I was sitting at the bar in Club, a happening hotspot in Cherry Creek that posed as a posh eatery but was mostly a pickup spot. I had on a little black dress that did the best it could (and its best was far from bad; the dress was scorching) with what little cleavage I had. I had on killer strappy black sandals that I’d borrowed from Indy, who had borrowed them from our friend Tod, the premier drag queen in Denver, and she’d not returned them.
Tod wouldn’t mind. He was generous with his shoes. I had three pairs of them in my closet already. He also had two pairs of mine.
I was there because I had my eye on Zach Gilligan, the guy a friend of mine, Helen, was dating. They’d been together for a while and she liked him a lot. But she suspected from some of the behavior he was exhibiting that he had a nasty habit that was the reason she had cash going missing from her wallet more than once. And last week, she’d “lost” the diamond pendant her grandmother gave her when she graduated from the University of Colorado ten years ago.
She feared her cash and the diamond she treasured was going up his nose.
I had no idea how I was going to prove this fact, outside of watching him with his buds, eating steak, drinking martinis, laughing, and him being the loudest and liveliest of the lot because he was so obviously coked to the gills. But I couldn’t just tell Helen he looked high. She was into him and really didn’t want to believe he was stealing from her.
It was going to have to be an eye witness account.
I was hoping that eye witness account wouldn’t include me following him to a meet with a dealer. I tried to give dealers a wide berth. Jules got jacked up by a low level dealer and ended up killing him before he killed her because he’d already put a fair amount of effort into that (in other words, two bullets in her body). For obvious reasons I wanted to avoid situations like that.
I didn’t even own a gun. I wasn’t prepared for getting on dealer radar, nor did I ever think I would be. Though, since I planned to keep doing what I was doing, I knew it might happen.
I just wasn’t prepared (yet).
So I was waiting for my shot to follow him to the bathroom. If guys were in there and they saw me when I entered, I’d pretend I was tipsy and went in the wrong door. But I was willing to do it in the hope I’d catch him in the act. If I caught him in the act, Helen would believe me. Totally. We were tight.
I was thinking this when I heard a familiar voice say from behind me, “Ally.”
Chills slid over my skin and weight settled in my gut as I realized my mistake.
In order to watch Zach with his boys in a back booth, I’d put my back to the door.
Which meant I was ripe for attack.
Fuck.
I turned on my stool and looked up at Ren.
He was wearing a well-tailored suit that looked good on him.
As for the rest, everything that was him, top to toe, was the thing of dreams.
It was then something I always loved—the fact that Denver was huge, sprawling, dynamic, eclectic, diverse and energetic, but could still be a small town—became something I hated.
Living there my whole life, I never went out without knowing there was a very good chance I’d bump into someone I knew, liked, and would shoot the shit with them in a grocery aisle or arrange to go to a movie or end up in a bar sucking back Fat Tires until we had to order a taxi.
Then there were times, and there were few, when I ran into someone I most definitely did not want to see.
Like now.
“Hey,” I greeted.
“Hey,” he replied. He looked at the empty stool beside me and back at me. “Got a minute?”
I didn’t. I had to keep an eye on Zach and time his bathroom break so it worked for me, and hopefully for my friend Helen.
But I didn’t want to blow off Ren. That might give him the impression he’d shredded me. Or at the very least upset me.
He had shredded me. No doubt. It made no sense. Drinks, conversation, great sex and just one night. How that could lead to me feeling dead inside, I had no clue.
I just knew it did. And I wasn’t one of those chicks who denied things. I was real with everybody. Including myself.
But not including Ren. No way in hell I was going to let on he’d done that to me.
Therefore, I said, “Sure,” and turned my whole body his way.
He sat and caught the bartender’s eye.
As we were waiting for the bartender to arrive, I looked for a hot babe hanging back and found none, so I asked, “You here alone?”
His eyes came to me. “Business dinner. Saw you, told them to start without me.”
That was interesting. We hadn’t really parted on good terms. If it were the other way around, I wouldn’t make the approach.
Before I could dig deeper, or, the better option, find some way to blow him off without letting on I was doing it, the bartender came.
Ren ordered, “Vodka gimlet,” and I felt my eyes widen slightly. “What?” he asked when he looked at me.
“You’re a gimlet man?” I asked back.
“I like booze,” he answered. “I’ll drink anything but tonight I’m in the mood for sour.”
I didn’t know what to do with that.
His brows went up a couple of centimeters. “You got a problem with the gimlet?”