Authors: Terri Anne Browning
“Sleep well?” He asked with a smile in that sexy voice of his.
“For the most part.” I leaned back against him and met his gaze over my shoulder. “You?”
There was a wicked look in those mesmerizing eyes of his. “Best rest I have ever had.” He dropped a kiss on the end of my nose. “Can I come back when you get off of work?”
I had been dreading coming home to an empty apartment that night. His words warmed me. But I knew that he needed to stay on his strict schedule or it could mess him up for his match. I reached for my key ring and handed over the one to my apartment’s front door. “You can stay all night if you want.
I know that you need to be in bed early…And I’m sorry that I cost you a day of training.”
His eyes darkened and he turned me around to face him. “One day is not going to change anything. And I would have willingly missed a week of training if that was what it took to get through to you how much you mean to me.” He took my key and pocketed it.
I kissed him long and hard
, and then—because
I was tempted to blow off work
—I
pushed away and grabbed my bag. “I have to go. See you when I get home?”
“Before then.” He promised as he walked me to the door. With one last lingering kiss he pushed me out of my apartment and I walked the few blocks to work.
I walked on air the entire way. As
I
got Safe Haven ready to open I floated. The bouncers kept sending me knowing grins and I couldn’t help the smile that continued to sneak up on me every time I thought of the man who had invaded my heart and soul in less than a week.
Mel arrived just before it was time to open and some of my happy bubble
evaporated
.
She had sent me a cryptic text saying that she had had a nice time with Greg Daventry, but that she doubted she would ever go out with him again. I hadn’t sent her a return message, wanting to talk to her face to face about it. But now that I had the opportunity to do just that I didn’t want to know anything except that she was alright.
There was a
kind of
darkness in her green eyes that told me that she wasn’t. One look at the woman who had pretty much adopted me and I pulled her into the office.
As soon as the door closed behind us I wrapped her up in a tight hug and a sob escaped her. I let her cry it out, knowing that it helped to get it all out of the way as soon as possible.
I held her for a good five minutes until the body shuddering sobs became less gut wrenching. Mel raised her head and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand; her nose was running and her lips trembling and even though I had yet to hear what my grandfather had done to cause Mel to hurt like this I wanted to punch him in the face.
“What happened?” I murmured, urging her to sit.
“I don’t know.” She muttered, taking the napkins I handed her and blowing her nose loudly. “One minute we were having a good time. Laughing, getting to know each other…And then the next I…I went off on him. I guess I was
angrier
with him than I realized because I let him know exactly what I thought
of
him.” She grimaced. “Then, after I was done yelling at him, telling him what a poor excuse for a human being I thought he was…I just left.”
Her story made me smile. “So he didn’t do anything?”
She shrugged. “No. I just couldn’t hold in how I felt about the way he had treated you all those years ago. Sure
,
he wasn’t the one who…who…” She sucked in a deep breath. “But he just ignored you when you needed him the most. Ignored you to make money he didn’t fucking need!”
I crouched down in front of her and hugged her again. “I love you, Mel.”
Her arms tightened around me convulsively. “I love you too…That’s the first time you ever told me that…”
“I’m sorry. I’ll tell you more often from now on.” I promised.
Thursdays were our warm ups to the busy weekends. More often than not people would come in, knowing that they were going to call in sick to work the next day if they had a hangover or not, in order to get a long weekend. Mostly it was business types
that we had tonight
,
but there were
some blue collars and of course the usual biker, Emo and Goth.
Yes it was an odd assortment of people under the same roof. But that was one of the reasons why we were called Safe Haven. We didn’t discriminate. All we asked was that you didn’t cause trouble, of course.
The bar stools were all taken, as were most of the tables. In the back, where the bouncers mostly kept a close eye on things, the four pool tables were all taken. At one of the tables stood Kieran’s crew and Maddox. They were pretty good and I had already given them a
pitcher
of beer on the house, which had basically caused any tension between us to disappear.
Jake had apologized which had been an almost surreal experience for me.
He had explained that he kind of liked me, especially when I was in my Goth paint. And he had thought maybe he could push me away from Kieran if he had told me I was like the others. He hadn’t realized that things were moving so fast between me and his fighter. But he had wanted me to know that he had been wrong and would I please forgive him?
Of course I had told him he stood no chance in hell, with or without Kieran. Then told him if he ever did anything like that again I would show him a thing or two that I had shown the spar twins a few days ago. He had thrown his head back and roared with laughter, then proclaimed that we were going to be the best of friends.
I was skeptical on that
and
let him know so with the roll of my eyes. Jake had returned to his friends,
and
then quickly started chatting up the college girls that came in not long afterwards.
While the crew and Maddox played a mean ga
me of pool and drank their beer
I had still not seen the only man I wanted. But he had promised to stop by tonight and I knew he wouldn’t let me down. So I focused on mixing drinks
and
keeping the two obvious lovers
seated at
what I had come to think of as Bubba’s end of the bar from getting R rated with their kissing and occasional groping.
Of course that wasn’t as easy as it seemed. I turned around from setting a few whisky sours in front of two older business men to find the l
overs going at it nearly Porn S
tar style. Fe
d
up with the two I grabbed both men by their hair and dragged them to the front door. “Until you get it out of your systems don’t bother coming back!” I yelled after them.
They hadn’t put up much of a struggle, but still I turned to find the crew less than a foot away when I started back to the bar. Gage and Simon just grinned and shook their head. Mason seemed a little conc
erned, but still smiled at me; w
hile Jake moved forward. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” I assured him as I moved behind the bar
and went back to filling drink
orders. The crew went back to playing pool. Within minutes they were laughing and shoving each other good naturedly.
Around nine-
thirty I
started
to get really
hungry. I hadn’t stopped for my usual grilled salmon salad on
the
walk over because I had been too much in a love induced haze to remember.
T
he granola that I had snacked on before leaving my apartment had not exactly
been filling
. My stomach started grumbling just as a sack was dropped down in front of me behind the bar.
The smells coming from inside made my stomach clench with hunger and I glanced up to find Kieran standing just a few inches away. He had come behind the bar to greet me, and he had brought food. I threw my arms around him and kissed him.
His big, strong hands gripped my hips, holding me closer.
“Hey! Hey!” Jake’s voice called from the pool tables. “You just kicked some guys out for doing just that.”
Kieran stepped back and shot his manager the finger, but he was smiling down at me. “Tossing people out already?” He teased as he reached into the sack and extracted a turkey club sandwich
on honey-
wheat
from the deli down the stre
et. Sweet potato fries followed. H
e
unwrapped the sandwich and
placed it on a napkin. “Eat.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I devoured half of the sandwich before I even realized it. Munching on the fries I mixed drinks and dealt with business. Kieran Stone was taking care of me and I
was really, really enjoying
it.
()
When I got home it was nearly four. There had been a few hangers-on that had given me and the bouncers a little trouble. The cops had had to be called, and three of them had been taken to jail. Once we had given our statements I had told the guys
not
to worry about cleaning up. I even skipped all my paperwork and a few other normal closing chores.
All I wanted was a hot shower and to
snuggle
up with Kieran.
As quietly as I could I entered the apartment and went straight for the shower. I stripped and ignored the mirror
as I turned on the water, knowing that what I would see would not be pretty.
While the hot water heated up I scrubbed my face and brushed my teeth, then stepped under the power
ful
spray of the shower.
I couldn’t help crying out in both agony and pleasure as the water hit me. I bit my lips, afraid that I would wake up Kieran if I kept making loud
, moaning
noises. It took me longer than normal to get clean, but when I was finally done I pulled on my flannel pajama top
and
clean underwear
before
climb
ing
into bed with the beast of a man
already
under my covers.
He had been snoring softly until I put my head on his chest and my arm across his hard abdomen. “Reese…” He brushed a kiss across the top of my head.
I smiled despite the pain that I was in and raised my face to meet his lips. “Go back to sleep. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”
With a yawn he pulled me close
r
, unaware that he was putting me in excruciating agony.
But I just wrapped my arms around him tighter and held on until he drifted back to sleep. It was some time before I
could follow
…
“I have to go, baby.” Kieran’s deep, sexy voice murmured at my ear as he extracted himself from my hold.
Caught off guard I cried out as he brushed against my side. The light on my bedside table was snapped on instantly. “What’s wrong?” He demanded, concern darkening his tone.
“Nothing.” I pulled the covers back over me, trying to hide away from him.
The blanket was stripped from me and he started running his hands over me. “Something’s wrong. You’re hurt.” His long fingers skimmed over my right side and I just barely held in my whimper. He froze, saw the tears of pure agony in my eyes and then pulled the
flannel
top up.
A fierce curse escap
ed him as he took in the discoloration
that took up most of my side and went around to my back. “What the hell happened, Reese?”
I sighed. “There was some trouble when we went to close up.” I told him. “A group of guys didn’t want to go. They were overly drunk and I hadn’t noticed that they had had one to many. They struggled when the bouncers and I tried to get them to leave. One of them caught me with a chair…It broke...”