Then he lifted his cigarette and took a drag. I lifted my wine and took a sip.

“You shouldn’t smoke,” I advised after I swallowed.

“Heard that before,” he muttered.

“I bet you have,” I muttered back.

“It bother you?” he asked and I thought about this.

Even though I was a lifelong non-smoker, it didn’t. It was whacked but it reminded me of home. My Dad smoked. So did my aunt. I was used to the smell. As far as my Dad was concerned, it made me nostalgic. As far as my aunt was concerned, it was just the way it was. It was home. Both of them that I had growing up.

“No,” I answered softly but honestly. “It reminds me of home.”

“Your folks smoke?”

“Yeah, my Dad. Then my aunt. She was a chimney. Pack and a half a day.”

I felt his body tense and he asked, “Your aunt?”

“She raised me after my parents died.”

He was silent a moment, the tenseness increasing then his arm loosened around my chest only for his hand to shift me. He shifted too, resting a hip against the railing then his arm around my waist pulled me close to his front, almost touching, as he looked down at me.

“Your folks passed?” he asked quietly, his eyes intent but his face back to blank.

“Yeah, when I was in second grade.”

His eyes slightly narrowed. “Both of them?”

“Carjacking.”

No blankness then. A flash lit his eyes and I heard him draw in a sharp breath.

Then he whispered, “What the fuck?”

“They worked together. No…” I shook my head. “They went to work together. They worked in buildings across from each other so they drove in together. They drove me to school, dropped me off then drove into work together. Witnesses said they were sitting at a red light and some guy with a gun opened Dad’s door. He shot him three times, yanked him out to the street, got in and took off with Mom in the car. Fifteen miles from there, they found my Mom, also shot, in the road. Dad survived the trip to the hospital but died in surgery. Mom took a bullet to the temple. She was gone before he shoved her out of the car.”

His arm left me, his eyes did not, then his hand came to the side of my neck and slid up into my hair as he muttered, “Jesus, fuck, baby.”

I shook my head. “Knight, it’s okay. I know it sounds dramatic but it isn’t. Shit happens all the time to a lot of people. Obviously, they had no idea that they were going to die at the same time so they didn’t make arrangements for what to do with me. My aunt, Mom’s sister, got me and control of their estate, such as it was, and life insurance policies. My uncle, Dad’s brother, lives in Alaska. He went through the motions of trying to get me to take care of me but he worked on a pipeline, wasn’t married and lived in a barracks with a bunch of other guys. Judges didn’t go for that. And my grandmother, Mom’s Mom, was already sick so she was out. She left my grandfather and he went back to Russia because apparently he was a jerk but also he missed home but he didn’t miss his daughters and had nothing to do with them after he left. Dad wasn’t close to his parents. They’d already raised two sons and weren’t hot on having a seven year old to raise so they didn’t try for custody. Still, they were relatively cool and still are, though they live in Arizona now. So my aunt raised me and she, um… smoked. And also, uh… she drank a lot of vodka.”

Knight’s eyes kept mine captive and he asked, “Drank? She gone too?”

“No, she’s very alive. Apparently, if you become one of Satan’s Minions, as a reward, he makes you immune to cancer, heart and liver disease.”

At “Satan’s Minions”, I felt his fingers flex tightly against my scalp but he waited until I was done speaking when he asked, “She didn’t do right by you?”

As an answer, I explained, “I had a job at Arby’s and moved in with three girls, paid rent, slept on a couch for eight months until one of them moved out and I did this two days after I turned eighteen. I still went to high school until I graduated but at eighteen I was g… o… n… e… gone.”

“She didn’t do right by you,” he murmured then twisted his neck and I watched him take a drag from his cigarette and exhale an angry stream of smoke. Then he contemplated the Front Range with an expression on his face that made him look like he was plotting to annihilate it.

“Years ago, Knight,” I said quietly and his eyes again tipped down to me.

“She beat you?” he clipped out.

I shook my head. “No, she’s just not very nice.”

“In Anya Speak what, exactly, does not very nice mean?”

“Anya Speak?”

“You’re playin’ it down, I know that. But I don’t know you enough to know how you’re doin’ it. So I want to know and I want to know it exactly.”

“Knight –” I started and his face dipped to mine even as his hand in my hair pulled me up to him.

“Exactly, babe,” he ordered.

I sighed.

Then I started talking because I didn’t know him very well either but I was getting to know the fact that he tended to find ways to get what he wanted and most of these ways involved extreme levels of bossiness mixed with tenacity.

When I started talking, he shifted away, let me inch back and he smoked while I did it.

“She was just not nice and her not nice got bitchy not nice when she drank a lot which unfortunately was often. We didn’t have a lot and she didn’t have a lot before she took me on and I’m not certain she was smart because she didn’t count on the life insurance policies and the rest of what she got selling our house and stuff running out so fast. But since she blew all that on vodka, smokes, clothes, new furniture, a stereo, a TV, dumping me with my sick Gram and going to Vegas or on a cruise and stuff like that, it was bound to.”

Knight kept smoking as I was speaking but his hand in my hair slid down to my neck and his thumb stroked the skin there.

It felt nice, so nice it was a distraction and to keep my mind off how nice his thumb felt lightly stroking my skin, I kept talking.

“But she wasn’t even nice before the money ran out. I knew I was a drain on her because she told me. I knew she felt she deserved compensation for taking me on because she pretty much made me her slave. I cooked. I cleaned. The minute I could drive I did the grocery shopping. She didn’t do any of that and when I say that I mean never. She sat on her butt and if she wanted a drink, she told me to get it for her, iced tea, occasionally, vodka, mostly. She didn’t help me with my homework, though she probably wasn’t smart enough to help. Didn’t care about my grades. She constantly made remarks about my clothes, my hair. Just being nasty. The minute I could get a job, she made me then she made me buy my own stuff and stopped giving me money, only a roof over my head and feeding me. She was in a bad mood perpetually. Life wasn’t good for her, never was. But if life isn’t good, she’s not the kind of person to find a way to make it that way or at least make it better. Just expected it to be and as time wore on and it didn’t get better, even if she didn’t do anything to improve it, she got more and more pissed.”

Knight kept smoking, watching me, stroking me and I pulled in a breath and continued.

“She had no man or no man who hung around a lazy woman for very long though she blamed that on me too. She said the men in her life dumped her because she had me hanging on her neck. But really, it was just her. And worse, she really loved my Mom. Like, really. It’s jacked but I think the only person in her life she really loved was my Mom. I look like my Mom. She told me that all the time. I reminded my aunt of my Mom and she said more often than not that it sucked I was there and my Mom was not. I’ve thought about it and I always wondered if it was that that made her such a bitch. That she missed my Mom, didn’t know how to deal, had an overabundance of feelings she had to get rid of and didn’t know how and was the kind of person to take that out on me. Whatever. Bottom line, it was no fun so the minute I could, I got out. I never see her anymore. Now she’s just a memory.”

Finished, I stopped talking.

Knight didn’t move, not his body or his eyes away from me.

Then his hand left my neck and he shifted around me to go to the table to put his cigarette out in a clean, cut glass ashtray that was sitting on the wrought iron table. Once done with this errand, his eyes went back to the mountains.

He did all this and did not speak.

I didn’t either but I turned to watch him and kept watching him as he surveyed the Range.

Finally, thinking this was weird, I called, “Knight?”

His eyes instantly came to me.

“I’m taking you to dinner tomorrow night,” he declared and I blinked.

I’d done what he asked, explaining about my aunt exactly and he had no comment.

Jeez, this guy was weird. Hot, but weird.

“I can’t,” I told him. “I have class.”

“Class?” he asked.

“School. Beauty school. I’m getting certification in skin technology.”

“Tuesday,” he stated immediately and I shook my head.

“Clients. Two of them. One at six thirty. One at eight.”

“Clients?”

“I’m already a certified nail technician. Both are acrylics.”

He turned to face me fully and asked, “Why do you take clients on evenings and weekends?”

“Because I work as a file clerk full-time during the day.”

He studied me.

Then he murmured, “Life isn’t good, find a way to make it that way or at least make it better.”

“What?” I asked quietly but I knew what. Those were my own words coming back to me.