He looked across the bar at her and shook his head. He couldn’t believe it. Here, of all places, he’d found a girl with the fire in her gaze that he’d been searching for his whole life.
Forrester ordered another whiskey and sipped it while one of the idiots from the booth put a song on the jukebox. Forrester recognized it vaguely, some stupid pop song from a few years back.
The guy who’d put it on then walked over to the girls and addressed them by name.
“Kelly, Elle, what do you say we get this party started?”
Forrester watched as the girls rolled their eyes and gave each other a look of disdain. He knew that neither of them was interested in dancing with the boy. He’d also gathered that they were the sons of important local politicians, and that that was the reason the bartender couldn’t do anything about them.
He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t stepped in yet to get rid of the boys. He didn’t like seeing women being harassed. He wasn’t the least bit afraid of the boys’ fathers. There wasn’t a thing in the world people from a town like this could do to harm him. Together with Jackson, Grant and Grady, he knew that there was no amount of trouble in a place like this that he couldn’t handle.
But something kept him from acting. He realized that it was his own curiosity. He wanted to see what the girl, Elle, that was her name, he wanted to see what she would do? What kind of a person was she? Would she put up with them? Would she ignore them? Would she ask for help? Would she give them what they wanted? There were so many ways she could play it. Forrester doubted that she herself even knew yet which way she would go.
Elle, he said to himself, rolling the word over his lips. He liked the sound of it.
The jerk, as well as his three friends, were now standing right next to the girls’ seats. One of them took Kelly’s hand and tried to pull her from her stool. Two others took Elle and, working like a wolf pack, the boys cajoled the girls to the dance floor in front of the bar.
Forrester took a sip of his drink. He was still waiting. If you wanted to know about a person, you watched them.
What would Elle do? Who was she? Was she the girl for him?
“You ever been with a real man?” the ringleader of the boys said to Elle.
“Like you’d know the difference,” Elle said.
Forrester grinned at her answer.
“Oh come on baby,” the ringleader said, putting his arm around her waist. “Let me show you a good time.”
“You wouldn’t know how to show a girl a good time if your life depended on it.”
“You’ve got sass girl.”
“You haven’t seen the half of it,” Elle said.
She drew back her hand and made to slap the boy across the face. The boy caught her arm in mid flight and overpowered her, forcing her arm back down to her side.
“Feisty little one, aren’t you?”
Elle smiled at him innocently, and then, in the blink of an eye, pulled up her knee right into his groin. He doubled over in agony.
Forrester laughed to himself. He’d seen enough. He didn’t have to let this son of a bitch go any further to get a read on Elle. She was a straight shooter, she called them how she saw them, and that’s all he’d wanted to know.
Because of what had happened when he was a kid, Forrester had trust issues. He’d learned to cope by watching people closely in stressful situations, and seeing what sort of decisions they would make. It was amazing what this told him about people.
He could see, for instance, that while Harry was a good man who wanted to do the right thing, he lacked the courage to push the limit when it was clear that he might lose everything if he did. Kelly was rolling her eyes and trying to discourage the boys, while avoiding doing anything that would make them mad. She had a past with the twerp named Phil. Forrester could tell from her body language. She was also trying to protect other people. That was the main reason she didn’t stand up to Phil and his friends. She didn’t like what they were doing, but she was too scared about what would happen to the people she loved, her family, Harry, her boss at the diner, to do anything openly confrontational.
Elle didn’t have the same hangups. Forrester watched as she shoved Phil across the dance floor and made her way back over to the bar.
“Come on, Kelly. Let’s get out of this place.”
“Not so fast, hot stuff,” Phil said.
Forrester stood up. “Hey, bartender,” he said, “I’m really sorry about the mess.”
“What mess?” Harry said.
Forrester left a hundred dollar bill on the bar. “This mess,” he said, and he picked up a bar stool and brought it crashing down on the bar, smashing it into pieces.
Everyone in the bar went silent. Harry’s jaw dropped. Elle and Kelly looked over to him with a mixture of worry and relief. They could see that someone was finally going to do something, although they’d already been wondering what the hell was taking him so long.
The four boys were apprehensive because of the way he acted, and yet were itching for a fight. They were practically snarling.