Kane's Ransom: A BWWM Mafia Romance Novel (3 page)

As he backed out of his spot and headed across the diner's parking lot, he caught sight of Alicia through the plate-glass windows of the diner. He didn't know if she was looking back at him, but he lifted one hand off of his handlebars and gave her a little wave as he pulled out of the parking lot.

Killian still had a few more errands to take care of today - picking up around his house, cooking himself some dinner, doing some yard work - but he let himself think back to his time at the diner, the highlight of his day.

A quiet day, he thought to himself. Just what he wanted.

Chapter three

Alicia gave Mr. Kane - no, Killian, she reminded herself - a last little smile as he headed out of the diner. Unlike with some of her other patrons, her smile was genuine; she really did like Killian, even if he seemed strangely aloof at times.

As he rolled out of the parking lot on his motorcycle, she headed over to his table to pick up his bill. She picked up the folded over bill, and her eyes widened as she saw the pair of twenties drop out from inside.

Turning and looking up, she considered dashing after Killian, flagging him down in the street to let him know that he'd tipped her far too much. Her ears caught the sound of the man's motorcycle pulling away, however, and she gave up on returning the extra money.

Besides, she admitted ruefully to herself, she really could use the extra money, even though she'd made no mention of her troubles to Killian.

Tucking the extra money into one of the pockets of her apron, she started her next lap around the diner, checking in on her other patrons. Just twenty minutes left on her shift, she reminded herself, trying to keep her eyes from returning back to the clock on the diner's wall. Nearly done, and then she could at least get off her feet at the bus stop.

Even as she smiled automatically at her other customers, promising to fetch them their inane requests right away, yes sir, yes ma'am, her thoughts kept on returning back to Killian, although she had to keep reminding herself to not refer to him mentally as Mr. Kane. She didn't know much about the man, she had to admit, even though he'd been her regular for months, now.

He always seemed as though he was consciously holding something back, she thought to herself. He was always friendly, and he returned her smiles, never treating her as a second-class citizen, seeing her as a person, not just a waitress. But still, he always acted a little reticent, not opening up.

Killian never shared anything about his past, that was what it was, Alicia realized a minute later. She had a good sense of his personality, but she didn't know anything about where he'd come from before he started showing up at the diner, what he'd done before he started trying to write a novel.

And even though he always smiled back at her, she sometimes thought she saw darkness lurking behind those pale blue eyes.

The minutes ticked away, until the minute hand of the clock finally struggled all the way up to the twelve. Alicia checked on her last couple of tables, picked up the last couple of dishes, and let the diner's grumpy owner, Mr. Aldridge, know that she was done with her shift for the day. He waved her out of his tiny little back office without even looking up from the papers on his cluttered desk.

Outside the diner, Alicia took her time in walking down to the bus stop, enjoying the warm Texas sunlight on her dark skin. It was still fairly early in the spring, and despite the warm light, she still felt a little chill in the air as a breeze carried it past her. Little goose bumps popped out on her bare arms as she walked along the side of the road.

"Hey! Darkie! You looking for a good time?"

Alicia stiffened as a loudly roaring pickup truck thundered past her, with a smirking, gap-toothed redneck leaning out the passenger side window. "Yeah! You looking like the cutest escaped slave I seen!" he shouted as he whipped past her, his scraggly hair blowing out behind the truck.

Growling under her breath, Alicia raised both hands in an offensive gesture at the retreating pickup. She didn't know if the jerks saw her, but the double upraised middle fingers at least made her feel a little better, although she still half expected to see steam rising up off her head in the window reflections at the bus stop.

Even now, racism was alive and well, she reminded herself. No matter where she went, she'd always have to deal with some idiots who couldn't see past the dark color of her skin, insisting that she was a second class citizen for reasons completely beyond her control.

That truly made her angry. More than the stack of bills sitting on her counter at home, more than the physical distance between her and her brother, Marcus, more than the fact that having to rely on public transportation added close to two hours of time to her commute. All of those problems were hers, due to her own choices throughout her life.

Alicia had made many choices in her life, but she never claimed to have chosen the color of her skin.

Plopping down with a sigh of disgust on the bench under the shade of the bus stop, she tried to turn her mind towards more optimistic thoughts. Her hand, sliding into the pocket of the apron she still wore over her dress, found a piece of paper, partly crumpled.

No, not a piece of paper, she reminded herself. A twenty dollar bill which, along with another ten, belonged all to her! She smiled, remembering how Killian had quickly ducked out of the restaurant, not stopping to say goodbye. He must have been afraid that she'd refuse to take his generosity, or maybe that she'd be offended at his attempt at charity.

Well.

Maybe she would have tried to return the extra money, she admitted to herself in the privacy of her own head, but she also felt blessed to have received it! She could put it towards her bills, add it to her small but highly prized rainy day fund...

Or maybe just use it to buy herself a little treat, a new outfit or a pair of shoes that caught her eye the next time she headed to the discount stores.

In any case, she owed Killian a nice big piece of the diner's best pie, on the house, Alicia thought to herself as she leaned back against the wall of the bus stop. No matter how he sometimes seemed to have darkness lurking behind his eyes, Killian had never treated her with anything but respect, and she knew that his respect for her was genuine. She guessed that he was running from something in his past, hence the zipped lips about any part of his personal life, but she could still see enough of his personality, his soul, to know that he was a good and honest person at heart.

The world of white people needed more folks like Killian Kane, she thought to herself as her eyelids drooped in the warmth of the overhead sun.

Fortunately, the bus arrived before Alicia could drift all the way off to sleep, stopping in front of her with a hiss. She opened her eyes, dusted off the hem of her dress from the seat as she stood, and climbed the two steps onto the bus.

"Afternoon, Johnny," she greeted the elderly bus driver, giving him a smile as she dropped her fare into the change receptacle.

"Afternoon, Miss Wayne," he replied, giving her a little nod of his head and tugging at his crumpled and shapeless cap. "Good day at the diner?"

"Every day's a good day when I get to see your smiling face, dropping me off and picking me up," Alicia replied, eliciting a laugh from the wrinkled old man.

"Oh, Miss Wayne, you've got too smart of a mouth by far, 'specially for a pretty girl like you!" Johnny called out, shaking his head in mock dismay. "When're you gonna find a man and settle down, give up all those wild dreams that keep a smile on that pretty face of yours?"

"Why, just as soon as I find a man who can make them all come true," Alicia fired back without missing a beat, taking a seat on one of the benches up near the front of the bus. She gripped the steel pole beside her as the bus pulled away from the curb, beginning its slow trek back towards the little housing complex where she lived.

As his gnarled hands turned the wheel, Johnny sighed. "Pretty little thing like you ought to be with a good man," he commented, talking as much to himself as to his passenger. "And I bet those men would line up for miles, just to see a smile on that sweet little face."

Alicia turned away, hoping he didn't spot her smile in his rear view mirror. She faked a little coughing fit to cover up a bout of laughter at how the bus driver worried over her future, although his smirk suggested that he saw through her cover-up.

Forty minutes later - traffic was light this afternoon, and the bus made progress a bit faster than some other days - Alicia stepped off the bus's bottom step, onto her street. "Thank you, Johnny!" she called, turning to give the man a wave.

"See you next morning, Miss Wayne!" he replied, returning the wave as he reached out to yank the bus doors shut.

Alicia waited a moment for the bus to pull away from the curb, its air brakes hissing, and then she turned to head up to her house.

She didn't have far to walk, now. Here, the houses were so small and packed together, she could probably walk from one end of the entire development to the other in just a few minutes, and she'd probably spot half her neighbors - or hear them arguing inside the paper-thin walls - along the way. Around here, the houses were small, shoddily built, and crammed together like sardines in a tin.

But they were clean and tidy, for the most part. Whenever she returned home, Alicia always felt the unavoidable sting of poverty, the poverty that, try as she might, she couldn't fully escape. But despite the clear lack of money, she found pride in the attitudes of her fellow residents, in how they always swept the leaves off their tiny little yards, how they picked up garbage when the bins blew over, how they made sure that, although cheap, their homes still looked presentable.

Pulling her key out of her pocket, Alicia walked down the little path that led to her own front door. She felt a little glow of pride in her chest as she slid the key into the lock. This was her house, she thought to herself. Not worth much, not impressive to anyone else, but she always beamed with pride at knowing that she'd earned this for herself.

Stepping inside, Alicia briefly wondered what Killian's house looked like. He probably lived in a mansion, she imagined, with more bedrooms than she could count. He seemed down to earth and didn't flash money about, dressed conservatively, but something about his attitude suggested that he didn't have problems with money.

She bent down, scooping up the little pile of mail on her front hall. Bills and junk mailings, as always. She tossed the junk mail into the recycling bin under her kitchen sink, added the bills to the neat little stack in a basket on her counter, adding sticky notes to each envelope so she wouldn't miss a due date.

Hopefully.

Sometimes, Alicia joked to herself that she was trying to swim across a pool while blindfolded. She never knew exactly how far her paycheck would stretch, and whether there'd be anything left of it by the time she reached the end of the month. Sometimes, she had a little extra change after all the bills were paid, but other times, she ran short and ended up having to scramble for extra hours at the diner or pick up odd jobs elsewhere. She'd grown adept at handling "Past Due" notices from the electric company.

Alicia started to untie her apron, but paused, remembering to pull out her tip money and add it to the little Mason jar that she kept on a shelf in her kitchen. She smiled at the little collection of bills and spare change.

Not much, but it was something, and it was hers. She'd earned it.

As she put the jar back on the shelf, she felt a vibration in her pocket, accompanied by a buzzing sound as her cheap little cell phone bumped against her keys. She frowned as she pulled the phone out - who was calling her? She didn't recognize the number.

"Hello?" Alicia asked, answering the call and holding the phone up to her ear.

"Alicia?"

"Marcus?" she replied, her eyebrows climbing up her forehead. What in the world was her brother calling her about? And why from this phone number that she didn't recognize, instead of using his usual cell phone?

"Yeah. Listen, Alli, I'm in trouble." Marcus sounded strange. It took Alicia a moment to put a name to that tone - fearful. "I need to warn you, don't come visit me. Please, stay out of it. You don't want to be sucked into this."

"Sucked into what? Marcus, what are you talking about?" Suddenly, she felt some of that fear creeping into her tone as well, infecting her through the phone. "Marcus, what's happening? How are you in trouble?"