by S. L. Gray
But her drive to be productive wasn’t entirely their fault. She liked being the student a professor could count on to do the work, the employee a manager could trust to finish a project on time. She enjoyed challenging herself with tasks that didn’t come easily. She relished a good night’s sleep at the end of a job well done.
She didn’t think she’d be getting much sleep tonight. Despite the relatively peaceful ride home on the bus and the uninterrupted walk to the building itself, Melanie hadn’t calmed down much. Her mind was still hard at work trying to make sense of impossible things. Like wanting to be reunited with a man she hadn’t met.
She needed distraction. She needed to forget her usual routine. No microwave dinner beneath florescent light. She’d light candles, she’d put on music, she’d drink some wine and actually cook. She’d pamper herself tonight and wake up refreshed in the morning. Refreshed and completely sane, today’s odd happenings just a memory.
First things first. Once she’d stepped inside the loft and locked the door, she peeled off her jacket, dropped her purse on a chair and toed off her uncomfortable shoes. She curled her toes until they cracked, then rolled her neck and shoulders. They popped too, deep, satisfying sounds that meant her bones had realigned. She'd been scolded by more than one chiropractor for the nasty habit, but when it felt this good, she’d risk another lecture. She might regret it years from now, when her grandchildren wanted to play, but tonight, she needed the knots of tension to go away.
Wine would help with that, she knew. Wine and the blues. She poured herself a healthy glass of a warm merlot and sighed with the first sip as she picked her way toward the stereo in the living room.
At the press of a button, the low, rich tones of a saxophone flowed from the speakers. Melanie closed her eyes, breathing the music deep. She'd heard people claim this was a lonely sound, shimmering and desolate. She disagreed.
If she concentrated, she could hear the working of the keys. She could hear the little pause before the musician took a breath and sometimes, sometimes she swore she could feel it when he let it out again, swirling across her skin just before the note reached her ears. No, the saxophone didn't make her feel alone. It felt like she had someone dancing with her, like the music played just for them.
It'd been that way since she first heard live blues, played in person, in New Orleans. She'd gone after college on her own. She went for Mardi Gras, but missed most of the parades. She wasn't interested in flashing anyone for beads. She got lost in the stale smoke and close quarters of the clubs, where she could brush elbows with the greats who were and might one day be.
She'd swayed on a stool then the way she swayed on her feet now. Melanie curled her arms across her body, the glass caught in one hand, the fingers of the other dancing over her skin. Even her tall, dark, impossible stranger would have to dance when this music played.
The phone rang, startling her. The jolt slopped wine over her hand and put the stiffness back into her body. Dammit. One wandering thought and she was back where she started. Cursing, she stepped around the stain, pausing to pick up the cordless phone as she went to the kitchen for a paper towel and the vinegar. "Hello?"
"Good evening."
The voice on the other end of the call was low and smooth, musical in itself. Accented enough to draw the word out into three syllables. Eve-en-ing. A man with a voice like that would have to be tall, dark and handsome by default. A little dangerous, maybe. "May I speak with Melanie?"
She froze. Was it him? The stranger on the pier? Had she conjured him up with the slip of her thoughts? She swallowed on a dry throat, cleared it to find her voice. "You may and you are." No point in lying. She peered at the display on the handset. Unlisted number. Of course. "Who is this?”
“An admirer,” the smooth voice said. “Someone who hopes to work with you soon.”
She frowned at the wine spot still seeping into her carpet. She crossed the room again and knelt to mop at the spreading stain. “If you need something restored, you can contact the Sentinel. I’m sure they’d be happy to work with a local collector.”
“I’m not interested in the Sentinel, Ms. Kendrick. It’s your particular skill I’d like to acquire.”
The hair at the back of her neck tickled. Goosebumps popped up on both arms. “How did you get this number?”
He chuckled. “I have my methods and my means. I do hope you’re open to new opportunities. Until we meet.” The line dropped to a flat dial tone again.
The wine soaked through the towel beneath her hand.
For a moment, Melanie didn’t move. If that was the man who’d watched her, maybe he was as dangerous as his voiced sounded, only not in a good way. Maybe she should call the police.
And if it was a joke, she’d feel like a fool. Maybe Noura had set her up, asked a friend to call and tease her in revenge for not staying after lunch. Maybe this was all one of her games. She could star-sixty-nine the number, call them back and give them what for. She could ask to talk to Noura, tell her — no, ask her, politely, to stop.
At least the wine came up without much effort. She’d get the bottle of spot cleaner she kept for emergencies, spray the stain away, and then she’d redial the prankster. That would put an end to this for the night.
She'd just pushed to her feet when the phone rang again. She eyed the thing balefully. Two rings. Three. This time, the handset displayed the familiar number of the prankster herself. Probably calling to see if her joke had worked. Melanie pressed the button to answer, and put the phone to her ear, ready to launch into a lecture. “You must think you’re really funny.”
"Is that how you answer all of your calls? I may have to borrow it. Does it keep the telemarketers away?"
"Only when I’m being pranked. Which I don’t appreciate, by the way."
"Pranked? By who? What sort of prank?" In the pause between words, Melanie heard her friend sigh. "At least you’re talking. You had me worried, you know?”
Melanie pursed her lips. “Come on, fess up. You had someone call me. With a creepy accent and the whole “Come and work for me, my pretty” line?”
Noura paused again, then laughed. “You know I’d take credit if I managed to pull off a prank that worked, but it wasn’t me this time, sweetie. Are you sure it was a prank and not an honest job?”
Melanie’s stomach knotted and a chill seeped into her lungs. “Honest jobs don’t come from unlisted numbers,” was all she could force past the lump of her heart in her throat.
Noura didn’t seem to notice the change in her voice. “Well, then, it was probably just a wrong number. These things happen, Mel. Shake it off and come out with me. I know you don’t have plans, or company,” she went on before Melanie could protest. “Both of which are a shame, frankly, and both of which I can fix.”
Melanie held her breath until the knot in her stomach eased. She knew her silence would just encourage Noura's plotting, but that little bit of normalcy felt oddly like a lifeline right about now.
“You always want to stay in," the other woman complained, teasing. "If you didn't have to eat and pay bills, you'd never have taken a job. You wouldn't leave your flat. Please, Mel, I'm begging. I've got the urge to do something crazy. Nobody keeps me out of trouble like you do."
"Thanks. I think." She rubbed her forehead. She could argue, as she had a dozen times before, but Noura wasn't good at giving in. Maybe company really would do her some good. She would have preferred to invite her friend over for more wine and a movie, something one on one, but that wasn’t Noura’s speed. She'd brush the suggestion aside like a stray hair. "Where exactly are we going? Please don't say Hannadays.”
“Of course Hannadays. Why break in a new bartender when I have one who treats me so well?” She didn’t wait for Melanie to answer, plowing on in typical Noura fashion. “So meet me there in half an hour and do us both a favor?”
Melanie dreaded the question but asked anyway. “What’s that?”
She could hear the grin in Noura
’s voice. “Wear something slinky.” Once again, the call ended before Melanie could respond.
She groaned and thumped the handset gently against her forehead. She didn’t own anything slinky and Noura knew that. It was just her way of giving Melanie a warning that she was in the mood to push buttons and turn heads. She really did want to get crazy.
Melanie had played the part of safety net before. She kept most of Noura’s bad impulses under control. Some people called that being a wet blanket, but Noura had thanked her often enough that she knew her friend didn’t really want to get into trouble and knew herself well enough that she knew she would without an assist.
She hadn’t allowed Melanie to say no or make excuses. She’d been right there, witnessed Melanie’s little breakdown, and still wanted to drag her out in public tonight?
Well. Well. Melanie took a few more deep breaths. Her friend probably had the right idea. If she went out, if she showed these people who might actually be watching her that they couldn’t scare her into hiding, maybe they’d leave her alone. Maybe, if she did something unusual, something unpredictable and daring, they’d think twice about taunting her again. Maybe she’d prove she wasn’t quite such an easy target.
And maybe, if she got lucky, she’d have a little fun along the way.
From the outside, the bar looked like a hole-in-the-wall only locals would know. A place that limped along from week to week on the dollars of dedicated regulars. Now and then one of them would get married or have a landmark birthday. They’d bring the celebration to their favorite watering hole and the unexpected boon would keep the doors open another month.
No neon sign flashed in the window, encouraging strangers to wander in. No advertisements were posted about the new, trendy beer. There was just a simple sign over the entrance, the name ‘Hannadays’ burned into the wood. Beneath it, nailed to the lintel, a plaque with a slightly more ornate script read Slainte.
That was the whole introduction, take it or leave it, for better or worse. Kade wouldn’t have been surprised to find a lone codger warming a stool and a dead-eyed bartender polishing the same glass for the seventh time.
Not tonight. Tonight, Hannadays overflowed with light and sound. It glowed like a beacon, even through to the shadows where he stood, waiting for just the right moment to join the party.
Once upon a time, before his world shattered, this would have been Kade’s kind of scene. He could have blended in easily, making friends at a moment’s notice. He’d have bought rounds for the crowd at the slightest provocation, with his father and brother on the stools to either side. They’d have belted out drinking songs, staggered home together when the bar closed for the night, then come back the next to do it all again.
He missed it, he realized, standing outside as an observer. He missed the surety someone would welcome him back, no matter how long he’d been gone. He missed the bustle of bodies moving around and against each other. The sharp sting of a back slap and solid nudge of a shoulder when good jokes were told. The flare of heat surging through his gut at the sight of a pretty girl, and the way it blazed hotter when she flirted back.
Well, he still had that, after a fashion. He had the pretty girl who tied his stomach in knots. He had his assignment. Melanie.
According to the file the IU had pieced together on her habits, Hannadays suited her about as well as it suited Kade. She tended to be a homebody once she left work. Yes, now and then she’d been seen here with Noura and other friends, but rarely in the middle of a work week and never this late. She was an early riser and that meant early to bed. On every previous visit to the pub since she’d moved to the city, she’d been back at home by ten.
Kade checked his watch again. Eleven-thirty on a Thursday night? Something was different today.
A statement, a thought, that left him smirking at himself. Yeah, something was different. Someone. Melanie herself.
Kade couldn't explain the moment on the pier. Five minutes before, he would have refused the assignment, not the least bit interested in being anyone’s bodyguard. He didn’t do protection duty. Untrained people slowed him down. Then she’d looked at him across that impossible distance and everything changed.
Farris had been halfway through the assignment briefing when Kade realized he could feel her. Not by touch, of course, but he had a clear sense of where she was and how much distance lay between them. The closer she got to her work, the farther away from him, the harder it became to focus on anything other than closing the gap.
Which would drive him crazy soon enough. This wasn’t how he did things, chasing people through shadow, but forbidden to act. He’d heard an all-too-common nickname for shadow-born trackers from other groups in the IU. They smirked and said shadow-stalker. It implied men and women who liked to watch people sleep and shower and live their lives, never letting on they were there.
He’d been in more than one fight because someone spat the slur within his hearing, but how could he deny it with orders to watch and not interfere?
Screw that. He couldn’t watch if he couldn’t even see her and he wouldn’t be any use if he couldn’t get close. The shadows parted easily as he stepped back into the world, off the curb and across the street.
The lively notes of a well-played fiddle brightened the air as he stepped inside. A four-person band crowded the tiny stage in a corner of the room. Despite a lack of elbow room, and much to Kade’s surprise, they were good.
Their audience was anything but quiet and uninvolved. Couples and groups took up the floor in front of the stage, singing along as they shuffled and danced. People seated in the booths that edged the dance space picked up the chorus of an apparently well-known and much-loved song.
The bartender grinned and shouted over the resultant din. He raised his hand in greeting to Kade, then sidestepped to the end of the bar and leaned against it, straining cheerfully to catch the next order.
This was a picture of happy chaos and not at all the kind of place Melanie Kendrick ought to enjoy. It was too loud and too crowded for a meticulously ordered mind. She should have shied away from shouting strangers, stayed hidden in her nest of broken antiquities.
And yet, she was here, somewhere, lost in the throng. Kade’s awareness of her thudded like the bass-drum beat and dancers’ matching footsteps. She was there, in the middle of them, but his first good look at her tonight would carry him through until he spotted her again. It blazed like a bonfire in his memory.
All that business in her file about discipline and order combined with her conservative outfit at work made Kade mistakenly think he had her figured out. Tonight, though, she’d traded the sensible trousers for a skirt that stopped mid-thigh and matched the soft brown leather boots she wore, but left a hand’s width of exposed skin between the hem and boot tops.
The shirt was some sort of softly clinging fabric that shimmered between colors as she moved, purple to blue to green and back. It hugged her waist and the curve of breasts that had all but disappeared beneath her staid button-down, and offered a tempting flash of cleavage.
No, he definitely wouldn’t mind seeing that outfit again.
The bartender slapped a napkin down in front of him as Kade finally claimed a seat. The dimpled man took his order for a whiskey, neat, with a nod and smile and a knowing grin. He'd just started to reach for a glass when Kade caught his wrist
"I know my alcohol," he warned. "No trying to trick the new guy. Don't hold back the good stuff."
The grin faltered a moment, then returned, sharpened with the slightest edge. "Don't worry, Dad," he promised. "We give what we're asked for around here." He twisted his wrist and tipped his head toward the glasses. "Give us a chance?"
Kade nodded and let go, settling back on the stool. "Been in too many of the wrong sorts of bars. Just wanted to be clear."
The codger he’d expected sat on the stool next to him. He leaned into Kade’s shoulder and mumbled, "Think you insulted him." His breath reeked, the scent of decay mingled with t
oo much alcohol. His teeth were crooked, yellow and no doubt half-rotted through.
Kade managed a faint grimace that could, on a bad day, pass for a smile. "Wasn't my intent if I did. Friend of yours?"
"Naw!" The man laughed, wheezing out another blast of bad air. "Know him, but he's not my friend. Not no more a special friend than he is with anyone here, anyway. Dalton's just everyone's buddy."
"Dalton," Kade echoed.
The bartender reappeared, a dark bottle in hand, the label curling up at the edges. "Dalton Hannaday, and not so easy to insult as all that." He put a shot glass down squarely in the center of the cocktail napkin and filled it to the lip. He gestured with his chin toward the drink. "On the house, for a man who knows his stuff."
Kade paused mid-reach. "Hannaday. Then you own the place?"
Dalton's grin returned full force. "The family owns the place," he corrected. "I’m just the poor sap stuck behind the bar. Go on," he prompted with another jerk of his chin. "No need to wait for it to cool down."
Kade glanced sidelong at his neighbor, who watched with too much anticipation. He still assumed a trick, a glass of pure rotgut that he'd have to fight not to spray on the two observers. So much for first impressions. He picked up the shot, toasted both men, and threw it back, ready for the worst.
The kick only came after he'd swallowed a mouthful of liquid velvet. This was a whiskey that could legitimately be called smooth. It must have shown in his eyes, because Dalton's face split with a grin so wide Kade could almost see every tooth.
"You weren't joking then," he said, as he refilled the shot. "You really do know how to appreciate the good stuff."
"I've been around a couple of bottles." The old man beside him thumped him soundly on the back. "Is it true, what he said? Do you really know everyone here?"
