooms to be cleaned. I’m the one who has to listen to them complain.”

“You’re right. I’m really sorry,” she said as Earl marched outside in a huff.

“Guests will gripe, no matter what. Everything’s not your fault,” Veronica said. “You know, you don’t have to apologize to Earl for everything.”

Veronica could get away with saying whatever she wanted since she was the mother of two of Earl’s boys. But Luanne knew that the rest of the staff better toe the line. “I should be getting back to work.”

Veronica rolled her eyes after her ex-husband. “Can’t tell you how many nights I spent lying awake, thinking about holding a pillow over his head.” She sighed. “I still can’t believe he cheated on me with Stacy Lucado. Couldn’t resist all the sweet innocence, he said.” Veronica snorted. “She had more truckers in and out of her than this motel.”

She shook her head, waving the words away with fingers tipped with the fanciest gel nails Luanne had ever seen, white and red flowers on pink. “Oh, forget I said that. Let’s just pretend I’ve been gracious and ladylike. He is paying child support. He’s terrible with women. But he’s pretty good with his kids.”

Earl Cosgrove, a complex human being
. One of the mysteries of the universe, Luanne thought. She grabbed a newspaper from the counter. “Room #44,” she said, and Veronica added the charge on the computer.
 

Luanne dropped off the paper in front of the trucker’s door, then she finished room #46 and moved on to #47, her last one for the day. Thoroughly trashed, that one, pizza boxes on the bed, garbage everywhere, the furniture moved around, mud ground into the carpet, shampoo bottles floating in the toilet.

She had a fishnet she’d picked up at a garage sale for twenty-five cents for things like that. Live and learn was the name of the game in the hospitality industry.

She decided to leave the toilet-fishing expedition for last and headed over to the dresser, keeping fingers crossed. With a nice tip, she could still salvage some of the birthday celebration. She could at least spring for a boxed mix for the cake. Otherwise, she was going to have to frost her half box of graham crackers.

She cleared off the dresser. But under all the garbage, she found absolutely nothing.

Okay. No big deal.
She closed her eyes for a second and swallowed the lump in her throat. People had more serious problems than not being able to buy a cake.
 

Friday. Date. Good things ahead.

She finished the room, doing the best damn job she could, then put the biggest smile on her face and went to pick up the kids from Jen.

Jen O’Brian had been her best friend in high school. They went their own ways for a while when Jen shipped off to college and Luanne stayed home to work and help her mom pay the bills. Even when Jen came home, she got married and had a baby, too busy to hang out. But Luanne and she became friends again once Luanne took guardianship of the twins after her mother’s death, and Jen began watching the girls.

Jen was on the phone when she opened the door.
Doctor
, she mouthed, then said into the phone, “Okay, yes. We can try that.”
 

Luanne gathered up the girls and left her friend to take care of business, simply whispering a “See you later,” as she headed out the door with the kids. Jen was desperate for another child, currently in the throes of her sixth round of fertility treatments.

“Bobby cut Daisy’s hair with the play scissor,” Mia tattled on their way home.

Luanne whipped back to look. Okay. No chestnut curls were missing. Thank God for plastic scissors.

“I pushed him down,” Mia said proudly, her brown eyes glinting. “We’re family, and we protect each other.”

Luanne winced. “When I said that, I meant that I’ll protect you two chipmunks, because I’m the big sister.”

“I’m the big sister too,” Mia argued.

“No fair. One minute,” Daisy mumbled. “I’m not a baby.”

“No, you’re not.” Luanne smiled at them in the rearview mirror. “You’re both big girls. You’ll be four tomorrow. You’ll be going to preschool soon.” Her throat tightened. She wasn’t ready for the girls to head out into the world.

She drew a deep breath and took the opportunity to add a teachable moment into their day as they got out of the car in front of the tiny two-bedroom ranch home she rented. “You shouldn’t push anyone, Mia. Okay? If you do that at school, you’ll get in trouble with the teacher.”

“I don’t want to go to school.”

Daisy looked doubtful too, but she didn’t say anything. For the most part, she let Mia do the talking. Luanne worried about how that would work at school if the two got separated, put in different groups. Something she’d have to ask about when they went in to register. A problem for another day.

For the next couple of hours, she focused on nothing but Mia and Daisy. She wanted them to feel loved and wanted, not a problem she’d inherited that she had to shuffle around in between her chores and work. She played with them, read to them, fed them, bathed them, got them into their pj’s. Only when they were settled in front of the TV for their favorite cartoon did she get ready for her date.

She began by showering the spray-cleaner smell out of her hair. Next, she dragged on her best jeans, topped it off with a cute silk top that she’d found at Goodwill, fitted to her curves but with a decent neckline, not too slutty, not too nunsy, just right for a first date.

She had no money for drinks, but Tayron, the bartender, had promised her a drink on the house the other day when she’d given him a ride. She could nurse that one drink all night, no problem. She wasn’t a big drinker. She’d picked Finnegan’s because it was public, and because if they went to a restaurant and her date wanted to split the bill, she wouldn’t be able to pay for her half.

She put on fresh makeup, tried for smoky eyes, ended up looking like a raccoon on drugs, wiped it off, tried again. Her eyes were a lighter shade of brown than the twins’, not exactly pretty, but maybe interesting.

You always emphasized your best feature to draw attention from the worst. If you emphasized everything, you came off overdone and slutty, which she wasn’t. And she didn’t like her lips anyway; she had a stupid crease in the middle of her bottom lip.

Okay, clothes, check; makeup, check. She sprayed perfume in the air, then walked through the cloud of scent so it’d cling equally to her shirt, skin, and hair. She never sprayed perfume directly on her clothes. No sense in staining a perfectly good top.

After she finished, she drove the girls back to Jen’s for a prebirthday sleepover.

“Ready for the party tomorrow?” Jen asked Luanne after hugging and kissing the girls silly. She loved them as if they were her own.

“Almost.” Luanne bent to take the girls’ shoes off.

“How about for tonight?” Jen grinned, offering her a cola. “You look sexy.”

“I wish.” Luanne tugged at a stray lock of hair as she accepted the drink.

Without a curling iron to give her blond locks body, her hair was seriously limp and way too fine for any kind of volume, unlike Jen’s thick reddish-brown waves that could have starred in a shampoo commercial. Where Luanne was too thin from running around and being on her feet almost constantly, Jen actually had curves, especially since Bobby had been born—the kind of curves men noticed.

Luanne looked at her own chest. “Do you think this top is too low-cut?” she asked, hit by a sudden wave of insecurity. “What if Brett thinks I’m a total hussy?”

“Yeah, because that’s what guys think when they get a glimpse of boobs.” Jen rolled her eyes.

Then she glanced at the girls giggling on the couch, her gaze distant, an odd look coming over her face as she turned back to Luanne. She blinked, then a smile replaced her strange expression. “Oh, to be single and going on hot dates.”

“You don’t want to be single and going out on hot dates.”

Jen was a family gal through and through. She wanted a second child badly to give Bobby a little brother or sister, so her son could have what the twins did.

“Fine. I want to be home with a bushel of kids.” She smiled a little wider. “I do. But you deserve a hot date.”

“I’ll settle for
nice
.” Her first date in a year, Luanne thought.
Nice
would have been an excellent start.
 

“How about hot sex with a nice guy?” Jen suggested ever so helpfully.

“Not on a first date.”

“You’ve known Brett for a while now.”

“Over the Internet.”

“He’s a dog walker. You met him in a goldendoodle online fan group. I don’t think anyone who’s into poodle–golden retriever mixes so much can be a creep.”