The Driver
By Amy Lane
A Long Con Adventure
Sequel to The Muscle
Hell-raiser, getaway driver, and occasional knight in tarnished armor Chuck Calder has never had any illusions about being a serious boyfriend. He may not be a good guy, but at least as part of Josh Salinger’s crew of upscale thieves and cons, he can feel good about his job.
Right now, his job is Lucius Broadstone.
Lucius is a blueblood with a brutal past. He uses his fortune and contacts to help people trying to escape abuse, but someone is doing everything they can to stop him. He needs the kind of help only the Salingers can provide. Besides, he hasn’t forgotten the last time he and Chuck Calder collided. The team’s good ole boy and good-luck charm is a blue-collar handful, but he is genuinely kind. He takes Lucius’s mission seriously, and Lucius has never had that before. In spite of Chuck’s reluctance to admit he’s a nice guy, Lucius wants to know him better.
Chuck’s a guaranteed good time, and Lucius is a forever guy. Can Chuck come to terms with his past and embrace the future Lucius is offering? Or is Good Luck Chuck destined to be driving off into the sunset alone forever?
So my husband picked me up from the airport after a trip to St. Louis, and all I could talk about was how insane the drivers were there and how happy I was to get back to where stoplights are more than hints, scents in the air, and the merest whispers of suggestions. Also, I was super happy to see my husband. So here’s to all the people who obey the traffic rules so the Chuck’s of this world can drive right by us to save the day. And here’s to Mate, who keeps picking me up from the airport and listening to me talk about goofy things. Also Mary, the kids, the dogs, the cats, the friends, the colleagues, the people who listen to me ramble…. All of you make writing possible.
Growin’ Up for Good Luck Chuck
Ten Years Ago
“CHARLIE. I’M sorry, Charlie, I didn’t have anyone else to tell!”
Charles Calder—also known as Chuck—gasped in dismay and opened the door to his dorm room to let Maggie Siddons in.
She looked terrible.
Maggie had been Chuck’s college try at heterosexuality in his freshmen year. The sex had been unremarkable—but not regrettable. She and Chuck had become each other’s plus-ones during visits home and at fraternity mixers. For Chuck, Maggie had been an easy way to not have to tell his parents that he was gay, although Chuck’s parents seemed to be happily oblivious and not particularly interested in his love life. For Maggie, Chuck had been an easy way to not have to answer any questions about why she wasn’t seeing anybody right now.
But Maggie—who had pale bronze skin, charming cheekbones, and spiral ringlets that all added up to her being one of the prettiest, most popular girls at their small midwestern university—didn’t look pretty and adorable right now.
That pale bronze skin was showing purple, and it was swollen under her eyes and along her jaw. Her eye itself was showing brick red, and she had a split over her eyebrow that would scar. Her body—tight and athletic—wasn’t moving too well, and Chuck tried to still the hammering of his heart as he took her in.
“Maggie, oh dear God!”
She threw herself into his arms and began to sob.
It took her half an hour to get the story out—but Chuck had it figured out long before she did. She’d been seen flirting with some dork named Kyle. Jock, not dumb but lazy. At first, Chuck thought Maggie would see through the guy and his pathetic, “Help me, Maggie, only you can tutor me out of obscurity!” schtick, but everybody had their blind spot. Chuck’s mother’s blind spot was his father’s infidelity, and his father’s blind spot was the contempt his children held for him because of it. Maggie’s blind spot was apparently blond, entitled Kyle Miller, and while Chuck hadn’t liked the guy, it wasn’t like he could just beat the crap out of Miller because Chuck had a bad feeling about him.
Well, apparently Chuck needed to trust his bad feelings more, because Maggie had said stop when Miller said go, and Miller said, “Fuck me, you dumb bitch,” and Maggie had barely gotten away.
Chuck looked at his friend, who had cheerfully bared her soul to him from the beginning of their doomed relationship, and who’d forgiven him for not being that into girls. At that moment, Chuck decided that Kyle Miller was going to be the one who wished he’d gotten away.
“Charlie, you can’t hurt him,” Maggie hiccupped. “He’ll kill you. He and all his dumb jock assholes will kill you. You know it. Their fathers will get them off because they have money and—”
“Oh, darlin’,” Chuck said. “It’s not like I’m all that breakable, right?” He was, in fact, decked. He loved physical exercise as much as he loved studying. Didn’t particularly have any ambition, and there wasn’t a competitive bone in his body, but he did love doing things simply for the sake of doing them—like a zillion bench presses until his muscles ached, and then a zillion more. It wasn’t as much fun as a blow job, no, but there was still a certain visceral satisfaction to be had.
But even Chuck knew you couldn’t face off with an entire football team for visceral satisfaction.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t have a plan.
It involved some sodium bicarbonate and some vinegar and then one extra ingredient of a slightly more incendiary nature.
All he needed to do was cut class one day, sneak into Kyle’s room in the frat house, and put everything in cups that he placed upside down in Kyle’s toilet tank. Everything would be fine… until Kyle flushed.
Then—God willing—the toilet would explode.
Hopefully all over Kyle, the giant piece of shit, because look what he’d done to Maggie!
Chuck planned it carefully. He didn’t want Kyle to die, but he did hope he’d be hurt. And embarrassed. And made small. Because Maggie was a force larger than life, and that’s what Kyle had done to her.
It was bad enough that they couldn’t even report him to campus police for fear of reprisals from Kyle’s father, who was a state senator and on the board of trustees for the college—but now Maggie was afraid to cross campus by herself, and had taken to sleeping in Chuck’s room at night. Chuck didn’t begrudge her one second of safety, but he did (as he told his blowjob buddy) sort of miss having his own room.
He had also put a plan of reprisal and humiliation into play, as he attempted to tell his blowjob buddy right after he’d set it up.
His blowjob buddy might have had more to say about the matter—questions about what he’d done, perhaps—but Chuck had been mid-blowjob at the time. Dan Torres was the local ROTC instructor and on-campus Army recruiter, and while he was very in the closet, he was also very out-spoken about his appreciation of Chuck’s skills.
Lucky for both of them, Dan had a small office in the back of the physical fitness offices, with a door that locked and a television mounted on the far wall that they turned on to mask their noises.
So Dan was not exactly quiet about Chuck’s plan for revenge on Kyle Miller, but he wasn’t exactly articulate, either.
“You… oh God… you… you… holy fucking God! You blew up his toilet?”