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She had been kidding, but the light jest wasn’t far off the mark.
Mick exchanged a handshake and casual greetings with Dale Gallagher, outwardly polite and friendly.
The air between them all but crackled with instant dislike.
Gallagher’s knuckles briefly crushed around his palm as they stepped back. Apparently he was the type who used physical displays to inflate the size of his balls. Mick couldn’t care less. He was aware of having the odd vulnerability where women were concerned; he had never so much as flinched in response to a challenge from another guy. And there were some batshit crazy bruisers in the armed forces. Gallagher was a frigging kindergarten teacher by comparison.
He liked Sophy’s cousin, Melissa. She was a tall blonde with odd pink patches in her hair, a biting tongue and shrewd green eyes. He couldn’t imagine what she’d originally seen in Gallagher, but after an acquaintance of five minutes, he could strike the prediction of a pending reconciliation.
The bastard was completely hung up on Sophy.
He was broadcasting it in every look, comment, unnecessary touch and suspicious glare at Mick. The guy was circling her like a territorial Rottweiler.
Neither woman seemed to have a clue.
Sophy, at least, seemed to regard Gallagher as a cross between an annoying little brother and a faulty alarm clock that wouldn’t stop bleeping no matter how many times it was smacked down. He might look like a bloody menswear ad, but she obviously had no pressing desire to fall at his feet.
And hell, Mick was petty enough to feel smug about it.
As he left to return to work, he stopped beside the car and took a long, thoughtful look back at the house.
Chapter Six
“Two shots of blue cheese and a…rhino.”
It was all she could hear over the pounding bass beat. Sophy shoved her ponytail over her shoulder and took another look at the blonde girl leaning heavily on the bar. She had probably spent hours on her hair and makeup earlier in the night; now the heat-flattened curls were limp and bedraggled and she had sweated through her foundation. Her bustier was making a decent attempt to escape a pair of generous breasts and she was half-draped over a guy with a Yosemite Sam moustache who’d had his hand up another girl’s skirt two songs ago.
Blue cheese? Blue cheese…
Sophy scanned the rows of liquor bottles for anything that sounded vaguely similar to that unlikely order. Coming up short, she sighed resignedly and poured two shots of tequila. The girl was so hammered that she probably wouldn’t notice the difference. As both an apology and a futile attempt to sober her up to the point where she would realise that going home with Senor Mustachios would be a monumentally bad idea, she added a pack of mixed nuts on the house.
She gave it forty minutes before they made a violent reappearance in a rubbish bin or all over the sidewalk.
There was barely time for a quick neck stretch before six orders for beer refills were shouted over the counter. This was one of those nights when she was sorry that she was too much of a straight arrow to fake an onset of chicken pox and stay home with a book. The university rugby teams from all over the country were in town for a tournament, which had drastically increased the bar’s aggressive drunk quota. She had received so many x-rated offers that she was starting to feel as if she worked in a very different sort of club. At least two people had been caught trying to smoke indoors, which was not only illegal in a public space but potentially lethal for Sophy personally. To cap off an epically bad shift, it was nineties theme night in the music booth and Victoria Beckham was yet to take her own advice and “stop right now”.
“Please, God, do,” muttered Sophy, grabbing a cloth in readiness as she watched a barely-legal guy attempt to skull a magnum bottle of sparkling wine. He clearly thought it was the single sexiest moment of his life.
Alcohol was a cruel beast.
She was only working until midnight, having come in early to cover the dinner rush for a (presumably genuinely) sick waitress. At ten minutes to twelve, she started getting ready for the shift changeover, took some of the cash takings out back to the safe as a security measure, checked the bathrooms for anyone verging on an alcoholic coma. The bar managers had no problem continuing to sell alcohol to those well over the legal limit, but God forbid they should succumb to their excesses while still on the premises. Everyone in the ladies’ room was still vertical, praise be, but at least one person was no longer in possession of their stomach contents.
Sophy shuddered and backed out. If she ever felt like complaining about her job, she only had to look at what the cleaning staff had to handle. The odd boob-stare and butt-pinch seemed pretty tolerable in comparison. She grabbed her bag and light jacket from the staff cloakroom, steeled her ears and walked back out into the bar. Stacia, the other female bartender who was taking over for the night shift, flicked her wrist in wordless greeting and Sophy waved back. The flashing of strobe lights from the ceiling fractured her hand and vision into multiple pulsing shards. The points of her high heels stuck to the liquor sheen on the floor as she headed for the door, pushing and dodging her way through a pack of rhythmically bobbing people. It was exactly like trying to get off a crowded bouncy castle, only to be constantly knocked back and flung sideways. She’d hated those as a kid, too.
Outside on the sidewalk, the music retreated to a muted and far more enjoyable level, the air was like a crisp, clean shot of espresso, and she could raise a hand to smooth her hair without accidentally stroking a stranger. Sophy stood for a moment, enjoying the relative quiet. There were throngs of people all over the streets, laughing and talking, but mercifully no thumping bass beat. Somehow at that volume it managed to hit and reverberate directly in the region of the belly, which was both bizarre and unpleasant. Not for the first time, as she started to walk in the direction of home, she contemplated switching the bartending shifts for a daytime waitressing gig. But the pay was dismal in comparison, she would have way less time for school and her personal art, and she would have to talk to people. Hospitality and retail staff in Queenstown were expected to be even bubblier and more outgoing than was usual for the trade. It was the tourist atmosphere. Holiday-makers wanted to be around people who shared their buoyancy; they didn’t want to be served coffee by a retiring mouse who whispered the daily specials.
She tried to think positively. If her entry managed to place in the sculpture competition, the exposure might lead to enough paper and even stone commissions that she could give up the moonlighting entirely. And she was fairly sure that it was going to be good. She had a feeling about Hades.
Pulling her jacket tighter across her chest, Sophy folded her arms and jogged lightly across the street, skipping out of the way of a passing car. She was turning off the busy intersection that ran by the pedestrian-only outdoor mall, crossing into the quieter part of town that led to her home block, when she became aware of a slowly thrumming motor behind her.
Feeling as if this was her week for a slow descent into paranoia, she peeked over her shoulder and a spike of nerves prickled her midsection. There were numerous cars on the road, some of them actually keeping down to a decent speed, but one had pulled slightly over to the side of the road and seemed to be hanging back. There was no reason to assume that the driver was watching her…but there were free parking spaces if he wanted to stop and there were no other pedestrians in sight at that particular moment.
She was aware that it wasn’t the wisest move to walk home from work alone at this hour, but the house was literally ten minutes away if she strode briskly and there was always passing traffic. It never seemed worthwhile paying for petrol and vehicle maintenance when most of her life was in walking distance and there were buses and obliging friends for the odd long-distance trip. She was also a crap driver – those poor reflexes again – but she preferred to use less personally damaging excuses for her carless state.
Right now, she was thinking that investing in at least a bicycle might be a good idea.
In a fortnight where she’d encountered mad bombers and seemed to have picked up an ever so slightly creepy secret admirer, roadside abduction didn’t seem as outlandish as it might have done.
She came to a complete stop.
