“She totally forgot,” one of the men muttered.
I looked over at the table of bikers, but they were all staring at something across the way.
I turned my eyes in that direction, too, finding a very pretty brunette with long, flowing brown hair sucked up to some man’s side.
Just then, the door to the bar swung open and a very large, intimidating man filled the frame.
He was tall, way taller than my five-foot-seven and a half inches—that half was very important, so I never forgot it. He had very dark hair. So dark, in fact, that in the somewhat favorable bar light I couldn’t tell what color his hair was—brown or black. He had dark greenish-colored eyes and his skin was the color of light brown sugar.
He obviously had some Latino roots in his family tree, because that skin was born, not sun-bronzed.
“Oh, fuck,” I heard one of the men say.
But I didn’t have time to turn and look at them. My eyes were enraptured by the man that’d just filled the door.
He was… intimidating, to say the least.
He was also a man that I’d turned down for a date a few weeks ago when I’d first started my dating profile.
Why had I turned him down? Because he owned a pig farm.
Not that pig farming was a bad thing, but from the moment that I’d seen the man’s photo—even in profile—I’d gotten this weird feeling in my chest that I couldn’t explain.
So I’d done the smart, sensible thing—I’d told him no on his date. And I’d blamed it on his pig farm, because why the hell else would I feel this… irrational… over him?
And now I was kind of regretting that gut reaction.
Because just seeing him standing there, taking in the entire bar like a silent wraith, had things inside of me taking flight.
Like when I got to that really, really good part in the romance books that I loved so much. The pivotal parts where the hero and the heroine FINALLY admit their love for the other. Or when something really bad happens, and the man realizes that all this time he’s been denying what was right in front of his face.
Those parts of the books were my absolute favorites.
The man, Bruno from what I’d remembered, stepped over the threshold, his eyes on something by the bar. The brunette that the people at the table next to me were talking about earlier.
He saw her, registered who she was, and rolled his eyes.
Instead of stopping and confronting the woman like I thought he would, he walked right up to the bar just a few spots down from where she was cuddled up to the man she was talking to, and held up a finger.
The man, obviously knowing Bruno, nodded his head and got to work on a beer.
It was a local brew. Dark. Something on the label had a skull and crossbones on it.
I looked at my own beer.
It was the same exact one.
I loved skulls and crossbones. Dark beer, though? Not so much.
But I loved the label enough that I could overlook the bitter taste.
In fact, I’d had the bartender wash the beer bottle out for me so that I could bring it home. It was currently in my bag, wrapped up in the cardigan that I’d brought with me to the bar.
Absently, I reached out and picked up a chicken wing and started to nibble on it, feeling the instant heat in my lips as the fiery taste hit me.
I licked my lips clean and basked in the burn as the big guy finally got his beer and made his way toward the table of men that were watching him with various shades of remorse on their faces.
“Y’all order yet?” Bruno asked the moment he sat down.
I took another bite of my wings, then tossed the empty bone onto the tabletop where a napkin was.
I reached for another one, a drumstick this time, and started in on that one when the waitress finally arrived with the smallest cup of ranch I’d ever seen.
I would’ve commented on it had I needed it. But since they weren’t as hot as they claimed, I would be okay.
In the meantime, I flipped the page on my book with my clean hand, listened with half an ear to Bruno and the table’s discussion, and waited for whatever shoe to drop.
That shoe dropped in the form of one of the men saying, “Oh, hey. I think she finally noticed that you’re here.”
Bruno grunted as he reached for a handful of peanuts that were in the middle of the table.
The ones that sat there all day long as person after person put their fingers into the metal canisters.
“Those are severely unsanitary,” I found myself saying as I turned back to my book. “Do you know how many people reach into that bucket for peanuts each day? I saw at least four people do it before y’all took the table, and just sayin’, but studies show that at least one in four people don’t wash their hands after they go to the bathroom. So saying that, statistically, forty-nine point three percent of the world’s population are women, that means that, logically, at least one in eight people have had their dick in their hands when they reached in that bucket for peanuts.”
There was a long, silent pause before Bruno himself looked at me.
But I’d already gone back to my book and was now on my fifth chicken wing.
“Oh, shit,” I heard said. “Bruno?”
The sound of a woman’s voice had me looking up in time to see the brunette from earlier come walking over with a sheepish looking male blond. The male blond that was supposed to be my date.
That’s when I started to get annoyed.
“You know, Dr. Benji Knight,” I couldn’t stop myself from saying. “If you were going to stand me up, the least you could do was tell me that you were rearranging your plans so that I didn’t have to be in a bar waiting for you to get here when I didn’t have to be.”
Benji looked at me, his eyes widened, and he sputtered out, “I’m so sorry.”
I rolled my eyes. “If you were sorry, which you aren’t, you would not be holding that woman right now. You’d be here, at this table, eating chicken wings with me. But, since the hero in my book likely has better manners than you, I think I’ll just continue to stick with him. Thanks for nothing.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bruno’s mouth twitch.
“It’s not what it looks like,” I heard the brunette say.
“It’s exactly what it looks like.” I licked one finger clean so that I could reach for my beer. After taking a hefty swallow, I said, “You practically were mauling that man with your mouth when I walked in. I just wish I’d have known that man was my date, and I would’ve turned around. These chicken wings are shit.”
A man at the table started to laugh, and I didn’t spare him a glance as I turned the page.
“I can get a manager,” I heard said.
I glanced up to see the waitress there looking a bit miffed.
“Just my check.” I shrugged. “Thanks anyway.”
I didn’t need to speak with the manager.
I knew the ‘manager’ was sitting at the table with the men.
“What’s wrong with the chicken wings?” the big man with the nametag that read ‘Trick’ asked.
“They’re okay… I guess.” I shrugged again. “You just boast that these are ‘super-duper hot’ when in reality they taste like I picked a flavor off of the kid’s menu. My lips are sufficiently tingly, but I can still function. If they were actually ‘hot’ as you put it on your menu, I wouldn’t be able to be sitting here holding an intelligent conversation with you.”