Hot As Sin

by Debra Dixon

  “Oh, I see,” she said again. But the answer didn’t seem to satisfy her. Not by a long shot.

  She worried her bottom lip with perfect white teeth and watched Marsha Jean deliver the platter of drinks. Gabe followed her gaze to the group of men who looked entirely too edgy to be mixing whiskey and beer. He wasn’t any happier about the situation.

  Then her gaze shifted to the door, and she began to watch the clock. He couldn’t see if her hands were clasped, but Gabe would have sworn she was doing some heavy-duty praying. Puzzled by her reaction, he tried to fathom why she was suddenly so concerned with the time. Traffic began to heat up, and each time the door opened she stared with hope at the new arrivals, as if matching them against a mental picture. Each time she frowned.

  An hour later she’d switched to orange juice and to a stool next to the wall, out of Marsha Jean’s traffic pattern. She said it was to rest her back, but Gabe decided it was to escape Marsha Jean Petit’s questions. His waitress was a hothouse transplant from the South with a heart of gold but not one ounce of subtlety. People who grew up in small southern towns tended to have a warped view of individual privacy. Her questions made the good sister nervous, which confirmed Gabe’s suspicions that the good sister had something to hide.

  If he’d been less involved in trying to figure out the nun, he might have seen the fight brewing. Instead, his first clue was the unmistakable sound of a beer bottle being smacked against a table edge and turned into a weapon. Instinctively his head whipped around, his eyes searching the scene in front of him to locate the culprit, but everyone in the place was standing up, obscuring his view.

  By the time he’d rounded the bar, the crowd was backing away. Some were already out the door. With good reason.

  “Dammit,” Gabe whispered when he saw what sent all the smart patrons scurrying out into the parking lot or heading for home.

  Sawyer Johns and Clayton Dover, normally the best of friends, were circling each other. Both of them had a nasty, decidedly unfriendly gleam in their eye and a hard set to their mouths. If someone had asked him for a list of patrons who could cause serious damage in a fight, these two would have been at the top of his list. Hell, these two were his list. Big, mean, ugly drunks. Both of them. That’s why he always watched them carefully when they started backing whiskey with beer. Until tonight.

  Until a nun with secrets distracted him.

  An expectant hush fell over the crowd as he shouldered his way through. The morbid anticipation and excitement that gripped the bystanders was almost palpable. Several of them shot him looks of encouragement, urging him into the fray.

  Gabe knew better than to let fools or the first rush of adrenaline trick him into situations too quickly. Military service had taught him something the orphanage never could—patience. He waited. And rolled down his shirtsleeves, protecting his arms as best he could with the thick red flannel.

  As he casually buttoned his cuffs, he asked, “You boys care to tell me what’s goin’ on here?”

  Sawyer answered him with a voice so rusty from whiskey that it was more of a hoarse whisper. “Just a little disagreement, Gabe. You don’t want a piece of it.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.” He took the large silver and turquoise ring off his finger and slipped it into his jeans pocket along with the silver chain he wore around his wrist. “Don’t suppose I could convince you to take your disagreement outside?”

  “Right here suits us fine,” Clayton said as he made a halfhearted preliminary lunge, testing his reflexes and Sawyer’s.

  “Look, I’m asking you nice, boys. Do me a favor and take this to the parking lot before someone ends up bleeding all over my floor.”

  Neither of the men answered this time. They were too busy circling, measuring the distance, and kicking furniture out of the way to give themselves plenty of room. Their heavy leather work boots crunched the glass on the floor and ground it in.

  They outweighed him, but he was taller with more reach. They had knives and broken beer bottles, but he was sober and trained in hand-to-hand-combat tactics. He liked his odds, but he swore that he was going to get around to buying a baseball bat to keep behind the bar. Yeah, that’s what he needed. Or a shotgun. Or classier clientele.

  “I guess we’re going to do this the hard way.” Gabe sighed. The bar was about to close early.

  He waded in, knowing he needed to take one of them out quickly, and Clayton was closer. In a motion that was second nature, he avoided the drunk’s sloppy lunge and slammed his boot heel into the man’s kneecap. The nasty snapping sound reassured Gabe that Clayton wasn’t going anywhere but down. The drunk bellowed and folded like a broken lawn chair as Gabe spun to take on the other one.

  Sawyer paused at the sight of Clayton crashing to the floor in agony. The crowd was equally impressed.

  “Damn, that had to hurt!”

  “This ain’t a fair fight.”

  Gabe had to agree. Bar fights never were; integrity seemed to go out the window right alongside sobriety.

  “Aw, Clayton, you fool, stay down,” exhorted someone in the crowd.

  Disbelief made Gabe flick a glance over his shoulder to see if Clayton had actually dragged himself up. The brief moment gave Sawyer the courage to charge, but the crowd ruined his advantage by sucking in a collective gasp. Their warning saved Gabe from a nasty cut as he whipped back around and realized Sawyer was smarter than the average drunk. He led with his knife instead of his chin.

  Simultaneously evading the slicing motion and grabbing Sawyer’s forearm, Gabe pulled him closer, off balance. Then he twisted Sawyer’s arm and bent the wrist back until the pain penetrated his alcohol-fogged senses. Sawyer suddenly grunted in pain and let the knife fall to the floor, but not before Clayton delivered a sledgehammer punch to Gabe’s ribcage.

  Ignoring the sensation that exploded at his side, Gabe smashed an elbow into Sawyer’s cheekbone and sent him reeling. Tired of the game, he rounded on Clayton and added a little character to his face by rearranging his nose with two swift jabs. Then he swept Clayton’s feet out from under him and dumped him to the floor again.

  “Look! Sawyer’s just as stupid as Clayton,” someone said. “They shouldn’t get up.”

  Dammit! Gabe thought, turning to Sawyer. The crowd was right. These boys shouldn’t get up. They were about to make him angry. He wheeled and planted a boot squarely in the center of Sawyer’s chest, drilling him with enough force to send him backward six feet and into a chair that flipped as soon as his butt landed in it.

  The crowd loved that, giving him a chorus of “All right, man!” and discussing the fight as though they were watching cable. “Where’d a bartender learn all that stuff anyway?”

  “Ben Lawson says he did some time in Leavenworth,” someone volunteered loudly as they made space for Clayton, who was crawling toward the door.

  “Hell, he ain’t never done time in prison! He spent some time in Lebanon, for crying out loud! He was one of those Navy SEAL guys they send on rescue missions. That’s where he learned all that ninja crap.”

  By slow degrees Gabe relaxed. When Sawyer stayed down this time, he stepped back and jerked his head toward the door. “I don’t want to have to explain the house rules to you again. You take your fights outside, or next time somebody’s going to get hurt.”

  At his intentional understatement, several of the spectators couldn’t hold back snorts of appreciation or nervous chuckles. Sawyer glared at a few of them before he staggered to his feet. When he looked at his knife on the floor, Gabe advised softly, “I’d buy a new one if I were you.”

  Sawyer decided to take his advice.

  “The rest of you go on home. The show’s over, and the bar’s closed,” Gabe said wearily without looking at what was left of the crowd.

  Spearing his fingers through his hair to drag it back out of his face, Gabe expelled the tension inside him and a curse in one breath. The adrenaline faded, and a bruised rib made its presence known. Carefully he put a
supporting hand over the spot where his ribcage screamed the loudest. He was getting too old to be the only one on his side in a bar fight. His body had thirty-five hard years on it.

  He shook his head at Marsha Jean’s offer to stay and waved her out with the rest of the stragglers. “Go home and watch your kids sleep.”

  Tired and hurting, he was in no mood to deal with anything else. So when he found the nun still lingering behind the others and staring at him with the same disappointment he’d seen a hundred times before, he said a few things he shouldn’t. “It was a bar fight. Plain and simple. I didn’t break the Fifth Commandment. I just bent it a little, so don’t start the sermon, Sister. Not all of us are saints.”

  “I’m not looking for a saint,” she assured him. “I’m looking for you.”

  TWO

  Emily Quinn had been too far back in the crowded bar to hear every word said during the fight, but she’d heard enough to get the general drift of the discussion. Her knees had actually buckled for a moment when she realized that the bartender had been a Navy SEAL, that—against all logic—he had to be Patrick’s retired buddy. The photo in Patrick’s wallet had been stuck to the plastic and grainy, but it clearly showed a man who was gaunt and tired and emotionless. A spit-and-polish military man. A man she thought would be older by now.

  She had elbowed her way through the crowd without any thought to how her behavior might look or where her elbows landed. By the time she had a clear view of the action, one drunk was crawling toward the exit, and the other was in the process of crumpling to the floor. Christian Gabriel was supposed to be retired, but the man had barely broken a sweat.

  Suddenly the casual L. L. Bean clothing that had fooled her originally couldn’t disguise the military discipline that shaped his reflexes. His opponents had been in no condition to offer resistance, but his feet had still been braced apart, his knees bent, his hands ready. She doubted he’d even realized that people were crowded around watching with varying degrees of awe.

  Staring at him, she had remembered something her dad said while she was growing up. It’s not over until I say it’s over. This man was like her father. He didn’t walk away until he was ready or sure.

  Christian Gabriel might look detached and emotionless, but he wasn’t. He was controlled. He kept his emotions on a very tight leash, but he had them. She’d already seen them. Emily wasn’t looking for a saint, but she wasn’t looking for a man like this either. Unfortunately, she no longer had a choice.

  Emily saw surprise flicker in Gabriel’s eyes a second before she heard him laugh. The laugh was obviously a mistake. He winced.

  “Looking for me? Now, what would a nun want with me?” he asked, his eyes narrowing and studying her.

  Suppressing a shiver, Emily realized that he radiated a power that felt every bit as dangerous to her as a loaded weapon. She had an uneasy premonition she’d be damned if she trusted him and dead if she didn’t. Her life felt like Russian roulette, and asking for help might be pulling the trigger.

  “I’d like an answer, Sister. What’s a nun want with me?”

  “I’m not—” A real nun, she almost blurted out before instinct clamped her mouth shut. Pretending to be a nun had kept her alive and gotten her this far.

  Emily pushed up the ill-fitting glasses and smoothed the wrinkles from the shapeless habit as best she could. Irrationally she wanted to be less desperate, more in control. She wanted to look like anything except what she was—on the run.

  Taking a deep breath, she said, “I need your help, Mr. Gabriel.”

  “If you’d come for help, you could’ve said something when you walked in.” Retrieving her coat and purse from the barstool, he held them out to her. “And if it’s a donation you want, you’re out of luck. I really am broke.”

  Emily stood her ground, meeting his hard gaze without flinching. She slipped a hand into the pocket of her habit and touched the dog tag. The tag was her proof, but caution kept her from showing it yet or telling him that Patrick was dead. Promises to dead men were easy to ignore.

  And there was always the chance he’d want revenge. Revenge wouldn’t bring Patrick back or keep her safe. So she told only the beginning of the truth.

  “Patrick Talbot sent me.”

  Every hair on the back of Gabe’s neck stood up at the name from his past. He let the coat and purse slide out of his hand and back onto the stool. “What are you talking about?”

  “Patrick sent me,” she assured him, her voice stronger. “He just didn’t tell me Christian Gabriel was the bartender. And you don’t look like your picture.”

  As he listened, Gabe felt the urge to swear. His old SEAL buddy was one of the few people who knew his full name or his retirement address. He owed Patrick.

  Patrick sent a nun? Yeah, well … she didn’t feel like a nun, and Gabe was an expert on nuns. More than anything else, she felt like one of Patrick’s infamous practical jokes.

  “The name’s Gabe.” He closed the distance between them, towering over her once more. “Exactly what kind of help do you need, Sister?”

  “I need to disappear.”

  Calmly Gabe waited for a laugh and a “gotcha” that never came. He waited for her to pull off the veil and grin. She didn’t. The woman in front of him seemed small and frightened, not bursting with a need to spring the punch line.

  Gabe frowned, his suspicions working overtime. He studied her for a moment, taking note of the shadows beneath her eyes and the way she leaned against the chair as if she was going to fall down any minute. Not that she would—he also noted the way her chin rose a notch.

  Softly he said, “Patrick is the U.S. marshal—not me. Making people disappear is his job.”

  “He can’t help me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Trust me. Patrick can’t help me,” Emily repeated dully.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Because he already died trying to protect me.

  Before she found a better answer, one of the small windows across the front of the bar exploded inward. Shattered glass flew in all directions. Emily froze in horror, but Gabe reacted.

  He grabbed her and dove for the floor, rolling until they were away from the flying glass. His body formed a shield for hers. Emily fought to slow the beating of her heart which thumped hard in her chest as adrenaline-charged blood pounded through her body and roared in her ears. She didn’t realize she was clutching Gabe’s shoulders until he rose up slowly, head turned toward the door as if he might go and investigate.

  “Don’t,” she heard herself whisper in a broken voice she hardly recognized as her own. Emily was scared she’d been found, scared someone else was going to be killed protecting her, scared she’d spend the rest of her life feeling this way. “Don’t go out there.”

  Surprisingly gentle Gabe pulled away and drew her up on her knees. He picked up her glasses, which had flown off, and pressed them into her hand. “I’m not going anywhere, but I want you to get behind the bar and stay there. Before anything else happens. And stay down.”

  She nodded and did what he said, scooting behind the bar and folding herself into a very small ball in the corner—between the big aluminum beer cooler and the wall.

  “Please, God, not again. Please, God, not again.” Over and over she repeated the short prayer. Bits and pieces of what happened that night in Idaho flashed into her mind.

  She was crying when Gabe knelt down beside her. She couldn’t stop, even when he raised her chin and wiped the tears that trickled off her jaw.

  “Hey, it’s all right. It was just a rock. Probably Sawyer’s clever idea of revenge for the fight tonight.” He helped her up and around the cooler until they were standing by the register. “See? Everything’s fine.”

  “No, it’s not,” she said raggedly, and stole some comfort by burying her face against his chest. She wasn’t strong enough to pretend anymore, and he was warm and real and solid.

  Startled by her reaction, Gabe was unprepared for
the rush of sensations that swamped him. The pain in his ribs and the woman pressed against him were reminders of why he left the navy to begin with. He was tired of hurting and tired of fighting someone else’s battles. He’d done his bit for God and country. He’d spent seventeen years pulling people out of bad situations.

  But old habits died hard, and right now—like it or not—she was a woman who needed saving. Slowly his arms went around her, and he rested his chin against the top of her head.

  “Shh …” The sound wasn’t much in the way of a brilliant reassurance, but it was the best he could do.

  While he held her, he came to three very important conclusions. First, these tears were the real McCoy and not a melodramatic reaction to tonight’s rock-throwing contest. Second, the lady had been terrified when the window shattered, but not surprised. It was almost as though she had expected violence. Third, it appeared that nuns, if she was a nun, didn’t have to cut their hair anymore.

  Her veil had been knocked askew, revealing a rich brown mane with hints of gold. Free of its pins, her hair spilled down her back in waves. Gabe plucked the veil off and tossed it toward the counter. Then he bracketed her head with his hands and lifted her face to his.

  “If you’re going to cry all over me, then at least tell me your name.” She hesitated a second too long, and Gabe knew she was lying.

  “Emma.”

  “Sister … Emma”—he upended the stools that had gone crashing to the floor—“sit.”

  Then he fixed himself a drink to dull the pain of his ribs. Knowing one wouldn’t be enough, he poured a second and set it down. While he was getting orange juice for the sister, she reached for the shot glass. Her hand trembled, but she knocked it back without a gasp or a cough.

  My kind of nun, he thought. One who takes her whiskey neat.

  He set the juice in front of her and left her while he taped a flattened box over the gaping hole in the window.

  When he finished, she said, “I—I think I need to splash some water on my face.”

  He gestured with his head. “Ladies’ room is that way.”