Chapter Three – Avda
That asshole, that fucking asshole.
I didn’t know what the hell his problem was, this new guy, Sasha, but it felt like he had been nipping at my heels since I had arrived back at the Flood a couple of weeks ago. I had dealt with plenty of guys like him over the years, guys who came in here acting like they were the ones calling the shots – he would grow out of it soon enough, but his attitude was getting under my skin, and I didn’t like it one little bit. Didn’t like how easy it seemed to be for him to piss me off. I should have been able to brush him off, but there was something about that cocky grin of his that made it impossible for me to walk away when I knew I should have.
I needed a drink. Several, preferably. Ever since I had come back from my work at the compound across the city, I had been feeling out of sorts – like something was off here. I knew it was just me overthinking, and all I really needed to do was relax and get myself back in action, it was hard not to feel like I had been pushed out in the time I’d spent away.
I slipped on to a bar stool, and lifted my head, expecting to be met with a grin from Freddie, the bartender – but, instead, the person I saw standing opposite me made me freeze to the spot.
I recognized her at once. Those green eyes, they took me back to a night – a night I couldn’t quite place at first, but the longer I looked at her, the clearer it became.
A night at a club. I could remember...I could remember her eyes blazing into mine, her hand on my arm, pulling me in close. The look on her face when she came, the way her cheeks flushed as she went over the edge.
Running in to someone I’d hooked up with wasn’t exactly an unusual experience for me. When you’d been with as many people as I had, it would have been crazy to expect to get away without bumping into at least a few of them. But this? This was a little different. This was a girl behind the bar, a girl who was working here, a girl who I could remember, all too vividly, coming on my cock.
Okay, this could be fun. And could be exactly what I needed to get my mind off Sasha’s bullshit.
She was standing there, unmoving, as she stared at me, like a bunny caught in the headlights – clearly trying to parse whether or not I remembered her, and, if I did, just what I thought about her presence here.
”Well, hey,” I greeted her, tipping my head to the side, letting my eyes trace up and down her body. Oh, yeah, I remembered her. She was short, but curvy, with the most gorgeous legs I’d ever seen. I could remember the way they felt when they were wrapped around me, the way she had arched her back against me like she couldn’t get enough.
”Hi,” she blurted out. Her cheeks were burning red, and I could tell she had no idea how to deal with this. I didn’t blame her. I doubted this had been covered in the employee handbook.
”You must be new here,” I told her, extending my hand across the bar to her. ”I’m Avda. Good to meet you.”
”Jo,” She replied, taking my hand for the briefest moment. Jo – I was pretty sure I hadn’t known that before. We might have had sex, but that didn’t mean I’d actually picked up her name. I had a habit of doing shit like that, falling into bed with someone – or into a club bathroom with someone – while we remained totally anonymous to each other. Not that I minded. No, there was always something hot to me about just giving yourself over to the intensity of the moment, not letting anything get in the way of it, no matter how reckless it might have been.
”You remember me, Jo?” I asked her. Like I needed to hear her answer. I could tell from the look on her face that she remembered, in exquisite detail, exactly what had happened between us – glad to see I had made an impression.
”I – I think so,” she replied, clearly flustered by my attention. I grinned.
”Good,” I replied, leaning forward slightly. ”Because I remember you. You want to get me a beer?”
”What kind do you drink?” she asked, seemingly snapping into professional mode as soon as I asked for that.
”You choose for me,” I told her. ”I seem to remember you had pretty good taste.”
She grabbed a bottle of frosty beer from the fridge behind her and passed it across the table towards me. I took it from her, and our fingers touched for the barest, briefest moment – she drew her gaze away from me, doing her best not to let me see the expression on her face right now, but I had already clocked it. How could I not? She wasn’t exactly being subtle here.
”You just started at the Flood?” I asked her. The last time I had seen her, I was pretty sure she had been celebrating her birthday – I seemed to remember her wearing this tacky pink sash, and being surrounded by a group of her friends. She looked a little different now, older, more refined, her features sharper, but her green eyes were just as dazzling as they had been when they had caught my attention in the club.
”Yeah, a couple of months ago,” she replied. ”Don’t know why I haven’t seen you here before...”
”I was working at another of the Antonov’s properties, across the city,” I explained smoothly. ”But if I’d known you were here, I would have stopped in a little sooner...”
She bit her lip, eyeing me for a long moment. I had to admit, there was something cute about how flustered she got, not able to wrap her head around this level of flirtation. She drummed her fingers on the table in front of her, clearly trying to burn off some excess energy that was pulsing through her system right now.
”It’s fine,” she replied. ”I – I”ve been really busy anyway. Not like I’ve had time to talk to anyone.”
”I guess we should fix that, then,” I suggested, lifting the beer to my lips, and watching as her eyes flicked down to my mouth for a moment. I could tell she was attracted to me. I had a sixth sense for it, and right now, she wasn’t exactly playing it particularly cool. She swallowed hard.
”I’m busy tonight,” she replied quickly. ”I have to deal with shutting down the bar, and then-”
”Maybe another night, then,” I shot back. I knew she was just being professional, but if she thought I was going to let the chance for another hook-up slip through my fingers, she had another thing coming.
”Maybe, I – I have a lot on,” she blurted out. ”With the job, and my daughter, and-”
”Your daughter?” I asked, and she stopped dead in her tracks. Her eyes widened when she realized what she had just said to me.
That wasn’t the look of a woman who didn’t have anything to hide. I stared at her for a moment, and I noticed the way her jaw tensed, as though she knew she had just said something she should never have come out with.
”Yeah, my daughter,” she replied, almost defensive. ”I have a daughter.”
A kid. A child. I had often wondered, idly, if I had any children out there, but I had never given much thought about the reality of it. But the way she was looking at me right now, I could tell it was basically an admittance. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
”How old is your daughter?” I asked her.
”Nearly six,” she replied.
”And how are you?”
”Twenty-seven,” she blurted out. ”I’ve got to go, I have shit to take care of...”
And with that, she hurried off before I could say another word to her. Because she knew as well as I did what that had been – she had all but admitted to me, without any room for doubt, that I was the father of her child.
Fuck. Fuck! What did this mean? A kid, there was a kid out there with my blood in their veins? It was a matter of averages, I got that, especially since I hadn’t exactly been careful about the way I had gone about my sexual encounters when I had been younger, but this....
This was the last thing I had expected. I took another sip of my beer and waved down Freddie from the other side of the bar.
”You okay, man?” he asked. ”You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
”I’m going to need something stronger,” I muttered to him. ”Vodka. A double. No ice.”
”On it,” Freddie replied, knowing better than to ask me what was actually going on right now. He’d seen me through enough heavy shit to think it was a smart idea to get to the bottom of it, without ruining his own night in the process.
And if he’d known the truth – that I had just discovered I was almost certainly a father, and by one of the women who worked at the Flood – I knew it was going to turn into the gossip of the whole town. And I had to work out what I was going to do about it before I let anyone else in on the secret.