Devil's Oven Read Online Free PDF

girl, she didn’t have much of an accent. She smiled. “Not much call for cabs here, I guess. Maybe you could run me home?”
    As they walked toward his truck, Jolene moved slowly, telling him she thought she probably had the flu.
    He was surprised to find she trusted him to take her home on the proof of his DNR badge and his word that Dwight knew him well enough. He tossed her backpack into the backseat of the king cab and helped her in, reminding her to buckle her seat belt. Shutting the door after her, Tripp found himself smiling, but the smile quickly faded when he saw Lila’s white SUV jerk to a stop in front of his truck.
    Shit.
    He walked up to the SUV’s passenger window, which came down.
    “Hey,” he said.
    Lila was wearing her favorite oversize sunglasses even though it was pitch-dark outside the glow of the parking lot lights. Her face was turned toward him, but because of the glasses, he couldn’t tell if she was looking at him or past him and into the cab of his pickup. Something about the set of her well-lipsticked mouth told him she had already gotten a good look at the girl.
    “Missed you,” he said. “I wish you’d called me today.”
    She didn’t say anything.
    “Bud out of town? Want to come up to the cabin?”
    Lila took off the glasses. Sometimes she wore them when she had been drinking, but now she looked dead sober. The coyote collar of her jacket nestled against her jaw, and she had her hair clipped at the crown of her head so that just a few curls spilled down. She definitely hadn’t been sitting at home all evening, but her silence was starting to get to him. Despite the presence of a teenage stripper in his truck, he hadn’t actually done anything wrong.
    “You going to talk to me, or what?” He was getting cold standing there. It was warm in the truck and the kid was waiting, sick.
    Lila’s lips moved a bit and he thought she was going to speak. Instead, she spat at him. It didn’t hit him, or even make it to the window.
    “Now, why did you want to go and do that?” he said, fighting a sudden urge to laugh. Even when she was being a flat-out bitch, Lila was beautiful to him. If she had been angry before, now she was embarrassed and angry. Not a combination likely to increase his chances of seeing her at the cabin anytime soon.
    “Just so you know, Bud says those girls are always getting crabs,” Lila said. “Enjoy.”
    She hit the gas hard enough that Tripp had to jump back or else be thrown to the ground. Once she was out of the parking lot, she gunned the SUV. He hoped for her sake that the county cops weren’t hanging around, watching for DUIs leaving the club. She was pissed off now, but he was pretty certain she would call him, if not in an hour then the next day. The make-up sex would be killer.
    When the SUV’s taillights had disappeared, he went back to the truck.
    “Ready to go?” he said.
    “She was mad,” Jolene said.
    “Just a misunderstanding. It’ll blow over.” He shut the door and put the truck in gear, hoping he was right.
    She shifted on the seat so she could rest the back of her head against the passenger window. “Really? I hear Mrs. Tucker holds a pretty mean grudge,” she said.
    He could feel her watching him as they left the lot, driving west up the highway, directly opposite from the direction Lila had gone. Of course she would know who Lila was. That meant she probably knew exactly who he was, too.
     

CHAPTER SIX
     
    Jolene stuffed the classified ad she had torn from Alta’s weekly paper into a pocket of her jeans, and shut the front door of Charity’s trailer behind her as softly as she could. Outside, she lifted her face to the sky, welcoming the morning’s misty rain. Pulling her mane of coal-black hair around so that it fell over one shoulder, she put up the hood of the white winter jacket she had bought with part of her first paycheck from The Twilight Club. Most of the rest of the cash had gone to things like toothpaste and