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Motioning to Lea and Kent to take over the bar, she moved to Jonesy. “My office,” she ordered.
“My ass,” he growled, his brown gaze glittering in anger. “I have work to do. ”
“Not after tonight you won’t,” she snapped. “My office now, or get your ass out of my bar. And you damned well better remember who owns the place. ”
She turned on her heel and stalked out of the area toward the back door marked Private.
Pushing through, she moved through the short hall, made a sharp turn, and quickly unlocked the door to her office.
She threw it open before Jonesy could barrel into it. He stalked into the room, jerked his white apron off, and wadded it into a ball before throwing it to the floor.
His white T-shirt stretched over the bulging muscles of his tattooed arms. The ham-sized biceps flexed menacingly as he glared back at her.
“Drop the attitude. ” There was no fear of Jonesy. He was temperamental, tried to be a bully, and fussed like a mother hen gone rabid, but she had never seen him as dangerous.
“Don’t tell me to drop the attitude, little girl,” he snarled, face flushing as his heavy brows lowered over his dark eyes. “I’m the dumb bastard watching you mope around with those big, pathetic eyes of yours as you watch the door and pray that no-account sheriff makes his way back to mark you. Where the fuck is your head, letting that bastard touch you?”
Rogue drew back in surprise. Evidently Jonesy had seen the reddened mark beneath her jaw as well.
“The mark or the man is none of your damned business, Jonesy,” she said, voice tight.
“It’s my damned business when I have to listen to the gossip and field the questions,”
he yelled back, his lips pulling back from his teeth furiously.
“Like I’ve ever given a damn about gossip,” she retorted. “And since when do you give a damn? Hell, Jonesy, they talk about everyone and everything. It’s a fact of fucking life and I couldn’t give a damn one way or the other. ”
“Maybe that’s your problem!” he said, his voice rising further. “You simply don’t give a damn. You didn’t give a damn when they made you look like a tramp in those pictures, and now you don’t give a damn and spread your fucking legs for that whoremongering sheriff who doesn’t have a chance of being good enough for you. ”
She was going to pull her hair out. Staring back at him incredulously, she fought to figure out what the hell kind of bug had gotten up his ass to make him act this way or to say something so vile.
“Zeke is not a whoremonger,” she bit out between clenched teeth.
“Yeah, you’ll take up for him, but you don’t give a shit when I call you a tramp,” he accused roughly, his eyes narrowing as his entire body seemed to quiver with outrage.
“Your daddy raised you better than this, girl. ”
“My daddy raised me to have enough confidence in myself to do whatever the hell I want with whoever the hell I want,” she yelled back, nearly shaking in her own anger now. “How dare you think you can take me to task for anything, Jonesy? You don’t have that right, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let you pretend you do. ”
He was six feet tall to her five feet seven in her highest heels. She was in his face, snarling back at him, overwhelmed by her anger. She hated being told what to do or being taken to task for decisions she made. She was an adult. She knew what the hell she was doing even when she wasn’t certain of the way to get there, and she knew she was damned sick and tired of others trying to tell her she was too young, too inexperienced, or evidently raised to do things differently than she was.
Jonesy was still glaring down at her. His breathing was rough, face flushed. At his side, his beefy hands were curled into fists as though it was all he could do to keep from hitting her.
She knew him. She knew his rages, and she knew his affection, but she didn’t understand his sudden animosity toward Zeke.
“You used to understand how the world works around here, Rogue,” he spat out.
“What the hell happened to you?”
The way the world worked around here. Here being Pulaski County, as though it was a separate part of the rest of the world.
“Oh, don’t worry, Jonesy, I understand the rules very well, and I intend to break every one I can,” she informed him with a tight smile.
Jonesy and his damned rules. Stay with your own kind, he’d always warned her. White trash to white trash, upper-class trash to upper-class trash, and she was somewhere in between and yet somewhere above them all. She could return to Boston and take her place as a society princess there, or she could stick to her own kind here. That being the hard-drinking, motorcycle-riding men and women that made the Bar their home away from home. To Jonesy, she shouldn’t look any further for entertainment or for a relationship.
“This ain’t about breaking the rules, you little twit,” he bit out in disgust.
Her eyes narrowed as she began to shake in fury. “Don’t call me a twit, Jonesy. ”
