“Years ago, Knight,” I said quietly and his eyes again tipped down to me.

“She beat you?” he clipped out.

I shook my head. “No, she’s just not very nice.”

“In Anya Speak what, exactly, does not very nice mean?”

“Anya Speak?”

“You’re playin’ it down, I know that. But I don’t know you enough to know how you’re doin’ it. So I want to know and I want to know it exactly.”

“Knight –” I started and his face dipped to mine even as his hand in my hair pulled me up to him.

“Exactly, babe,” he ordered.

I sighed.

Then I started talking because I didn’t know him very well either but I was getting to know the fact that he tended to find ways to get what he wanted and most of these ways involved extreme levels of bossiness mixed with tenacity.

When I started talking, he shifted away, let me inch back and he smoked while I did it.

“She was just not nice and her not nice got bitchy not nice when she drank a lot which unfortunately was often. We didn’t have a lot and she didn’t have a lot before she took me on and I’m not certain she was smart because she didn’t count on the life insurance policies and the rest of what she got selling our house and stuff running out so fast. But since she blew all that on vodka, smokes, clothes, new furniture, a stereo, a TV, dumping me with my sick Gram and going to Vegas or on a cruise and stuff like that, it was bound to.”

Knight kept smoking as I was speaking but his hand in my hair slid down to my neck and his thumb stroked the skin there.

It felt nice, so nice it was a distraction and to keep my mind off how nice his thumb felt lightly stroking my skin, I kept talking.

“But she wasn’t even nice before the money ran out. I knew I was a drain on her because she told me. I knew she felt she deserved compensation for taking me on because she pretty much made me her slave. I cooked. I cleaned. The minute I could drive I did the grocery shopping. She didn’t do any of that and when I say that I mean never. She sat on her butt and if she wanted a drink, she told me to get it for her, iced tea, occasionally, vodka, mostly. She didn’t help me with my homework, though she probably wasn’t smart enough to help. Didn’t care about my grades. She constantly made remarks about my clothes, my hair. Just being nasty. The minute I could get a job, she made me then she made me buy my own stuff and stopped giving me money, only a roof over my head and feeding me. She was in a bad mood perpetually. Life wasn’t good for her, never was. But if life isn’t good, she’s not the kind of person to find a way to make it that way or at least make it better. Just expected it to be and as time wore on and it didn’t get better, even if she didn’t do anything to improve it, she got more and more pissed.”

Knight kept smoking, watching me, stroking me and I pulled in a breath and continued.

“She had no man or no man who hung around a lazy woman for very long though she blamed that on me too. She said the men in her life dumped her because she had me hanging on her neck. But really, it was just her. And worse, she really loved my Mom. Like, really. It’s jacked but I think the only person in her life she really loved was my Mom. I look like my Mom. She told me that all the time. I reminded my aunt of my Mom and she said more often than not that it sucked I was there and my Mom was not. I’ve thought about it and I always wondered if it was that that made her such a bitch. That she missed my Mom, didn’t know how to deal, had an overabundance of feelings she had to get rid of and didn’t know how and was the kind of person to take that out on me. Whatever. Bottom line, it was no fun so the minute I could, I got out. I never see her anymore. Now she’s just a memory.”

Finished, I stopped talking.

Knight didn’t move, not his body or his eyes away from me.

Then his hand left my neck and he shifted around me to go to the table to put his cigarette out in a clean, cut glass ashtray that was sitting on the wrought iron table. Once done with this errand, his eyes went back to the mountains.

He did all this and did not speak.

I didn’t either but I turned to watch him and kept watching him as he surveyed the Range.

Finally, thinking this was weird, I called, “Knight?”

His eyes instantly came to me.

“I’m taking you to dinner tomorrow night,” he declared and I blinked.

I’d done what he asked, explaining about my aunt exactly and he had no comment.

Jeez, this guy was weird. Hot, but weird.

“I can’t,” I told him. “I have class.”

“Class?” he asked.

“School. Beauty school. I’m getting certification in skin technology.”

“Tuesday,” he stated immediately and I shook my head.

“Clients. Two of them. One at six thirty. One at eight.”

“Clients?”

“I’m already a certified nail technician. Both are acrylics.”

He turned to face me fully and asked, “Why do you take clients on evenings and weekends?”

“Because I work as a file clerk full-time during the day.”

He studied me.

Then he murmured, “Life isn’t good, find a way to make it that way or at least make it better.”

“What?” I asked quietly but I knew what. Those were my own words coming back to me.

“Don’t know shit about this,” he announced. “Do women who do nails need to have a full-time job to cover their asses?”

“Um… no. But I only have a part-time clientele. To rent a station in a salon or whatever and make a living at it, I need a full-time clientele. I’m working to that.”

“Babe, full-time work with school, just pointing out, that’s an impossible feat.”

“I only have a few weeks left on my skin technology certification so I can start taking clients on Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday nights. That’ll make it easier. And I can diversify and pick up facial clients too.”

His mouth got tight. Then his eyes went back to the Range.

“Knight?” I called.

His eyes cut back to me. “Schedule you keep, babe, no time for me. Not likin’ that.”

I pressed my lips together because this was kind of true.

“I don’t work Saturday nights and most of Sundays,” I said softly.

“I do work Saturday nights which leaves only Sundays,” he replied then repeated, “So, not likin’ that.”