“Not here to impress her. Or you.”
“Then you’ve achieved your goal. With me, at least. Maybe that one there likes a Cro-Magnon man. Or at least she did until you walked away from her to go talk to another woman. Maybe you should knuckle-drag your way back over to her before she decides you’re not worth the wait.”
“Always worth the wait, darlin’.”
She rolled her eyes, making sure he didn’t miss it. “Doubt that.”
“Could prove it but I don’t fuck pigs.”
Jet jerked her head toward the woman now talking to Dodge with her eyes still on the two of them. Somebody was acting possessively. “Is she more your type?”
“Does she have a snatch?”
Good grief, he wasn’t even at the Cro-Magnon level. He just lowered himself to a Neanderthal. “Is that all you need?”
“That’s all I need tonight,” he answered before taking a long draw on the draft beer in his hand.
“Simple requirements for a simple man,” she said on a sigh.
“Pretty much. You’re the one tryin’ to make my life more complicated.”
“I took you walking away from me as your answer to my deal. So, you’re the one making it more complicated by standing here talking to me.”
“Ain’t talkin’ to you, Jet. Just wanna know why the fuck you’re here.”
“I’m only here for a drink. I didn’t realize you were moonlighting here as a bouncer. I thought being a wrench monkey would pay better.”
“Don’t gotta be a bouncer to tell you this ain’t a pig bar.”
“I didn’t see a sign outside preventing me from being a patron. If you didn’t know, my family sometimes drinks here.”
“Wouldn’t care that you’re here if you didn’t have a fuckin’ agenda.”
“An agenda,” she repeated softly.
He only tipped his head.
“I had no clue you were here, Rook,” she lied.
He leaned in close and whispered. “Bullshit, darlin’.”
She shrugged and drew an innocent expression over her face. “Think what you’d like.”
Not a second later, Dodge dropped off her second Jack and Coke. Dodge’s dark eyes sliced from her to Rook and back before he was smart and got out of Dodge.
She stared at her drink for a moment, wondering why she even agreed to a second one. She wasn’t a big drinker. She didn’t smoke. She tried to run in the afternoon after she woke up and before her midnight shift. Keeping in shape and her body clean of toxins was only habit.
When you had to stand next to men who didn’t think you were good enough to do their job—who thought you weren’t as strong or as tough as them—you tended to keep yourself in the best shape you could to prove them wrong.
Rook probably smoked much more than tobacco, most likely drank too much, too, and he certainly didn’t roll out of bed early in the morning to go for a jog. Even so, he still looked pretty damn good.
“Dodge is trying to move in on your girl down there,” she warned him.
Rook didn’t even bother to glance over his shoulder to see if what she said was true. “Then we’ll share her.”
She raised one eyebrow. “You two are that close?”
“Hard not to be when you share a cell. Those long nights can get lonely.”
Her attention left Dodge and the woman to land back on the man standing just inches from her. “That’s how you met?” She hadn’t compared their criminal records to see if they both did time in the same facility.
“Finish your fuckin’ drink and go, Jet.”
“And if I don’t?”
He spun on his boot and strode back to where the brunette sat.
She guessed that conversation was officially over but she didn’t get the answer of what would happen if she didn’t leave.
The answer unfolded before her.
Dodge’s smile was anything but innocent when Rook wrapped an arm around the woman’s hips, leaned in and said something into her ear.
She reached out and slowly raked her long nails down the arm Dodge had propped on the bar as he leaned against it like a kickstand. When Rook straightened, he gave his former cellmate a chin lift and helped the woman rise to her feet.
Without removing his arm from her hips, Rook guided her around the end of the bar and through the swinging door that led to what Jet could only guess was either the kitchen or a storage room.
Jet’s gaze followed Dodge’s path as the bartender approached the heavyset prospect, had a few quiet words with him, then disappeared the same way Rook and the woman did.
Jet stared at that gray door as it swung back and forth a few times before finally coming to a rest. Then she stared at it some more, waiting to see if one of the men came back out.
An invisible hand squeezed her throat when neither did.
Jet ignored her full Jack and Coke, grabbed her coat and did her best not to sprint out of Crazy Pete’s.