Read Online Vamp-Hire by Gerald Dean Rice - Free Book Online Page B

wouldn’t talk for him,
either. “Hungry?” He nodded again. “Okay, come on.”
    The three of them came into the house proper
and Nick stepped in front of Phoebe.
    “Hi, I’m Nick,” he said, taking her hand and
shaking it. “You’re… Bunny?” He couldn’t help the smile on his
face.
    She smiled and averted her eyes, her cheeks
turning crimson. “I’m Phoebe. Nice to meet you—”
    “Nick.”
    “—Nick.” He thought she was pouring it on a
little thick. “Oh, my gosh! What happened to your face?”
    “Nothing,” Dolph said, barging between them
and breaking the handshake. “Just a little accident outside. Nick
here is one of the workers.”
    “Well, where’s everybody else?”
    “It’s getting dark, it's time to pack it in.”
Dolph glanced quickly at Nick and he got the picture. Don’t say
anything about Emilio and the knife incident. “Nick here twisted
his ankle and bumped his face on a rock. You two get washed up for
dinner. It’s ready.”
    The room felt colder and Nick wondered if it
had had anything to do with him. He remembered when he and Phoebe
had sat down to talk about him leaving for a few days and how the
temp had dropped. Although before had been on the confusing side,
he was pretty certain this time had been Dolph being a little
protective of his granddaughter.
    All the more reason to not say anything about
knowing her.
    When mother and son had gone upstairs, Dolph
looked at him sternly. “Hands off.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “You heard me. That’s my only granddaughter.
Steer clear of her. You got me?”
    “Sure. I’m not even interested in any girls.”
Wait, that didn’t come out right. “I mean right now.”
    “Well, keep it that way as far as my Bunny is
concerned. Don’t need any foxes in this particular henhouse.”
    Is she a chicken or a rabbit? Nick thought.
“I’m trying to get back on my feet. I honestly wouldn’t even have
the capacity to have any kind of relationship.”
    Dolph gave him an examining look and
grunted.
    Nick made the connection for the first time
that this was a relative of hers. Not that it had mattered, he’d
always been curious of her ethnicity. She could have been just
about anything. Dolph was a light brown complexion, with deep-set
dark eyes, white hair cut short, and full lips. If he’d had to
guess, he’d say the man was black. He could have been a couple of
other things too. He supposed he wondered about these things
because he didn’t know about himself. Whenever he pictured his
parents he couldn’t recall any telltale signs of what their
ethnicities were.
    “So you know some about me,” Nick said. “How
about you? Where are you from?”
    Dolph had taken a pitcher out of the
refrigerator and was pouring lemonade into two glasses and a sippy
cup.
    “Me? What the hell do you want to know about
me for?”
    “I’m just curious. Sorry if I’m being too
intrusive.”
    Dolph didn’t speak for three or four beats.
“No, no, it’s not you. Hell, I get a good sense off you, Nick and I
trust my instincts. I just get so protective of that little girl
upstairs and my little man. Her last boyfriend, Randy’s father, ran
off on her before he was born. I can’t help but see every other man
as another taker.”
    “Taker?”
    “You know, givers and takers. We’re all of us
one or the other. Next to her grandmother, Bun—Phoebe’s one of the
biggest hearted people on this Earth. What was that you asked me
again?”
    “You,” Nick said, now wanting to know more
about what Dolph was currently saying. “Where are you from?”
    “Here. I grew up in Highland Park. It was
practically about all black then and I suppose it is still now. I
went to school there and enlisted in the Marines the day after I
graduated.”
    So he was black. Which meant Phoebe was too.
At least partly. Nick mentally patted himself on the back for his
minor degree of detective work.
    “What about you? What do you remember?”
    “Not too much. I was in a coma