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Andy, shithead that he was, interrupted her trip down fantasy lane. “Who the fuck—”
The protector of her totally unbothered honor yanked Andy’s twisted arm up half an inch higher. “Someone is not good at following directions.”
Andy winced and not in the playing it up kind of way and lost some of the color in his perpetually ruddy cheeks.
Shit.
Enjoyable as it was to see the little jerk like this, her bestie Nola would kill Astrid if her annoying cousin ended up with a dislocated shoulder.
Astrid reached out and laid her hand on her growly guardian’s fine-as-fuck forearm. Immediately, the pressure on Andy’s arm visibly relented, but the man didn’t release his hold.
“Do I need to tell you again only using smaller words your brain can understand?” the man snarled at Andy.
He asked it in the form of a question, but it sure as hell wasn’t one—not even close. And if it was, she doubted there were words teeny-tiny enough for Andy anyway.
“Astrid,” Andy groaned, “call off your goon.”
This was when she should have thanked her absolutely delicious defender and asked him to let her annoying boss go. She really should. The words were right there on the tip of her tongue when the rink brat inside her rushed to the surface.
She’d always identified with the shit disturbers, the chippers, the ones who pushed things just right to the edge (and sometimes over). She may not get within five miles of a Zamboni any more, but old habits died hard.
So instead of saying what she should, she set her elbows on the bar and rested her chin in her hands so she could better commit the agonized expression on Andy’s face to memory. “I can’t call him off.”
Andy narrowed his eyes as much as he could at the moment, which was quite a feat considering there was a hand squishing his face to the bar. “How come?”
“He’s not my goon. In fact, I don’t know him.” But she was planning to change that as soon as her shift was over and she could strip him of every stitch of clothing he had on. She might want him to keep that pink sweater on, though. That contrast of soft and hard really flipped her switch. “Also, I kind of enjoy seeing the guy who swears he isn’t the reason why the tip jar is always a little light having difficulties.”
Did her champion press a smidge harder against Andy’s cheek at that moment? Andy let out a little yelp. Well, that answered that question.
“I swear on my mother’s grave,” Andy said, “it wasn’t me.”
“A solid pledge, except I know your mom is still alive and is usually as annoyed with you as the rest of us,” she said. “Tell you what, why don’t you just do what the scary man said and apologize? Then we’ll forget all about this.”
“Fine,” he said with a huff. “I’m sorry, Astrid, for almost—but not actually—calling you a not-nice name.”
Her very own paladin didn’t let go, but he lifted an eyebrow in question before shaking his head as if in his opinion that sad-ass excuse for an apology didn’t even begin to cover it. On that, they were agreed. She looked back down at squashed-face Andy.
“But the only reason why you didn’t call me a bitch was because the sexy guy in the soft sweater stopped you.” She glanced up at the stranger. “Is it soft? It really looks it.”
“Yeah,” the man said.
She reached out, stopping short of his chest. “May I?”
He grunted.
Taking that as a yes, she pressed her palm to his sternum, and oh my God, the sweater was soft and his chest was very, very, very much not. The man was solid. But it wasn’t like a zero-percent body fat, gym-rat kind of no-give rigidity that made her think of high-protein diet farts and pushup contests. Nope, this was the I-have-shit-to-do-with-my-life kind of brawn of someone who may spend some time at the bench press but didn’t live there.
Lumberjack-cutting-down-redwoods burliness.
Cowboy-tossing-bales-of-hay power.
Bouncer-throwing-assholes-out-on-their-ear strength.
In other words, totally Astrid’s catnip.
Forgetting about Andy, his useless buddy at the bar, and the rest of the Thursday night regulars at The Flying Sow Pub, she flipped through her mental files of just the right pickup line for her sexy (if misguided) knight on a mission. She really needed to finish this examination of his sweater somewhere more private.
God knew she had a whole stack of come-ons that she’d been using during the past five years of making up for lost time being only with the dick who shall not be named. She needed something straightforward, something bold, something—
