Rescue Me

like you do. I think he’d give me good advice like you do.”
    “You think of me like your . . . dad ?” What the hell?
    She looked at him and her eyes rounded. “No. No, Vince. More like an older brother. Yeah, an older brother.”
    Sure. The only time he felt old was when the cold settled in his bones and cramped his hands. There’d been a time when the cold hadn’t bothered him much, but he certainly wasn’t old .
    Behind Becca’s Bug, Sadie’s Saab rolled to a stop, and he forgot about being Becca’s dad. Her running lights shut off and the door swung open. The orange sun shot golden sparks off her sunglasses and hair. She was all golden and shiny and beautiful.
    “I stopped to get some super unleaded. What’s up?” she asked.
    “I’m closed for a while.”
    She shut the car door and moved toward him, the smooth walk she’d learned in charm school with a slight bounce to her step and breasts. A smile tilting the corners of her mouth. The mouth she’d used on him a few nights ago. A hot, wet mouth he wouldn’t mind her using again. She wore a white dress he’d seen on her before. One he wouldn’t mind taking off her.
    “Hi, Becca.”
    “Hey, Sadie Jo.”
    The two gave each other hugs like the true Texans that they were. “Your hair looks good,” Becca said as she pulled back.
    “Thanks. I just got the roots touched up today.” Sadie ran her gaze over Becca’s hair. “Your hair is . . . darling.” She glanced at Vince. “Short and long at the same time. Very clever.”
    “Thanks. I’m in beauty school and we practice on each other. When I get better, you should let me color your hair.”
    Since Sadie wouldn’t be around when that happened she said, “Fabulous.”
    Becca dug her keys out of her pocket and looked at Vince. “I’ll stop by tomorrow and say hey.”
    “Fabulous.”
    Sadie turned and watched Becca scoot into her Volkswagen and drive away. “How often does she stop by to say ‘hey’?”
    “A couple times a week on her way home from school.”
    “Well, that haircut is just tragic.” She looked up at Vince through her sunglasses. “I think Becca has a crush on you.”
    “No. She doesn’t.”
    “Yes. She does.”
    “No, really. Just take it from me.”
    “As we say in Texas, ‘She’s sweet on you.’ ”
    He shook his head. “She looks at me like I’m her . . .” He paused as if he couldn’t bring himself to finish.
    “Brother?”
    “Dad.”
    “Seriously?” For several stunned seconds she simply stared at him, then her laughter started as a low chuckle. “That is hysterical.” As if to prove the point, her chuckle turned into a full-blown laugh fest.
    “It’s not that funny.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his cargo pants. “I’m only thirty-six. Hardly old enough to have a twenty-one-year-old daughter.”
    She clapped a hand to her chest and took a deep breath. “Technically it’s possible, old man,” she managed before she burst out all over again.
    “You about done?”
    She shook her head.
    He frowned to keep from smiling and gave her his dagger stare. The one used to incite fear in the hearts and heads of hardened jihadists. It didn’t work so he kissed her to shut her up. A press of his smiling lips to quiet her laughter.
    “Come in and have a beer with me,” he said against her mouth.
    “You bored?”
    “Not now.”

Chapter Twelve
    S adie shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head and followed a few feet behind Vince as he moved down the hall past a lighted office, and toward the front of the Gas and Go. Her gaze slid from his wide shoulders in his brown T-shirt, down his back to the waistband of his khaki cargo pants riding low on his hips. He looked kind of sweaty. Hot and sweaty and totally doable.
    “Are those brown T-shirts and cargo pants some sort of uniform?”
    “Nope. Just easy to keep clean in a sandstorm.”
    She supposed that made sense if a guy lived in a desert prone to sandstorms. “How long are you closed?” she asked as they walked into the store. The lights were out and the space was filled with shadow and the steady hum of the refrigeration units. The shelves of perishables were mostly empty but coolers were still well stocked.
    “Unless I run into some unknowables, two months. Out here I’m going to paint, retile the floors, and put in new counters.” He opened the door to the big cooler. “A lot of the equipment is fairly new. He grabbed a pair of Coronas. “Except the wiener