I Want Candy (21 page)

Suddenly, the whole world flooded with a flash of light, and Candy winced, expecting to hear another crashing
boom!
explode all around her. Instead, she heard Miller’s voice.

“There she is! Arrest her!”

Candy ratcheted her neck to look behind her, and what she saw was a spectacle that made no sense. A half-dozen police vehicles were pulled onto the lawn, lights flashing in the rain, spotlights aimed directly up her skirt.

“Oh, my God!” Candy tried to push herself off the ledge but something was stuck. She couldn’t move!

“Get me down!” she screamed. She flailed around with one hand and discovered that her skirt had bunched all the way up to the middle of her back, which meant her entire ass was exposed! “Oh, my God!” she yelled out again, trying desperately to pull her skirt down.

Suddenly the lights went on in her mother’s apartment, and Candy felt something smack her on top of the head. Once. Again. And again and again.

“Thief! Trailer park trash! She’s probably armed!”

Lorraine Estes?

She’d climbed in the wrong window. And Lorraine was beating her on the head with a rolled-up newspaper.

“Candy. Let me help you.”

Turner?
“Oh, God, get me down from here! Please! I’m hung up on something and I can’t move. Help me!”

“It’s gonna be all right,” he assured her, his voice slow and steady. “I’m gonna reach up under you now and see if I can help you get unstuck.”

The soothing sound of that mellow voice in the middle of all this crazy shit was almost too wonderful to be real. Then she felt his hand reach up under the front of her body and rub against some extremely sensitive places before he squeezed it between her belly and the brick.

“I think … wait … your belt loop is twisted around the window latch. Here. Hold on.” Turner’s forearm and hand began to twist and turn, doing some pretty amazing things to places on her body that had nothing to do with belt loops.

Candy shut her eyes and wanted to die right there. She swiveled her head around again in the hopes that the audience had dispersed, only to find that over a dozen residents had wandered out, clustered under their umbrellas, hoping to get a look at the crazy woman stuck ass up in a freakin’ window. Among those whose mouths were hanging open were most of the law enforcement types she’d delivered lunch to a couple weeks back. The pretty woman with dark hair looked horrified. A guy who’d tried to tip her was smiling like he’d won the lottery.

That’s it—she was going to cry now.

“Candace?” Her mother popped her head out the window just to her right. “Oh, dear Lord! What are you doing, child?”

“Here, Sheriff.” Miller scurried under his umbrella and held out a utility step stool to Turner, not bothering to hide his glee.

“Thanks.” Turner climbed up and got face-to-face with Candy. He stroked her hair and whispered in her ear. “Candy baby, you’re a hot, wet mess. What in the world were you thinking?”

“Just get me down, Turner.” Her gaze latched onto his and she saw his eyes crinkle up in amusement. “You can poke fun at me later, but please,
please
get me down
now.
”

“You got it. Now, you’re going to try to unsnag the belt loop when I lift you, okay?” He grabbed her by her hips and lifted enough for Candy to reach underneath and rip the small denim loop off a hook-shaped piece of metal.

“Got it!” she said.

Turner immediately pulled her skirt down to cover the lower half of her body.

“Thank you,” she said, feeling the tears start to stream down her face.

“Stay there just a second and I’ll help you down.” Turner climbed off the utility stool and stood on the ground with his arms out. Candy lowered herself down the wall and he caught her. She was so ashamed and worn out that her legs didn’t hold her.

“Come on,” Turner said, propping her up and walking her toward his SUV parked in the grass.

“I am filing charges!” Miller screamed. “Don’t think you’re getting away with this, Miss Carmichael!”

Candy felt herself start to collapse. A sob escaped her shaking lips. She was soaked to the skin and the rain dripped from her hair into her eyes. At least it would mask the tears.

Turner opened the door and helped her inside the passenger seat. He put his hand on her cheek and looked at her with concern. “Just stay put. I’ll take care of Miller and then we’ll get you dried off, okay?”

She nodded, wiping the water out of her eyes, feeling herself start to shake all over. Candy sat in the silent SUV and with the windows sealed. She could hear her own heartbeat. She could hear rain pound and her teeth chatter. But she couldn’t hear a word Turner was saying to Miller. Candy could only watch him touch Miller’s arm to calm him down, nod patiently as the nasty man yelled and complained, and reassure Miller that he had the situation under control. At that moment, she was immensely grateful for Turner’s people skills.

Suddenly, she panicked.
Sophie!
Candy groped around under her skirt to find that the bracelet was still in place—oh, thank you, God!—but felt sick with the knowledge that everyone must have seen the belt around her thigh. She’d have to come up with a viable explanation. Maybe she could say she didn’t trust banks, which would be accurate enough, and chose to carry her pay under her clothes.

She watched all the law enforcement people start to get in their cars and drive off, the pretty woman stopping to speak with Turner before she flashed a look of pity in Candy’s direction and left. What were all those cops doing here, anyway? Candy was just a woman overstaying her welcome at a senior citizen home! You’d have thought that kind of all-out response would be saved for a dangerous terrorist or something!

One by one the residents went back inside, some waving to Candy before they disappeared. It took a good fifteen minutes, but Turner eventually finished his negotiations with Miller and jogged back to the car. He got in the driver’s seat and backed up.

“Take me to my car,” Candy said.

Turner put the gearshift in drive and frowned at her. “Where is it?”

“Just out back.” She pointed toward the rear of the building, and as they drove she noticed the remains of Gerrall’s orange crème cake oozing all over the pavement. She busted out laughing.

“Something funny?” Turner looked sideways at her.

She pointed to the wet blob. “I was thinking of that stupid old song Viv used to put on her record player when we were kids. Remember? ‘Someone left the cake out in the rain and I don’t think I can take it’—”

“‘Cause it took so long to bake it…’”

Suddenly, they both exploded in laughter. Turner seemed to be enjoying himself as much as she was, at least until her guffaws turned into sobs and she bent over from the weight of the ridiculous, sad disaster that her life had become, hanging her head between her knees as she cried.

Turner stopped his truck. “Are you all right, baby?”

And just like that, in her mind she was seventeen. It was that night Turner called to ask her out, that awful night she swore hadn’t been real. She felt the sting of her father’s hand, but it was nothing compared to the sting of his words. She heard her mother’s high-pitched begging. She watched as the red velvet cake dripped down the walls.

Candy quickly sat upright, gasping at the clarity of that memory. She glanced at Turner. He looked worried, doubtful of her sanity, even.

He touched her shoulder. “What is it, Candy?”

She shook her head. Tried to swallow. Felt panic rise in her throat.

“Tell me.”

“That night you called…” Her voice sounded far away to her own ears, as if it belonged to someone else. Candy stared out the window. “I have to tell you about that night you called and my father answered. I have to explain to you why I forgot. I have to—”

“You don’t have to do anything, sweetheart. I’m here and I’m listening if there’s something you want me to know, but you don’t have to do or say anything.”

She looked sideways at Turner. He was so calm. Sensible. He just didn’t know. “My parents were having a dinner party for some of Daddy’s clients. My mom asked me to bake a red velvet cake for dessert. I did that a lot for those parties, you know, and I’d have to sit there and look nice and not say much. I hated those dinners. Daddy would be so charming and nice and it would be like he was showing off his lovely, happy family and his daughter’s cakes so these suckers would feel good buying an insurance policy from him. It was awful.”

“Sounds like it.”

“You called during dessert.”

“Bad timing, I bet.”

Candy nodded. She couldn’t look at him for the rest of it. She stared down at her hands, twisting on each other in her wet lap. “He called me to the phone and stood over me while I spoke to you. He was wearing a suit and tie. He smelled like that horrible cologne he wore mixed with Jack Daniel’s and anger. I could feel it rolling off him in waves.”

Turner moved a section of wet hair from her cheek. It felt reassuring. She continued.

“Daddy pressed up so close to me. I had to get off the phone. I was shaking all over when I hung up and had to go back to the table and pretend like nothing was wrong. The whole time my mother was laughing a little too much and trying to cover over Daddy’s anger. When the clients finally left…”

Candy took a big breath. She had wanted to calm herself but it sounded like a hysterical gasp for air instead. All she wanted to do was get the whole story out before she lost it completely.

“He hit me in the face. He called me a white trash whore. He threw me up against the wall.”

“Your father beat you. You never told me.”

Candy nodded. “I never told anyone. But it only happened sometimes. That night was the worst ever. And when he was done hitting me, he grabbed the cake stand from the table and threw it against the wall right by my head and there was cake and icing everywhere, all over the carpet and my dress and in my hair…”

“Oh, Candy. No. I’m so sorry.”

“And he just kept screaming at me saying, ‘I’m not sending you to some damn college to whore your way through life! You might as well just stay home and bake cookies! That’s what you want anyway, right? A bakery? Hell, you can be some stupid hillbilly girl and bake cakes and slut around Bigler without me wasting my hard-earned money on college! Why don’t you just do that?’”

Candy let her head drop into her hands and she began to cry again.

“I threw up all that night and again at school the next day, just sick with fear of my dad and guilt about how I treated you, and … I remember praying that you would never, ever talk about what had happened. I wouldn’t have been able to deal with it. And you never did … Turner, you never brought it up again, and that made it easier for me to forget the whole night … forget that it ever happened.”

His hand remained on her back. She could feel the heat and strength of his palm through the cold, wet fabric stuck to her skin. She continued to heave and cry like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum in the cereal aisle of the Piggly Wiggly, feeling more ashamed than she had a few minutes ago, with her butt on display for half of Cataloochee County, if that was even possible.

“Oh, Candy. Baby.”

She bolted straight up at the sound of Turner’s voice. For a moment, she’d almost forgotten he was there. Oh, God, the last thing in the world she wanted was to let him see her like this.

She peered through the windshield and saw her car. She dug her hand into the front pocket of her denim skirt, located her key, and pulled on the door handle.

Turner grabbed her upper arm. “Where are you going?”

She ignored him and turned away.

“Candy, look at me. Seriously. Where the hell are you going? You’re wet to the bone. You’re traumatized. Please, let me take you—”

“Thank you for everything, Turner.” She managed to get the words out in between gasps for air. She didn’t dare look at him. “I am sorry if … I embarrassed you … in front of your coworkers.”

“What? I don’t give a rat’s ass about them. I only—”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” She jumped out the door and ran to her car, throwing herself behind the wheel.

With a loud backfire, the car started. She turned on her windshield wipers, swiped at her eyes again, and hit the gas. Right then she made a bargain with herself.
Keep it together until you reach the Tip Top,
she told herself.
Then you can grab your toiletries and a towel, buy yourself a dollar-fifty shower, and spend the entire fifteen minutes of hot water behind the locked shower stall door, alone, where you can totally lose your shit in peace.

*   *   *

Turner phoned in his brief report to the dispatcher while he followed Candy—at a respectable distance—out of Cherokee Pines. He had no choice but to follow. For starters, she was hysterical and trying to drive a death trap of a vehicle through mountain roads during a downpour. Also, he just didn’t think she should be alone. If ever a woman needed someone to hold her and tell her everything was going to be all right, it was Candy Carmichael, on this particular night. That story she’d just told him left him vibrating with anger and numb with sadness. If he had seen even a hint of what was going on in that house when they were kids, Turner would have killed the man with his bare hands.

Candy had hidden it so well.

And now Turner had the overwhelming urge to bring her home with him and keep her close. Keep her safe. The way he hadn’t been able to do when they were kids.

When Turner received that call from Wainright Miller about a break-in at the senior home, his heart had dropped like a rock. His first thought was it had something to do with the Spiveys and that Candy was in danger. He’d contacted O’Connor, who called in other members of the task force already in town. Happily, his hunch turned out to be a little off target.

Once he’d helped Candy out of the window, Miller had given him the details—he’d discovered that Gerrall Spivey was helping Candy stay longer than guests were permitted, working out a deal where Candy baked him a cake for every night he sneaked her inside. At least that explained how her cakes had made their way into the meth lab.