The other guy was trying to vet if I was serious or not, so I inclined my chin. “Her best friend is a cop. If you call the DPD, chances are they’re going to send him in since he knows this is where she likes to hang out, and then she’s going to tell him you and your buddies put your hands all over her without her permission and the cameras will back that up.” I pointed to one of the surveillance cameras Rome had installed all over the place. “You think that’s going to end well for you?”
He looked like he was considering how to answer when the lead singer of the band suddenly called out over the mic so that the entire bar had no choice but to listen: “You guys suck. Take your bleeding friend out of here and let everyone go back to having a good time.”
That rallied the rest of the bar-goers and suddenly a chant of “You suck!” went up and the grabby-hands bunch really had no choice but to leave. There was no way left for them to save face and they didn’t want to risk the chance that Royal did in fact know a cop.
They slunk toward the front door as I hauled Royal toward the bar and plopped her fine ass in a seat right in the middle, where I could keep an eye on her. I caged her in between my arms and leaned in close so that our noses were almost touching.
Through clenched teeth I told her, “Sit. Now I can either call Saint to come get you, or you can sit here, drink water, and eat something greasy and terrible until you sober up enough to get yourself home. Those are your only two options, Red.”
She blinked criminally long lashes at me and I could swear she looked like she was going to cry. I saw her gulp and she gave her head a little nod of agreement.
When she spoke it was only a hint of sound. “Don’t call Saint. I’ll wait it out.”
Saint was her closest girl friend, and also my friend Nash’s lady. She was a sweet and shy young woman that somehow managed to balance out all of Royal Hastings’s bold and brash attitude. They were an odd pair, but I knew Saint would drop whatever she was doing in a heartbeat to make sure Royal was taken care of. I didn’t blame Royal for not wanting her friend to have to come collect her in her current state. She was a mess. She was still beautiful, kind of wild and untamed looking, but under it all she was a disaster, courting trouble as well as danger and other bad things, which is what she had been actively doing for the last two weeks. This wasn’t the first disaster I had been forced to avert because of her antics, and the time had come to tell her it had to stop.
I pushed off the bar, walked around the open end, and glowered at Dixie as she smacked my ass on her way back to the floor.
“My hero.”
I grunted at her in response. I was not hero material. I fell more along the lines of arch-nemesis or supervillain. I poured Royal a glass of water in one of the giant beer steins I had behind the bar and thumped it down in front of her without a word. She jumped a little and I could see the regret and remorse starting to work its way into her face. A pink flush was blooming over the exposed crests of her cleavage and filling her cheeks.
I made my way across the entire length of the bar, stopping to refill a couple of drinks, closing a tab, clearing some empty plates until I got to the kitchen entrance that took up the entire back part of the bar. We typically only served food until midnight, but I knew Avett Walker, the new girl Rome had agreed to hire to work in the kitchen as a favor to an old friend, was still lurking somewhere around. I hadn’t seen her hot-pink hair dart out of the front door as soon as her shift ended like it normally did.
She was a mouthy little thing that had nothing but poison and attitude running in her veins as far as I could tell. She clearly didn’t want to be working here. Her mom, Darcy, was the kitchen manager and her father was the guy that had sold Rome the bar originally, but Avett didn’t seem to have any kind of fondness for the place. In fact she didn’t seem to have any kind of fondness for anything at all. She acted like coming to work each day was a prison sentence, which by default made me her jailer since I was her boss. We didn’t exactly get along. I think I saw too much of my old careless and thoughtless ways reflected back at me when I interacted with her.
I called Avett’s name, and when I didn’t get an answer I prowled through the empty kitchen until I got to the massive walk-in fridge. I didn’t have time to screw around, so I found some cheese, some bread, and some random pieces of fruit and figured that would have to do. I needed to shove something into Royal that would soak the booze up so I could tell her to get her head out of her ass and have the command stick.
I was kicking the door closed with the heel of my boot since my hands were full when the door to the beer cooler suddenly popped open and Avett came strolling out, fiddling with the zipper on her obviously stuffed-full messenger bag. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw me, her eyes widening and then narrowing in defiance.
“What are you doing back here? The kitchen is closed.” Like she had any right to question where I went in this place. It was a diversionary tactic I knew all too well.
I just stared at her and didn’t say anything. I looked pointedly at her bag and then back up to her chilly hazel gaze.
“What’s in the bag?”
She shifted her weight, and there was no mistaking the sound of bottles clanking together. She was trying to smuggle beer out of the cooler. It figured. My night needed one more complicated female I had to straighten out to make it more of a headache.
“Nothing.” She went to move past me and the sound of bottles clanging together got even louder.
My hands were full, so I just moved my entire body into her path to stop her. Avett took after Darcy way more than Brite, her dad. Brite was a giant of a man with a beard that I was sure had folk songs written in its honor. Avett was petite and barely came up to the center of my chest, and she had to tilt her head back in order to keep glaring up at me. What she lacked in height, she sure as hell made up for in bad attitude.
“Put it back. Don’t do it again and this is the last you’ll hear about it.” When I was irritated, the South tended to be heavy and thick in my voice, and not in the same way it was when I used my drawl to get something I wanted or to make someone think I was nicer and stupider than I really was.
“Get out of my way, Asa.”
“No. You don’t get to steal from Rome. I don’t care what your beef with Brite is and I don’t care that you obviously would rather be out wrestling wild mountain lions than working here. I’m not letting you take advantage of Rome. He’s a good guy and he deserves better than that.”
We had a glare-off and for a second I thought she was going to try and step around me knowing my hands were occupied, but I think there was some kind of invisible thread, some kind of aura that we shared that made her instinctively know that she could get away, but not for very long.
She huffed out a breath that sent her pink bangs dancing across her forehead. She would be a really cute girl if she wasn’t such a pain in the ass and practically a decade younger than me. She was just a kid really and she sure as shit acted like it.
“I’m going to a party and I don’t have any money for beer. I didn’t think it would be a big deal to take a twelve-pack from the cooler. After all, my dad practically handed this bar over to the soldier for free. A few beers seems like a fair trade.”
I rolled my eyes. “It wouldn’t be a big deal. You know that Rome wouldn’t care if you asked him. But walking around like you’re owed something for some unknown reason isn’t all right with me, and I’m not going to let you do it.” I furrowed my eyebrows at her and shifted my weight. “How can you be broke? You just got paid on Friday.” Since she worked in the kitchen, I knew Rome paid her an hourly wage. It wasn’t enough to retire on but it was enough that it shouldn’t be gone in less than twenty-four hours unless she was up to no good.
Instead of answering me, she whirled around and went to put the beers back in the cooler. I waited until she came back out, and made her lead the way out of the kitchen back to the bar. I had been gone long enough that the band was done wit
h their set and that meant a crowd had gathered and Dixie was standing behind the bar trying to catch orders up. I nudged Avett with my elbow and deposited my haul into her hands. I pointed to Royal, who was sitting stoic in the middle of the rush, her head bent down and her gaze locked on the bar top.
“Feed the redhead. Make sure she eats it, and if I ever catch you trying to steal again you’re out of here. I don’t care what I promised Brite or how much it would break Darcy’s heart.”
She gave me a baleful look and muttered just loud enough that I could hear it, “Funny coming from you.”
She wasn’t wrong. It was ridiculous coming from me, so I ignored her and dove into the mess of trying to sort the rush out. It was only half an hour until last call, so it proved to be a little trickier than usual. The weekends at the Bar were getting busy enough since Rome’s remodel that I thought maybe I was going to have to ask him about hiring another server as well as a bouncer. Business was good, and in order to keep it that way we needed to make sure the crowds got service just as good as the battered old veterans that littered the place during the daytime hours.
I tried to keep an eye on Royal. I was worried she was going to try and leave before I could talk to her and before I could judge if she was sober enough to drive, but she was in the same spot, head bent down, eyes focused on the bar, and her water was gone. She had also put a good-sized dent in the food in front of her, so that made me breathe a little easier. She was abnormally quiet and I wished I had thought to grab her shirt for her when I pulled her out of the crowd earlier. She looked rumpled, like she had just climbed out of bed, and that wasn’t doing a thing to help me remember why I needed to get her out of the tailspin she had been in ever since the week before Christmas.
I got last call done. I paid the band and thanked the lead singer for helping me out with the frat kids, and he in turn asked me if I thought Royal would be interested in going on the road with them as a backup dancer. I had to laugh and broke the news to him that she already had a full-time job. I didn’t bother explaining what it was because I doubted he would believe me anyway. I helped Dixie clear the floor, and when we started to move people toward the front doors, I stopped next to Royal’s side and told her, “Hang out for a minute.”
She didn’t respond but she pushed some of her hair out her face, tucked it behind her ear, and looked at me out of the corner of her eye.
I took that as silent assent and helped Dixie get everyone outside and gave her a hand putting all the chairs up so that the cleaning crew Rome hired could spit-shine the place before we opened again tomorrow. Dixie and I had a system since we did this together six nights a week, so it was work that went by pretty quickly. When I was done I went behind the bar, poured myself a Dalwhinnie on the rocks, and took myself and my drink back around the other side of the bar so I could sit on a stool next to Royal. Everyone teased me that I should drink bourbon or whiskey, being as I was from Kentucky, but I preferred the smooth and dirty taste of scotch. It sort of fit since I was both those things myself.
I took a swig of the drink and set it down with a thunk on the bar. I ran my hand through my dirty-blond hair and looked at Royal out of the corner of my eye.
“So this is what you do now? Get drunk, rile up the natives, take half your clothes off in public, and just generally act the fool? ’Cause I gotta tell you, after two weekends in a row of it, I think it’s probably time you find another bar to haunt.”
I saw her shoulders slump and she matched my side-eye look.
“Why didn’t you tell those guys I was a cop?”
I sighed and turned to face her. I really wished she wasn’t such a looker. It made trying to be level-headed and rational around her that much harder.
“Because even though you can carry concealed legally because of your badge, you still can’t be drinking while carrying a loaded weapon. That’s illegal and a headache you really don’t need.”
“All of a sudden you’re concerned with others being law-abiding.” A little bit of her sass was coming back and that was a nice change from her maudlin moping that had settled around her since I pulled her off the dance floor.
“No. I don’t give a flying fuck about others being law-abiding, but you’ve got a job you like, friends that care about you, and you’re way too young to be flushing it all down the toilet. Even if that seems to be your new mission in life. You need to get your shit together, Royal, before you’re too far gone to fix the mess you seem so eager to make.” She was barely twenty-three. That seemed a lifetime younger than me, even though I had a couple more years ahead of me before I hit the big three-oh.
“That’s funny coming from you.”
Second time I had heard that in less than an hour. Maybe I just needed to keep my nose out of it and let everyone learn their own hard lessons just like I had been forced to do. I picked up my drink and took another slug.
“Get it together or don’t, but this is the final warning about bringing that nonsense into my bar. You want to go down in flames, I guess that’s your call, but I’m not going to watch you burn.”
Something flashed across her eyes, something so sad and lost it really made me want to reach out and comfort her, but touching Royal was like touching a live wire and I already had a hard enough time keeping my mind out of my pants and my hands to myself when I was around her. She blinked those long-ass lashes at me, stuck her tongue out to flick it across her bottom lip, and I forgot how to breathe for a second. She did it on purpose. I had no doubt.
“One of these days you’ll come home with me when I ask, Asa.” She leaned over on the bar stool a little and put her hand on my thigh. My fingers tightened around the tumbler in my hand so hard I was shocked the glass didn’t break.
“Is that why you’re here? Is that what the show is all about? You really want to make that kind of mistake?” My drawl was thick enough that the words were languid and heavy sounding. I felt blood start to race under my skin and I had no doubt that my eyes were probably glowing bright gold in my face. It wasn’t often someone made me uneasy, threw me off my game, but Royal had done it more than once in our short acquaintance.
She pressed her weight forward and stopped when her mouth was just a fraction away from mine. I could almost taste her. In fact, if I stuck out just the tip of my tongue, I would be tasting her. I clenched my teeth to stop that from happening, even though I was pretty sure she would taste like candy and fire.
“It seems like all I make anymore are mistakes. At least making that kind of one with you would be fun.”
She used her leverage on my leg to push herself upright as she slithered off the bar stool in one seamlessly sexy move. It made me bite back a groan.
“If you don’t want me here, I won’t come back.” She tossed her heavy hair over her shoulder and gave me a steady look out of her dark brown eyes. “I really thought you would make this easier.”
I didn’t say anything as she walked away, steady on those killer shoes and missing her shirt even though it was winter in Colorado. She was obviously sober enough to drive, but I had no idea where her head was at otherwise.
Dixie locked the door behind the redhead and wandered over to the bar. She grabbed herself a bottle of Bud Light, which of course was sacrilegious in this Coors Light–dominated bar, and refilled my scotch.
“I don’t know how you’ve managed to turn her down more than once.” She shook her own strawberry-blond curls and grinned at me. “I’m not even into chicks and I think I would do her if she asked. She’s pretty amazing.”
I muttered a few swearwords under my breath and tossed the second round back in one swallow. It burned a little and I had to blink.
“She’s a cop, a cop that has arrested me. I have better self-preservation instincts than that.” In my experience, cops were not my biggest fans, and I really couldn’t blame them. I set the empty glass down on the bar and climbed to my feet. It was late and I needed a hundred cold showers. “Besides, she doesn’t actually wanna fuck, sh
e just thinks she does.”
Dixie snorted. “That’s not what it looks like to me.”
It might look pretty cut-and-dried from the outside. Royal was pretty, I was pretty, and we definitely had a spark, but I hadn’t lasted as long as I had screwing over everyone whose path I crossed without learning how to look deeper, how to see the danger looming, and it was obvious to me that Royal was dangerous in more ways than one.
“That’s a very pretty girl with a very ugly hurt, and somehow she got it in her head that she deserves to be punished, to hurt even more.”
“So she’s trying to drag you to bed to punish her? That sounds kinky and fun.”
I tossed my bar towel at her and pushed up from the bar so I could do the nightly cash-out and go home. Now the idea of Royal in her handcuffs and nothing else was going to be running around in my head for the rest of the night. Like she needed any help being unforgettable.
“She feels bad and she’s doing everything in her power to make herself feel worse.” I didn’t know all the details of what had started Royal’s recent decline, but I did know her partner on the force, who really was her best friend and had been for most of her life, had been injured pretty badly in the line of duty and that Royal was currently on administrative leave while the department investigated the circumstances that had led to two cops being shot. One of the officers hadn’t made it and the other was still in the hospital. The other being Dominic, Royal’s partner. “I’m not looking to be any part of that.”
I had used enough people in my life, even those that loved me unconditionally, to know what being a means to an end for someone else looked like. I wasn’t going to help Royal self-destruct.
Dixie gave me a soft little grin that reminded me that even though she was tough as nails when she needed to be, she was really a romantic sweetheart at her center.
“Maybe you should give it a shot and you could make her feel better, and maybe she could make you finally see that you have changed over the last year or so.”