by Lili Valente
I step away from Mary with a sniff, determined to pull myself together. “You guys are the best. You want to hit bingo night at the Sisters of Mercy next week? It’s still on Wednesday nights, right?”
Mary’s eyes light up, and her furrowed brow relaxes. “It is! And I’ve got a new selection of lucky hats! Enough for all of us. Bring Adriana, she’ll love them.”
I ignore the fresh pang of sadness that flashes through my chest at the mention of my youngest daughter. “I’ll try, but she’s been so busy with track and all her senior activities I barely see her anymore. She might be too cool for bingo these days.”
“No one’s ever too cool for bingo,” Mary scoffs. “She’ll come. She won’t be able to resist. Deep down, she’s still the same kid who brought her troll dolls to the VA Bingo Tournament and lined up red jellybeans along the top of her cards for good luck. You’ll see.”
I smile, hoping she’s right. “I’ll try to talk her into it. But you two should get going. Doesn’t the concert start soon? If you don’t hurry, you won’t find parking.”
“They’re sold out, or we’d offer to bring you along,” Virginia says.
“But we can be late if you need us to stay.” Mary casts a glance up and down the street in front of Oakville Grocery, where Chad67 and I were supposed to meet. It’s still a good hour until dark, with plenty of people out enjoying the warm Indian summer night, but Mary’s a worrier from way back. “I hate to leave you here alone. Do you need us to walk you to your car?”
“No, thank you,” I say. “I’m fine.”
“Or you could take my ticket,” Mary says, her eyes lighting up as inspiration strikes. “I don’t mind. I’m leaving for my Alaskan cruise next weekend, so I should get home and start packing anyway.”
“No way, crazy! I’m not taking your ticket.” I shoo them off. “I’m fine to get home by myself. You two go. Have fun. It’s been a big day, and I’m honestly relieved for an excuse to get in my pajamas.”
“Well, if you’re sure.” Mary hedges back a step, tugged along by Virginia, who hasn’t missed a Rockin’ the Vines performance at Sampson’s Point Vineyard in ten years.
I continue to insist that I am sure as they turn toward Mary’s car, and Virginia calls over her shoulder, “Remember—don’t let the bastards grind you down!”
I hide my wince behind a wave as they buckle in and roll out onto Matheson Street, headed toward the highway. Only when they’re out of sight do I let my arm drop heavily to my side and my shoulders slump.
Time to head home.
Home. It’s the same house I shared with Grant when we were married, the one the girls and I have made a true, pink-celebrating, lady-lair in the past two years, but it doesn’t feel as cozy as it used to. Emily and Beatrice, my two oldest, are both away at college and living in the dorms. It’s just Addie and me at home, and she’s out with friends tonight, staying over at a hotel in Vallejo so they can hit the amusement park nearby first thing in the morning.
That’s the reason I arranged to meet Chad the Douchebag tonight in the first place—so I wouldn’t have to go home to a lonely house after the wedding and eat a depressing dinner for one in front of the TV.
And so I wouldn’t be tempted by a certain brooding alpha male…
Deacon looks way too good in a suit, so good a girl could forget that he’s her boss’s big brother and way too much like her ex-husband to make dating him a wise choice. I’m finished with bossy, domineering, love-em-and-leave-em men. I’m going to find a nice man who checks all the boxes on my relationship wish list or die alone.
“I don’t want to be alone,” I murmur to a miniature poodle tied up outside a wine-tasting room near the grocery. She barks if to say, “It could be worse, woman. You could be chained up on a gum-pocked sidewalk while your owners get wasted. At least you’ve got your freedom.”
“True,” I agree, pulling my cell from my purse. The poodle is right. I’ve got free will, and it’s not too late to turn this night around.
I shoot my friend Mina—my only single girlfriend—a text to see if she might be up for a spontaneous girls’ night, but she almost instantly shoots back—Sorry. Can’t. On a date with one of my hot babies.
My nose wrinkles as I tap out, How old is this one? Twenty-eight?
Twenty-seven! Her enthusiastic response is accompanied by a winking emoji, a kiss-blowing emoji, and a string of perky-looking eggplants.
I roll my eyes, encourage her to Have fun, and drop my phone back into my purse.
At least someone is enjoying themselves tonight. And getting laid, even if it is by a man twelve years her junior.
But Mina insists the only available men are either a decade younger or a decade older, and from what little dating I’ve done, I’m afraid she’s right. I don’t know what the men around our age are doing—staying happily married or dating girls young enough to be their children or having such debilitating mid-life crises they’re unable to drag themselves out of the house after work—but they are in shockingly short supply.
Most of the men I’ve gone out with have been in their fifties and already working on a middle-aged paunch and a grouchy old man attitude. A little cushion around the middle, I don’t mind, but being snapped at every time I accidentally disrupt a guy’s rigid, aging-single-dude routine isn’t something I enjoy.
I have three hormonal daughters to snap at me, thank you very much.
Maybe I should give younger men a chance—Mina certainly seems to be enjoying her shameless sampling of the twenty-five to thirty-year-old men of Sonoma County—but I can’t help but wish for something more.
For someone closer to my age, who understands where I’m coming from, who’s been knocked around by life enough to appreciate little blessings and everyday miracles. Someone who has something on his mind aside from how quickly he can get me out of my clothes and into his bed.
Because I’m not into one-night stands.
Or I wasn’t into them.
Until last night, when I almost banged Deacon in a stranger’s attic.
Though, of course, I didn’t know he was Deacon at the time. I thought I was banging a complete stranger in a stranger’s attic, which makes the entire thing even worse.
But if I hadn’t whipped off his mask and revealed his true, off-limits identity, I wouldn’t have stopped. I was out of my mind with wanting him, possessed by a wild lust monster clawing away beneath my skin, desperate to rip free and devour everything in its path—namely, all six feet two inches of Deacon Hunter’s magically delicious body.
The man is mind-bendingly fun to look at, with sky blue eyes, the broadest shoulders I’ve ever seen, abs of pure titanium, and powerful calloused hands that knew exactly how to touch me without a word of direction.
It’s eighty degrees outside, but still I shiver, my nipples pulling tight against the silky fabric of my dress as I start across the street, not sure where I’m going, but needing to move, to burn off some of this restless, pulsing energy.
I want to go back there, to that dusty room with the stranger in the mask, to that moment before I peeled away the fabric covering Deacon’s face, and this time keep going. I want to know what it feels like to have him inside me more than I want air.
Definitely more than I want dinner from Oakville Grocery or those two pints of ice cream.
I’m not hungry for food, I’m starved for touch, for skin on skin, for Deacon’s lips hot on mine, and his hand sliding down the front of my panties.
No, not Deacon. The stranger. That’s who I want. The stranger, who isn’t tangled up in a web of complex interpersonal connections. Deacon’s brother, Tristan, is not only my boss, he just married one of my best friends. And the other Hunter brothers, Dylan and Rafe, have been in my life for years. Sometimes I even babysit Dylan’s daughter when his usual sitter is out of town. In a lot of ways, they’re like family.
And you don’t roll around naked in an attic with your family’s family, even if the man in question has been wor
king outside the country so much the past twenty years that you barely know him.
I know enough to realize it would never work, even if he weren’t a Hunter.
Deacon spent twenty-five years in the military; I’m a pacifist who’s never shot a spitball, let alone a gun. Deacon is a logical rule follower; I’m a mischief-maker who lets my heart be my guide. Most importantly, Deacon is a bossy alpha male with too much testosterone for his own good, and I want no part of that. Not again.
I barely survived that the first time.
When Grant left, he didn’t just break my heart, he left me scrambling to learn how to pay the bills, renew the car insurance, stick to a budget, and all the other things he’d exercised complete control of during our marriage. It was terrifying, the constant worry that I was going to make a mistake and my kids would end up sleeping in a dark, cold house because I’d let the electricity get turned off.
I’m in control now, and that’s the way it’s going to stay.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t let loose once in a while, especially when there’s no one waiting at home…
I slow at the next corner, ears pricking as I catch a few notes of the song playing inside the bar across the street. It’s a hole in the wall I’ve never been in before, but I’d recognize the bass line of Heart’s Magic Man anywhere, and it’s been way too long since I’ve been dancing.
Dancing is in my blood, in my soul, the only thing that lights me up as much as throwing pottery. It’s also an excellent way to burn off excess energy, the kind that might tempt a girl to do something stupid like call the guy she almost banged last night and ask if he might be up for finishing the job…
Without another thought, I hurry across the street and push through the creaky door into the murky light inside, heading straight for the small, mostly abandoned dance floor.
I’m not afraid to dance alone.
I do everything alone these days, why should dancing be any different?
CHAPTER 2
DEACON
The minute the bombshell with the silky black hair down to her ass walks into the bar, I know there’s going to be trouble. And then she starts dancing—spinning around in her sexy-as-hell dress, her hair swirling and twitching around her hips as she swivels in time with the song wailing from the jukebox—and every muscle in my body tenses.
I’m instantly on high alert, hyperaware of every male eye in the joint turning to watch Violet Boden like she’s a baby gazelle that just wandered out into the open savanna.
Because she isn’t just any bombshell.
She’s my bombshell.
Or she almost was, anyway. We got so close to sealing the deal last night that I haven’t been able to think of anything else all day. In body, I was standing up at my brother’s wedding, but in spirit I was back with Violet in the moonlight, with my mouth between her legs and my heart slamming inside my chest, hearing those sexy gasps and moans that drove me out of my mind with wanting her.
I jerked off twice last night and once this morning, like a teenager with his first boner, but she’s still in my head. I’m thicker than I was a moment ago, and if I don’t get her off the dance floor, the situation below my belt is going to get downright embarrassing.
And this evening could get dangerous. For her.
There are some unsavory patrons here tonight.
The Raven’s Claw is the last true dive bar left in Healdsburg, maybe in all of Sonoma County. They only accept cash, the clientele is composed mainly of grizzled bikers and vets old enough to have fought in ’Nam, and the grimy dance floor has probably never seen a woman as pretty as Violet Boden.
God, she’s stunning. And still not wearing a bra, a fact I’m sure hasn’t escaped the attention of perverts old enough to be her father.
The thought is barely through my head when Benji, a Vietnam Vet with a glass eye and a swollen foot he swears is just naturally twice the size of his other one and not a sign of advanced Deep Vein Thrombosis, heaves himself off his stool and makes a beeline for Violet like a sex-goddess-seeking missile.
Benji is harmless—he might talk Violet’s leg off, but he wouldn’t lay a hand on her—but the man swaggering onto the floor to her left could be trouble. He’s probably thirty, but looks older, his thin chest hollowed out by too much drink. He’s got a hungry look in his eyes that makes me want to throw my jacket around Violet and hustle her outside. I don’t recognize him, and I’ve been coming to the Claw since my dad used to drag me in here for harvest parties when I was still too young to drink.
But of course, I did drink.
Willa, the former owner and bartender, had a soft spot for young guys. Ten minutes of flashing my seventeen-year-old dimples in her direction and I was set up with a Coke spiked so hard I was usually seeing double by the time I left. I credit Willa—and an especially wicked hangover the day after my eighteenth birthday—for my continued aversion to gin.
I’ve got a history with this place, these people, one that usually affords a certain amount of respect for anyone I bring in with me, which means it’s time to make it clear Violet is under my protection.
Setting my beer on the bar, I slide off my stool and stride purposefully across the room, reaching Violet seconds before Hollow Chest and closing my fingers around her wrist.
She flinches in surprise, and her half-closed lids open wide.
I lean down, letting my lips linger near her ear, inhaling the salty-sweet smell of her as I whisper, “You shouldn’t come into a place like this alone. It’s not safe.”
She huffs as she pulls her arm away. “This is Healdsburg, not the mean streets of Shanghai. I can take care of myself, thanks.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” I stand my ground at the edge of the dance floor as she starts to sway once more.
“Well, I am.” She flutters her fingers as she lifts her arms over her head. “I appreciate the concern, but I’m just fine.”
I nod. “All right. I’ll be back when you get into trouble.”
Irritation flashes in her eyes. “That was patronizing.”
“Wasn’t intended to be. Just stating the facts.” I turn on my heel and return to my stool, ignoring the stinging sensation at the back of my neck. That’s just wounded pride. The first woman I’ve made out with since getting out of the service four months ago runs in horror when she realizes we aren’t strangers? That was not fun.
In fact, it pretty much sucked all the ass. I’d been certain Violet knew who I was from the beginning and that the “sexy stranger” talk was just part of the fun.
And we were having fun. She can give me the cold shoulder all she wants today, but we both know that last night I set her on fire.
“Don’t think about last night,” I mutter, motioning to Toby, the bartender, for another beer.
I will not think about Violet’s breasts arching toward the ceiling while I devoured her pussy. I will not think about her fingers tangled in my hair or her sweet taste filling my mouth or the way she moaned in anticipation as she rubbed my cock through my jeans.
And I’m certainly not going to turn and watch her dance.
I don’t need to look at her. I’ll know when she’s in trouble. I’ll be able to feel the change in the energy of the room, the shift in the wind as potential danger becomes something I need to worry about. Years of training and multiple deployments to war zones have given me a sixth sense when it comes to trouble.
Too bad I don’t always listen to it…
“You know her?” Toby asks, nodding toward the dance floor as he sets down my pale ale.
“I do.” And I knew she was trouble the moment I laid eyes on her. But I still danced with her, flirted with her, and led her up to a secret place where we could be alone because opposites attract.
Until they start to irritate the shit out of each other. Say, when one of them insists on putting herself in danger for absolutely no reason except that she refuses to listen to the voice of reason, for example.
“She’s
something else.” Toby’s graying eyebrows lift higher on his forehead. “Makes me wish Baxter was in tonight. Always nice to have an off-duty cop around. Just in case.”
I grunt in agreement. “I’m concerned about the new guy. The one in the blue T-shirt and flannel.”
“You should be. He’s been drinking whiskey since four o’clock, and Cassie already had to give him an earful about an hour ago. He wouldn’t let up with Becca, even after she told him repeatedly that she likes girls and was here with her partner.”
“I’m sure Cassie made him regret that.” Cassie is only five three, but she was a Marine for ten years. She’s tough as nails and fiercely protective of her girlfriend.
Toby chuckles. “He slunk away with his tail tucked between his legs pretty tight. Thought he was out of here, but guess he just went out for a smoke. He definitely perked up when your gypsy walked in.” He glances past me, amusement flickering in his eyes. “Though, looks like Benji’s giving him a run for his money.”
I swivel on my stool to see Violet twirling under Benji’s arm, laughing at something he’s just said like they’ve been friends for years. For his part, Old Benj is beaming, his round face flushed bright red. He continues to dance—badly—while talking Violet’s leg off in a voice not quite loud enough to be heard over the music.
The Heart song ends, and a Led Zeppelin classic takes its place, and still Benji and Violet are swaying hand in hand, apparently getting on like a house on fire, while the creep in the flannel prowls the edge of the dance floor, looking for an opening that’s not coming. I’m starting to think everything might be all right, when Benji cringes, his spine stiffening as he reaches down to clutch his right knee.
Violet lays a gentle hand on his back, clearly concerned, and murmurs something close to his ear. Benji shakes his head with a pained smile and motions toward the back hallway, where a single unisex toilet serves as the john for the entire bar. Violet tries to follow as he hobbles away, but Benji waves her off. Whether he’s faking the need for a bathroom break to cover for his bad knee or really has to take a leak, it doesn’t matter.
