Pie Town - Lynne Hinton [70]
“Why don’t you give me a shot?” Rob asked, reaching over and touching Trina on the leg. “I think I can help you a lot better than he can.” He slid his hand up her thigh while he headed up the road to the church.
Trina sighed, taking his hand and throwing it back in his lap. “Are you going to take me there or not?” she asked.
“Baby, we can skip church and I can take you to heaven if you’d just let me,” he replied, this time reaching up to grab her breast.
Trina yanked away his hand. “Rob, I am so not interested in this,” she said.
“Oh, come on, baby.” He reached over and pulled her hard, dragging her closer to him. They had gotten to the church, and he was heading into the parking lot. “Let’s just have a little fun for old times’ sake.”
Trina, now practically sitting in the driver’s seat, slammed her foot down on the brake, throwing them both forward and jamming Rob’s face into the steering wheel.
“What is wrong with you?” he yelled, reaching up to touch his face and feeling blood now dripping from his bottom lip.
She felt for the gear stick and threw the engine into park, slid over to the passenger’s side, and reached for the door handle. When she started to open the door, Rob pulled her back.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “Are you crazy or something?”
“Or something,” she answered him. “Just let me out and you go home.” She already had the door halfway opened, and she threw her elbow back hard, catching Rob in the chin.
Rob winced from the blow and then pushed her hard out of the truck. “Fine, bitch. Get out.” And before she could close the door, he sped away.
The night was not going at all like he had hoped.
Chapter Twenty-six
It was well after midnight when Bernie King was driving back from an estate sale down in Silver City. A ranch had foreclosed, and the bank was selling off all the equipment, the stock, and the land. He hadn’t planned to stay as long as he did, but he ran into an old buddy who had grown up in Pie Town and then moved to Carlsbad when he was a teenager. They found each other just before the auction started and decided to have dinner together afterward. They ended up talking well after the restaurant quit serving and stayed as long as the manager would let them, drinking coffee and reminiscing about old times. When the hour came to say good-night, Bernie thought about getting a hotel room at the place where his buddy was staying, but finally decided he would drive home.
He didn’t buy much at the sale, a few odds and ends, wires and tools, a good-looking table saw. He hadn’t really gone down there planning to buy anything. He just liked to see what other folks had, offer support in some small way to the family, and maybe find a bargain. Turned out, the family was long gone from their farm and from Silver City, and the only representative for the property owner was a man from the bank. Bernie could tell who he was because he was wearing a suit and because, after he walked over and whispered to the auctioneer a few times, he distanced himself during the rest of the sale from most of the ranchers standing around.
Like the other foreclosure sales Bernie had attended, this one was a fairly sad event, and the longtime rancher had almost decided this would be his last. It was just too hard to see a man’s property picked over and measured so nonchalantly. It was hard to know that a person, a rancher like himself, had lost everything he had worked so hard to have. It just made him feel bad to bid on the details of a man’s life, and he had been just about to leave before the thing started when he had run into his old pal. He stayed for the entire sale, ended up enjoying the auction, and even bought the saw, which he got for a very good price and knew he was certain to use.
Bernie rolled down the window to stay awake. He thought the fresh air would help. He was not used to being up so late, and he was sleepy. He glanced down at the clock on the dashboard and realized it was way past his bedtime. He thought about the next day and wondered if he could