“I’m guessing little is the operative word,” she called over her shoulder as she yanked on her door handle. But the darn thing stuck and she couldn’t get it to budge. From behind her she heard a burst of sophomoric laughter, followed by a barked order to “shut up!” She wasn’t sure whether the kid was talking to her or to his friends, and really didn’t give a damn either way.
Pulling on the handle and swearing under her breath, Sam almost didn’t hear his approach. But the scent of Obsession for men drifted in on the night breeze like a bad department store fog, and she rolled her eyes with impatience. She didn’t have time for this shit.
She turned and – no big surprise – the kid walked toward her, backlit from his friend’s brake lights, cupping himself in some kind of challenge. It was difficult to distinguish his features as he had a camouflage boonie hat pulled low over his head, but his swagger practically radiated testosterone-charged contention, a walking billboard of up-to-no-good. As he moved even closer she caught the unmistakable scent of booze. Great. This kid was probably sixteen, seventeen at the outside, and walking along the dark highway half-cocked. If the Halfwit of the Month Club was looking for October’s poster child, they needed to search no further.
“Look, son.” Yeah, he didn’t like her calling him that, but she wasn’t in the mood to placate his fragile ego. “I understand that at your age your social acceptability is directly proportional to your ability to exercise poor judgment, but I’m telling you right now that you need to turn around and walk away. I’m running late, I’m cranky, and this is a very busy highway. If you’re not careful someone acting even more irresponsibly than you are is going to come along and run over your ass. So do us both a favor and pretend you have some sense.”
Junior laughed, as she’d feared he would, and swaggered even closer. Sam squeezed her eyes shut briefly, wondering why she seemed to draw assholes like flies to sticky paper. Maybe there was a jerk-magnet buried under her skin. “Why don’t you put that mouth to better use, sweet thing, and then we’ll see who you’re calling little. I got money.” He reached into the back pocket of his baggy jeans. “Ten bucks should cover it.”
What the… was he serious? Just because she was wearing a trench coat and go-go boots the little punk had the right to assume? “Okay, kiddo.” She barely resisted the urge to slap him. “I’m going to offer you a piece of advice. You and your friends need to go home and sober up before you do something truly stupid.”
He reached out and grabbed for her breast. “The only stupid thing I’m looking to do tonight is you.”
Sam’s hand snapped out so fast that the kid had no idea what hit him. Blood spurted – the heel of her palm had connected pretty solidly with his nose – as he stumbled back with a shriek. His bloodshot eyes registered surprise even as they went watery from the force of the impact. Before that surprise could morph into humiliation and anger – a dangerous combination in a teenaged male – Sam had her hand on her cell phone.
She held it up so the kid could make an informed decision as to what he should do next. “Unless you’d like to explain to your parents how you ended up in jail, drunk off your ass, booked on charges for underage drinking and attempted assault, I suggest you think twice about trying to touch me. I don’t take lightly to unsolicited groping, and here’s a hint – no means no. Always. No exceptions. Now unless you’d like me to have a chat with the 911 operator who’s standing by, you need to turn around and get out of my sight.”
Using the edge of his shirt to mop the blood which still trickled from his nose, the kid glared and weighed the options. Sam swallowed the bitter taste of fear – there were three other boys in that car, and no amount of self-defense training would even those odds – but another car passed by, slowing to survey the scene, and thankfully Junior had the smarts to check his pride in favor of avoiding a trip to the pokey.
“Bitch,” he hissed, stooping to retrieve the hat which had been knocked from his head when she hit him.
“Sticks and stones, pal.”
As he stalked off toward his friends, Sam’s breath whooshed out in a rush, legs trembling beneath her coat. No matter how many times she’d been in that kind of situation, it never got any easier.
But she hadn’t let him see her fear.
Watching the kid climb into the car amid the cackling laughter of his friends, she hoped he’d at least learned a lesson. “Hell,” she said out loud, as the GTO peeled away. “I could seriously use a drink.” And because the thought of a drink reminded her that she was supposed to have been at Murphy’s Pub as of – she glanced at her watch – ten minutes ago, Sam turned toward her car and gave another violent tug on the handle. The stupid thing decided to cooperate, and she yanked the door open in frustration.
Settling her long legs, which with the addition of the three-inch platforms on the boots had become ridiculously unwieldy, into the cramped area between the bucket seat and the gas pedal, Sam wrapped her arms around the steering wheel and leaned her head down with a shaky sigh. The vomiting and then the fun little tango with that shining example of teenage stupidity had played havoc with her already frazzled nerves.
Lifting her head, she flipped down her visor so that she could check her makeup in the little lighted mirror. Most of the war paint was still in place, but she’d worn off all of her lipstick. Pulling a tube of Kiss-Me Red from the cup-holder between the seats, she hastily performed a repair job.
Although really, she might as well not have bothered. No one ever looked at her face.
Without the multiple layers of make-up and the shockingly red wig, her face wasn’t much to speak of. Plain hazel eyes surrounded by stubby lashes topped off a button nose and nondescript lips. Her cheeks were too full, her face too round, and though she was spared the ignominy of freckles, her features were so aw-shucks bland and uninteresting that she could only be described as average. She’d heard cute a few times, and more often, wholesome.
Which was why it was some kind of great, cosmic joke that that face was attached to her body. Because her body was blatant sin.
DoubleD breasts, a narrow waist and legs that seemed to go on forever. True, her hips might show the evidence of a few too many candy bars here lately, but there was no question that overall Sam was built like one of Hugh Hefner’s wet dreams.
Trying not to resent the fact that she was going to have to use that body in a way that made her sick, Sam put the key in the ignition of her ancient Ford, and listened as the engine turned over.
How the hell she was going to take off her clothes in front of a room full of men, she honestly had no idea.
DETECTIVE Josh Harding stood at the time-worn front doors to Murphy’s Irish Pub – a semi-famous Charleston landmark housed in one of the city’s most venerable buildings – reading the hand-lettered sign advising that the bar was closed for a private party. A light breeze, the first real kiss of autumn, stirred a smattering of leaves which had fallen from one of the city’s few deciduous trees.
Somehow, the summer had gone and he’d failed to notice.
The past few months had been a weird sort of blur, filled with a relentless cycle of doctors and specialists and physical rehabilitation as he worked to regain the full use of his dominant right arm – torn to hell by the passage of a bullet through the shoulder – so that he could fully assume his position as a forensic artist with the Charleston PD. It was just a few weeks past that he’d finally been given the green light, and although he still experienced an occasional tingling sensation in his fingers if he spent too many hours gripping a pencil, his artistic abilities didn’t seem to have suffered.
Given his single-minded focus on putting his health and his career back on track, Josh hadn’t given a thought to his social life. It felt oddly surreal, like something out of a former lifetime, to find himself on the threshold of re-entering the whole scene. He glanced at the sign. If he was going to start doing the face-to-face with people again, this little soiree was surely the way to do it.
The pa
rty in question was the old traditional bachelor send-off: a gathering of male relatives and friends of the groom-to-be – in this case Josh’s FBI pal Clay Copeland – ostensibly to celebrate the end of one era in the soon-to-be-wedded man’s life while toasting the beginning of the new.
In reality, it was an excuse for a bunch of normally well-behaved guys to get stinking drunk, act like idiots, and watch well-endowed women take off their clothes.
Smiling to himself, Josh tugged on the old brass handle, chuckling as the pulsing beat of some kind of dance music mingled with the deep, raucous cadence of male laughter. The bar area, normally hopping at this time of night, was eerily vacant – the only patrons perching on the well-worn stools the ghosts of Murphy’s checkered past.
Weaving his way through the clusters of high tables, Josh headed toward the stairs, the ruckus growing louder as he ascended.
Normally a dining room packed with tourists and locals and the mouthwatering aroma of fresh seafood, the large area was now thick with the scent of male bodies – of cigar smoke and spilled beer and high-test whiskey flowing through many a vein. The cloud of rampant masculinity engulfed Josh as he gained the upper landing, and before he’d even stepped three feet into the room he’d acquired a contact buzz. The cop in him sniffed briefly, wondering if it was indeed only cigars that he’d scented, but as he figured the guest of honor was a federal cop himself, he’d be better off turning a blind eye – or nose – to whatever went on here tonight. The Murphy’s, the twin brothers and their fireball of a dad who owned and operated this establishment, were known to be a rowdy bunch when the occasion called for it. And the marriage of their cousin/niece, Tate Hennessey, to a man they’d come to think of as one of their own was definitely such an occasion. This send-off to Clay’s bachelorhood was simply the first installment in a week’s worth of festivities, culminating in the blowout, storybook wedding, in which Josh had been asked to participate as an usher. Looking around and spotting the groom-to-be doing – oh my God – a keg-stand in the far corner, he figured that the poor guy would probably require the full seven days to recover enough to walk down the aisle on his own two feet. As a matter of fact, he hoped Clay wouldn’t be either hospitalized or dead by the end of the night.
Shaking his head on another chuckle, Josh edged around a couple of guys he didn’t recognize, and as he turned to head toward one of the full service bars set up on either side of the room, he ran headlong into another guest. “Excuse me,” he said to the… blow-up woman. She was about six feet tall, wearing a come hither grin. Someone had scrawled across her chest with permanent marker, labeling her The Perfect Wife.
“Good Lord,” he muttered, running his hand across eyes dancing with laughter. He really hoped the thing was there for decorative and/or comedic purposes only, and not considered a piece of functional party equipment. The way this event was shaping up, they’d all be lucky to make it through the night.
He was just about to move past the interesting choice of party favors when he spotted Rogan Murphy. Shoulder-length brown hair caught back in a low ponytail, a huge grin on his beard-shadowed face, he hobbled toward Josh on his cane. Three months ago he’d been injured – drugged and pushed down a flight of stairs to facilitate the abduction of Rogan’s young cousin – by the same man who’d shot Josh. Murphy had endured a couple of setbacks with the shattered ankle he’d sustained in the fall, and the cane was a vivid reminder of what they’d all been through.
Josh tried not to grow angry all over again as he watched him make his way over.
“Harding.” Josh found his hand filled with a bottle of Killian’s. “Glad you could finally make it.”
Josh accepted the bottle with a smile and a nod, taking a long pull as he surveyed the crowd. “Got caught up at work.” Josh had to virtually yell to be heard as the room erupted in applause for Clay’s drinking prowess. The future groom was pretty much wet from his blond head to his boot-covered toes, having spilled almost as much alcohol as he’d drunk. “I’m trying to put in some extra time and make nice with the superiors, since I had to spend my first few weeks on the job on medical leave.” When he’d been shot, he’d still been a sheriff’s deputy in the small town of Bentonville, and his convalescence had carried over into the start of his new position.
Rogan nodded, opened a bottle of brew for himself. “Kathleen said you’re settling in okay. Deflected a few verbal blows about your ability to handle yourself.”
Kathleen Murphy was Rogan’s older sister, and a detective with Charleston PD. “You know how it is,” Josh demurred, taking another pull on his beer. “A couple of assholes who don’t cotton well to a small town cop – particularly one with a degree in art – joining their illustrious ranks. They seemed to think that my being shot was directly related to the fact that I can do more with a pencil than write out tickets. Just your basic Neanderthal bullshit. They get confused by what they don’t understand.”
Laughing, Rogan started to reply but then sent his hand into his pocket and felt around. “Well hell, it’s about damn time.” He pulled his vibrating phone from his pants and checked the text message. “The stripper’s half an hour late and I was afraid Clay’d be out cold by the time she decided to show up.” He glanced over toward where his future cousin was sprawled in a chair, looking a little green around the gills. “Which, by my estimation, is one of the next scheduled events in his immediate future. I love the guy like a brother, but he sure as hell can’t hold his alcohol.” His wicked grin was a slash of white amidst the chestnut stubble, giving credence to Josh’s guess that Clay had already held a good bit more than his fair share of alcohol tonight.
Rogan’s smile widened as he texted something back. “Looks like you got here just in time, Harding. The main attraction has just shown up and is ready to perform.”
“So your girlfriend was just a warm-up?” Josh inclined his head toward the doll.
Rogan laughed, tapping the inflatable woman with his cane. “Can’t you read, Harding? That’s my wife.”
“Hmm. Congratulations. I had no idea you’d taken the plunge. But I guess if you’re going to do so, there’s some practicality in taking a wife who can float.”
Rogan barked out another short burst of amused air and then started toward the stairs. “Why don’t you grab a good seat? I’m going down to let our girl in.” He picked up his cane and limped off with a slight grimace, prompting Josh to ask if Rogan would rather he do it.
“Nah. I’m good,” Rogan assured him with a backward glance, but Josh saw the shadow flit quickly behind his eyes. “Why don’t you go greet Clay while he still might stand a chance of recognizing you? I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”
Josh nodded, knowing he’d cast plenty of his own shadows lately, and then turned around to check out the noisy crowd. He spotted a man near the now pasty-looking bachelor who he felt reasonably sure was Clay’s best man, based on Clay’s descriptions. Josh had never had the opportunity to meet him, although he was acquainted with the man’s younger brother, Justin, who was a surgeon at MUSC Hospital. Figuring now was as good a time as any for a meet-and-greet, he snagged another bottle of beer out of an open cooler and made his way across the room.
ROGAN Murphy swallowed a string of virulent curses as he hobbled toward the service entrance off the darkened kitchen. His damned, piece of shit ankle felt like someone had been after it with a hammer. He hadn’t taken any pain meds today as he’d known he’d be drinking, but he was paying a hell of a price. He’d sort of hoped the alcohol would numb his senses, but ironically he felt sharper than he had in months.
He was scheduled to undergo another surgery in a couple of weeks, but until then he was forced to live with the ever-present pain which followed him around like a damn shadow, sometimes faint and hazy, sometimes so solid it was like it was a living thing, as well as having to rely on the stupid cane. He felt like someone’s geriatric uncle. Josh had meant well with the offer of help, but he was sick and tired of the disability, of bein
g treated like he was something less than a full man. It was an overreaction, he knew, when so many other people dealt with disfigurements and impairments that were so much worse and way more permanent, but tell that to his fine Irish temper. Or maybe it was his ego. Either way, the whole gimp routine was getting old.
Flipping on the overhead light in the food prep area, Rogan unlatched the back door. Standing on the concrete stoop, looking both exotic and uneasy in the security lamp’s bluish light, was the stripper from the company he’d contacted last week. Even if the heavy make-up, outrageous wig and black boots hadn’t given her away, the knee-length trench coat on this mild October evening would have offered a hint as to her line of work.
“Hi,” he offered his hand as he ushered her in the door. “I’m Rogan. Glad you finally made it.”
Wide greenish eyes – wary beneath the troweled-on eye gunk – skittered briefly away before returning to meet his head on. “Sorry about that,” she offered, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “I, uh… had some difficulty getting here.”
Rogan’s brows drew together slightly as he considered the woman in front of him. “I hope the directions were okay.” Of course, unless she lived in a bubble or was new to the area, Murphy’s was a pretty big blip on the local radar.
“Oh, not that sort of trouble. It was…” Again with the skittering eyes. “Car related.”
Uh-huh. The girl was a really miserable liar. And unless Rogan missed his guess – something he didn’t do often – she was nervous as hell about what she was here to do. Super. Leave it to the kind of luck he was experiencing as of late to have hired a virgin stripper. Stifling a sigh, he motioned with his head for her to follow, and limped toward the downstairs bathrooms. “I wasn’t sure if you needed to change or… whatever,” he admitted, waving his hand toward the door marked lasses. “But whenever you’re ready, our bachelor is on the verge of passing out upstairs. You made it in the nick of time.”
“I’m… sorry,” she said again, looking both sheepish and a little defensive. Her nerves were evident in the way she couldn’t manage to stand still, but then after a deep indrawn breath she seemed to make an effort to pull it together. Glancing at the bathroom door, she brought her hands to the belt on the trench coat. “I’m already dressed,” she allowed, and as the edges of the coat fell away Rogan did his level best not to gawk like a school boy. Holy cripes, the woman was built like a brick –
The Southern Comfort Series Box Set Page 59
