Chapter 19 #4
A laugh that sounded like a small explosion burst from her.
“I’m sorry.” She dropped her voice into whisper-shout mode.
“I didn’t mean to tromp on your ego, Mac.
It’s just that her boyfriend works in the kitchen.
Big guy who wields a meat cleaver.” She pursed her lips, which turned her pink mouth into a pout, and tsked.
“Jealous type. You don’t want him thinking you’re interested in anything more than having her pour your drinks because if he does, he’ll either pare you down to size or put something nasty in your food.
” She stuck out her tongue and made an icky face that reminded him of something his daughter would do.
It was totally at odds with the whole businesswoman thing she had going on, and he nearly let loose a laugh.
Getting himself under control, he ventured, “Do you work here?”
Allison was back and spoke in her own whisper-shout. “No, it just looks that way because she comes in here whenever she’s had a bad day. She spends a lot of time here.” The bartender’s expression held an incongruous look of … disapproval? To Ms. Boilermaker, she said, “More bad news?”
Beer glass to her lips, Ms. Boilermaker downed half of it in one gulp. “Pour me my next shot, and I’ll tell you.”
For a split second, Mac thought he was back in his early playing days in Canada, sitting in a bar with his buddies, daring the cute girl to chug. He gave Ms. Boilermaker another glance. Okay. Much cuter than the cute girls from his youth.
Allison arched a skeptical eyebrow at Mac’s stoolmate, who glared right back at the bartender. “Don’t you have a job to do? Like getting me my double shot?”
“Puh-leese. Keeping your drunk ass out of trouble has been my job since we were kids.”
Ms. Boilermaker scoffed. “Look who’s talking!” Then she side-eyed him. “Don’t listen to her. She exaggerates.”
Mac frowned, feeling like he was insinuating himself into some BFF moment—or a looming cat fight—but it was better than sitting in his room alone. This was entertainment without having to use a remote.
“You get your shot after I hear what the last disaster-of-the-day was,” Allison persisted.
Ms. Boilermaker narrowed her eyes. “Does management know about you withholding drinks from your paying customers?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.”
Ms. Boilermaker’s voice rattled out of her on a defeated breath. “Bedbugs.”
CHAPTER 2
Bedbugs and Other Randoms
EYES AS BLUE AS football’s Derek Carr popped wide, and the big guy with the messy hair—Mac—reared back as if the buggers were swarming over her and about to leap onto him.
Which was sort of funny, considering his large frame and the cocky grin he’d flashed her.
Not so cocky now, Mr. Badass. Well, he was more overgrown, tousled kid than badass.
Then again, the man had quite a set of shoulders on him.
Not that Mia was admiring them—just observing.
She had more pressing issues to ponder than this guy’s build, and they had nothing to do with insects.
Which was why she’d come in tonight, hoping to drown her troubles with Mr. Buchanan or talk them over with her sister.
Wasn’t that what bartenders were supposed to do?
Listen to your troubles? Of course, they would have to be wired that way in the first place.
Getting Alli to actually give a damn about Mia for a change would take some kind of cataclysmic shift in the heavens.
But Lord love a duck, Mia could use some of that compassion right about now—even if it was of the stunted variety.
Normally, she was adept at keeping life’s low blows bottled up, putting on her sales smile and sailing through her days without anyone glimpsing her ragged underside.
It was a role she’d learned to play to perfection and the reason why she was damn good at her job as a property manager, even if she did hate it.
But this latest burden—and it was definitely not bedbug-related—was too big to carry around alone.
So big, in fact, that it sat like a boulder on her chest, and it was becoming more difficult to hold back the tears that wanted to burst the dam despite the fact she hated showing any sign of weakness.
Yep, Mia could sure use some unloading right about now. Except she couldn’t—not with this Mac character sitting right there. But all the bar stools had been taken, and she’d had nowhere else to park her tush.
She side-eyed him covertly. Any other night, she might have taken a little more interest in him, but—
“Bedbugs?” the Mac character coughed, startling Mia back to the bar, where Alli obligingly poured her next shot.
Mia brought the glass to her lips and sipped, reining in her overwhelming desire to toss back the whole pour. God, she wanted to get hammered into oblivion tonight. Which was a bad, bad thing.
“They’re not on me,” she scoffed. “They’re in some guy’s apartment.
” Those big blues of his got even wider.
Ooh, that sounded all wrong, like I was with some random guy in his random apartment and got infested with …
random bedbugs. Mia lifted her glass again and threw half of it back before facing him.
“What I meant was … oh, never mind.” She didn’t have the energy to explain that one of the damn tenants in one the damn units she managed had brought in the damn bedbugs, but it fell to her to hire a damn inspector with a damn bedbug-sniffing dog to keep her client in compliance with the damn law.
And that had been the easy part of her day.
An inadvertent growl vibrated in her throat.
Usually an eternal optimist, she couldn’t help but give in to the dark side and admit that once in a while life really sucked!
Sometimes all one could do with lemons was swallow the sour and the bitter together and pray one could keep the god-awful mixture down.
Beside her, dark eyebrows rose and got lost in thick, disheveled hair. “Uh …”
“My feeling exactly.” She polished off her shot and chased it with the rest of the beer.
His eyes landed on her phone, face down on the bar. “You a Blizzard fan?”
She followed his gaze. Yep, her phone case was all Blizzard all the way. “Absolutely. Also a Broncos fan and sometimes a Rockies fan. Nuggets, Mammoth, and Rapids … not so much.”
One side of his mouth hitched. “So the Blizzard are your favorite Denver sports team?”
“God, yes. By a mile.”
“Have you ever played?”
Okay, she could do this. And it would keep her mind off the damn bedbugs and the real reason that had brought her here in the first place.
“Yep, as a kid, before the boys got too big and the good ones moved on. We didn’t have enough girls to field an entire team, and the boys that didn’t move up weren’t very good.
Play got boring, so I switched to volleyball, but then I was too short and …
Sorry. Didn’t mean to blather on.” She finished off her beer and caught Alli’s eye across the bar.
In spite of her spout, something seemed to flicker to life in Mac’s eyes, and he took a sip of his drink. “What position did you play? In hockey, that is?”
“Mostly center. Sometimes defense.”
“Defense? Were you big enough for D?” Amusement now played in those gleaming blues. They had to be really blue because she could tell their color despite the dim mood lighting in the bar.
“Maybe not, but I was scrappy,” she chuckled.
His arched eyebrow had her barreling on, “I had to be. I was small for my age, and kids picked on me because I used to wear these really thick glasses that were out of proportion with the rest of my face. They called me, ‘Bug-eyed,’ ‘Bug Girl,’ or the shortened version, ‘Buggy.’”
Gah! TMI! What is wrong with me?
Mac’s blues drilled into her browns. Maybe those eyes were the reason she was gushing like a broken sprinkler head. “Ever play in net?”
“God, no. I needed to be skating, using up my energy, not standing in the way of pucks like some overgrown potato. That’s where the coach stuck the fat kid who had no wheels. I could never understand why anyone who could skate wanted to be a goalie. Boring!” she sang. “Did you ever play?”
The corner of his mouth quirking, he twirled his glass on his coaster. “A little. Have you been keeping up with the Blizzard’s trades this off-season?”
“Mmm, trying to. Not that they’ve done much after winning the Cup.
” Catching Alli’s eye again, she pointed at her empty drink.
Alli turned her back to help another customer, no doubt ignoring Mia.
“I think their last trade was for a backup goalie. I can’t remember his name right now, but he was the starter for Philly up until a few years ago.
Then he had some health issues? I don’t recall, but he sort of disappeared for a while. ”
The amusement drained from his expression, and he threw back his entire drink in one neck-pulsing swallow. “His wife died,” he murmured as he set his empty glass down. “And he took some time off.”
Huh. Guess he knows his hockey players. Mia let out a shuddering sigh. “That’s so sad. But he’s like what, twenty-nine? Same as me! He’s still in his prime. Think he can come back?”
His eyes shot to the ceiling, then returned to her. “Twenty-eight, and yeah, he can come back … if he gets the chance. The guy he’s backing up is younger and really talented, which means he’ll be the starter most games.”
“True. Wyatt Tompkins has been outstanding in net. He’s one of the reasons they won.”
Mac gave her a lopsided smile. “Think they can win it all again this coming season?”
“Absolutely!” she declared. “They have the same core group of guys, so why can’t they have a dynasty like, say, the Red Wings of the nineties and two-thousands?”
“You really are a fan,” he chuckled.
“Season ticket holder for the last four years, baby! Okay, so it’s only a fourteen-game fan pack.” And she gave half of them away to clients or family, but who was counting?
They discussed hockey for how long, Mia had no clue, but they kept it up through an order of appetizers and more cocktails.
She was grateful, getting lost in a different world, and her mood lifted.
The guy knew his stuff, and the longer she talked to him, the cuter he got.
Or was that because Alli kept the drinks coming …
especially his? No, him consuming alcohol wouldn’t make him cuter.
It should make Mia cuter, more appealing despite her bedraggled business clothes and frazzled facade anyway.
The bar had grown crowded and a little rowdy. During a lull in their conversation, he leaned in to be heard above the din. “So what do you do?” A musky sandalwood fragrance wafted off of him. Subtle and really, really nice.
“I thought you knew. I’m a bedbug wrangler, of course.” She giggled, actually giggled, not missing her big sister’s eye-roll.
He guffawed. “No, seriously. What do you do?”
Something—maybe the scotch—made her say, “How about we don’t trade personal information? No names, no jobs.”
A slow grin spread, highlighting a very square jaw under scruff. “That’s not exactly fair because you already know my name.”
“Do I? Sounds more like a nickname to me.”
“Well, I need to call you something besides ‘hey you sitting next to me.’ What’s your nickname?”
Before Mia could deflect, Alli butted in—of course she did. Where had she come from, and how could she hear above the din? Big sister radar. “Fruit Loops. Loops for short,” Alli blabbermouthed.
“Traitor!” Mia growled as Allison speed-walked away.
Mr. Blue Eyes’s grin broadened. “Fruit Loops?”
Mia glared at him. “I used to love Fruit Loops, okay? Lots of kids do.”
“Yeah, but most kids don’t get stuck with the nickname.”
No one had called her that in years, not even her mom. Suddenly, the very thing she’d been trying to escape all night came rushing back and whomped her like the bad-tempered willow in Harry Potter. Mac was talking, and she reminded herself to get it together and tune in.
“… crowded in here. Can I take you to dinner? In the restaurant here or somewhere else or …”
She blinked. “You bought me dinner.”
“Only appetizers.” He suddenly shoved a hand through his wavy locks, looking all kinds of cute and nervous, and Mia’s mind detoured to whether he had a hotel room upstairs. From there, it was a short hop to imagining the warm weight of his big body on top of her in a fluffy bed.
Staring at him for a beat, she tuned into the silent signals thrumming between them, running through possibilities in her head.
A one-night stand with a good-looking guy who wasn’t local, who wouldn’t want more than she could give.
Oh, so tempting. She considered it for a hot second before her responsible self stepped in, though not soon enough because Mac was talking again.
“Then maybe we could order you dessert—or more scotch—while I eat dinner?” Hope danced in his eyes, and the cockeyed grin returned.
While she might be happily lubed, she was neither so lubed nor so happy that she would cross her sane self.
Though Mia had never been in love before—she’d been close once—she recognized that a guy with eyes like his was dangerous, whether he was an out-of-towner or not.
Something about him set off all kinds of sirens, complete with bullhorns shouting, “Run the hell away!” because with a snap of her fairy godmother’s fingers, Prince Possible-Dream-Come-True could morph into Asshat Supreme.
Mia had heartache in spades as it was and couldn’t afford to heap on more.
Urgency to leave surging inside her, she gathered up her purse. “That’s really sweet, but I have an incredibly busy day tomorrow. In fact, I should get going.”
Disappointment transformed his features. He cleared his throat. “Don’t go yet.”
Seeing the lonely plea in his eyes twisted emotions inside her, and warring factions tugged at her to stay, tugged at her to flee.
Reminding herself that lonely guys often transformed into clingy ones, she slipped into her saleswoman persona.
“I really enjoyed spending time with you. It was fun, and you kept my mind off … well, off my troubles, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.
And tempting as staying sounds, I really need to go.
” She patted his surprisingly steely bicep, and electricity raced through her fingers, up her arm, her chest, her shoulder.
Nothing like that had ever happened to her before, and it rocked her, making her reconsider for another hot second.
GET YOUR COPY OF No Touch Zone and find out how Fate steps in with plans of its own, putting two hearts on the line.