“Hey, can you make frozen drinks?”
I looked up to see that two women had taken seats at the bar. The one who’d inquired about my skills with the blender was unfamiliar to me. But her companion was not. Jill Sullivan and I had once been close. If by “close” you meant the sort of friends who were always in competition, and who were always trying to undermine the other.
Jill had been the rich, fashionable one. I had been the sexy, adventurous one. I’d craved her clothes and her car and her giant bedroom. She’d craved my confidence and my twin brother.
Neither of us got what we wanted.
“Hi, Jill,” I said. We were grownups now, right? Old wounds shouldn’t haunt me.
Besides, Jill didn’t look so hot. She had red eyes and splotchy skin. Furthermore, (and this wasn’t just me being catty) she’d put on quite a few pounds since I’d seen her last. I felt an unexpected tug of sympathy for the girl who had battered my self-esteem during our senior year.
“Hey,” she said, then took a deep, steadying breath. If I wasn’t mistaken, she’d been recently crying.
“What can I get you ladies?”
“I would kill for a frozen margarita,” her friend said.
“That won’t be necessary,” I said smoothly. “Salt?”
She shook her head.
“And for you?” I laid a coaster in front of Jill.
She sniffed. “What do people drink the night after they walk in on their husband banging the nanny in their bed?”
“Oh, shit,” I breathed.
Jill just turned her eyes skyward. “That was even harder to say out loud than I expected it to be.”
“I think you should drink whatever sounds good,” I say. “Especially if it’s something he never liked.”
“Two margaritas, then,” she said.
“Coming right up.” I’d probably be calling these two a cab later. I’d lay money on it.
It was a summer Tuesday, and quiet. So I had time to sneak looks at Jill as I made their drinks. I used to think she was so glamorous, with her straight hair and blond highlights. Now she just looked like a tired housewife. And those highlights looked like they required some serious time spent at the salon.
I wasn’t exactly living the high life here behind the bar at The Mountain Goat, but our lives suddenly didn’t seem so different after all. Like me, Jill hadn’t finished college. After failing to get Benito’s attention, she’d married the high school quarterback. He worked at a car dealership in Montpelier. They had a kid. Or two?
Funny how I hadn’t kept track. Who knew that jealousies can dry up and fall away, like autumn leaves?
Jill and her friend drank their margaritas and then switched to white wine. I brought them a plate of potato skins on the house, claiming that anyone having a terrible day deserved carbs. But I didn’t want them drinking all that alcohol on an empty stomach.
“What have you been up to, Zara?” she asked after thanking me.
“This,” I said.
“Fun job,” she replied, and I couldn’t decide if she was trying to be nice or just patronizing me. Or both. That’s how it had always been between us. She’d lend me one of her silk scarves to dress up my poor-girl clothes. But then she’d make sure everyone knew the scarf was hers. The memory sent a flare of ten-year-old anger through me.
And then I took a deep breath and let it go. Holding on to that bullshit? I didn’t need that.
“This job has its moments,” I said. “But mainly I’m here because it pays the bills.” I wouldn’t play Jill’s reindeer games anymore.
“I guess I’ll be needing a job soon,” she said, peering into her wine glass. “I’m leaving him.”
“Oh, honey,” her friend said, rubbing her back. “You can, but don’t decide tonight, okay? Just take a breath.”
That was good advice, so I backed away. Unfortunately, the bar’s door opened to reveal Jimmy Gage, my least favorite ex-cop. And—damn him—he took a seat at the bar just two stools away from Jill and her pal.
All the hair stood up on the back of my neck. Swear to God, I would have rather seen Griff Shipley and Blond Audrey instead. Even if they were liplocked and handing out wedding invitations.
Jimmy waved me over. “Coors Light,” he grunted.
“Tap or bottle?” I asked quietly, praying he was in a mellow, forgetful mood tonight. Because ten years ago, Jimmy had pulled Jill and I over for speeding on our way to the graduation dance. And Jill had sassed Jimmy and gotten us both into a pile of trouble. There had been big drama. And I’d behaved very, very badly.
In other words, tonight had quickly become a train wreck of historical, emotional baggage that I’d hoped was behind me. And to think that only an hour ago my new obsession with a certain green-eyed stranger had been my only problem.
“Tap beer,” Jimmy demanded. “Happy-hour price.”
My nerves jangled. Happy hour had been over for an hour already. Forget please or thank you from this asshole—he wanted half price, too. And I was going to let him get away with it, damn it.
I poured his beer and set it in front of him. He nodded, putting a five on the bar.
After that I was practically tiptoeing around my own bar, just waiting for things to get even worse. And it only took Jimmy a couple of minutes to notice Jill and her friend swilling wine down the bar. “Hey ladies,” he said, his cold eyes measuring them. “Buy you a drink?”
Jill sat back, startled. Her gaze collided with mine, and I looked away. “No thank you,” she said slowly. “We need to slow down our alcohol consumption, I think.”
“Diet Coke?” I prompted, reaching for the soda gun. Jill used to love her Diet Coke, which I’d pretended to despise because I hadn’t been able to afford to feed dollars into the cafeteria vending machine.
Jill nodded gratefully.
Jimmy was still watching her, though. “You always were an uptight little bitch,” he said. “I heard it’s still true.”
“Hey!” I gasped, stunned that he’d go for the throat like that.
The asshole gave us a humorless grin and returned to his beer.
And it was right then—at the very moment I’d forgotten all about him—that the door opened on Dave. He sauntered in alone again, passing Jimmy and the two women to take the same barstool he’d occupied only three nights before.
He put his muscular forearms on the bar and studied the beer list. And for no good reason I began to relax. It was almost as if he’d aired out the room with his calm presence. Jill’s friend eyed him appreciatively from one bar stool away, but he didn’t notice (or pretended not to).
“Evening. What can I get you?” I asked him, as if I’d never seen him before.
He turned his gaze on me, and there was humor in it. “What’s tasty around here?”
“Vermont beers,” I said firmly. “I recommend Sip of Sunshine from Lawson’s Liquids. Bright, hoppy IPA. Beer snobs drive a thousand miles to taste it.”
“Is that right?” he asked, his eyes hot on mine. The only thing he seemed to want to order was me.
And right now I so did not have the time for that. I tapped the bar impatiently. “You need a minute to think about it?”
“Nah. The Lawson’s sounds good.”
I poured his beer and set it in front of him without a word.
“Thank you, beautiful,” he said, his voice gravelly.
Yowza. The things that man made me feel. Even so, I left him alone with his beer. Mopping down the bar, I tried to monitor the tense situation which continued to brew between Jimmy and Jill.
“Sorry to hear about your marital troubles.” Jimmy snickered.
“Not sure you know the meaning of the word sorry,” Jill’s friend piped up.
Jill and I flinched at the same time. Fights at The Mountain Goat were rare. Fights between an ex-cop and a soccer mom were rarer still. But it was possible that I was about to witness one.
“You ladies need anything?” I asked, my glance taking in all the fre
e tables in the room. If my marriage were imploding, I’d probably want a little privacy at one of those tables. But what the hell would I know? Nobody had ever asked me to marry him.
And probably nobody ever would.
“Why aren’t we still friends?” Jill asked now, her eyes in a drunken squint.
“Oh, honey.” I sighed. “Just different paths.”
“We had so much fun together back in the day!”
Sometimes we did, and sometimes it was awful. “You’ll have fun again,” I said with false cheer. “Don’t take on the whole world at once, okay? One problem at a time. You can’t change your whole life in one night.”
“I can change your life in one night.” Jimmy chuckled. “Could show you a few things.”
“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” Jill’s mouthy friend put in.
My blood pressure went up another point.
“No man strays if you keep him satisfied,” Jimmy taunted. “Get on your knees for him sometimes, you know? I bet you didn’t.”
“Jimmy,” I warned, finally too pissed off to be afraid of him. “Keep your nose out of it.”
But he only sneered at me. Shit. I’d already set my phone out on the bar in preparation for calling the police if things got too heated. Not that it would help diffuse things. Jimmy would hate getting a lecture from the police department that had fired him for graft.
This was already the longest Tuesday shift in history.
Dave waved at me from the other end of the bar. His glass was empty. “Another?” I asked quickly.
His gaze traveled down the bar. “Everything okay?”
“Sure,” I ground out. “Beer?”
“Love one, gorgeous.”
I met his gaze and got an unexpected jolt. Apparently I wasn’t too distracted to remember what it had been like to look up at him as his powerful body—
“Your man spends a lot of time at that car dealership,” Jimmy said loudly, pulling me out of my reverie. He was taunting Jill again. “Fondling those new cars instead of your titties. Bad call on his part.”
My famous temper flared.
“Shut. It,” I demanded, abandoning Dave to move down the bar. “You harass people in my joint, you will never come back in here. Think about that. You’ll have to drive to Montpelier for a beer. It’s not worth it.”
“Don’t push me, honey. It’s not worth it,” he echoed. The asshole looked up at me with a sneer on his face. He was wearing a Ted Nugent T-shirt with an AK-47 on it.
Now I’d had it. “You know what? Wearing an assault rifle on your shirt will not make your dick any bigger.” Everyone in the bar laughed, but I wasn’t even done. “Now get out of here or I’m calling Officer Brown.”
Jimmy went white, and then red. And then everything began to happen at once. Dave got off his bar stool and moved around behind the girls. Jimmy grabbed his beer glass in one fist. Then he swung. Dave let out a shout of warning, and my stomach lurched, but I didn’t move. I don’t know whether it was fear or foolish defiance that kept me rooted in place. Maybe both.
But for his own reasons—human decency or self-preservation, I’ll never know—Jimmy didn’t bludgeon me with the pint glass. He threw it instead. It landed with a deafening crash against the wall behind me, taking out several of the liquor bottles lined up there.
And then, even before the scent of leaking brandy and the sound of broken glass began to pierce my frozen senses, he bolted toward the door.
“You want me to catch him?” Dave asked, hands in angry fists at his sides.
“No,” I said firmly. He was gone, and I wanted him to stay that way.
For a long beat, no one else said a word. I took in the sight of my stunned customers. “Show’s over, guys. Sorry about that.”
“Sorry, Zara,” Jill and her friend murmured in turn. “We can help with the mess.”
“I got it,” I said. “Need me to call you a cab?” It was always better to make the offer early. It was a reminder to them of how inconvenient it would be if they did need one an hour from now.
“No,” Jill’s pal said. “Can you pour us another Coke, though? We need to level out before I drive home.”
“Sure thing.” I got their sodas and then went in back to find a broom and a dustpan. I kicked off my heels and put on a pair of muck boots I kept for messy jobs.
“Can I help you with that?” Dave asked when I began to sweep the space behind the bar.
“No.” That’s when I realized I’d never gotten him another drink. “Shit. Can I pour you something before I get too involved here?”
“Another Lawson’s. Or I’ll wait. It’s really okay.” I poured the beer, and he tucked his chin in one hand and gave me an appraising glance. “Pretty exciting night in here.”
“Ugh, I know. I’ve been looking for a good excuse to kick him out, anyway.”
Dave smiled, and his almost-dimple showed. “Are you sure you don’t want a hand? I can’t believe that fucker left a mess for you to clean up.”
“Just like a man,” I teased. “I probably had it coming, though. You can’t insult someone’s T-shirt and his dick and expect no reaction.”
Dave winked at me, and I felt it everywhere. “Good thing he didn’t pull out his equipment to prove you wrong.”
I surveyed the mess on my bar. “That would have required less clean-up, though.”
His laugh was a bark. “Want me to hold the dust pan?”
“Nah. This really won’t take long. Shame about the good bottle of cognac.” I clicked my tongue.
An hour later the mess was long since gone. So were almost all the customers. I’d restocked the bottles Jimmy had broken.
All that remained of the incident was the faint smell of brandy and my shaking hands. I was unnerved. Jill had gotten weepy on her bar stool, and the sounds of her sniffles weren’t helping. All while Dave watched me with heated eyes.
Then, finally, Jill and her friend left, leaving me and Dave alone again. And I did something completely out of character. I took two shot glasses off the rack and popped them onto the bar. Then I took the bottle of Jose Cuervo and poured two shots, pushing one of them toward Dave.
He watched me with gleaming eyes. “Rough night?”
“The roughest.”
“I can make it better.” His voice was a caress against my heated face. “Come here, gorgeous.” He patted the bar stool beside him. “Sit with me a minute.”
I hesitated for at least half a second.
“Zara,” he said, his voice as low and rich as I’d ever heard it. “It wasn’t an invitation. It was a firm request.”
Goosebumps leapt to the surface of my skin. And then I obeyed him, ducking under the bar gate and sliding my bottom onto the bar stool beside him. The room looked unfamiliar from this vantage point. “So this is how the other half lives,” I joked.
Dave took his shot and tossed it back. Then he placed mine in front of me.
The lime wedges were in reach, so I grabbed one and squeezed it into my shot. Then I drank it up with as much confidence as I could muster. Dave did strange things to my ego. He made me want to be as sexy as he kept telling me I was.
“Good girl,” he purred, taking the shot out of my hand. He gave my bar stool a tug, sliding it toward him with me in tow.
Then he grasped my shoulders in firm hands and kissed me. Hard.
Chapter Six
One month later
Dave
On August first, I stepped out of my rental truck at The Mountain Goat for the last time.
But I didn’t go inside right away. Instead, I stood there for a couple of minutes, listening to the engine tick, my ass parked against the door. Faint music could be heard from inside the bar, but I turned in the other direction and looked up. The Milky Way arched overhead, a stripe of messy starlight. I knew now that in an hour the moon would outshine it, making it harder to see.
I was thirty years old. But until six weeks ago, the Milky Way had been only a phrase in textbook
s and the name of a candy bar. Where I grew up outside of Detroit, there was too much industrial light to see any stars. And where I lived in New York City, it was even worse.
A couple of weeks into my Vermont stay I’d bought a terrific pair of binoculars—had them FedExed to the cabin. First I’d researched telescopes, but it turned out that a decent telescope is four feet tall and doesn’t like to be moved around. And since all I did was move around, I decided to settle for binoculars. I was just a stupid punk from the wrong side of Detroit, anyway. Not an astronomer. What did I know from telescopes?
The binoculars showed me more of the sky than I’d ever seen before. Especially the moon—when I focused my lenses, its landscape suddenly looked like a real place. I’d been astonished at how visible the craters were and how near-desolate surfaces came into view through the binoculars’ lenses.
Much like the moon, Vermont had also been just a shape on the map for me until a couple of months ago. It had been my teammate’s idea to rent a cabin up here for two months, to do some hiking and fishing. He’d played hockey for the University of Vermont, and loved the place.
Since I was a single guy—and the hockey team was my whole life—I’d agreed to come along.
Getting in the car in Brooklyn, all I’d known of Vermont was nice cheese and beer, because both those things showed up on restaurant menus in New York. But I hadn’t known about the stars.
Now my vacation was over. Earlier tonight I’d packed up my little room in the rental cabin. After tonight, my new binoculars would collect dust on the windowsill of my apartment, where my teammates would probably pick ’em up and try to spot women changing their clothes through the windows of Brooklyn.
We were just a bunch of overgrown kids, really. Couldn’t take us anywhere.
Standing in the parking lot, I took one more look at the Milky Way. I knew I wouldn’t see it again for a long time. A week from now I’d be back in the city, living in the weight room and out on the ice, fighting for another chance to make the playoffs. Then the travel would start up, and I’d live out of a suitcase.