Julie exhaled. “You’d better put the kettle on.”
Veronica laughed nervously. “Shit, that doesn’t sound good.”
“I’ll have a cup of tea with milk and a little Splenda.” Julie called after her.
Five minutes later, Veronica emerged with two steaming mugs of Twinning’s English Breakfast Tea. Sliding it over to Julie, she sat again.
“Okay, spill.”
“I’ve heard talk, ‘love ‘em and leave ‘em, Nick’. I heard he’d slept with Miss McGregor.”
Julie lifted the mug and took a sip.
Veronica cocked her head. “Miss McGregor, the history teacher?”
“Think back twelve years ago. She was in her early twenties and used to wear those leather skirts split up the back right to her ass, along with the tight sweaters. She had every teenage boy lusting after her.”
Veronica shook her head. “Are you telling me she slept with horny teenage boys, Nick included? Isn’t that a felony?”
“That’s the rumor. I mean really, Nick never looked like a teenage boy, did he? That’s the only student I heard about. Nick in the twelfth grade was full grown in more ways than one. So I heard.” Julie shrugged taking another sip of tea.”Remember Darlene Cummings?”
Veronica searched her memory and then nodded. “She got around.”
“Well, I was in her gym class. I heard her bragging to a bunch of girls in the locker room about Nick and his impressive equipment and his stamina. It’s something I’ve heard many times through the years, from numerous sources.”
A sharp stab of jealousy slid in under Veronica’s ribs. Turns out, she was just one in a long line starting with a damned school teacher in a slutty, leather skirt.
“Nick dropped out in March, did you ever hear why?”
Nick told her jail, but she wanted to hear what Julie knew. Julie, who it seemed, was a fountain of information.
“Yes, I heard he was in prison somewhere up state, robbery or some such. Then I heard after he was released he took off and disappeared. When he showed back up in town four years ago, I admit I was shocked, thought he dropped off the edge of the map.” Julie related in a confiding tone. “I take it he didn’t tell you anything on your date.”
“No. He made it quite clear he didn’t want to talk about it, I didn’t press,” Veronica wasn’t going to tell Julie it was jail for assault. She wanted to keep Nick’s confidence. “What about his uncle?”
Julie took another sip. “Henry McCann. He died last year. Cancer.”
“Oh,” Veronica exclaimed softly. “He never said. But I got the impression they weren’t close.”
Julie crossed her legs. “Back to the women. Who knows what’s true. I only know the man doesn’t talk to anyone and as for the women he’s been with, it was of a brief and intense duration and it was always him that walked away. A lot of broken hearts I would imagine. Is that what he did with you?”
Veronica was taken aback. “What? No. At least, I don’t think so. I think we’ll be seeing each other again.” But now, she had her doubts.
“You had sex with him, didn’t you?” Julie whispered. “Don’t deny it, I see it on your face, you’re blushing. Is it true, the equipment and the stamina?”
“Julie,” she said in a warning tone. “I can’t talk about it, not now.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Wow. Nick is walking testosterone. I’m impressed and maybe just a tad jealous.” Julie teased gently.
“What about the drugs?”
Julie inclined her head to the back rooms. “Why not ask your Viking god of a brother? He must be up by now. He could tell you. Personally, I haven’t heard much. His bar’s in a rough part of town.”
“I can’t talk to Tyler about this, not yet,” Veronica laughed. “Viking god — Tyler?”
“Don’t worry, I’m not interested, not that he would even look twice at me anyway. Talk about Nick getting around, your brother’s no slouch.” Julie giggled.
“Oh? You’ve gossip on my brother? Now it’s your turn to spill! And what do you mean he wouldn’t look at you twice?” She demanded.
“I’m not gossiping about Tyler with him in the next room. Look at me, Ronnie. I might pass as border-line cute, if that. I’ve been called plain by members of my own family and they love me. I know my limitations. Tyler likes beauty. That’s all I’ve seen him with, though not lately. Your brother and I are friends, nothing more.”
The bell tingled over the door as a woman and her daughter walked in. Julie put down her mug. “I’ll go help this lady.”
Veronica sat, stunned. She learned quite a bit, even about her brother. She’d been away from home too long. It seems her
close
brother kept things from her. What made her insides roil and lurch was the talk about Nick. She should’ve guessed.
Love ‘em and leave ‘em Nick.
Great. Is that what she really wanted? No strings attached — casual, hot sex? She thought so. Nick was — complicated, she got that already after one date. He knew what he was doing, the restaurant, not too expensive and not too cheap. The beach, the candles, the wine — and the rose.
The rose.
She would’ve happily fallen at his feet with that gesture. The big, tough biker was a romantic at heart when it suited him. Nick could’ve easily had sex with her on the beach, he had seduced her thoroughly and completely, and she would’ve done anything. Instead, he held back.
Then to be waiting at her door to comfort her about Tyler, the tender way he held her and kissed her. It took her breath away. Showing up at her door the next night in that state, like he would explode if he didn’t have her was sexy as hell. That alone sent her over the edge, never had she been so — horny. A man wanted her that much. It was appealing, enticing, and downright satisfying.
Who was the real Nick? He obviously wanted her to believe he was all those men rolled together, romantic, tender, wild, and dangerous. Veronica thought they’d connected somehow, that something happened between them. This was her downfall, she read too much into sex. Not this time, that is if Nick ever called again.
Veronica took a sip of tea and looked at the phone. Would he call? Should she call? She shook her head and headed out back.
High school, they were in damned high school.
• • •
Across town, Nick arrived back at his bar. He did head into Delaware and drove straight to the ocean. The night passed quietly as he sat on the beach and watched the sunrise. He’d called his employee Kevin on his cell and told him to open. Nick hung around Bethany Beach and had an early breakfast. He did a lot of thinking. Lunch rolled around so he had a coffee and sandwich at the Kool Bean, and then decided to head back. Now mid-afternoon, he told Kevin to take a break, he would cover. Not many in the bar this time of day, a few barflies or the unemployed, probably laid off from the pulp mill. Nick inhaled, he should’ve showered first before coming in to work, but he supposed he smelled no worse than the guys propping up the bar. Maybe he wasn’t that anxious to wash off Ronnie’s essence.
Nick picked up a few empties from the tables. What possessed him to go to Ronnie’s place like that? He must be obsessed. He wanted more, he wanted her. It would be breaking his own private covenant. He never slept with a woman more than once. Nick stood up straight.
Except one time. Darla McGregor, school teacher. He closed his eyes. Damn. The woman was only four years older than him at the time, as she was a new teacher fresh out of college. Darla reached out to Nick innately sensing his self-imposed isolation and loneliness. She invited him to her apartment for dinner. He never should’ve gone, but he did. Someone paid attention and took the trouble to talk to him. He wound up in her bed more than once. Only the second woman he’d ever been with. He had been eighteen at the time of their affair, legally an adult. He thought he knew what he was doing. Yeah, right.
Nick’s eyes snapped opened and he placed the empties in the crate by the back door. He thought he was in love. Darla showed him things and made him feel — damn. As if she could ever be serious about a troubled kid desperate for love. Pathetic really. Nick made a vow after Darla dropped him that he’d never let his heart be engaged with any woman ever again. His emotions were all over the place at eighteen. When Darla told him it was over, he rode off into the night to points north, Cowentown in fact. He stopped at a biker bar outside the town limits, got drunk and started a fight, the bar had been trashed. The end result of his emotional meltdown? He was thrown in jail and his damned uncle wouldn’t bail him out.
It will teach you a lesson, boy.
His Uncle Henry sneered. Left him to rot for six months. Nick never returned to Rockland High. Sitting in jail for a long stretch will do things to you. Nick swore no one would let him down again. He locked his heart up tight and threw away the key.
His thoughts were interrupted by slim man of medium height walking through the door. Nick glanced at the stranger. The man had long, black hair to his shoulders and criss-cross scars on his cheek. What caught his attention were the eyes. They were dead — like a doll’s eyes. He sized him up immediately. He didn’t like the look of him at all.
Nick stood behind the bar. “What can I get you?”
The man glared at Nick, his face stern and resolute. “Got any Kilkenny?”
Nick curled his lip.
Irish accent.
Rockland was a blue-collar city with a deep, Irish background and roots. You only had to drive around the small city and see the names of the streets, Erin, Orange, Patrick, to know the origins of the founding fathers. For decades families brought over their paddy relatives to work either at the pulp mill or the now empty sugar refinery not far from Nick’s bar. Not so much anymore. Wonder where this Mick came from? Nick was half-Irish himself, on his mother’s side of the family, but he didn’t brag about it. The uncle that left him in jail was his mother’s older brother. Mean bastard.
“American only, dude. Pick your poison,” Nick snapped.
“Give me a Budweiser.”
He turned to get a bottle from the refrigerator behind him and reached for a frosted glass. By the time he turned back, the Irish guy was deep in conversation with a couple of Nick’s customers and showing them little packets of white powder. Nick’s fury boiled.
“You. Irish. Over there,” he barked, pointing to the other side of the bar.
Nick strode over and stretched to his full six foot, four inch height. He stood close to the Irishman and glared down at him.
“Listen to me, you Irish bastard. No one sells drugs in my place. You want to sell it out in the alley? Fine. But not in
my
place. Or I will give you a new scar on that asswipe face of yours.”
The skinny Irish didn’t blink nor speak. A slow, smug smile curved on his thin lips.
“Go drink your beer.” Nick snarled.
The nearby jukebox played Grand Funk Railroad’s
We’re an American Band.
“Your music sucks, mate.” The man sneered.
“My music, my place. My rules. So either drink your beer or get the hell out.” Nick growled through his clenched teeth.
“Take your lousy American beer and feck off, mate.”
• • •
Ronan McCarthy strode outside slamming the door behind him. He looked back at the bar,
lousy biker scum
. He pulled out his package of Camels and dangled a cigarette from his lips while reaching for his Zippo in his other pocket. Flicking the cover open, he spun the wheel until the fluid lit. Lowering his cigarette into the flame, he inhaled, and then grimaced. Bloody American cigarettes, as bad as their damned watery beer and their feckin’ music. The flavor was not helped by the acrid taste of the burnt fluid.
Ronan turned at looked at the non-descript building that housed the bar. He was renting a few rooms not far away from this bar. Being smart, he had asked around and heard a hulking biker ran it. Thought it would be a good place to unload a little blow. Should have known, once he stepped inside, he realized the bar was not his type of place.
He watched the biker moving about the bar, collecting empties and talking to customers. He expelled a long curl of gray smoke through his nostrils, his eyes narrowed in annoyance.
Ronan did not tolerate being spoken too that way.
No one
spoke to him that way. He would’ve gutted that biker like a fish from the North Sea if there hadn’t been witnesses. He marked the biker down in his book. He knew who he was, Nick Crocetti.
In my book.
Veronica lay in bed reading when the phone rang. Would it be Tyler? He was back at his apartment and ready to return to work tomorrow, did something happen? She scrambled out of bed and ran for the phone.
“Hello?”
“You weren’t asleep, were you?”
Nick.
He called. The thrill that shot down her spine made her want to jump up and down with pure glee.
“No, just reading. How are you, Nick?”
“I’ve been better. I wondered if I could come by and pick you up. It was a slow night and I closed the bar early.”
“You need sex?” she replied. As soon as she said the words, she regretted it. The silence on the other end of the line said plenty. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I wanted to show you where I live and work. Maybe we could talk.”
There was that voice, the tight, barely constrained anger she heard the night on the beach when they touched on his past.
“Come by, Nick. I’ll wait out front.”
Nick grunted an affirmative and hung up, didn’t even say good-bye. God, how stupid could she be? Veronica slapped herself on the forehead a couple of times.
Stupid, stupid
. Really, she wandered about in a forest here, couldn’t even see the trees. How to handle this thing with Nick, whatever it was? Maybe she wasn’t going about this the right way. Veronica wanted William Titus, she got him, and he hurt her. Did she go and curl up in a ball? No — Okay, for a few days — but she picked herself up and dusted herself off and moved forward, determined she wouldn’t be hurt again. Veronica rummaged through her drawers to find something clean and presentable.
Fifteen minutes later, Nick pulled up in front of her bakery. Without speaking, he handed her a helmet. Veronica climbed on the back of his bike and tucked herself close to his body. She laid her head on his back as best she could with the helmet on, and his body tightened at her touch. She affected him and she derived satisfaction from that bit of knowledge. Inhaling deeply, her senses could detect the aroma of expensive, sexy aftershave, leather, and a scent that was Nick’s alone. The scent was enticing and male — wildness — a feral tiger. Her crotch nestled firmly against his muscular ass. The friction from the bumps and lurches and the rhythmic vibrations of the bike as he drove caused a landslide of heat to envelope her. The bike and Nick were one entity, each an extension of the other. Dominant, throbbing and lustful. Desire pierced her. She barely bit off a moan before it floated past her lips.