Page 17 of Side Hustle
“It’s okay. She can’t see us back here and she doesn’t know my truck. If it’s her, we’ll just make sure she gets into the hotel and then we’ll get out of here. Okay?”
Hazel turned her head away from the window, her nose now mere inches from mine. Fuck, she was pretty. A guy could get lost in her eyes, if he wasn’t careful. Thankfully, I was the most careful guy I knew.
“Thank you, Rip.” Her eyes seemed to melt right there in front of me.
My pants got tight and I had to grip my hands into fists to keep from reaching out for her. Abort! My brain was screaming at me to back up, look away, get out of the truck. Anything to get away from her and the spell she cast with a single sentence.
The slamming of a car door had us both looking back out the window. I huffed out a relieved breath so heavily my window fogged up. I waited for it to clear and then got a good glimpse of Hazel’s mom walking through the parking lot to the hotel. She seemed agitated with the way her heels clacked against the pavement. I’d seen Hazel stomp away mad a time or two and now I knew where she got it from.
Not that I would point out the similarity. Hazel would not take kindly to that comment. I felt the same way when people said I looked like my father. Made it hard to look in the mirror most days.
Her mom breezed through the front door of the hotel and was out of sight. Hazel whipped around and started shimmying with her hips in the air.
“What are you doing?” I tried to cram myself as close to my driver’s side door as I could. Distance was a good thing.
“Here. Hold my balls.” Hazel successfully stripped off the costume and handed it to me while she straightened the clothes she had on underneath.
I frowned, but did as I was told.
“Okay. Thanks. That’s better. Let’s head home, yeah?” Hazel grinned at me, sitting in my truck barely clothed in a tiny tank top that didn’t cover her stomach.
Her shorts looked more like bathing suit bottoms, leaving her entire thighs exposed. She shoved the crumpled costume to the floorboard by her feet, dusting her hands off and looking at me expectantly. I slid my hands onto the steering wheel and held on for dear life. I just wouldn’t look at her. There. That was a perfect solution to my little pants problem. For some reason my dick was severely confused these days. Maybe this push I’d gotten in my life had also caused a penile problem to kick up.
Great. Just when I go to get my adult life together, my dick decides to malfunction.
“Yeah. Let’s get you home.”
I started up the truck and headed to Yedda’s place, keeping my eyes on the road and my hands on the steering wheel. When Hazel got out of the truck and thanked me for today, I just nodded, staring straight out the windshield. Through no fault of my own, I did get a peek at her backside in those shorts as she walked up the driveway to her house.
And there went my dick again, the stupid bastard.
* * *
“I know I put that file somewhere around here.” Amelia stooped over a six-foot table jammed in one of their extra bedrooms on the third floor of their new bed-and-breakfast.
Titus handed me a beer and waved me over to sit on the floor with him while she searched. I’d called them as soon as I left Hazel’s house, needing a distraction. And my shit show of a life was the perfect one. Amelia had graciously invited me over to talk about my father. She’d kept a file on who checked in when at Hill Hotel when she worked there. I was hoping to find evidence that my father was involved in something illegal. And yet, there was a part of me also hoping there was a valid explanation for these payments he’d been receiving over the years.
“Hazel get home okay?” Titus asked after we’d both taken a welcome first sip of the IPA.
I nodded, not wanting to talk about that subject. “Yep. Her mom’s at the Hill Hotel. At least for tonight. She’ll probably try to find Hazel tomorrow, so she’ll have to deal with her then.”
“I can’t believe that bitch is back. I’ll go to Hazel’s tomorrow after I feed everyone breakfast. Hazel is too sweet for the likes of her mom. She needs reinforcements.” Amelia looked ready to fight right now based on the huge scowl on her face.
“Paperwork, babe.” Titus redirected her, which I appreciated.
No one wanted to deal with a pissed-off Amelia. I had my own problems to deal with. Now Hazel had hers. We couldn’t be adding Amelia’s anger-management issues on top of all that.
Amelia gave him the middle finger, but got back to digging through the mountain of paperwork on her makeshift desk.
“Aha! Here it is.” She turned around with a thin brown file folder and had a seat in front of me on the floor.
“Oh God. That’s disgusting.” I thought I might have a revisit of the sip of beer I’d taken.
The very first piece of paper in her file was a blown-up picture of a used condom. No kid wanted to see their father’s spent condom. Although that condom was what led to Lucy doing an analysis on it and us finding out we were half brother and sister. So something good came of it.
Amelia hurried to flip the page. “Sorry about that. Forgot that was in there. Here’s what you really want.” She shoved the paper at me and I took it, studying the printout of dates and names.
I took my own piece of paper out of my back pocket and smoothed out the wrinkles. The first payment my father received was dated August of 2018. The first business to come to town in the last decade was when Lucy opened up her sperm bank in August of 2018. Looking at Amelia’s records, a woman with the last name Smith had checked into the Hill Hotel with cash in May of 2018. That could have been connected, but it wasn’t definitive proof either.
