[City Limits 01.0] Roots and Wings Read online

  Roots and Wings

  a City Limits novel

  M. MABIE

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Roots and Wings (City Limits)

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Ninteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  PREVIEW

  Other Books by M. Mabie

  Acknowledgments

  About M. Mabie

  Roots and Wings © 2016 M. Mabie / Fifty5cent Publishing

  ISBN-13: 978-1530594832 ISBN-10: 1530594839

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of the material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/ publisher. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, alive or dead, is coincidental and not indented by the author.

  LICENSE NOTICE. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you wish to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  DISCLAIMER. This is a work of adult fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  The author does not endorse or condone any behavior enclosed within. The subject matter is not appropriate for minors. Please note this novel contains profanity and explicit sexual situations.

  Cover Design Copyright © 2018 by M. Mabie, Editing by Lori Sabin, and Book formatting by M. Mabie.

  Dedicated to my

  Pike, Adams and Craighead county girls.

  Tough women who take care of business and family alike.

  Beautiful humans who will do anything for anyone at any time.

  No questions asked—with a smile.

  I’m proud to call you mine.

  Chapter One

  Mutt

  Few things were certain around O’Fallon’s Service and Tire. Kenny didn’t really work there, but he was there enough. Be careful what you eat in the break room. The week before I’d found some leftover cake, and, sure enough, it was harder than a wedding night dick. And last, when we did the fifteen-minute oil changes for fifteen bucks, that garage would be asshole to elbow all day.

  Dad had done that promotion once a year for twenty years, which happened to be every year he’d owned the place.

  It was our family business. That was, if two people could make up a whole family. I guessed families were all different shapes and sizes, and since Grandpa passed away, it had only been Dad and me.

  Oh, and Dean.

  He wasn’t really family, but he’d worked there since we were in high school. And, honestly, who the hell wasn’t family somewhere down the line around Wynne?

  Dad and Dean worked the shop and I ran the desk—unless they needed the help, but most of the time it was pretty slow and easy to manage.

  Not that day.

  There was a line out the door and cars parked along the road, waiting. All there to get their oil changed for fifteen bucks.

  I wadded my thick, long brown hair up into a knot on the top of my head as I heard my dad exclaim from the garage.

  “Twenty, Mutt! We’re on a roll today, kid. Make sure they all keep pulling in.”

  Oh, yeah. My name’s Mutt. Not my given name, but, ask anyone who Darrell O’Fallon’s daughter is—ten to one—they’ll say Mutt. My grandpa—God rest his bastard soul—called me that from the day I was born.

  Sometimes it drove me nuts growing up. I’m used to it now; I don’t think my mom liked that very much, but she didn’t stick around long enough to do anything about it either. She left when I was two months old.

  No Dear John letter.

  No phone calls.

  Just gone.

  My grandpa called me Mutt because apparently my mom was the town bike. Every town had one, and she was theirs.

  Among everyone else who had a go at her, my dad ended up getting the longest ride.

  He loved her. To tell you the truth, I thought he still did.

  This one time I asked my grandpa about my name and he told me flat-out: “Your mom was a whore, Mutt. You could be anybody’s kid. You could be made up with anybody.” I never forgot that, and thought about it a lot more whenever I’d consider dating someone.

  First, what if we were related? Ew. No.

  Second, who would want to bring a Mutt home to Sunday dinner? Not many.

  So most of the time, I decided, better not.

  That was the only time I saw my dad raise a fist. He knocked out three of Grandpa’s teeth that morning. Then he made me scrambled eggs and told me to not pay him any attention.

  Don’t worry. They were false anyway, so I guess there was no real harm done.

  It wasn’t like Grandpa had a lot of room to talk. His last wife had run off with some guy she met at a casino. That’s why he was stuck there living with us.

  Most people would say I was kind of a tomboy, growing up with only a dad and an asshole grandpa to show me the ropes. I didn’t really give a shit. In my experience, people said whatever the hell they wanted to anyway. My name was the perfect example of that.

  Anyway, I’m not done yet, despite how hungry I was on fifteen-minute oil change day, I was having a pretty damn good Saturday.

  Wynne was a small town on the river and we had a great lake nearby, too. Sure there was no mall or movie theaters, but if you wanted to catch wall-mount worthy trout or a largemouth bass, you were in the right spot.

  Dad’s oil change promo was going great, but what was shocking me was how many spinners and lures I’d sold.

  I’d made them all myself and was about to sell my last one.

  “Mutt, honey, those sumbitches bit on every cast. I’m taking the rest you’ve got here,” said Mr. Walton to me from the other side of the counter, slapping a twenty down on the linoleum top.

  I should have been charging more.

  A few days back, I’d set up the little display with the fifty or so I had on hand, and at five bucks each, I sold out too easily.

  I wasn’t complaining. I loved making them.

  But Mr. Walton was right.

  Those sumbitches did work.

  The past Thursday evening, I’d caught a two-pound bass off my dock in only about ten minutes. That’s called working right there.

  “I’m glad you liked them. Which one did you use?”

  “The blue and yellow one. You got any more of those?”

  “No, but I can make a few up for you.”

  “I’ll take
‘em, by God. Make me ten of ‘em.”

  “All right, I’ll call you when I have them ready. Is that all you need?” I asked. He’d just been in a few days before getting new brakes and tires put on.

  “Oh I’m fine, I just thought I’d come settle up from last week. Your dad’s probably just been busy, but we never got our ticket in the mail like we usually do.”

  That was odd. My dad was always meticulous about his billing. Although primitive, his system was foolproof.

  In Wynne, everyone knew everyone. They’d drop their vehicles off, and then come pick them up whenever. Keys in the visor.

  Dad always sent out invoice tickets on Mondays, and Mr. Walton had been in the past Friday.

  “Sorry about that. Let me look real quick.” I left him at the counter and ran into the small office. In the old wooden chair, I sat down and spun around to the cabinet where he kept all the past week’s tickets and found it full. I pulled the folder out and opened it, seeing Mr. Walton’s ticket about a third of the way down.

  Had none of these been sent out?

  I knew he was waiting for me, so I didn’t want to spend too much time going through it all, but shit, there was a lot. I quickly looked at the ticket on the bottom and it was from almost a month ago.

  “Hey, Mutt,” Dean said from the doorway, the office was only big enough for one person. “Can you call and check on the parts order? Your dad says we should have more filters, but I can’t find them. I hope he’s got more coming in.”

  Shit.

  “Yeah, I’ll call, but I doubt they’re open now. Do you have enough for today?”

  “I don’t know. We still have about ten cars out there.”

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  “Call down to Dub’s and see if they have any to get us by.”

  Dub’s was the other automotive repair place in town. There wasn’t really any competition though, since there was enough work to go around. Always had been.

  Dad and Dub even worked here together for a while, but they didn’t have enough space. Dub opened his own shop about three years after Dad bought his. They’d been best friends all my life. He even came by earlier to get a free hot dog and Pepsi.

  “Thanks, he probably forgot. I tell ya, the old man’s mind is not what it used to be.”

  It was true. My dad would never hit the Guinness book for highest IQ, but that had been just another thing he’d slacked on.

  “Mr. Walton, here’s your invoice. He didn’t get it out yet. Sorry for the trouble. Do you want to pay it now? It’s $745.00.”

  “Sure, honey, let me go get my rubber checks out of the truck,” he said, winking at me. I think I’d heard that recycled joke told once a week for the past ten years.

  I peeked into the garage and caught Dean hanging up the shop phone. He gave me a thumbs up, then motioned for the next car to pull in.

  What would we do without Dean?

  He was like the brother I never had, and Dad was like the father Dean never had. You could say Dean’s story and mine were similar. Me with no mom. Him with no dad. Since his mom had passed a few years back, he had no mom either. We were pretty much his only family.

  I walked over to my old man, his head grease streaked and his hands moving as fast as they ever did.

  “Twenty-two, Mutt. I think we’re going to beat last year’s twenty-eight.” Pride was shining in his aging brown eyes. He loved what he did.

  Then he teased Dean, “If that slacker would pick up the pace we could damn near hit forty, I bet.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re going to owe Dub a case of beer. You forgot to get oil filters this week. He’s on his way up. This is the last one on the shelf,” Dead fired back.

  My dad stopped and looked at him like a coonhound with three dicks, but it wasn’t Dean who was wrong. Judging by the stack of unpaid invoices, I had to start taking on a little bit more of the responsibilities around there.

  “Didn’t we order those?” Then he scratched his face and went on about his business.

  “I’ll call them on Monday and see. Maybe they left them off the truck or something? Don’t worry about it,” I said and kicked his work boot. “You’ve got a line out there. Get your old ass in gear.”

  He rolled his eyes at me and went back to work.

  Dean and my dad beat their record. Thirty-three oil changes in less than fifteen minutes, start to finish. They drank a few beers as they cleaned up the shop for the evening and called in some tenderloins for us at Diana’s, the local diner across the street. We were all hungry and one of her tenderloins could practically feed a whole family. They were plate-sized and you needed three buns.

  “Hey, we’re walking across the street to eat, you coming?” my dad finally asked a little later.

  I looked at the clock. It was seven and I knew she’d be closing up the kitchen soon, but I needed to take a better look at those tickets. I had my work cut out for me. It was either going to take all night or all the next day, and paperwork was the last thing I wanted to do on Sunday.

  It was supposed to rain a little, but that was fine. I needed to get a jump-start on making more lures. The extra money was going to be nice, and they were selling better than I ever dreamed.

  “Nah, you guys go eat while they’re hot. Tell Diana I’ll be over there before she takes off. I’m going to settle this register and clean up. You two go.” My dad ran a hand over my back and kissed the top of my head.

  “Hey, how many did you sell today?”

  I smiled, knowing he’d be just as excited as I was.

  “All of them.”

  “No shit, Mutt? Hell, you’ll be setting up a tackle shop next. Just you watch. Good job, kid.” It was nice having someone notice how well they were doing, but, then again, he was my dad.

  “Your old man’s gonna go eat, then I’m hitting the sack. These old bones are tired.” He winked at me as he slapped off the lights to the shop. “Love you, Mutt.”

  “Love you, too, Dad. See you in the morning.”

  It didn’t take me five minutes to get the register in order, and then I went through the pile of invoices in the folder. There was almost ten thousand dollars’ worth of billing in there. I sorted them and decided I’d come back the next morning to finish up.

  I was starving and didn’t want Diana waiting on me so she could go home. She would, too, if she saw the light in the shop. Hell, if it weren’t for her, I would have starved by age three.

  I closed up the building for the night and walked across the street. Teenagers were cruising, people were filing into Sally’s—one of the two bars in town—and it was a normal, small-town Saturday night.

  I stepped up to the brick front of Diana’s, and just as I was opening the door I heard a man say, “Shit,” from the vehicle parked nearby. I guess I wasn’t the only one having a long day. Minding my own business, I stepped into the diner.

  “Hey there, sweetie. I’ve got your sandwich in the oven keeping it warm for you. Want anything else with it?” asked Diana. She wiped her hands on her apron as she dropped the rag she’d been wiping tables off with when I came in.

  “No, I probably won’t even be able to finish the sandwich.”

  “Your daddy said you had a long day. Those big hazel eyes of yours look a little tiresome.” She was kindhearted, so I knew it wasn’t an insult.

  I nodded, which turned into stretching my neck. Diana was right. Thirteen hours is a long day for anyone, especially this twenty-six-year-old chick.

  She smiled sympathetically, the ever growing laugh lines on her face appearing, then she walked in back to get my food. Her grey hair was swept up in a ponytail, and as she walked away she rubbed the back of her neck, too.

  She was a hard worker. There were a few high school kids who helped her out here and there, but other than that, it was just her and one other waitress running the place.

  I took a seat in the booth closest to the door, and when the bell rang above it I reflexively looked up. There stood a tall man who I di
dn’t know.

  Wynne wasn’t big and I knew everyone who lived there. It wasn’t likely for a passerby to stop in, especially at quarter to eight on a Saturday night.

  He looked at his watch, taking stock of how empty the place was.

  “Hi,” he said as he regarded me with the most striking cornflower blue eyes I’d ever seen. “Are they still open?”

  I blinked a few times. His words had hit my ears, but not yet my brain. I sat there staring. Either I was delusional, or he was one of the finest men I’d ever seen.

  What in the hell would bring him here?

  “Excuse me,” he added, looking for an answer. “Do you know if they are still open?”

  I shook the stupid from my head and replied, “Hell, I’m sorry. Lost my thought there. Yeah, they’re open, but I think the kitchen is already closed down for the night.”

  He took a frustrated breath, raising his arm and placing his palm to his forehead. “Perfect,” he huffed as he squeezed his eyes shut, looking defeated.

  I instantly felt bad for him. I always had a bleeding heart for someone down on their luck. If he was the same guy who was swearing in his SUV, which I knew he was, then this just added to whatever he was already dealing with.

  I could commiserate.

  “If you’re hungry,” I started to say when he interrupted.

  “Of course I’m hungry, why else would I be here?”

  I didn’t take offense. I was no stranger to a hungry man with a short temper, but I also wasn’t one to take their shit.

  “Hey! You didn’t let me finish. All I was saying was, she has pie up there under the counter. Chill out.” I didn’t shout, but my tone was a clear message that assholes were never alone in a room with me. If you want to be a jerk, bring your A game.

  He froze and hung his not-from-around-here head.

  “Sorry. I’m just starving and tired,” he apologized. Then he pointed a finger in the direction of the pie case and raised his contrite eyebrows like he was saying, “In there?”

  I nodded sarcastically.

  He started it.

  The guy walked over to the case just as Diana walked out with my overflowing plate. She’d even added lattice fries, because she knew they were my favorite. It smelled like heaven. An embarrassment of riches in the form of meat and potatoes.