Coldhearted Boss

I pick at the label on my beer as the door swings shut again, leaving me alone with two regulars down at the end of the bar and the bartender who’s still harboring ill will toward me about the cherries. I know because he keeps grumbling “ungrateful brat” under his breath. Altogether, we’d make a well-rounded cast for an antidepressant commercial, and I know I must be feeling down because even that thought doesn’t make me smile.

“You need anything?” the bartender asks, speaking to the area of the room where the suits were sitting a few minutes ago, and my head whips over my shoulder so fast I nearly fall off my stool.

He’s still there.

Alone.

Sitting at the table and telling the bartender he’s all set. He doesn’t want another drink…so then why is he still here? There’s no game on the TV over the bar—it’s been busted for years. There’s no one around to offer up witty conversation unless you count the belching pair in the far corner. (I don’t.)

Then his gaze finds mine and I get it.

He’s here for me.

My heart lurches to a stop, misses a beat, and then starts to thump wildly.

He’s not the answer to my problems. He’d be nothing more than a distraction, a short reprieve from the weight of life’s boot on my neck.

I meet his eyes head on.

God, he’s so good-looking with that rough edge to him. He’s a man’s man. Broad chest, veined forearms, tall frame. Even now, he’s not smiling. His brows are furrowed and his supple mouth—arguably the only soft thing about him—is marked by a terse frown. It’s like he’s mad at me for putting us in this position, mad at me for making him want to stay.

I could aim the same resentment right back at him. I’ve never had a one-night stand before because I’ve never met a guy who made me want to do it. This man is seductive without even trying, sensual even as he sits half a bar away from me, partially reclined, assessing me coolly. In any setting, he’d turn heads. In this setting, he captures my full attention.

It occurs to me that I could walk out of the bar right now and keep my heart in one piece. Nothing good would come from this encounter.

Tomorrow, this stranger will be gone and my life will resume.

My life.

Four years since graduating from high school and I’m still here, unable to escape this nightmarish merry-go-round. We work and we save only to have some disaster strike—car breaks down, insurance doesn’t cover McKenna’s new asthma medication, A/C busts, roof needs fixing—and here we are again, right back at square one, just as broke as the day we started.

My hands shake and my throat aches from trying to keep these tears unshed.

I can’t do it anymore.

This life is going to send me to an early grave. I need an emergency stop button, a safety valve that triggers a spring that will propel me from this barstool and send me to a deserted island where credit card bills and crappy bosses don’t exist. Actually, let’s scrap the island. I’m not picky. I’ll take a quiet night in my mom’s trailer, staring at a blank wall as long as no one reminds me of the doom that awaits me in the morning.

That emergency stop button doesn’t exist, but this man does.

So, I will go down this path, just so I can step off the merry-go-round for one night.

I look pointedly toward the side hallway, the one that leads to the bathroom, making sure he gets the message. Then I slide off my barstool at the same time his chair scrapes across the wood floor.

There’s no going back now.Chapter 2TaylorI’m in a daze as I walk to the bathroom, my body propelling itself forward one step at a time without me even realizing what I’m doing. I’m in shock. That’s what this is, shock that I’m about to go through with this. My conscience tries to shout at me to stop, to turn and run while I still have the option, but then I’m in front of the door for the women’s bathroom and a hand much bigger than mine is pushing it open for me.

I’d forgotten about the mirrors. I wish they weren’t here, two of them sitting over old porcelain sinks. They’re cracked and stained, but I still see my reflection well enough to be confronted by my actions.

My mother’s brown eyes stare back at me, alluringly slanted up in the corners like I possess some untold mysteries.

My long brown hair hangs loose down to the middle of my spine in lazy waves.

My full lips are the stuff of dreams, or so I’ve been told. I suppose I have them to thank for bringing this dark stranger to me tonight.