Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Diana didn’t mind eating alone. She was used to it, but the chaotic energy of the Salty Dawg Tavern—all the people laughing, talking, and eating—made her feel like she was on the outside looking in.
She’d picked a table in the corner, against the wall, for a reason, and she watched now with all the hunger of someone eager to be invited in but knowing they didn’t fit.
She’d rented the apartment and she was moving to town, but maybe she was wrong about how it was going to make her feel to live here. Maybe she’d always be the outsider, her face pressed to the window, wanting to belong to the happy group on the other side.
The town wouldn’t embrace her. She wouldn’t walk into Miss Mary’s diner and be greeted like a local.
Nobody at the Dawg would know her regular order.
Paisley Allen wouldn’t call to tell her the book she’d wanted had arrived at the library.
She wouldn’t be invited to join the altar guild at the First Methodist church, and nobody would ask her to bake a cake for the annual bake sale.
She pushed her burger away, her stomach suddenly churning too much to finish it. Why did she do this to herself? Why did she build up a happy future in her head only to tear it down again and again?
Joel had accused her of pulling him in only to push him away. Repeatedly. Until he’d finally broken up with her. She’d thought he’d be back, but he hadn’t been. He hadn’t called. She hadn’t called him either.
And, really, she didn’t want to. Yes, she was lonely.
But Joel had never been a serious boyfriend, even if he’d wanted to be.
He was FBI, too, but he worked a desk as an analyst. He wasn’t a field officer.
When she saw him at work these days, he was polite.
Distant. Like they’d never been naked together.
They could have made it work, probably, if she’d been different. She had trouble letting anyone in. Trouble believing she could have the things other people did.
Love. Happiness. A man who worshipped the ground she walked on same as she did for him.
She was damaged. Viktor had done that for her. And not just him, not really.
The way she grew up, with parents who didn’t know how to show love, hadn’t helped at all. She’d always tried to earn more crumbs of affection from them, but it’d never been enough. Now she just accepted that some people didn’t get what they craved from others.
She sipped her water and watched the Ghost Ops table beneath her lashes. Alex didn’t look her way again. He sat with his buddies, eating and laughing at something someone said. The women joined them until the table was full and the laughter was continuous.
She envied them for the friendship they had.
For the relationships. She’d never been that close to anyone.
She’d grown up going to a private girl’s school, and then she’d entered college and been too busy with her studies and the Adler Foundation’s charitable work to nurture relationships with women her age.
Maybe if she’d had a friend, she wouldn’t have been alone when she attended Viktor’s speech.
Wouldn’t have gone to dinner alone, wouldn’t have gone to his apartment.
So many wouldn’ts, and she didn’t know if she was right or it was simply wishful thinking. Mostly, she didn’t think about it, but when the loneliness got to her deep in her soul, she let all her sorrow leak into her brain.
She needed to pay her bill and go home, start organizing boxes for the move. She didn’t have a lot of stuff, but she had enough. A couple of antiques she’d gotten from her grandmother. Some artworks. Books. She really loved books.
She waved at Amber until the waitress walked over to her table. She didn’t look exactly hostile, but she didn’t look friendly either.
“You need anything else, hon?”
“No, just the bill. Thanks.”
“Sure thing.” She slapped the tray with the slip onto the table and moved away before Diana could get her credit card out. Then she swung back by and picked up the tray without a word. Diana took out her phone and checked her messages.
The laughter from the Ghost Ops table reached her in her corner, and her heart squeezed.
Really? Was she that pitiful she had to envy other people instead of finding her own friends?
She sucked in a breath and let it out. Yes, she was that pitiful. She didn’t have friends. Not really. She had Ackerman—her partner—and she’d had Joel. Women didn’t like her because she was too much like her mother, too distant and reserved, and most men only wanted to get into her panties.
Amber dropped off her receipt with a pen and said, “Have a nice day, ma’am,” before moving on again.
Diana wrote in a big tip and scribbled her signature, then got to her feet to make her way to the rear parking lot.
The back hallway was blocked by a group of men waiting to snag a table.
Four big men around age thirty or so, talking loudly and leering at the waitresses and other women standing nearby.
An odor of beer emanated from their midst. Not overwhelming, but enough to know they’d been drinking.
Four pairs of eyes homed in on her like lasers as she approached. Sliding down her body and back up again.
Diana sighed. Men like them didn’t frighten her. They were pack animals, filled with testosterone, and clearly trying to outdo each other.
“Hey, baby,” the cockiest one said when she reached them. “Where you going?”
“Home,” she said mildly, despite the churning anger in the pit of her stomach. “Care to get out of the way?”
She looked pointedly at the hallway behind him. His gaze was insolent, sliding up and down her body. He grinned. “Now, honey, no need to be so uptight. Come party with us for a while, let me loosen you up. You’ll feel better, promise.”
“Thanks, but no.”
He laughed and looped a hand around her upper arm as if he didn’t hear her.
She batted it away. His expression changed from friendly to confused, and then angry in a heartbeat.
Like so many men, he thought he was entitled to touch her because he was being friendly.
Because, so long as he smiled, he wasn’t being aggressive or inconsiderate or presumptive at all.
“No need to be such a bitch about it. I’m just trying to be nice.”
Diana glared. She was tall, but he topped her by about four inches.
“You aren’t being nice, dude. You’re being misogynistic and entitled, and you need to check your attitude.
Women don’t want to be leered at. They don’t want you to grope them or tell them to be nice because you’re nice.
And none of them want to be called baby or honey when you’ve never met before and you don’t even know their fucking names. ”
His eyes had grown wide. His buddies’ eyes were wide. The people nearby had stopped talking to dart their gazes between her and this idiot.
She had hopes that he’d get it. That he’d apologize for calling her baby and honey and trying to touch her.
But of course that was never how it was going to go.
His expression hardened. And then he stepped forward, into her space. “Somebody needs to teach you a lesson about talking back, you know that?”
She tipped her head back to look up at him. “Oh yeah? You think it’s going to be you, huh?”
He grabbed one of her arms and dragged her over to the wall so her back was to it.
“Hey, man, let her go,” somebody said. “That’s not cool.”
“When does the lesson start?” she whispered, her eyes locked with his.
“Right fucking now, bitch.”
“Oh goody, I’m so thrilled.”
He started to move again, presumably to drag her into the darkened hallway, but he never made it.
Diana did what she’d been trained to do.
She took the bastard down to the floor with a knee to his balls, hooking a leg behind his knees to finish him, and a twist of his wrist to neutralize him further.
When he lay on the floor gasping in pain, she glared at his buddies. “Anybody else?”
The other men were red-faced, angry, but they were smart enough not to pursue it. “You made your point,” one of them said.
Had she though? Men like these would never understand why they weren’t entitled to a woman’s rapt attention and enthusiastic agreement to their demands.
Diana looked at the jerk on the floor. She dropped his wrist and he cradled it to his body, glaring at her.
“Never touch a woman without her permission, baby,” she growled. “Or bad things can happen.”
The women nearby started to clap. Diana flushed.
When she turned to find the purse that’d fallen off her shoulder, she collided with a hard male chest. Six-foot-three inches of pure alpha male gazed down at her with a thunderous look on his face.
Alex Bishop held out a hand, her purse dangling from it.
“Thank you,” she said, shouldering the strap and holding tight to the bag like it was a lifeline. Because of the way he made her tremble inside, not because of the four assholes grumbling and shooting her looks.
A little voice told her to take him home, get him naked, and let him do his worst. That would cure this itch she got whenever she was near him. Or it’d make it worse.
A possibility she wasn’t willing to risk.
“You’re welcome. I thought I was coming to rescue you. Got here a little late, but to be fair you dropped him rather quickly.”
She tipped her chin up. “Thanks for the thought, but I’m capable of rescuing myself.”
“I see that.” His gaze was hot and mysterious as it raked over her. “That was… masterful.”
Her flush deepened. Thankfully, it was dark enough she didn’t think he could tell. “Thank you. I think. Though maybe I should be insulted that you sound so surprised.”
“Yeah, maybe you should. Got to admit I wasn’t expecting it.”
“Again, this feels like an insult.”
He grinned, and her heart turned over. Why did he have to be so damned gorgeous? She was a moth dancing too close to the flame, but it was warm and glowy and it felt good.
“Yeah,” he said a bit sheepishly. “Sorry about that. You’ve just always seemed like a woman who doesn’t like to get her hands dirty.”
She rolled her eyes, falling back on humor because it was the only way to keep him from seeing more than she wanted him to see. “Oh boy, Alex Bishop, you’re really digging a hole here, you know. First the performance at my table when I was minding my own business and now this.”
“I know. I’m delightful that way. Come join us for a drink?”
She wanted to. She imagined being invited into their group, being accepted. But she knew how it would go. The awkward silences from the men. The resentful looks. “I need to get home. Long day.”
“Okay. Then let me walk you to your car.” He held up a hand before she could tell him no. “Not because you can’t take care of yourself, killer. But those boys are pissed and back up is never a bad thing. I’ll be your Agent Ackerman for a few minutes, watch your six.”
She didn’t know how to refuse without sounding ungrateful or, worse, willfully stupid. “Thanks.”
He held out a hand to indicate she should go first. “After you, ma’am.”
Diana clutched her bag tighter and led the way.