“No, I only paid the first time. George came by demanding the other money but I told him to…” He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I refused to pay, Violet. I couldn’t do it. I want you. You’re beautiful and special, but…”
There was a snort from behind her, but Violet ignored the sound, still too stunned by these revelations. “Twenty-five thousand dollars.” Her fingers pushed her hair back from her forehead, still reeling. “George demanded twenty-five thousand dollars?”
“Stop saying that!” Creek demanded.
She looked up at him, still trying to understand everything. “But you paid him five thousand! In cash?”
“By check,” he replied. “Look, the money isn’t the issue.” He reached out, trying to touch her again, needing that contact despite all he knew about her.
Violet pulled back, refusing to let him touch her. She couldn’t let him! He’d…he’d paid for her! He thought that she was a prostitute! Everything they’d shared together, it was all sullied, dirty!
“Oh yes it is!” she said, stepping back once again, refusing to let him touch her. “You’re a bartender! You don’t have that kind of money!” Another snort, this time from the bar. Her eyes hardened as she sneered up at him. “Did you even try to negotiate with George? Did you haggle a bit to get the price down?”
“No!”
“You should have! Maybe you could have gotten a better deal for half the night. Or an hour! Maybe an hour would have saved your bank account. I mean, we did sleep during part of the night. Not very long, but there was sleep. You should have calculated the hours that we slept and demanded a refund.”
“Stop it, Violet!” he snapped.
Her blue eyes flared up at him and she backed away another step. “No! You stop it! Stop talking to me! Just go away with all of your offers to save me and help my business.” She leaned in and poked her finger into his chest again. “My business is going extremely well! And I don’t…!” she was about to say that she didn’t need to prostitute herself, but the words simply wouldn’t come out.
She turned towards the door, furious and hurt, and not sure about all the other emotions that were going round in her head at the moment.
He glared at her back, furious that she was leaving and starting to panic at the idea of her being alone on the isolated streets. Not only were there drivers that could hurt her, but the wildlife wasn’t something to be ignored either. “Violet, you can’t drive. I’ll take you home.”
“I’m walking!” she snapped, and let the door close behind her, too angry to care about the cold, or the melting snow that would freeze over tonight, or the man who had hurt her so badly she could barely see straight.
“I’ve got this,” Tyla said and slapped her laptop closed, heading out the door to follow Violet. But she stopped in front of Creek. “You paid for her? For that woman?” She shook her head. “Men! They’re all idiots!” she snapped and walked out, not bothering to glance behind the bar where Tucker was now glaring at her as she left.
“Violet, wait up!” Tyla called out. But the woman just kept walking, hunching into her waterproof, down jacket that might be warm enough for the early evenings here in Alaska, but it wouldn’t help her after nightfall when the temperatures dropped even further.
Tyla jumped into her Jeep and revved up the engine, turning on the heater to full blast. She suspected the woman walking out of the parking lot would need the heat after that conversation. Cold didn’t even start to describe what those two had been discussing. Creek was in deep – deep in trouble and deep in love. Any fool could see that. The man was a cynic when it came to women, almost worse than the other three, one of whom she didn’t ever mention, even in her head. For Creek to have offered to help Violet…that was love.
Rolling down her window, she drove alongside the woman walking with her arms crossed over her chest, trying to keep warm despite the rain and valiantly trying not to cry.
Tyla could understand what the woman was going through, what was flashing through her mind. But that wasn’t a good enough reason to die. “He’s not worth freezing over, Violet,” she said to the woman wearing jeans and high-heeled boots in the icy rain. “He’s a total jerk and a complete idiot. But I’m not one of them. Why not get in and we can talk about it?”
Violet lifted her head to look at the woman, recognizing her vaguely as the one who had been sitting in the corner of The Rotten Apple. “Do I know you?” she asked.