It happened fast. Kevin wasn’t sure if the guy was throwing a punch or reaching in to grab him by the shirt, but his elbow hit his date and knocked her backward. She didn’t fall, thanks to the guy sitting next to her, who was pleasantly surprised to find himself with an armful of brunette, but it distracted Kevin enough to allow the guy to land a weak, glancing blow to his jaw.
Uptight Guy, who the woman had called Derek, sucked in a breath, as if he just realized what he’d done. Kevin watched as the guy’s fight-or-flight instinct kicked in and wasn’t surprised when he chose flight. Sadly for him, Kevin was six-two and had some experience collaring yahoos, whether they were crooks back when he wore a badge or his four rowdy nephews. He reached across the bar, grabbed the guy by the scruff of the neck and yanked him back.
Derek was struggling like a pickerel on a hook and, when Kevin’s grip almost slipped off the guy’s collar, he jerked his left arm hard. Derek’s head snapped around and his nose exploded on the edge of the bar. Oops.
The guy screamed like a girl…and the crowd went wild. Jasper’s didn’t attract a real rough crowd, but everybody loved a good fight.
“Good fight” being relative, of course. Derek cupped his hands over his face, trying to staunch the blood, and made a high-pitched keening sound that made more than a few of his patrons wince.
“Shut up or I’ll knock your ass out,” Kevin yelled at the guy which, of course, got everybody in the bar chanting. Do it…do it…do it…
“Oh my God, his nose!” Derek’s date untangled herself from her neighbor and grabbed a couple of napkins off the bar. She tried to get to Derek’s nose, but he kept pushing her away.
The crowd quieted when a couple of police officers walked through the front door. Derek’s keening changed pitch when he saw them, from a pain-filled squeal to an oh shit desperation.
“Hey, Kowalski,” the older of the two cops said.
“Hey, Jonesy. Your old man like those tickets?”
“Are you kidding me? Tenth row, fifty yard line? He was in heaven. Said to tell you thanks and give you his best.”
“Glad to do it,” he said easily, still holding on to Derek’s collar. He fostered a friendly relationship with the local PD, not only because he’d been on the job once down in Boston, but because any good businessman did. Especially businessmen who served alcohol. “Got a live one here.”
“What happened to him?”
“Hit his face on the bar. You know how it is.”
In the split second between Kevin releasing him and Jonesy grabbing for his wrists, Derek stupidly decided to make a break for the door.
The rookie made a move to stop him at the same time Beth did. She accidentally—at least it looked accidental—tripped him and the young cop fell on his face. Jonesy jumped over his partner and did the nearing-retirement version of a sprint after Derek.
Beth was practically hyperventilating.
The rookie scrambled to his feet as Jonesy took down his prey in a half-ass diving tackle that made the crowd roar in approval. Rookie had his handcuffs out, but it looked like Uptight Guy was going all in on a resisting charge.
“Why are you doing this to him?”
Kevin’s gaze swiveled to the woman, who looked almost as pissed as her date. “I didn’t do jack to him, lady. Did you forgot the part where he hit you?”
“He didn’t hit me. He bumped me trying to hit you.”
Yeah, that was so much better. “How about the groping? How many times were you going to tell him no?”
She actually rolled her eyes at him. “I had it all under control.”
“No, now it’s all under control.”
“Look, it’s not what you…forget it. You have to help him, though.”
Since Derek had two hundred pounds of veteran cop kneeling on his head while the rookie tried to secure the cuffs, there wasn’t much Kevin could do for him, even if he wanted to. Which he didn’t.
“It’s not what you think,” she insisted.
“I’m going to sue you for everything you’ve got, asshole,” Derek screamed over his shoulder. “And you, you dumb bitch, you’re fired!”
Oops. Kevin looked at Beth. “I thought he was just a bad date.”
She climbed on to a stool and dropped her forehead to the bar with a thunk. “You just cost me my job.”
Only several years of fine-tuning his brain-to-mouth filter behind the bar kept him from pointing out she was maybe better off without it. “Want a beer?”
***
A beer? Rambo the bartender here thought a beer was going to fix the mess he’d gotten her into? Beth Hansen curled her hands into fists to keep from reaching across the bar and shaking him like a martini.
So Derek was a drunken ass. So what else was new? It was nothing she couldn’t handle. She handled it once a week or so, as a matter of fact, and had been for three months.
After work, Derek would leave the office and walk down the street to have a drink. He’d call his secretary—that would be her—with some bogus excuse requiring her to stop by the bar. A paper that needed signing. A fax he’d forgotten to read but absolutely had to before he went home. She’d show up, he’d try to get in her pants, she’d put him in a cab and the next day they’d pretend it didn’t happen.