Touch Slowly (Red Light: Silver Girls series) by Debra Kayn Page A

left and should be done in fifteen minutes if you want to wait for us to walk you back."
    She pushed to her feet, more than anxious to get back to her bed. "I'll go now."
    Outside, the sun blinded her. She smiled hello at the biker wearing a Moroad Motorcycle Club vest and fell in line. Tawny kept a string of questions aimed at the escort leaving Nova alone. Trying hard not to let her second wind grab ahold of her, she slipped her hands into her back pockets and concentrated on missing the cracks in the sidewalk.
    "It's so pretty here." Tawny leaned closer to the biker. "When the, um, woman's center said there was a safe place I could go after leaving my asshole boyfriend, I never thought they'd send me to the Rocky Mountains of Idaho."
    Nova lifted her gaze. What was Tawny doing?
    Tiff wanted them to stick to the story that she ran the upstairs of the Sterling Building as a safe home for women seeking to gain their independence, but the biker was a part of Jeremy's club. He could see through her lies and tell Tiff that Tawny was trying to flirt with him.
    She walked faster, distancing herself from the lies. Everywhere she turned, she had another story ready. Nick, Shayla, the bikers, and even Emmett. They all knew a different lie.
    "Let's cross the street, ladies." The biker stepped off the sidewalk and stopped in the road, guarding them against traffic that hadn't arrived yet. Nova grinned at Tawny. Chivalry wasn't dead. The big guy was cute trying to protect them in the case of a freak drive-by in a town without a stop sign.
    Nova jumped up on the opposite sidewalk and headed down the alley without waiting for Tawny. It was best to keep her distance if her co-worker ended up getting a reprimand on her records for having a big mouth.
    At the back door, she waited for the others.
    A car squealed around the corner and headed up the backstreet. Nova gasped recognizing the gray primer-colored muscle car at the same time the biker and Tawny reached her side. Unable to look away, she shaded her eyes and strained to see through the front windshield.
    Her escort stepped beside her to unlock the door. She shifted, and caught sight of Emmett staring at her through the window from behind the steering wheel. Heaviness landed at the base of her neck, and she lifted her hand to her chest, hoping he wouldn't recognize her in the daylight.
    His gaze narrowed and looked away from her, but it was too late. She'd recognized the truth slapping him upside the head. But what truth?
    Had he heard through the grapevine what happens upstairs at Red Light? There were a lot of prominent men who lived in Federal who visited the prostitutes. Her customers weren't all tourists. A quarter of them were miners.
    Every visitor to Red Light followed rules, kept secrets, and remained discreet because they knew what was in jeopardy if others found out what kind of business was open right under their noses.
    She walked inside the building afraid Emmett knew more than she thought. If he knew what she was doing in Federal, it was only a matter of time until all hell would break loose.

Chapter Seven
    T he dogs on the other side of the trailer park barked. John West, three trailers down from Emmett, yelled at his wife about not having dinner on the table by eight o'clock. Emmett shut the hood of his car and looked up at the sky. Another sprinkle of rain hit his face.
    Nick walked out of his house and over to Emmett. "Did you get your car fixed?"
    "Yeah." Emmett grabbed his flannel shirt off the seat of his car. "It should be good to go until the next part calls it quits. It's turned into a money pit."
    "Worth the cash, man. You don't see ones like this in such good shape anymore." Nick pulled up the collar of his coat. "Looks like it's going to storm."
    Rain would cancel the nightly gathering on his lot. Emmett rolled down the sleeves of his shirt. Glad for the break and time away from the others, he'd had a rough time sleeping the last two days and customer orders