“What do you mean?”
She had no obligation to tell me anything, but if my sister said something like that to me, I’d be ready to ride at dawn in a heartbeat.
“Nothing.”
Lou, however, did not let that go. “Somebody hurt you?”
He was a big guy, round in all the old guy places, but he also had five daughters. A protective bear was Lou.
“Nothing that doesn’t typically happen at bars around here. It’s whatever.” She flipped a hand through the air and grabbed her second shot. “It’s fine.”
“That’s not fine. And it’s not whatever. You telling me somebody touched you, and you got fired for it?”
She cringed. “It might have been me breaking a bottle on the bar and shoving it in his face that was the part that got me fired.”
Well fuck that.
And now I wasn’t just seeing a curvy, exceptional looking woman with a mouth I wanted to taste and breasts I wanted to get my hands on. I was looking at a woman, barely over five feet, who’d been harassed and suffered the consequences for it.
As she spoke, steel hardened her tone.
“Good,” I said, and she probably didn’t care, but I continued with, “I’m proud of you.”
Chapter 2
Maggie
I had no intention of taking anything from anyone, but when you had the night I’d had, hell, the last three years I’d had, where every time I thought I was getting ahead, the universe laughed and knocked me right back to my backside, I’d take the alcohol the incredibly cute and sexy guy at the bar offered.
There was grit in his voice as he said good, and I had to force myself to stay on track.
Save money for a deposit so once Belle and Lance moved in together, I’d have a place to go. Sure, she’d said I didn’t have to leave, there was space for all of us, but the apartment we were living in wasn’t nearly as big as Belle’s heart.
She and Lance were getting married in less than a year.
They needed their own home.
It wasn’t her fault my temper got the best of me, and I tended to lose my jobs quicker than my mama could drop to her knees and pray for my wayward soul, if she even bothered anymore.
No, once again, I was the sole bearer of responsibility for my own impulsive decisions.
The guy was cute. The kind of boy I could have taken home to Mama before they kicked me out of my small Christian college and refused to allow me to return home. I’d become nothing if not resourceful, so I used the five grand in my checking account, hopped into my car—the only possession they allowed me to keep—and headed to Nashville so I could chase my dreams instead of following someone else’s plans.
Fat lot of good it’d done me in the three years since I’d been here. I was too busy chasing my tail to get around to chasing those big dreams I had.
“Where were you working?” the bartender asked.
He reminded me of a guy who’d ride motorcycles and forget to shave for years at a time. He was big, burly, with a belly that said he liked to eat and probably cooked well, too.
“Franco’s.”
“Ugh. That place is a shithole.” That came from the man near the end of the bar. “Rough crowd.”
“Well, we can’t all work a pretty nine to five at some bank or something.” That’s what he had to do. Probably an accountant or something. So clean cut.
So—cute. No, that didn’t do him justice at all, but with the dress pants and the buttoned popped on the collar on his gray dress shirt, he gave off young finance slash banker vibes for sure.
He choked on a laugh and covered his mouth with his fist. “I look like a banker?”
“Best thing I’ve heard all night,” the bartender muttered. “After hearing you call your sister a snotface.”
“Charming.” But I was grinning.
Mostly because he was blushing.
“She started it,” he said, and I laughed a little harder. “She also said I suck at… my job.”
He cleared his throat and turned back to me. “It’s the shirt, isn’t it?”
“And the hair.” Which was glossy. Swept to the side and neatly cut around the ears. Cute ears, too, which was not something I usually noticed in men, but everything about this man was like someone said, “Draw me perfection who looks like they open car doors, says please and thanks and prays before their dinner meal” and dropped him straight into it.
“I’m not a banker.” His hand went to his hair, sweeping it to the side, and when he caught me watching him, dropped his hand back to the bar.
“So what do you do?” Impulsivity was scratching at my temples, teasing me to move toward him, maybe run my fingers through his hair to see if it was as soft as it looked from here.
He glanced at the bartender. Then me.
Ah. A guy who didn’t want to be honest. Not my first rodeo.
“I work for Nashville Steel.”
“Football team? Wasn’t there a game tonight?”
“Yeah. There was a game.” Another slight curl of his lips like he was hiding a secret and in no hurry to get to the punch line.
Usually it’d irritate me, but his lips were full and his teeth bright white and there were muscles in his arms that told me he probably could have easily taken out the asshole at Franco’s who grabbed my tits while saying, “I’ll give you a tip. And if you’re good, you’ll get more than just the tip.”
“So what are you? Their social media manager? Or do you work in their finance department?”
He was not. Couldn’t be. But I hadn’t felt the urge to flirt with anyone in months. Broadway brought out the worst in men. I’d seen it time and time again since moving there.
But this guy wasn’t on Broadway—he was at some off-street sports bar talking to the bartender like they’d been friends for years. Hell, maybe he was the guy’s son or something.
Not that I cared enough to ask. Truly.
A loud, booming laugh came from the other side of the bar.
The banker shot him a sheepish grin while scratching the back of his neck.
“Shut it, Lou.”
Ah, so the Santa Claus biker lookalike was Lou. Made sense. The place was his, which explained the belly on him.
“My daughters are going to love this. Hell, get your sister back on the phone. This will make her year.”
“You’re a pain in the butt, Lou.” Not-banker dude fidgeted in his seat, still grinning that sheepish smile when he swiveled on the stool in my direction. “I am, in a way, involved in their social media.”
He was lying. It came in the twitch of his left eye and that look that said he still had a punchline to deliver.
I was getting tired of being at the mercy of other people’s jokes, even if this was the most intrigued I’d felt toward anyone.
I shifted my attention to the bartender. “Lou, is it?”
“Yes, young lady?” He had a wide smile, slightly yellowed teeth, and lips that disappeared into his full beard.
“You want to tell me what I’m missing?”
“Better if I showed you.”
“Lou.” The guy groaned and dropped his face into his hand, elbow now propped on the bar.