CHAPTER 3
ALLY’S HANDS splayed out on Brian’s chest in an attempt to stay upright. He gripped her biceps and held her out in front of him. The music, loud and gritty, reverberated through her chest. Brian recovered in an instant and dragged her over to the side of the bar. From the corner of her eye, she saw Jack return from the office looking preoccupied. He went straight to the cash register and slapped some money into the big auburn-haired guy’s hand.
Brian squeezed her arms in a demand for attention. Hazy from Jack’s kisses and all the liquor, it took a moment for her eyes to focus in on his scowl. Every hair on his sandy brown head was sleeked into place. He wasn’t nearly as handsome as she remembered. Compared to Jack’s edgy bad-boy chic, Brian’s smarmy smirk, button-down white shirt, and khaki pants seemed fastidious and dull. Or maybe he had always been that way and she had been too dazzled by his pedigree and bank statement to notice.
“Are you alright?” he asked. “What were you doing back there with that guy? You were gone forever.”
“Let go of me.” She tried to step back, but his iron grip kept her frozen in place. “I have nothing more to say to you, Brian.” It was true; she’d already said everything she had to say the night of The Breakup, the night that she’d found him screwing the brains out of her best friend. The realization brought a bit of peace to her disgruntled soul, but righteous indignation still smoldered beneath the surface.
“You’re screwing him, aren’t you? That bartender guy?” He jerked his head towards Jack. “What’s going on with you two?”
“What do you care?” She yanked her arms out of his grip and swayed on the heels of her stilettos. “You gave up the right to care the moment you screwed my best friend.”
“You’re not his type, Ally.” The insult behind his statements cut to the quick, and she had to bite her lip to hold back the angry, hurtful words. He assumed that she wasn’t good enough for Jack or – her gut twisted with realization – for him. She wanted to hurt him, to make him feel the way she felt but hesitated. Anything she said would only make her sound weak or bitchy.
“Look, I’m trying to be an adult about this whole thing. We broke up. You’re sleeping with my best friend. I accept that and I’m moving on. I think we should just walk away before one of us says something that we will both regret.” With the euphoria of Jack’s kisses still clinging about her, it was a bit easier to take the high road than she’d imagined.
“Must have been a pity fuck,” Brian muttered as she pushed past him.
Rage and humiliation flooded through her. Her fingers clenched into fists with the desire to slap him hard across the mouth. Why did he always have to go there – to make her feel as if she was never good enough? Taking a deep breath, she drew herself up to her full five feet six inches and turned to stare him straight in the eyes.
“That was low, Brian.” Her voice was cold and even, edged with steel while her insides quivered with hurt. “You’ve already humiliated and embarrassed me by screwing my best friend. You don’t have to be an ass about it. ”
His hazel eyes softened and he stepped back. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I only wanted to say hello and make sure you were okay.” He waved a hand helplessly. “I didn’t know it would hurt so much to see you with someone else.”
“Take that feeling, multiply it by a thousand, and you might come somewhere close to how it felt to walk in on you with Becca.” The words hung on the air between them as she took another step away from him. He seemed like a stranger, like some distant acquaintance. The connection between them had dissolved; there was no pulse of attraction, no empathy, no desire. The realization saddened her. It really was over. She felt nothing for him.
She might have lost all feeling for Brian, but the tingle of gooseflesh along her arms told her that Jack was at her elbow. He loomed over her shoulder like an archangel. A glance at his face showed it dark and inscrutable but his eyes snapped with vitality. Their energy renewed her flagging spirit.
“Everything alright over here?” His deep voice rumbled with quiet authority. “Is he bothering you, Ally?”
“It’s okay,” she said. “He was just leaving.” She smiled in reassurance, took a step backward and tripped headlong over the leg of a barstool. The roughened boards of the floor rose to meet her. She landed on her butt with a dull thud and a squeak of surprise.
As if I haven’t been humiliated enough.
With a groan of exasperation, she struggled to get her feet underneath her. Both men extended a hand to help her up.
“Ally…jeesh! Are you hurt?” Jack loomed over her. His broad shoulders blotted out the rest of the room.
“I might be dying…from embarrassment.” A streak of pain jabbed into her backside as she scrambled to recover her dignity. “And I think my butt might be broken.”
Her confession was rewarded with a burst of surprised laughter from Jack. “Girl, you are officially cut off.” The warmth in his eyes brought a rueful smile to her lips. She slipped her hand into his, let him pull her up from the floor and dust off her backside like an errant child. If Brian was still there, she didn’t notice.
With the back of his hand, Jack stroked her cheek and smiled. “If he ever bothers you, you let me know.” The unexpectedness of his gallantry made her bottom lip quiver. Tears again? Seriously? She swallowed back the feeling with a shudder and bowed her head so that he wouldn’t see her vulnerability. She feared that more than anything.
The emotional turmoil and excessive liquor of the evening had finally taken their toll. Her knees quivered and she slumped against him, her forehead falling against his chest.
“I need to go home,” she murmured into his chest and took a deep breath of the fabric softener in his shirt.
“Want me to call a cab for you?”
She heaved a grateful sigh of relief that the drama might be over, if only for the night.
The cab lurched forward in a cloud of blue smoke and the squeal of tires before it disappeared around the next corner. A mangy black cat sprinted across the street in front of Jack and dissolved into the shadows of the dark and deserted alley. The streetlight overhead flickered and extinguished leaving him alone in the darkness. The only sound came from the bass drum inside the building, dull and muffled like a pulse through the thick brick walls.
Long after the taxi disappeared, Jack stood on the sidewalk, mulling over the novel sensation of defeat. How long had it been since a female left him standing at the curb? Her absolute disinterest in him left him scratching his head. When he had pressed her soft body against the wall in the back hallway, he could have sworn that she wanted him just as much as he wanted her. The moans of pleasure when he cupped her breasts still echoed in his ears and the pent-up passion behind the heat of her kisses left a residual of gooseflesh on his forearms.
Maybe he’d lost his edge. The fingers of his right hand twitched over the breast pocket of his shirt in search of cigarettes. He wasn’t exactly a kid anymore. At his age, he should be settled into a home with a wife and kids. Instead, he slept on the foldout sofa in his best friend’s apartment, drinking himself into oblivion with a different nameless, faceless girl every night. The notion brought weariness to his bones, deep and penetrating.
“Are you going to stand out here all night or what?” Randy poked his head out of the door with the look of a proprietary parent.
“Got any cigarettes? I could use a smoke.”
Randy patted down his pockets, came up with a crumpled pack of Marlboro’s, and tossed them in Jack’s direction. “I thought you quit.”
“Since when did you become my babysitter anyway?” He glared at his buddy, lit the cigarette, and took a long soothing pull on the filter.
“Right about the same time I became your damn secretary,” Randy said. With his right hand, he dug deep into his front jeans pocket, withdrew a crumpled piece of paper, and smoothed it out with thick blunt fingers. “Eleven times she’s called, man. And that’s just today.” He smashed
the piece of paper against Jack’s chest. “I guess you didn’t take her phone call earlier?” Jack shook his head and Randy scowled again. “I’m telling you, Jack…you need to deal with this.”
“Why?” Jack flicked away the ashes from his cigarette with a practiced hand. “She’ll get bored and go away. She always does.”
“I don’t think so, man. Not this time. You’ve rained on her parade and she’s not going to take it lying down.” Randy shook a cigarette out of the pack for himself as two drunken patrons stumbled out of the door behind him, laughing. One of them unzipped his fly and leaned a hand on the brick wall to urinate. Randy cleared his throat and the guy hastily zipped up.
“Does this look like a toilet to you? The owner doesn’t take kindly to people pissing on his building,” Randy said. He sniffed and inhaled in a way that made him swell to even larger proportions.
“Sorry.” The two men hastily backed away. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“You guys aren’t driving are you?” Jack eyed them up and down. He had a strict rule about letting patrons drive home drunk, going so far as to call cabs or arrange for sober drivers when necessary. Most taxis avoided that side of town, but he’d made a deal with one of the cab companies to service the bar patrons and gave them a cut of the door on busy nights.
“Hell, no,” said the shortest of the pair. “We walked here.”
“Good. Then get out of here.” Jack turned his attention back to Randy. “Maybe we should think about getting a van to cart some of these people home.”
“That’s a good idea, but don’t think you can change the subject.” Randy took a long draw on his cigarette, the end glowing cherry red in the darkness.
“Look, I appreciate your concern, but I don’t need you busting my balls over Chelsea.” Jack threw the cigarette to the ground with more force than necessary and ground it out with his booted toe. “She and I are history. End of story. I have no desire to start up a sequel.” He rounded on Randy, feeling a twinge of misdirected anger. “I seem to recall that you were the one pushing me to let her go. Make up your mind, dude.”
“Don’t get all shitty with me. I don’t give a rat’s ass one way or the other. I’m just saying that the longer you put her off the worse it’s going to be.” Randy tossed his cigarette to the pavement as well, gray eyes flashing. He had the personality of a redhead, quick to anger, although he didn’t show it very often. “And as I recall, I was the one who had to haul your drunken ass out of jail the last time you two hooked up. My wallet can’t afford any more tender reunions like that.”
“Quit your bitching,” Jack said, his good humor returning. “I paid you back and I’ve bailed you out twice since then.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.” They both laughed then fell silent, lost in separate musings. Deep inside, Jack knew that Randy was right. Evasion would solve nothing; only exacerbate his already miserable situation.
“What do you think she wants?” Randy was the first to break the silence.
“Who the hell knows…a place to crash? More money?” The very notion that anyone wanted Jack’s money brought a hearty laugh from them both, given Jack’s current state of destitution. That seemed the most likely explanation, although it could be any number of things. The girl wasn’t exactly in her right mind most of the time.
CHAPTER 4
ON WEDNESDAY morning, Jack rolled out of bed as daylight was breaking, pissed off and hung-over. Randy had some chick in the bedroom and a herd of buffalo as well from the sound of it. The banging of the headboard against the wall echoed the pounding inside his brain. They’d been at it all night while he – the infamous Jack Jameson — had spent the night alone on the uncomfortable sofa bed, too drunk to sleep and too tired to do anything about it. Maybe he needed to think about getting a place of his own. Muttering curses, he pulled on a pair of sweat pants and hit the pavement for a run.
After the first mile, Jack’s agitation began to dissipate. By the second mile, he had sweated out the last vestiges of his hangover. At the end of the third mile, endorphins kicked in and he began to enjoy himself. An endless blue sky stretched overhead, unbroken by clouds. The air rushed over his skin like a tepid bath. As the miles fell away, so did the confusion surrounding his life.
With his good humor restored, he went straight into the stock room at Felony. After a few hours of hard work, he stopped to wipe the sweat from his brow with the back of one forearm and catch his breath. The air conditioning unit, long past its prime, had quit sometime in the night. The upstairs apartment and the bar were stifling hot. To top things off, the heat had resurrected his hangover and his head thumped with every beat of his heart.
His eyes wandered over the smoke stained walls and battered floors. At night, the place reeked of atmosphere and mystery but daylight showed every structural flaw, revealing nothing more than a dilapidated old building with a multitude of sins that he could never absolve. Felony was in dire financial straits. The place had been a sinking ship when he took over the management from his uncle David and the cash flow had dried up to a trickle. Creditors hounded him day and night, even going so far as to confront him in the parking lot and at the gym.
Somehow, he had to revitalize the club and entice people to come. Too many bar fights had tarnished the reputation of the place and kept away the less adventurous patrons. He had several strategies in mind to widen the customer base and generate business, most of which involved a substantial layout of non-existent cash.
With his break finished, he continued stacking the heavy cases of beer into the tiny stockroom, arranging them with the fastest selling brands to the front and the oldest product on top. A stock boy should be doing this work. That was another problem – finding good help. Despite a struggling local economy and high unemployment rate, it had been nearly impossible to find reliable workers. Lucky for him, Randy did the work of a half-dozen employees. The guy had a talent for bartending and made a damn good head of security with his street smarts and intimidating size. But that still left a need for waitresses and a good accountant to take care of the books. After three months, he had barely waded through the first stack of invoices and statements on his desk.
A quick glance at his watch showed that the air conditioning technician was three hours late. He needed the system repaired today. If the guy didn’t show up soon, he’d be forced to pay the after-hours rate, a thought that made his bank account cringe. Record-breaking temperatures seared the city. Waves of heat undulated above the pavement outside and the air seemed thick with humidity. The century old brick walls of the building acted like an oven, collecting and storing heat. On the positive side, it was only Wednesday. That gave him a little time to get repairs made, but the window of opportunity narrowed with the passing of each hour. Once the cooling system was up and running, it would take hours for the place to cool down again.
In a stroke of luck, he had been able to book an up and coming popular local band, The Smoking Buttholes, for Friday night and anticipated a full house. This could be the shot in the arm his bank account needed. Still, the idea of two hundred sweating drunken bodies crammed into a building without air conditioning sounded like cruel and unusual punishment. It was a well-known fact that excessive heat led to shorter tempers and increased brawling. The rising tensions between the bikers and the metal heads were already a real threat, a situation that didn’t need any encouragement.
The buzzer at the back door cut through the silence like an air horn, startling him, the obnoxious sound splitting his skull like an ax. That had to be the technician; he wasn’t expecting any more deliveries for the day. Relief was short-lived as the buzzer rang again, jolting every nerve in his body. One hand gripped his temples as he climbed over the remaining beer cases scattered in the hallway.
He swung open the heavy steel security door and came face to face with his worst nightmare – Chelsea. Warning bells joined the pounding blood between his temples as she brushed past him in a cloud of perfume that rolled his stomach.
He’d been avoiding her for weeks and knew with one hundred percent certainty it was only a matter of time before she found him and began to systematically destroy his life.
The woman strode into the hallway, dressed to kill in a short skirt and halter top, looking too thin and too pale, but otherwise much better than she had the last time he had seen her two months ago. He used to consider her sexy as hell; now the sight of her made his stomach turn. She was still pretty in that predatory cat kind of way, but the shortcomings of her character blotted out any attraction he might have once felt.
The technician showed up at that exact moment or Jack would have thrown her out on her ass without a second thought. Instead, he briefed the man on the problem then returned to find her in his office sitting behind his desk, rifling through the drawers like a deranged squirrel foraging for nuts. He stood in the doorway watching her until she sensed his presence and looked up with an unabashed grin.
“Where are your cigarettes? I’m dying for a smoke.” She resumed digging.
“I quit,” he said. “And there’s no smoking in the building. You’ll have to go outside.” And once she went outside, he’d bolt the door behind her.
“You quit smoking?” She smirked and rolled her eyes. “Right.” The laughter died on her lips as he strode around to her side of the desk.
“I thought I told you to leave me alone. What part of that did you not understand?” He slammed the drawer shut with a bang, narrowly missing her fingers. Nothing ever changed with her. She was as irritating as that damned back door buzzer. With a heavy sigh, he removed her forcibly from his chair and took a seat there himself.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think that you weren’t glad to see me.” Her lower lip jutted out in an insincere pout. There had been a time when that expression might have tugged at his heart, but those days were long past.
Felony Romance Series: Complete Box Set (Books 1-5) Page 3
