Fuck it.
She smacked the flat of her hand against the locker door. A zing of pain ripped through her palm. It suited her mood to perfection.
There’d be other jobs, other opportunities, sure. But she’d wanted this one, damn it. The Southern Cross had a reputation as one of the best bars in the area and its clientele and conditions reflected it. Marie, the restaurant manager, had wanted to train her to take over and Nicole had been so excited. God, it had all sounded so great.
Her heart took a dive for the dozenth time. Had, past tense.
And there was no one to blame but her own sweet self.
She paused in front of the mirror to straighten her favorite black pencil skirt and pat down the fringe of her straight red hair. At least she’d go out with style. Wearing the black suede heels decorated with little white skulls might have been overkill, but frankly, she’d needed the boost in confidence if not in height. The thought of calling in sick had occurred to her more than a dozen times. But Violet version 2.0, the good girl, didn’t do that sort of thing.
Of course, good girls also didn’t screw their bosses second day on the job, did they? No.
Enough evading, it was time to face her doom.
Down the back hallway and out into the bar room she strode, shoes click-clacking alarmingly loudly across the wooden floor. Nerves rioted in her belly. Her breakfast churned. It was barely eleven, and already customers sat at tables. A song by the Jezabels hummed through the sound system. But no one spoke, bizarrely enough. In fact, no one even seemed to move. It felt as if she’d wandered into the twilight zone. The bar had somehow become a frozen tableau, stuck in time. Every eye in the place was fixed upon the couple standing in the front doorway.
The woman was petite, pretty. When Violet had been little, she’d pretended she looked like that. Even back then men’s preferences had been glaringly obvious. Big with bouncy bits almost always lost out to tiny and trim. But fuck that. She was fine with her own skin and all the flesh beneath. No more apologizing.
The other component of the couple was him, of course. Her nemesis. Her downfall. Her destruction. Six foot plus worth of ridiculously hot and handsome that she should have walked away from but hadn’t. God help her. Her body took immediate attention, irritatingly enough. Between her legs awoke instantly. The man packed the punch of a double espresso so far as her sex was concerned. Stupid, stupid sex.
But hell, look at him. She bit back a heartfelt sigh. Who was she kidding? Given the chance to do it all again, she’d take nothing back. Last night had been the best sex of her life. Climbing all over him had been a dream come true.
So, given her dreams had a tendency to turn into nightmares, this must be the girlfriend. They certainly looked perfect together. And like everyone else gathered, she stopped, watched and waited, caught up in the picture-perfect moment.
In something akin to slow motion, the woman in the doorway raised her hand high. Dazzling sunlight glinted off the rings on her fingers. Her hand flew and the flat of her palm struck the man hard across the face. The sharp sound of impact cut straight through the crowd.
Somebody gasped.
Someone else dropped a teaspoon. It clattered on the floor.
Without further ado, the woman turned on her heel and stalked out of the bar.
No one even dared breathe.
Slowly, the man, Alex Stuart, turned to face the assembled crowd. The imprint of the woman’s hand was emblazoned bright red across his cheek. He glared at his younger brother. His shoulders shook and his eyes spoke of murder.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” he growled.
Duncan, the youngest of the three-brother management team and a pretty party boy if she’d ever seen one, took one look at the enraged man, turned and fled.
Alex’s head filled with a red haze, the thumping headache long forgotten. His face felt on fire, mostly from embarrassment. Mary or Meredith or whatever the hell her name was—what the hell did he care? She wasn’t the woman who’d gotten him going—hadn’t really hit him all that hard. If he remembered right, the woman had a temper. She’d been less than impressed when he’d bailed on her offer of hot sex a few months back. Little wonder his text message had set her off.
Correction. Duncan’s text message on Alex’s phone.
He caught up with his brother in the back office and tackled the fucker, taking him down to the ground. Doing as much damage as he could.
“Shit. I’m sorry,” Dunc said between bursts of laughter. A well-placed blow to the bastard’s ribs stopped that.
Duncan grunted and twisted, maneuvering around to face him. Before Alex knew it, they were a tangle of flying fists on the floor, just the same as when they were kids. An elbow caught him in the shoulder and knuckles grazed his mouth. They were pretty evenly matched in height and weight these days but anger gave him a clear advantage. He was fucking furious.
“I told you not to do it!” Alex raged. “Why don’t you ever listen?”
Duncan panted and blocked another jab to his ribs. “It was just a joke. Calm down.”
Everything was a joke to the asshole. If anything, the piss-poor excuse made Alex wilder. He snarled, his fist landing square in his brother’s eye.
Duncan howled and kneed him in the guts in return, making his belly cramp in pain.
“You said you had to find her!” Duncan yelled.
“Not by sending random fucking texts to every woman on my phone!”
Hair pulling was soon involved, as was biting. They fought brutally dirty, with all the familiarity only brothers could muster. No weak spot was left unexploited.
Until someone let loose a whistle shrill enough to break even their concentration.
Hell, it sounded loud enough to shatter glass. It echoed through the confined space and bashed around inside his skull until his frontal lobe felt as though it would implode.
His ears rung and rung, the pain was indescribable.