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Breaking news: the Baltimore Harriers announced today that Cross Lecroix is out indefinitely due to the shoulder injury he sustained after dropping gloves with Erik Burke in last night’s heated overtime loss. #NoCrossNoCup #MaybeNextYearHarriers #HottestRivalryInHockey
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Three months later…
“You looklike you spent your entire day trying not to wring somebody’s neck.”
Kristen Burke slid onto her usual seat at the bar—on the end that wrapped around, so she could see everybody in the Firewall Bar & Grill—and picked up the vodka soda her favorite bartender set in front of her. “Nobody knows me like you do, Zach.”
“What is it you do again? You work in an office, right?”
She sipped her drink, pondering her answer. She was the unofficial office manager, as well as handling social media and promotion, for a very conservative boss with some political clout because it had been the best job opening for her overpriced degree and the most in line with her future goals, but she’d been working on her exit plan for a while. Once she wasfinallypromoted toofficialoffice manager and he made that run for mayor he was gearing up for, she was going to be his chief of staff. And then she intended to use the experience and the contacts she gained to get a similar position with somebody whose personal views didn’t make her want to sit at this bar and have a vodka soda every night after work.
“Imanagean office,” she said, but she really didn’t want to talk about it. “It’s boring and my boss is an asshat. What’s good tonight?”
“There’s a beef stew special in honor of it being freaking freezing outside, but based on the reactions I’m seeing, I highly recommend the salad.”
She laughed. “A salad sounds good. With some grilled chicken on top.”
“Sure thing.”
Left alone to sip her drink and let the annoyances of the day slip away, she looked around the bar. It wasn’t very busy tonight since the more casual patrons were probably staying home, out of the bitter cold, so if he was here, she wouldn’t have any trouble spotting him.
And there he was, sitting at the same table he’d been at two nights ago. Thick brown hair. A well-trimmed beard. Broad shoulders. She could tell he was tall, even though he was sitting down. And she knew from the one time he’d glanced up and they’d made eye contact on her way to the restroom that his eyes were very dark. So intensely dark she’d actually shivered.
“Do you know who that guy is?” she asked Zach once she’d finished the salad and he’d brought her a fresh vodka soda. “The one in the gray Henley shirt toward the back?”
Zach took a look and then shook his head. “Nope. I’ve seen him in here three or four times, but he’s not chatty, and he seems to keep to himself.”
Kristen wasn’t surprised. Something about him, whether it was the way the soft cotton shirt hugged his body or the way he carried himself, suggested the man didn’t quite fit in with this crowd.
Not that there weren’t other attractive, leanly muscular guys to be found in the greater Boston area. But this particular watering hole attracted a techie crowd, and this guy was not only rough around the edges, but his phone appeared to be a generation or two out of date.
She’d seen him a couple of times before tonight, and she’d been interested since that first glance. He usually had a meal with a couple of ice waters, paid his bill, and then took his time nursing a coffee while looking at his phone. She was pretty sure he was reading, based on the rhythm of his thumb swiping, and she had a serious thing for guys who liked to read.
A few women and a couple of guys had tried to strike up conversations with him, and Kristen had been close enough to overhear a couple of them. He was polite and friendly, while making it obvious he wasn’t looking for company.
A smoking hot guy who enjoyed good food, liked to read, and wasn’t looking for an easy hookup was totally Kristen’s type when it came to easy hookups.
“He pay with a credit card?” she asked Zach and smiled when he nodded.
He wouldn’t give her any of the guy’s information—and she wouldn’t ask—but she knew Zach would take note of it, so if Kristen’s judgment was off and something happened to her, the police would at least be able to identify the guy she’d last been seen with. It wasn’t much, but it made her feel slightly safer, and it beat being in a long-term, monogamous relationship with her vibrator.
After paying her tab, she took her drink with her and made her way to the guy’s table, coming to a stop in his peripheral vision. “What are you reading?”
He looked up, and she saw the flash of annoyance in his dark eyes before his eyebrow arched and a slow smile curved his lips. “A biography of Abigail Adams.”
She snorted. “Sure you are.”
He slanted the screen in her direction, so she could see the text. “Ask me anything.”
“Where was she born?”
“Not far from here, actually. In Weymouth.” He pushed the chair across the table from him out with a shove of his foot. “Have a seat.”
A little bossy, but she didn’t mind that in a man.
