LITMIR.BIZ

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wanted it, and why the sanitarium didn’t.

      From behind the iron bars, he watched the beaten-up Impala approach. The rear door was black, the driver’s side door was red, and the hood was sunshine-yellow. If Henry Ford and Picasso had gone out on a bender, that car was what the hangover would have looked like.

      Jason stayed steady and impassive, not angry or unfriendly, but stood and watched as a woman exited the world’s worst excuse for a car.

      Her.

      She still had the same never-say-die smile, which, considering the state of her transport, was just flat-out stupid. Once she was at the gate, a mere two feet from him, she held up the can of peas.

      “You left these.” Her voice was nice, not high and birdlike, but no cigarette smoke, either. Sonya had a low, husky voice. At one point, Jason had thought it was sexy.

      “You didn’t have to bring them all the way out here.” He probably should thank her for it, but he was distracted by the beads of sweat on her neck, and the green sweater had to be hot. Judging from the way it was clinging to her curves, the Hell-Car didn’t have air-conditioning. He didn’t like that she was sweating for him. He didn’t like the way his one good eye kept locking on her chest, like some reconnaissance tracking system doped up on Viagra.

      “I don’t mind,” she told him, then put the can to the bars, as if she expected the can to slip through. Nope. Jason could have told her that metal didn’t work that way. It took five hundred pounds of force to dislodge metal, or eight hundred degrees of heat. Sometimes both.

      However, Jason stayed silent because he had learned that people never liked to work too hard at a conversation. Eventually, they always gave up.

      “Are you going to open the gate, or should I toss this sucker over the top?”

      His instinctive response was to instruct her to go ahead and throw, but two things kept him from going with the default. The knowledge that he would have crossed the crazy-lonely-man line in his head, and the beat-up sedan. Frankly, that car out-crazied his crazy-line anyway, so while she might not notice, he would.

      Those were his reasons. That, and he liked her breasts.

      He typed in the combination on the keypad and the gate creaked open. He’d gone through a lot of trouble to get the creak exactly right. A haunted house creak. At the sound, the woman’s eyes grew wide, but not in fear. No, she liked it.

      “I bet the kids love this place at Halloween.”

      “People don’t drive out this far for a stick of gum.” People didn’t drive out this far for peas, either, but he left that part out.

      “If they don’t, they don’t know what they’re missing.” While she talked, her eyes surveyed the yard, the seventy-year-old house, the mountains of scrap, the piles of engines.

      Before she could trespass farther, he took the can of peas. “Thank you.” Then he nodded once, held the gate open and politely waited for her to leave.

      Leaving didn’t seem to be part of her strategy. She ducked under his arm and wandered inside, looking at one pile, then the next. “What do you do with this stuff?”

      Jason shrugged, not about to explain his hobbies to her, and not sure he could. Not that anyone would understand, anyway. Hell, he didn’t even know why.

      His gaze followed her as she walked around, moving from one mound to the next, drawing precariously close to the house.

      His pulse rate kicked up. Anxiety or lust? She was cute, short, stacked and curious. The clothes were out of place in the September heat, but he was grateful she was covered up, cause he didn’t think his pulse rate could handle any more. He liked her hair though. It was long, dark silk that hung down her back.

      “What is that?” she asked, pointing to a modified bicycle. “Wait, wait, don’t tell me.”

      Not that he would have told her anyway, so he stayed quiet while her fingers traced over the twisted metal hump with the leather seat mounted on top. Crouching down, she inspected the spring-loaded frame with the four iron-spoke wheels. It’d taken him three months to find the wheels, and eventually he’d bought them on eBay. They were perfect.

      “It’s an animal?”

      Still he waited.

      She rose, studied the thing. “First, there are four legs, or wheels. Second, the elongated back is almost like a hill…a hump…” Her finger crept to her mouth, chewing absently. She had a nice mouth. Red lips that spent most of their time open. His mind, always running in a tangential yet somewhat practical direction, began to think of all the uses for an open mouth: eating, breathing, kissing, sucking.

      Her mouth opened wider. “A camel!”

      And now that twenty questions were over, Jason needed to send her on her way. As he headed to the metal gate, he thanked her for coming. There was very little sincerity in the words, but he didn’t think she would notice.

      Her dark eyes flickered once. Okay, she noticed. He kicked a particularly heavy cast-iron drum. The pain was solid, well deserved. His foot would recover.

      “That’s some car.”

      Back and forth she shifted, like she was embarrassed about her mode of transport, but after seeing his mode of habitat, he couldn’t understand why she would care.

      “I bought it in Tennessee.”

      “Long drive for a car,” he noted, realizing he was making conversation, lingering in her company.

      It was her breasts. Had to be.

      Evil breasts.

      His body hardened at the thought of touching her evil breasts.

      “Tennessee was on the way,” she responded, hopefully not tuned in to his thoughts.

      “Surprised the car made it,” he told her, channeling his thoughts into another more socially-acceptable direction.

      Seeing her wince, he made a mental note to stop commenting on the dicey condition of her vehicle, but it was a little hard to ignore. The inside of the car appeared to be in as bad shape as the outside, with a blanket thrown over the backseat like a tarp. The tarp was most likely designed to keep out prying eyes—like his own. A gallon jug of water was sitting in the front seat, some food wrappers, a pillow, a half-open gym bag and a small sack for trash. Her home.

      As he continued to stare at her mode of habitat, a flush crept up her face, and he knew her habitat was a taboo conversation topic, too. That worked out well for him since he wanted her off his place.

      All of her, including her breasts.

      “You’re staying with your brother?” he asked pleasantly. As parting remarks went, it wasn’t the best.

      “Oh, yeah,” she answered quickly, moving to stand in front of her car, blocking his view.

      “Good,” he said, not that he believed her. Considering the state of her car, her finances, he didn’t think she was related to anybody in town. If she had family, she would have gone there first.

      Probably the brother thing was a lie, as well. In which case, she’d be jobless, living out of her car…

      Not that he cared.

      She reached for the door handle and yanked it open, the damn thing sticking so hard that her shoulder was now probably dislocated.

      Jobless, dislocated shoulder, living out of her car…

      Not that he cared.

      “You need a job?” he asked, sounding exactly like he was offering her a job. The woman turned, her eyes swimming with hope—until it was gone.

      “You know someone who’s hiring?” she asked, her eyes not so hopeful, unless a man was looking.

      “I need some help here,” he offered, thinking quickly. “Organizing.”

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