I had taken a chair at Shear Dialogue a little more than two years ago. Ginny and I had met through a mutual hair stylist friend, who knew she needed help and knew I was looking for somewhere else to work. We’d hit it off immediately. She had three kids, was a single parent in her early forties with a boyfriend, and had this no-bullshit attitude that sang to my own take-no-shit attitude, and the next thing I knew, I was moving the boys and myself from San Antonio to Austin. The rest was history.
But now that the day was here, we’d faced each other that afternoon and said the same thing, “I’m tired.” Which meant we both would rather go home and relax but weren’t going to because we were so busy we didn’t spend enough time together. Kids and relationships—hers, at least, she was getting married in a few months on top of everything—consumed a lot of energy. It was our unspoken agreement that we’d get a couple of drinks and head home before the nightly news came on.
“Where do you want to go?” I asked her as I reapplied deodorant in the middle of the salon. We’d locked up half an hour ago, cleaned the place, and took turns changing in the bathroom. It didn’t escape me that neither one of us bothered trying to fix up our hair after a long day of work. Some days I thought that if I had to touch more hair, I would vomit. I’d settled on more lipstick, and Gin had slapped on a little more blush and ran a brush through her shoulder-length, blood-red hair that I colored for her monthly.
She had her back to me as she… yep, adjusted her boobs, and said, “Are you fine with staying close to here?”
The look I sent her through the reflection of the mirror conveyed how stupid I thought her question was.
“Let’s go to the bar down the street then. It isn’t the fanciest place, but their drinks are cheap and my uncle owns it.”
“Deal,” I told Ginny. I was no snob. Close and cheap sounded like a plan.
Her uncle also supposedly owned the new building we had moved into. Located in a high-foot traffic side of town, across the street from a real estate company, popular tattoo parlor, and a deli, she couldn’t have gotten a better space for the salon. The dog grooming business two doors down from us had got me seeing money signs; I had tons of clients with dogs. Plus, it worked out even more in my favor because my new house was a short drive away.
And that was how we found ourselves, ten minutes later, standing in front of a bar walking distance from the salon. We’d been able to leave our cars in the same lot we left them for work, next to a big mechanic shop that her uncle also supposedly owned.
To be fair, Ginny had told me the truth. It wasn’t a fancy place. What she hadn’t warned me of was the fact it was a biker bar, if the row after row of motorcycles parked along the front of the street meant anything.
All right.
If she noticed my apprehension about going inside, Gin didn’t make a comment as she waved me toward the door. Fuck it. I only partially ignored the three men standing outside smoking and watching us a little too closely, but when I opened the heavy door to go inside, the simultaneous smell of cigarettes, cigars, and weed brutally assaulted my nose. My sinuses immediately started going crazy, and I had to blink a lot as the smoke made them burn.
The place was exactly what I’d picture a biker bar to look like. I’d been to a lot of bars in my life pre-Josh-and-Louie, and some had been way sketchier than this. From behind, Ginny pointed in the direction of rows of liquor along the wall, and I headed over, taking in the loose crowd of men and women in leather and T-shirts alike. They were all ages, all looks. Despite the heavy smell of smoke that I knew was illegal indoors… well, it didn’t seem so bad. Most people were talking to one another.
Snagging two chairs in the middle of the counter, Ginny slipped in to the chair beside me. I leaned forward and looked up and down the bar for the bartender, waving when the older man caught my eye. He simply tipped his chin up for our order.
I’d gone out with Ginny enough over the years to know we started off our evenings with Coronas or Guinness, and this place didn’t seem like the type to carry my favorite nectar from the mother country. “Two Guinness, please,” I mouthed to him.
I wasn’t sure he understood what I said, but he nodded and filled two glasses from one of the taps, sliding both over to us, yelling the amount we owed. Before Ginny could get it, I slid two bills across the bar.
“Woo,” Ginny cheered, clinking her glass against mine.
I nodded in agreement, taking the first sip.
I’d barely finished swallowing when two forearms came from behind to cage my boss in, a blond head of hair making an appearance right by her ear. Who the hell was this?
As if wondering the same thing, she started to say, “Who…?” before glancing over her shoulder, her body tight and reeling back. It was her laugh a moment later that told me everything was okay. “You son of a bitch! I was wondering who the hell was coming up to me!” She reached up with the arm furthest away from me to pat the strange man, who was wearing a leather vest over a white T-shirt.
“What a fuckin’ mouth,” the man’s low voice claimed just loud enough for me to hear. He pulled back, his attention casually sliding in my direction. The grin that had been on his face as he spoke to my friend brightened a little more as he took me in.
God help me, he was hot.
The dark blond of his longish hair matched the same color crossing his mouth and cheeks in a rough five o’clock shadow. Mostly though it was his easy smile that electrified his handsome face. He had to be a few years older than me at least. All I could do was sit there and smile at the man who was more than likely a biker based on the fact he had a vest on… and that we were at a biker bar. A biker bar on a Saturday. You really never knew where life would take you, did you?
The longer I looked at the blond’s face… I realized I recognized those blue eyes of his. That particular shade was pointed in my direction from another face, a face I knew well. That blue was Ginny’s blue.
“Trip, this is my friend Diana. She works with me at the salon. She’s the one I told you about who has the boy who plays baseball. Di, this is my cousin Trip,” Ginny explained as my gaze trailed back over to my friend, shaking off the fuzz that had come over my brain from looking at him.
Trip. Baseball. She had mentioned her cousin who had a son around Josh’s age who played competitive baseball a couple of times. I remembered now.
“Nice to meet you,” I greeted, one hand curled around my stout, the other extending out in his direction.
“Hey,” the grinning blond said as he took my hand in a shake.
“He works at the garage by the parking lot,” Ginny explained.
I nodded, watching as the guy named Trip turned back toward his cousin and elbowed her. “Where’s your man at?”
“He’s at home,” she explained, referring to her fiancé.
He gave her a funny look and shrugged. “The old man is back there if you wanna drop by and say hi,” he said to her, his gaze straying back to me for a moment as a small, sly smile crossed his mouth.
She nodded, turning to look over his shoulder briefly, as if searching for whoever “the old man” was. Her uncle?
“Go say hi,” I offered when she continued looking around the floor of the half-full bar.