A hand settled on the back of her chair,
causing her to stiffen. Hot beer breath leaned down into her hair.
“Hey, sexy.”
Kyra looked over her shoulder. A guy about
her age with gelled hair and an Affliction shirt was undressing her
with his eyes. “Hey,” Kyra said, but her voice was uninviting.
“Wanna dance?” The guy’s eyes were all over
Kyra’s body. He pressed into her, nearly knocking her off her chair
and gagging her on his cologne.
“No, thanks. I’m not a big dancer,” Kyra
responded, looking away.
The guy kept on, his hand creeping onto her
back. “Oh come on, baby. Let me feel that hot body.”
Kyra glanced back, her bitch face in place.
“The only thing you’ll be feeling tonight is yourself through a
sock.”
The guy recoiled. He opened his mouth to say
something, but he quickly closed it and turned away, but not before
Kyra caught the flash of fear in his eyes as he left. She looked
over her other shoulder.
“Hale,” she breathed.
“Hey, Kyra.”
Her name sounded rough in his mouth, and
Kyra instantly knew he would kiss like he talked: raspy and with
enough heat to set her hair on fire. He had his arm around her
chair before anyone else could come up and talk to her. She knew by
the way he propped his leg on the bottom of her stool and leaned
against the bar that he was staking out his territory. It was basic
bar real estate, and she enjoyed it for the first time ever.
“Thanks for running that guy off,” Kyra said
over the blare of the band.
Hale leaned closer, his skin a mere breath
from hers. The heat of his body slicked against her skin like a
warm blanket. Her stomach fluttered upward, twisting and spinning.
“What was that?” he asked, not hearing her.
“I said thanks for running that guy off. He
was creepy,” Kyra spoke into his ear.
He turned his head and looked back into her
eyes. “Every guy in here was thinking about coming over. He was
just the first to work up the courage.”
“Yeah, right.” She rolled her eyes.
“Do you forgive me for today?” he asked.
“You didn’t sound that sorry,” she shouted.
Stevie was talking to Troy, leaning over the bar and pressing her
boobs into the wood.
Hale said something, but Kyra didn’t hear.
“What?” she called.
He leaned even closer, his chest pressing
into her. His arm wrapped around her back and pulled her closer as
he lowered his head. For a crazy, shivering moment, she thought he
might kiss her. Instead, he leaned into her ear and said, “I wasn’t
sorry.”
Her eyes widened. “Hale!” she accused, but
she laughed. “That’s awful!”
His mouth pulled sideways in a crooked,
knowing grin. “I would’ve preferred if my whole crew hadn’t seen.
We’ll have to spend all day tomorrow fixing the mistakes they made
this afternoon because you were all they could think about.”
Kyra blushed. “Yeah, right.”
“Hey, Hale!” Stevie shouted, leaning around
Kyra. “What’s up?”
“Not much. Good to see ya, Stevie,” Hale
said with a polite nod of his head. It was odd coming from a man
who looked like him, but it warmed Kyra’s heart. His hand grazed
her arm, skimming the skin gently. She shivered.
“I hear you’re a peeping Tom,” Stevie
said.
Kyra turned and gaped at her friend, but
Hale laughed. “Kyra shouldn’t go around flashing everybody. That’s
what she gets.”
Stevie died laughing as Kyra smacked Hale’s
chest, but it only made her palm sting. His chest was rock hard. He
looked down at her, his eyes dark in the bar as his hand made
another tickling trail down her arm. A shaky breath escaped her
mouth.
“Want to dance?” Hale asked, leaning close
to her ear again. His breath was warm and fresh against the skin of
her neck, and she imagined what it would feel like to have his
fingers caressing the sensitive spot below her ear. The only
coherent gesture she managed was a nod.
He took her hand and helped her down from
her stool. “I’m going to go dance with Hale,” she shouted at
Stevie, who waved them off.
Hale led her down the back wall to the dance
floor. Kyra squeezed past the bar’s patrons, thankful that Hale
seemed to cut a path before him. She saw the stares of a few men as
she passed, but she ignored them. Her eyes were focused on the
wide, flexing muscles of Hale’s back.
Once on the floor, he turned and pulled her
into him. There wasn’t much room for dancing, but they made do in
the small space. Kyra felt herself pressed against every inch of
his body. She ran her hand up his chest as she wrapped her other
arm around his neck.
His hands were on her hips, holding her to
him as they moved to the music. It wasn’t exactly a slow song, but
there wasn’t much room for actual dancing. Not that Kyra minded.
Hale’s fingers found the bare expanse of her back where her shirt
had raised.
Her hand skimmed from his chest to the
muscular swell of his shoulder and back. She smiled, watching him
watch her. His head was bowed toward her, cocooning her in his
embrace. She felt completely hidden with him, like he was blocking
her from everyone’s stares, which meant he had seen the other guys
checking her out, and he didn’t like it. The thought made Kyra
happy.
But then Hale’s eyes caught something over
her shoulder. She noticed the stiffening of his muscles beneath her
hands, and his body stilled against hers. A hooded anger seemed to
slip into his eyes as he focused on whatever was happening behind
her.
“What is it?” Kyra shouted over the band,
but Hale didn’t respond.
He released her and slid past, his body
slicing through the other dancers easily. The fury radiated off of
him like steaming pavement on a hot day. Kyra followed his line of
vision and saw Cade talking to a burly guy with a large beer
gut.
The guy was clearly in Cade’s face about
something. Cade tried to hold his ground, but his eyes were wide.
He didn’t see Hale barreling toward him, and neither did the guy,
Kyra figured. He wouldn’t be laughing at Cade if he’d seen Hale
coming.
He clearly didn’t see the fist, either. Hale
took the guy down with one swing. Then it turned into a brawl, with
Hale’s crew jumping in to take down beer-gut guy’s friends.
Bouncers rushed over and tried to break up the fight while women
screamed and guys howled their approval. The band stopped mid-song,
knowing they couldn’t compete with a bar fight. The sound of fists
hitting flesh could be heard like an echo between the cheering and
hooting.
Not knowing what else to do in the jostling
madness, Kyra made her way back to Stevie, who was watching the
fight with bland interest while she sipped on her Long Island.
“What did you do?” she screamed into Kyra’s ear when she finally
took her spot next to Stevie again. All around, people were
jostling about to get a better view of the fight.
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Well, that’s not nearly as exciting as I
hoped.” Stevie huffed out in disappointment.
The bouncers had the fight separated, and
everyone was being escorted out. Hale didn’t look back over to Kyra
and Stevie as he left in the grips of a burly security guy. Cade
hurriedly settled their tab. As he turned to leave, he saw Kyra and
Stevie. He waved and mouthed “sorry” before he rushed out after
Hale.
“He’ll probably be in jail for the
weekend.”
Kyra looked up at Troy, who had just spoken.
“They’re going to put him in jail?” she shouted above the rowdy
crowd.
“They always put Hale Cooper in jail,” Troy
said with a sneer. “Even if he didn’t throw the first punch.”
Stevie rolled her eyes. “Or even if he
didn’t throw any punch at all. The prim and proper of Canaan Island
like to see the likes of Hale Cooper in jail. It lets them sleep
better at night.”
“But that’s bullshit!” Kyra exclaimed,
feeling so angry that she allowed herself to curse.
“Indeed, my friend. Indeed.”
“Why won’t he make bail tonight?”
Troy shrugged. “Small towns. Judges don’t
work on weekends.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
Troy nodded in agreement and slid Stevie
another drink. Kyra pulled out her phone and texted Cade. As she
waited for him to text back, she fiddled with her bracelets, but
when she didn’t hear back from him for the rest of the night, she
took it as a sign that, no, everything was not all right.
eight
I
t was finally the
weekend, and Kyra normally took Saturdays off from work to unwind.
Except today wasn’t as relaxing as she’d hoped since she was up
early ripping out weeds and pruning ruthlessly in her front garden.
She hacked and pulled, ripped and tugged. She fell onto her butt
with a muffled oath. Almost feverishly, she swiped her brow,
spreading dirt across her face, and dug back in.
She was relieving tension, and hacking
tended to relieve tension.
“Good morning, Kyra.”
Kyra jerked and peered up through the
overgrown bush she was currently trying to tear in half. Spotting
the ample hips of Mrs. Walker, she stood and pulled off a glove to
shake hands with the woman.
“Morning, Mrs. Walker. How are you
today?”
“Just stretching my legs,” Mrs. Walker said
with a sniff. She tucked an imaginary piece of loose hair behind
her ear.
“It’s a good day for it,” Kyra said, trying
to sound nice. Truth was that all she could think about was Hale
sitting in a jail cell. And it pissed her off.
“Right. Well, I just wanted to come by and
see if you’d heard about the…
incident
with Hale Cooper.”
“Incident?” Kyra asked through gritted
teeth.
“Oh, yes. I figured you would want to know
since he’s your contractor and all.” Mrs. Walker looked around as
if she didn’t want anyone else to hear her bit of gossip. Kyra
resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “But he was arrested last
night. For getting into a fight. At a
bar
!”
Kyra thought about smiling and joking or
doing something just as fake, but she thought about Hale and
decided against it. “Yeah, I know. I was
there
.”
Mrs. Walker couldn’t recover in time to keep
the horror from her face. “Nice girls don’t go to bars, Kyra. I
would hope that you would want a respectable contractor to work on
your house. I would also hope that you would value the Aberdeen
name enough to not be seen in places where there are bar
fights.”
Mrs. Walker looked about two seconds away
from shaking her finger in Kyra’s face. Before she could, Kyra cut
her off. “I’ve learned that the most respectable people are
normally the biggest assholes. And as far as the Aberdeen name
goes, well, I don’t really give a flying shit about that
either.”
“I…I…” Mrs. Walker’s mouth flapped opened
and closed like a fly trap. “I’m going to be relaying this
conversation to your grandmother!”
“Fantastic! Be sure to tell her I say
‘hello.’”
Kyra felt a little giddy with herself as she
watched Mrs. Walker turn seven different shades of red before she
turned and stalked off. Pulling her gardening glove back on, Kyra
realized she felt better than she had all morning. Maybe she needed
to be rude more often. With a grunt, she went back to work.
She tore out one particularly ferocious weed
and tried to examine the root of her anger like her therapist would
have her do. If she was being honest with herself, she knew part of
her frustration was sexual. She would’ve slept with Hale last night
if it’d gone that far. She didn’t know what that said about her, or
if it even said anything, but she found the thought confusing. She
didn’t know how she should feel about her attraction to Hale,
especially after their rocky start.
Forcing Hale from her thoughts, she worked
until lunchtime, when the sun was stifling and sweat was running
down her back. She put up her tools and pushed the wheelbarrow full
of torn weeds to the back of the house where she’d set up her
composting bin. When everything was put up and as tidy as possible,
Kyra went inside and took a lightning-fast shower in her exposed
bathroom.
She hung up a towel over the window, but it
did little to comfort her unease. She was in and out in under three
minutes—a new record for her. She snickered, thinking she could
make a video on snappy showers.
She pulled on her uniform of shorts and a
tank before she ran a brush through her wet hair. She always gave
herself a break on Saturdays, meaning no makeup and no doing hair.
She twisted her long blond locks up into a high bun and left the
house, feeling better than she had all day.
When Stevie answered her door at Kyra’s
insistent knocking, she was wearing a pair of sunglasses and a hood
pulled up over her head. Kyra looked at her friend and laughed. “Is
this what you’re wearing to go antiquing?”
Stevie groaned. “That’s today?” her voice
cracked, and Kyra was treated to a ferocious fog of bad breath,
which she waved away with a crinkled nose.
“We just talked about this yesterday,” Kyra
reminded her.
“Ugh. I forgot about it in all the
excitement.” Stevie turned away and left the door open for Kyra.
“Let me change then.”
“And brush your teeth!” Kyra called after
her.
After a shower of both body and mouth, lots
of coffee, and a pep talk, Stevie trailed behind Kyra as they
entered a building salvage warehouse. She still wore her
sunglasses, even in the dim building. “How are you even functioning
right now?”
They’d stayed out late last night because
Stevie had wanted to stay until the end of Troy’s shift. Kyra
waited with her friend, drinking water and warding off increasingly
frisky, wayward hands as the night wore on. Finally, Troy got off,
and Kyra could leave her friend, knowing she was safe and had a
designated driver. Maybe that made her a prude, but she was already
fond of Stevie and wanted the best for her.