Chapter 22 – Juliette #2
“Duh, the internet. I’m going to get a pen. Hold on.”
I hopped up from our table and made my way to the bar. But instead of Pete behind the bar, it was Jackson Talley.
“Hey, Juliette,” he said.
“Hey. I didn’t know you worked here.”
“Helping out for Pete. He fell off a step stool and broke his wrist. Nancy over at the clinic wants him off his feet. Also, the tips aren’t bad. What can I get you?”
“Uh, I’ll guess we’ll take another round.” Booze would probably help our conversation along. “Tap beer for Creed and I’ll have another white wine. Also, you got a pen back there?”
He looked around the cash register, found one, and handed it to me. Then he poured my wine and pulled a beer from the tap.
“What’s the pen for?”
“Sex list,” I told him.
He nodded, unfazed. “Good luck with that.”
“Put this on Creed’s tab,” I told him, and took our drinks back to the table.
I liked how Creed was watching me during the short walk back to the table. Geesh, he really did love this dress.
I set the beer in front of him and he gave me a little stink eye. “I’m driving.”
“Last one,” I said. “But I think we need liquid encouragement if we’re going to do this.”
Pushing a napkin towards him, I reconsidered for a second and gave him three napkins. As a man of the world, he probably had way more experience. Then I handed him the pen.
“Okay, write down all your dos related to sex.”
He looked down at the cocktail napkins, then back up at me. “I’m going to need another napkin.”
“Fine,” I sighed. “Write down all your don’ts.”
He looked at me again like I was nuts, then picked up the pen in his left hand, (holy shit did I know he was a lefty?), and scratched out a few words and handed it back to me.
“Anything Jules doesn’t want,” I read. “You suck. I’m serious. What if I said I wanted to shove a giant sized dildo up your butt?”
He took the napkin and the pen back, scrawled another sentence, then pushed it back to me.
“Giant sized dildos up my butt,” I read back to him. “You’re a comedian.”
“No, this is stupid. Sex isn’t something you write down on a list. You play and experiment and figure out what you like through trial and error,” he said.
Then leaned over with his elbows on the table while he looked me dead in the eye.
“You might write down on that list that you don’t want anal, and five years from now, you might be gagging for it.
My point is, you don’t know until you try. ”
I also leaned forward, my elbows on the table too, while I met his sharklike eyes. “Creed, I’m telling you right now, I’m never going to be gagging for your giant dick up my ass.”
He laughed like I’d said the funniest thing he could imagine and then abruptly he stopped, his gaze looking over my shoulder.
“What?” I said, trying to find where his eyes wandered off to, because it better not be another woman.
“Stay here,” he said, and then pushed back the chair just with the force of his ass because he was quickly moving through the patrons to the other side of the bar.
Quick side note: I was not a stay here kind of girl. But my conditioning under Herb also lent itself toward stealth.
After a few seconds of pretending to obey, I got up and made it look like I was headed to the bar, only to casually start walking around it, heading in the direction Creed had gone.
Except he must have been better at the whole stealth thing, because even as I searched for him among everyone, people both familiar and not, I couldn’t find him. And given his height advantage, that was saying something.
Had he gone out the front door?
“Juliette, you looking for Creed?” Jackson was waving me over to the bar. “He went out the back, I think. Down the hallway with the restrooms. Some big dude was with him.”
Shit. Did that mean Tank was back?
“Thanks, Jackson.” I gave him a wave and then made my way down the hall toward the restrooms.
Nothing to see here. Just a girl going to the bathroom. Who got a little lost. Who opened up the door to the alleyway just a smidge because she was cautious about such things.
Creed and the big dude Jackson mentioned were just outside the back entrance. There were a couple of smokers hanging out back, but neither man seemed to mind. Creed’s back was toward the door and Jackson was right, the other man was big, but it wasn’t Tank.
Still. I could see the buzzed hair around the edge of his ball cap. His face looked super serious and his shoulders were massive. He was older than Creed. At least by fifteen, maybe twenty, years. His face more weathered, skin more creased. Maybe because he’d seen more things.
Put it all together, he smelled like more military to me.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Creed muttered.
“Didn’t have an address. Just the name of the town. And only that because the damn fool was drunk. Said you fell in it.”
Pretty sure the damn fool was Tank and I was the it in that sentence.
“Something like that.”
“Been coming here off and on for the past few months.”
“Months?” Creed repeated, clearly surprised.
“You’re not the only one of us who had thoughts of getting away from it all. Montana, Wyoming, Idaho. I can’t swing a cat in one of those states without running into one of us. I just keep weaving back and forth until I find someone who wants the work.”
“I don’t. Want the work.”
“Hear me out, at least.”
“Sir,” Creed said, in that voice I knew all too well. It was his, hear me, because I’m not saying it twice voice. “All due respect. I think I’m better off not knowing what my options are.”
What the heck did that mean? Was he afraid he would be tempted by whatever work this guy was offering?
Wait, did I care?
Sadly, yes, I did. It seemed we’d reached the stage of Stockholm Syndrome where apparently I’d developed feelings for my prisoner.
I had zero plans of letting him know that.
And truthfully, I was going to maintain a certain level of self-denial because admitting something more than basic human desire seemed… too risky.
Especially given he was standing in the alley behind a bar talking to an old Navy buddy about possibly taking some kind of job. A job which I’m pretty sure couldn’t be done remotely.
“Take my number,” the man said, handing Creed a card. “Just to have it. One of those, break in case of emergency things.”
Creed said nothing, but he did take the card.
“You were the best,” the other man said. “In a few years you’ll forget that.”
“Tell my wife that. She thinks I was bottom of the barrel because I wasn’t with STS.”
“Your wife, huh?” the older man said. “Would that be the young woman with the straight hair that’s about to fall out that back door?”
Creed didn’t bother to turn around. “That’s her.”
“She’s real pretty. Wish you luck with that, son.”
“Thank you, sir. Now if you don’t mind. This is date night.”
The older man laughed. “Fucking date night. You were stone cold and now it’s date night. Okay, I won’t bother you. But just keep the card. You never know.”
He turned back down the alley, tipping his cap to the smokers and without another word, he was gone.
I stepped outside the bar, my stealth abilities obviously compromised.
Creed turned around and shook his head.
I lifted my hands in exasperation. “How did you know it was me?”
“Babe,” he said, walking toward me. “I can smell you.”
“Okay, I’m not wearing any perfume so you better take that back. Hard.”
“It’s not a scent like that. It’s just…you. I can differentiate people by smell. It’s a thing I do.”
“Like horse whispering,” I mused.
“Something like that. And before you ask, that was an old boss, looking to see if I wanted to take on some project work. I passed.”
“Yeah, I know. I heard the whole thing. Before you smelled me.”
He dropped a heavy arm around my shoulders and guided me back inside. “Come on, let’s get back to this list of yours.”
“Finally,” I said. If he was going to ignore his old boss in favor of staying on the farm, then I was, too. “You’re going to take me seriously about the list?”
“What about oral?” he asked, his arm tugging me around the neck. “That on the list?”
“For me,” I said, wrapping my hand around his back, because I needed some place to tuck into as we went through the door together. “For you, the jury is undecided.”
“But I haven’t even had a chance to make my case,” he said, with real sincerity.