The Trouble With Scarecrows (The Trouble With Men Book 2) (10 page)

Chapter 17

Brenda couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so frustrated and mad for being right. She couldn’t believe Neal didn’t see how Zadora had manipulated the situation. Zadora was a great actress and had played all innocent in front of Neal. But she sure didn’t look innocent. And now Brenda regretted not saying anything and letting them leave together.

“Can we please go?” Eugene said.

“Yes, and you can open your eyes now. Everyone is gone. Even the ghosts.”

Eugene opened one eye and stood up, inspecting the wreckage, a whimper escaping his closed mouth.

“This is your life now, Brenda. Chaos.”

“What’d you say?” Brenda asked Eugene.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Look around you. Is this what you want?”

Brenda’s heart pounded. “Dad?” she whispered.

“I know you’re not happy. What makes you happy? That’s what you need to figure out. What do you want for your future?”

“Your dad’s here? You invited your dad on our date too?”

“He’s dead,” she said. “Now shhhh.”

Eugene whimpered, “Of course he is.”

“Hello?” A sudden desperation, a need to see her father, overwhelmed her. “Where are you?”

“I’m here, Brenda.” She’d heard his voice, from somewhere above or behind her, in an echo in her head. She turned around and around, eyeing every angle of the restaurant, and there by the bar a glimmer of a shadow appeared. “I want you to be happy, B.B. Love yourself. Let go.”

She ran toward her dad, but he disappeared. If he’d ever really been there. Brenda stood there with her breath in her chest and tears in her eyes. “Dad? Dad?”

Brenda heard the sirens approaching from somewhere down the street, which snapped her back to reality. She closed her eyes for a second and shook her head. “Let’s get out of here before we have to explain everything to the police. If I say I saw ghosts in here, I don’t think I’ll have a job to go back to.”

“Me neither,” Eugene said.

They made it to the car and Brenda drove out onto the street, passing a fleet of ambulances and fire trucks. She tried to calm down and think about everything that had happened.

Ever since she’d left Zadora’s apartment earlier, she’d felt a little out of sorts. They’d picked out a dress together, a different, more conservative one than Zadora had worn to the restaurant. The entire time she’d been over there, Brenda had felt uneasy. She didn’t feel uneasy around many people. One moment, Zadora was her shy self—peering over her glasses like one of those big-eyed stuffed animals, and then the next, and for a split-second, a different expression had emerged, one that was dark and cunning, but it was over so quickly, Brenda had shaken it off. And then tonight, this happened.

“What just happened?” Eugene asked. “That was insane! But now that I’m not there, my mind wants to rationalize and say it never really happened. But we weren’t the only ones to see it happen. So it did happen. Didn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Brenda said quickly, not wanting to discuss it with him. She had to get home and gather her thoughts and talk to Neal. Neal trusted that psycho. Although they’d had their differences, he needed to know the truth. She had to warn him.

“Look,” Eugene said, “my hands are still shaking. Would you like to stay at my house tonight? You know, in case you’re scared and need some comforting?”

Even though it was a completely inappropriate question at the moment, Brenda was impressed. “I’m sorry, Eugene, but I’m not in the mood tonight. It’s been crazy, you know.”

“In the mood? I apologize. I didn’t mean to imply . . .”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind if you imply.”

“No, really. I thought we could order take-out, since we didn’t get to eat, and watch a comedy or something to get our minds off of, you know. And then you can have my bed, and I’ll sleep on the couch. Or on the floor in my room beside the bed in case you get scared.”

In case
you
get scared
, she thought. At that moment, she wondered how much of Eugene she’d actually be able to take. She glanced at him, noticing how rattled and disheveled he was. His hair was mussed, his top button was unbuttoned, and his glasses weren’t sitting square on his face. Poor guy.

Suddenly the words her dad’s ghost had said, or her subconscious for that matter, came to mind. Her future. Her happiness. Here she was racing home to talk to Neal with her date in the car, who she really wished she’d been able to leave at the restaurant. She wasn’t sure what her future held, but she knew Eugene couldn’t be part of it.

“Hey, umm, you’re a really nice guy.
Really
nice. But I’m thinking this might not work out.”

“Oh, I see. Okay, I get it.”

“What do you see and get?”

“I tried ignore it, but I should have known. Nice guys like me don’t get the hot, sexy blonde. You want the loud, bald-headed, tattooed bad boy, don’t you?”

“This has nothing to do with Neal.”

“Right. You guys were so into each other, you didn’t even notice the ghosts! There were ghosts in that restaurant! People were screaming and clawing their way out of there, and you’re so head-over-heels for that guy, you hardly blinked an eye.”

Huh, Brenda thought. She shuddered a little bit as she remembered everything she’d overlooked. But she hadn’t block it out because of Neal; it was because of Zadora. Zadora had done all of that because she wanted Neal. And they were alone together right now. She had to get rid of Eugene and stop Neal before he did something stupid.

They pulled up to the multiplex where Eugene had parked.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “This is just a bad time for me. This has nothing to do with you but has everything to do with timing. Understand?” She held out her hand for a friendly parting handshake, even though she wanted to shout, “Get the hell out now!”

“Sure. Whatever.” He shook her hand lightly, barely holding onto her fingertips. She cringed but then wondered why it bothered her so much. She knew what kind of man she had picked up at the bar. He was supposed to be her kind of man. But he wasn’t.

She waited until he had gotten out of the car before moving, waiting on herself to regret letting him go. But she felt nothing. She shrugged, and as soon as his door shut, she jumped out of the car and ran into the house.

She dashed down the corridor to Neal’s apartment. She jiggled the doorknob but the door was locked, so she banged on the door. When no one answered, she yelled, “Neal! Open this door right now.”

A few seconds later, he did just that. “What, Brenda, what?”

Like she feared, he wore only his underwear. That little bitch was probably naked in his bed, crying crocodile tears. “You have to listen to me. Don’t sleep with her. You’re going to regret it. I’m telling you, there is something wrong with her.”

Neal licked his lips and studied her for a moment. “What’s it to you who I have sex with?”

“I don’t care. Ugh. I just don’t want to see you get hurt. She’s manipulating you. She could even be dangerous. I know you think she’s all sweet and perfect, but I warning you, there is more to her than what it seems.”

Neal sighed and turned, going back inside his apartment, and Brenda followed him. “Where is she?” She started walking toward Neal’s bedroom.

“Zadora is not here. I didn’t bring her home, we didn’t have sex, not that it is any of your business. Besides, everyone doesn’t just jump into the sack with the first person they see,
Brenda
.”

“I didn’t have sex with Eugene! Not that it’s any of
your
business. And maybe you were right. I was with him for all the wrong reasons. Now can we move past that and talk about what’s really important here?”

Neal stared at her, his forehead wrinkled.

“If Zadora’s not here, where is she?” Brenda asked.

“She’s in her apartment, probably crying her eyes out because of you and tonight. She can’t control any of that. Just trust me and back off . . . please.”

“Back off? Are you kidding me right now? She
can
control it! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Can you seriously say that there is nothing strange about that girl?”

Neal lost eye contact long enough to let Brenda know that he had noticed something too, so she tried to release some of the tension that had caught in her throat so she could speak calmly. “Tonight, when you went to the bathroom, I said something mean to her.”

Neal stepped toward her. His head was beginning to get that splotchy red that she now knew came with him being really pissed off. “I don’t see why you couldn’t be nice for one night! You invited us and then you attacked her! You’re such a—”

“Wait,” Brenda said. “Let me finish and then you can start calling me names. I don’t even remember exactly what I said. Maybe I was a little thrown by her appearance. A woman can’t go from blah to supermodel without years of makeup practice and hair fixing. She should have looked, I don’t know, like she had gotten into her mommy’s makeup.”

“Maybe she went to a salon,” Neal reasoned. “I mean, really? She looked hot so you attacked her?”

She held her breath for a few seconds. So he had been attracted to her.

He shook his head. “What did you say to her?”

Brenda licked her lips, feeling a little matronly in her high-necked cocktail dress.

“Brenda!”

“Fine. I asked her what her favorite food was so I could get a sense of what to order for her, and she said chicken. I might have said something like, ‘You can take the girl away from the farm but you can’t take the farm out of the girl.’ See, it wasn’t even that bad. It was silly.”

“Are you finished?” Neal had his arms across his chest, legs apart, so confident in his snug underwear, and so pissed at her.

“No, actually, I’m not. Please just listen to me? As soon as I said it, something in her eyes changed. I’ve seen it before, but it had been such a quick thing that I ignored it. It was different tonight. She made no attempt to hide it this time. She was mad. She was mad as hell. She stared at me so long that I looked away. Me! And then she said something under her breath, and a man’s voice came out of her mouth. I swear it! She growled and . . .”

“That’s enough. You’re the one who made us go tonight, and then you feel threatened and you pull this shit.”

“You saw the ghosts.”

“I did. And I believe they were there because of Zadora but not because she could control it. Maybe it was because you’d upset her.”

“Bullshit. She conjured them up, or whatever you call it. Why won’t you believe me? I’m not making this up. Why are treating me like I’m some sort of liar?”

“Because you are!” Neal roared.

Brenda swallowed and stepped back.

Neal’s chest heaved in and out as he took another step toward her. “Larry told me all about the way you treated Haley. You fucking lied, humiliated her in front of your friends, and pulled every dirty trick in the book. That’s what you are, Brenda! A big fat liar!”

“That’s not fair,” she whispered and then gritted her teeth, fighting back tears. She hated her mad tears, but it was more than that. The anger at Zadora was gone. This was something else. As soon as she acknowledged that what Neal thought about her mattered so much, the tears couldn’t be suppressed and neither could her feelings. “I fought for the man I loved,” she cried. “Yes, I did all that, and I would do it again. But I guess you wouldn’t understand, would you? You let the love of your life slip through your fingers without even trying. Have you ever fought for anything or anyone in your life?”

Neal’s mouth opened as he stared straight ahead. He didn’t blink. It was as if she’d slapped him. Oh shit, she had gone too far. This was the end of everything. He looked so hurt. She wished she hadn’t said anything. He finally met her gaze, his eyes glistening, his eyebrows drawn.

Before she’d realized what was happening, he’d taken the last step toward her. She didn’t budge. She inhaled her fear and excitement as he grabbed her arms, brought her close and waited for a second, maybe to give her a chance to stop him. But she didn’t, and she wasn’t going to. Neal’s mouth crashed into hers, he kissed her hard, and it felt amazing. Hunger for him swirled and mixed with her desperation for him to believe
her
, to take
her
side.

He wrapped her in his strong arms and she melted against his body. He began to walk, back her down the hallway. She knew where they were going, would have led the way if necessary. When they arrived at the bedroom door, Neal whipped her around and kissed the back of her neck and then unzipped her dress. It fell to the floor, and she stood in her bra and panties.

But then Neal didn’t come back, didn’t touch her again. He walked past her and sat on the bed. He put his hands on his head and rested his elbows on his knees as he breathed heavily.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, a sudden wave of panic washing over her.

“I’m really into you, Brenda. I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I want you right now. So help me . . . but you can’t keep jerking me around.”

She neared the bed, slowly, thoughts swimming around in her head, but she was unable to grasp any of them firmly. She didn’t even know if she was angry about the scarecrow thing anymore, and she didn’t care about the future, only that moment. “You were right before, when you said I was scared. I am. You scare me to death. I’m scared to get hurt again. I’m scared to let my guard down. But the thought of you being with another woman . . .” She inhaled sharply, ready to tell him how jealous she’d gotten of Zadora, but then Neal jumped up.

He stood in front of her and took her hand and placed it on his warm chest.

His heart beat fast and hard against her palm. When she looked up at him, he smiled, wiping a tear from her cheek she didn’t know she’d let escape.

Neal came closer, his stare unblinking, his breath on her face. He whispered, “I will never hurt you.” He kissed her gently, purposely, unlike before when they’d let their bottled-up desires explode. She was suddenly aware of how serious this felt. She was in trouble. This man could easily break her heart. He’d already weakened it.