Not when coming to NOLA is complicated enough already for me.
I sip my beer, watching the woman on stage and the group of men congregated around it. Despite so badly wanting to check to see what she’s doing, I keep my focus anywhere else. But I feel the exact moment her eyes find me.
It would be impossible not to when the hair on the back of my neck rises and heat licks across my skin like a raging wildfire searing across dead treetops. It crackles and scorches through me, igniting something I haven’t ever felt before—yearning.
I shift uneasily on the stool and take another long gulp of the cool beer, but it doesn’t do anything to help my restlessness.
I’m not used to being assessed like this.
I’m the one who does the assessing…until I set foot in The Hawkeye Club.
Apparently, everything I thought I knew and understood about myself changed the moment I saw her. Decisions I made long before coming here now seem…undetermined. Plans long held…suddenly less certain. A future and end game laid out…now open for play.
The music thrums through the air, and I force myself to watch the dancer who moves in time with the beat rather than looking to see where she is and what she’s doing.
She’s careful, which means she won’t make it obvious she’s observing me, but the way my skin keeps sizzling, there’s no question that’s exactly what’s happening.
Why?
What caught your interest?
If anything, she should be concentrating on the men near the stage who have been getting more boisterous the longer I’ve been here. Two of them stumble over, leaving three of their buddies to throw money at the woman on the pole.
One of the men bumps into my left shoulder as he shoves his way up to the bar.
Asshole.
“Heey!” He yells for the bartender with a slight New England accent and a slur that suggests he’s a tourist who has likely spent most of the day on Bourbon Street before heading over here tonight. “I need shots.” He slams his fist on the bar top. “Tequila!”
My friendly bartender tenses the same way I do. We’ve clearly both had plenty of experience dealing with stupid drunks, and these two definitely seem to be somewhere on that scale. Maybe not at the top yet, but well above mid-level.
I slide my hands off the glass, resting them on the bar, and turn to more fully face them.
The bartender looks behind me at someone or something before he inclines his head at the two men, grabs the bottle and the shot glasses, and lines them up. He pours and motions toward the shots. “After this, you guys have had enough for the night.”
Good.
They certainly don’t need more from where I sit, and the man on the other side of the bar is good enough at his job to see it, too. These two—and their friends at the stage— will be trouble if they don’t sober up or make their way out of here—soon.
The bigger of the two of them, whose slicked-back jet-black hair shimmers under the lighting where he stands beside me, narrows his eyes at the bartender. “We’re fine.”
Disdain coats his pronouncement.
The bartender shakes his head. “We reserve the right to cut you off at any time.”
With a scoff, his friend who has the build of a wrestler and the sneer of someone used to getting his way glares across the bar. “Cut us off?”
They each grab a shot and take one, then slam them down.
The one with the black hair turns from the bar just as one of the girls walks by. He reaches out and snags her by the wrist, dragging her over to him with a lecherous grin that tightens my hand into a fist. “What about you, sweetheart? Do you think we should be cut off?”
Her eyes widen slightly and dart to the bartender, and I glance toward the security guard at the door as he starts to make his way over.
But I can already tell he’s going to be too late.
Shit.
The D-bag’s free hand travels toward the girl’s almost bare ass, but before he can grab her, I’m up from the stool, slamming my elbow into his face and knocking him back.
