Plot Monkeys

LUCKY STREAK is in stores in exactly 1 month! Mark your calendars for MAY 26th! To get you all excited, I’ve decided to give you a sneak peek that’s NOT on my website. I’m going to assume (hope) you’ve already read LUCKY CHARM and let you revisit a character from that story.

This scene picks up AFTER Mike and Amber have met in Vegas; married (I’m not giving anything away not on the back cover!); she’s bailed on him, stolen his money (borrowed, if you ask her); and she’s just recently returned. Mike doesn’t know what to make of her except that she’s lied to him – and he doesn’t trust her. He certainly doesn’t want her to get involved in his life at home. But that’s exactly what happens …

*****
Mike drove to his father’s in silence and Amber didn’t intrude. She wanted him to think about everything she’d told him but most importantly she wanted him to deal with the fact that she’d returned.

And she wasn’t going anywhere. First, she couldn’t return to Vegas until King Bobby was gone and no longer looking for her – and to know that for certain she needed to track down Marshall. Most importantly she wanted to stay with Mike and convince him she wasn’t the bad person he thought she was. His first impression, the gut feeling that allowed him to bond with her in the first place was the correct one.

She wanted to get to know her husband.

He was as sexy as she remembered, with a days worth of razor stubble and the sport jacket he’d worn to court giving him an edgy appeal. But gone were the easy smiles and relaxed aura from Vegas, in its place a wary man who’d been betrayed.

She gnawed on the inside of her cheek and glanced out the window. The cityscape had long ago been replaced by green grass, trees and a more country look, so different from the dry desert of Nevada or the smog of L.A.

She could get used to the fresh new scenery. She definitely liked Boston at least what she’d seen of it and starting tomorrow she’d explore more. It might be a great place to start over. It wouldn’t be hard to find a job in her chosen profession at one of the big hotels here. She could move her father east so she could visit with him more often and there’d be no Marshall nearby to cause trouble. And she could discover if this marriage had any possibility of lasting. Not just because she wanted Mike to know she was a good person but because she needed to closure for herself.

She wasn’t a quitter and she’d entered into this marriage. She’d darn well try her best to make it work out.

Based on the granite expression on Mike’s face and the set of his jaw, Amber knew she was getting way ahead of herself, but that’s how she operated in life. Gung ho and full steam ahead.

That’s how she’d decided to leave her grandparents’ behind and go on the road with her father while he did his cons, how she’d gotten her GED in place of traditional high school, and talked the head concierge of the Crown Chandler Hotels in Vegas to take her on as her assistant and teach her the ropes. She’d traveled the country, viewing all the hotels in the chain and ultimately earning the head job in Beverly Hills at the unheard of age of twenty one. Her charm and photographic memory were her best assets.

Brad Pitt himself requested her, as did the rest of his pals. The fact that her father wasn’t on her health insurance had been the one and only drawback to her life there. The one that had drawn her back to Vegas and into his world of underground high stakes poker.

But it had also inadvertently led Mike Corwin into her world. The man was real. Her day with Mike had shown her the what was missing from her life in Beverly Hills. It wasn’t just that she’d been too busy with work for a social life of her own. Her job had consumed her and at the time, that had been fine with her. Her father’s illness combined with meeting Mike had shown her that she needed someone to come home to at night. Someone to talk to, to laugh with. Someone who could make her feel like Mike had in the twenty four hours she’d spent with him.

She just wanted a chance to see if he was the one. And she intended to get it the way she did everything else in her life.

She’d earn it.

“What’s wrong?” Mike asked, interrupting her thoughts and breaking the long silence.

“Nothing. Why?”

“You sighed.”

“I didn’t realize I had.”

“Listen, about my father …” He trailed off.

“You mentioned that he’s … off I think is what you said.”

He nodded. “He’s reclusive and eccentric,” Mike said, choosing his words carefully.
There were none to really prepare Amber for what she was about to encounter, but he might as well try. No doubt Edward would scare her off, either by his gruff attitude, the way he lived, or the fact that once his father realized there was something between Amber and Mike, Edward would deliberately try to run her off before the curse could kick in.

Mike shook his head and groaned. “You’ll see what I mean soon enough.” They were almost at the exit leading to Stewart and his father lived in an old house on the edge of town.

“What about your mother?” Amber asked. “Does she live there too?”

He shook his head. “They’re divorced. Have been for ten years. She’s remarried. She and my stepfather live about an hour from Boston too. Opposite direction from here.”

“I’m glad you’re talking to me again.” She curled her jean clad leg beneath her and turned towards him, obviously setting in for more get to know you talk.

“Just giving you the necessary preparation to meet my father.”

“My father in law,” she said too cheerfully.

“About that –“ Without insulting her or getting into too much detail about the family curse, he needed to ask her not to mention their marriage to his father.

If she’d never stolen the money and bolted, he supposed he’d have brought her back here and dealt with his father’s insanity but she’d betrayed him. He couldn’t trust her, didn’t really know her and no longer had any reason to bond again. She wouldn’t be around much longer so there was no reason to upset Edward with words like marriage, which in his mind would lead to love and the invocation of the damn curse.

“There’s no reason to tell my father we’re –“

“Skunk!” Amber shrieked, pointing straight in front of them.

Mike slammed on his breaks, narrowly missing the animal in the middle of the old country road leading to his father’s house.

“Are you okay?” he asked Amber.

She nodded. “Close call.”

He agreed. He was about to drive around the skunk when he caught sight of his father, walking in front of the car.

Mike closed his eyes and muttered a curse. He shifted the car into park and opened the window. “Dad, what the hell are you doing? The animal’s fine and it’s a skunk. Get in the car before it sprays us all!”

To Mike’s surprise, his father bent down and grabbed the animal by the tail.

“What’s he doing?” Amber asked, wide eyed and in shock.

“It looks like he’s bringing it over.”

Before Mike could find the button to shut the window, Edward leaned over and said, “Michael, meet my new pet, Stinky Pete.”

“For the love of – Get that thing out of here.”

“He’s descented. But don’t tell that to anyone in town. It keeps people away.”

“They don’t come around anymore anyway,” Mike said, wondering how his father had allowed himself to descend so far into his own world.

Edward Corwin looked like a modern day mountain man, his black hair wiry and sprinkled with gray, hadn’t seen a scissor in ages nor had his beard. He wore khaki shorts and old shirts and beat up sandals but they were in style enough for Mike to know his father still made some trips to town.

The house he lived in had been built back when Edward and his brothers owned their own construction business, in the days before their generation of Corwin men believed in the curse, when the brothers had been on speaking terms and life had been as close to normal as Mike suspected his father had ever known it to be.

After the feud over Mike’s Aunt Sara Jean, the business had gone bankrupt, the partnership ended, and the brothers each made a living doing handiwork. Edward as a plumber, at least until Edward became so strange, no one wanted him in their homes anymore.

By then Mike made a decent living and deposited money monthly into his father’s bank account. By silent agreement the men never discussed it, but Mike knew his father used the money mostly for necessities like food and clothing and the odd purchase of voodoo or other items Mike preferred not to think about.

“Get in the car. I’ll drive you back to the house,” he said to his father. He didn’t look at Amber, afraid to see the horror in her gaze.

For some reason he didn’t want to reflect on, he cared what she thought of his father.

Edward opened the back door and climbed into the seat.

“He’s descented, huh?” Amber asked.

“Who’s she?” Edward asked Mike.

“I’m Amber. Does he bite?” she asked.

Mike shrugged. “Last time I checked, no but he didn’t have a skunk last time I was here either.”

Amber laughed, the light tinkling sound that had enchanted him in Vegas and did so again now. “You know I meant the skunk, not your father. Does Stinky Pete bite?”

Knowing his father wouldn’t talk to her, Mike glanced in his rearview mirror. “Dad, does the rodent bite?”

“No.”

Against all common sense and reason, at least to Mike’s way of thinking, Amber turned around in her seat and faced his father. “Can I hold him?” she asked.

Any sane woman would have run screaming by now. Any rational human would have insisted they leave immediately.

Amber took the skunk from his father’s hands.

Edward let her.

Then he did the unimaginable. He invited her inside the house.

Nothing inside the old cape style structure had changed since Mike’s mother moved out except the clutter. Mike was used to it.

Amber excused herself to use the bathroom and Mike jumped on the opportunity to discuss the reason for his visit. “Dad, Derek called and asked me to talk to you. He and Gabrielle appreciate your concern for them but they’d really like for you to stop …” How did he put it politely? “Stringing crap up over their door and sprinkling fairy dust on their walkway.”

“Someone’s got to ward away evil spirits. They’re tempting fate. So who is she?” Edward waved a hand towards the doorway Amber had gone through.

Mike didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Her name is Amber Rose. I met her in Vegas.”

“I thought what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?” his father asked, cracking a joke for the first time in … well Mike couldn’t remember. “Yet you brought her home with you?” Edward’s gaze narrowed.

Mike knew there was no way around the truth. Besides, who was a hermit/recluse going to tell? “We got married,” he muttered.

“Married!?” Edward shouted. “Are you out of your mind? The curse is going to get you yet. Unless … You don’t love her, do you?”

Mike shook his head. “I don’t even know her.

“Well praised be, there’s hope for you yet.” Edward raised his hands in the air, then ran to the nearest cabinet and returned with a jar of red dust.

“Don’t come near me with that stuff,” Mike ordered in his sternest voice.

Edward frowned and placed the jar on a table. “You aren’t in love with her, you barely know her, and you just met her this weekend so you couldn’t have gotten her knocked up. That means you married her because she’s hot. Sexy hot.” Edward nodded, seemingly talking to himself and satisfied with his own answers. “That makes sense at least. No love no curse, except remember your cousin Derek’s first marriage. The curse kicked in there anyway.”

Mike rolled his eyes. “Derek was a workaholic and he wasn’t in love with his wife. That’s a recipe for disaster any way you look at it. No curse involved. Speaking of Derek, I want you to promise me you’ll leave Derek and Gabrielle alone. Quit trying to rid them of the damn curse.”

“What curse do you keep mentioning?”

Mike glanced up to see Amber standing in the entrance to the den, watching them, but staring at Mike intently.

“You didn’t tell her about the curse?” Edward’s expression turned to one of horror.

“No and neither will you. Just like you’ll mind your own business with Derek and Gabrielle. They choose not to believe in the curse and that’s that. Understood?”

“What curse?” Amber asked again.

Mike grabbed her beneath her elbow. “Later,” he said to Amber under his breath. “Dad, we’ve got to go.”

“But we’ll check on you again tomorrow!”

“No we won’t,” Mike said. “I work the day shift,” he reminded Edward in case he thought Amber had any kind of say in his life.

She did not.

And he had no time to visit his father tomorrow.

“Then one of you call me tomorrow,” he said to them both. “I want to know more about my daughter in law and this marriage.”

“We will!” Amber waved goodbye as she let Mike guide her to the door.

Mike scowled at her. She and his father would not be bonding any time soon.

“Because I want to know more about the curse,” Amber said, eyes twinkling.

Mike shut his eyes for a brief second and wondered what rabbit hole he’d fallen into when he’d married Amber Rose. And how he was going to climb out when she seemed intent on burrowing in.
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I hope you’ve enjoyed!
Remember MAY 26th!