She cocked a brow at that. “Okay?”
“Yup,” Connor said absently as he took another sip of his beer.
She narrowed her eyes on him, wondering what he was up to. He never gave up this easily, never. Not even when they were fourteen and she may have pantsed him in front of the entire school one afternoon and he may have broken his arm in an attempt to pull her out of the air duct where she may have been hiding. He’d simply waited until the cast was dry and his mother was looking the other way before he’d snuck out of the exam room at the clinic over on Chestnut and made his way to the waiting room where he knew that her father would make her wait so that she could give him the customary muttered “Sorry.”
As soon as Connor stepped into the waiting room, she knew that she was in deep shit. She’d barely managed to turn to make a run for it when he’d clamped his good arm around her wrist and dragged her kicking and screaming into the staff kitchenette, where he found a strawberry yogurt three years past its expiration date hiding in the back of the fridge. For the next ten minutes, he sat on her back while he’d forced her to eat the brown concoction and even when the doctor, three nurses, and his mother tried to drag him off of her, he’d still managed to shove a large spoonful of the fuzzy gunk in her mouth.
No, he was definitely up to something, Rory thought as she picked up her mug of cocoa and gave it the attention that it deserved. Since there really was no way to prepare herself for what was coming, she didn’t bother trying. Whatever he did, she would make damn sure that she did something ten times worse to him later.
“I’m drawing a blank here and I was wondering if you could help me out,” Connor said in a thoughtful tone and just like that, the small hairs on the back of her neck stood up, but she refused to visibly react for him in any way.
She didn’t answer and he didn’t seem to care as he continued, “What was the name of that guy, you know the one that you bitch-slapped at McGill’s Bar last year for no reason?”
Rory wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but she was sick of people, especially Connor for some weird reason, thinking that she’d attacked the jerk for no reason like she was some crazed bitch with a bad case of PMS. She hadn’t told her brothers why she’d slapped the jerk because she thought that she’d taken care of it, but obviously, she’d been wrong. By the next morning, he’d spread rumors all over town that she begged him for a quickie in the bathroom and he’d turned her down, making her look like a pathetic slut. Her brothers’ fists had taken care of the rumor, but men still thought that she was easy thanks to him.
“Oh, you mean the guy that cornered me in the small hallway near the jukebox and grabbed my breasts while demanding that I give him a blowjob in the bathroom?” Rory asked in a bored tone, even though the memory of that night still had the power to make her feel helpless, something that she didn’t like.
Connor paused just as he brought the beer to his mouth. He looked thoughtful as he took a slow sip and placed the beer down on his small table. “He attacked you?” Connor asked in a deceptively calm tone that didn’t match the way that his jaw clenched tightly as a little muscle ticked just below his eye.
“You didn’t really think that I would slap some jerk for no reason, now did you?” Rory asked with a shrug.
He sighed heavily as he took another sip of his beer. “No, I didn’t, but I also didn’t know the asshole was that stupid,” Connor said, shifting in his seat to look at something over his banister. “Speaking of the asshole, you called AAA to take care of your tires?”
“You mean for my tires that mysteriously deflated sometime after I got home last night?” Rory asked dryly. “Yeah, I hoped they’d send someone else, but it figures that they’d send him,” she said, not bothering to get up to look since she didn’t need to sign anything for him to put air in her tires.
She didn’t need any added drama to her night and she sure as hell didn’t want to face Barry tonight. The guy was a prick and took being shot down personally. As far as she was concerned, he should just be grateful that she never told her brothers what he did because he would still be eating through a straw if she had.
“Hmmm, looks like he’s towing you,” Connor said conversationally as he watched Barry do whatever it was that he was doing.
“Yeah, right.” She snorted in disbelief. It was really sad that Connor had to resort to lame jokes to try to scare her. Seriously, like she’d believe Barry was really stupid enough to tow her Jeep away. There was no way that Barry would ever...
Did she just hear chains rattling? Rory wondered, trying not to panic as she quickly climbed off her lounge chair and made her way to the railing just in time to see Barry throw the switch.
“Stop!” Rory yelled, looking around desperately for a way to get down there and stop that madman before he took off with her Jeep. “What the hell are you doing?” she asked even as she contemplated climbing over the railing and taking her chances with her driveway, only to curse.
It wasn’t worth the risk.
Really hoping that she could stop him before it was too late, she waved her arms to get his attention, but the bastard was too busy looking down at his clipboard to see her. Groaning in frustration, Rory shoved away from the banister and ran back into her bedroom.
She ran across the room, startling Bunny, the long hallway, and down the stairs, taking them two at a time and damn near falling to her death several times in the process before she made her way across her small foyer. She threw the front door open, ran outside and across her freshly mowed lawn to the tow truck just as Barry set the locks on the back wheels of her Jeep, the Jeep that was now firmly secured on the back of the tow truck.
“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded.
Barry shrugged helplessly. “I have orders to tow it.”
“What the hell are you talking about? That’s my Jeep! Take it down!” Rory ordered, somehow resisting the urge to punch that smug smile that was playing on the corners of Barry’s mouth off his face.
“Sorry, you’ll have to take that up with the city,” Barry said, not sounding sorry at all as she followed him around the truck to the driver’s side.
“City? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Jeep’s being impounded for unpaid parking tickets,” he said with that damn shrug again.
“Tickets? I don’t have any tickets. I just bought this Jeep,” Rory pointed out to the stubborn man as he opened his door and threw his clipboard in the truck’s cab.
“Like I said before, you’ll have to take it up with the city,” Barry said, looking past her and gave a slight nod. “Thanks for the tip.”
“No problem,” Connor said from somewhere behind her.
