“Lucas was being a jerk.”
“I heard that!” Lucas yelled from the other room.
“Why don’t you hop in the shower?” Jo said, combing the girl’s hair back from her face with her fingers. “We’re going to get out of here in the next hour or so.”
Fiona perked up. “We’re going home?”
“No, genius, we can’t go home, remember?” asked Lucas as he walked into the room. “And I was not being a jerk. April refused to share the good cereal.”
April held up her hands. “I’m going in the shower. I can’t take this anymore.”
Lucas moved his head back and forth. “Good, ’cause you stink.”
“That’s enough,” said Joanne.
Sloan handed her the first cup of coffee. “There’s half-and-half on the top shelf. You sleep okay?”
“Eventually.”
“Can I play in the snow?” asked Lucas.
“Sure,” said Jo. “But wear your snow pants. We don’t have a lot of clean clothes.” Lucas left the room and she turned to Sloan. “What time does the bank open?”
She was certainly in a hurry to get out of here, but his curiosity was piqued. David had died days earlier, Joanne was desperate for money, and she couldn’t go home. “They’re open now. Why don’t you come with me for the ride? It’ll give us a chance to talk.”
“I can’t leave Fiona with Lucas. They’ll kill each other.”
Sloan winced. “I was hoping we could talk privately.”
“I haven’t had a private conversation since 2007. I’ll grab her iPad and headphones out of the Porsche. I don’t think you’d fit in there. We were like sardines in a can.”
Fiona’s eyes went wide, her mouth forming the letter O. “I watch princesses?”
“Yes, pumpkin,” said Joanne with a smile. “You can watch princesses.”
8
Six days.
Acid flooded Joanne’s stomach as her anxiety reared to life. She only had six more days to find the money and return it to Bannon.
It had been her first thought when she opened her eyes this morning, the words repeating like a mantra while she brushed her teeth and showered.
Six days.
Six days.
You only have six more days.
She grabbed Fiona’s booster seat from the Porsche and strapped the girl tightly into the back of Sloan’s Bronco while he cleaned off the windshield. She couldn’t breathe, her lungs seemingly stilted by the overwhelming panic in her breast. She needed a plan, and she needed it now.
She slid across the smooth leather passenger seat and waited for Sloan as Fiona softly sang “Let it Go,” an appropriate soundtrack as Joanne took in the white and gray scene, desperate to distract herself from her anxiety and calm herself down.
The vehicle was quintessential Sloan, and memories of his old pickup truck and the things they’d done on its narrow bench seat came swiftly to her mind. The night she’d lost her virginity, her heart had been bursting with love so profound she thought it could never die. That felt like a lifetime ago, her own naiveté casting her in a light that was unrecognizable to her now.
Sloan climbed in and started the car. Aerosmith blared, startling her, and he turned it down. “Sorry.” The corded muscles of his good arm stood out against his honeyed skin as he backed out of the driveway.
She furrowed her brow. “Where did you get a tan in December?”
