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She had a point. As mu
ch as he might want to, he couldn’t exactly throw her over his shoulder and drag her out without attracting the attention of at least a few good Samaritans, right along with the prison guard behind the bar, who probably had a handgun tucked away somewhere.
Lucy sauntered off, ass wiggling. She found another table, this one holding an older and tougher crowd. His temper surged. She was a big girl, and if this was the way she wanted it, to hell with her.
He began to elbow his way toward the door, then paused. Some of the women were watching her a little too closely, probably because they didn’t like the male attention she was attracting. But maybe they were trying to place her face, and if that happened … He imagined cell phones pulled out, cameras clicking away, people pressing in on her …
He ordered a club soda, leaned against the bar, and watched her until the men at the table got uneasy and stopped talking to her. She tried another table, but he had his glare on good and strong, and they didn’t roll out the welcome mat either. Instead of calling it a night, she came toward him, the ass-wiggling a thing of the past. Her footsteps were firm, her eyes steady, and beneath all that makeup, she looked like a woman who knew her way around the world’s power centers.
“Thanks to whatever it was you ordered for me, I’m sober,” she said with deadly seriousness. “I know exactly what I’m doing, and I don’t need your protection.” She lifted her chin. “I’ve spent a decade under guard. That’s more than enough. As of right now, we’ve broken up. I want you to leave.”
A blinding fury claimed him, the kind of fury he’d thought was behind him. He slammed his drink down on the bar. “You’ve got it, sister.”
LUCY HAD GOTTEN RID OF Panda, but she’d also lost her party spirit. Why did he have to show up and spoil everything? Still, she shouldn’t have flown off the handle like that. It was Temple’s fault. Her smug certainty that Lucy had fallen in love with him had made Lucy panicky.
She shouldn’t be. Temple was wrong. Lucy wasn’t the kind of woman to fall in love with one man two and a half months after she’d been in love with another. And she especially wasn’t the kind of women to fall in love with someone who was so guarded that he refused to reveal anything about himself. Still, some part of her wished she hadn’t announced they were breaking up quite yet, even though summer was nearly over and he’d be leaving soon.
She waited long enough to be sure she wouldn’t run into him outside before she left the bar. The parking lot was full. Since she’d taken his car, she half expected to see that he’d driven off in it and left her stranded, but he hadn’t. He was still taking care of her. Her eyes prickled even though she knew it was better to get their breakup over with now.
She didn’t want to go home, didn’t want to talk to anybody. She glanced toward the car but couldn’t make herself get in. If she’d had sneakers with her, she could have gone for a walk to clear her head, but her heels weren’t designed for a nighttime hike. Still, the air was warm, the moon full. She picked her way through the cars and around to the side of the bar, harshly lit with a single flood.
The building perched above an inlet. If she owned the place, she’d have put an open patio back here. Instead, she saw a pair of Dumpsters, an equipment shed, and a broken-down picnic table. Judging by the crushed cigarette packs and litter of butts on the ground, this was where the employees took their smoke breaks.
She made her way carefully over the uneven ground to the picnic bench and sat. The damp wood was cool against her bare thighs, and the air smelled of lake and cooking oil. She heard the roar of motorcycles, and for a moment, she wanted to believe one of them belonged to Panda, her own Sir Galahad rushing to rescue her from the dismal swamp of her own thoughts.
She gazed at the lights from the homes across the water. After his blowup with Temple, she wouldn’t be surprised if Panda was gone by this time tomorrow. But what about Lucy herself? How long was she going to stay? She envisioned herself standing on the bluff behind the house, autumn leaves falling around her, then snowflakes. She saw spring arriving; another summer. Years passing. Her hair turning gray, face wrinkling, the strange old lady who’d arrived one summer and never left. Eventually they’d find her mummified body buried under a mountain of petrified homemade bread.
She shivered. A loud voice intruded. “Hold on. I gotta take a piss.”
“You always gotta take a piss.”
“Fuck you.”
Footsteps crunched in the gravel. A man with an unkempt beard and a bandanna wrapped around his head appeared behind the building. As his companion stopped by the Dumpster, the bearded one spotted her. “Hey.”
They both wore boots, scruffy jeans, and scruffier hair. These guys weren’t the lawyers and high school guidance counselors who turned biker on weekends. They were the real thing, and from their unsteady walks, they were both drunk.
Lucy Jorik would have been frightened, but Viper knew how to handle situations like this. “Hey, yourself.”
“You care if I take a piss?” the bearded biker said in a voice louder than necessary. “You can watch if you want.”
The man by the Dumpster snickered. “Trust you, man, to find a chick back here.”
Viper wasn’t easily cowed, but she wasn’t stupid either. The bar was too noisy for anyone to hear her, and she was keeping this conversation short. “I’ve got better things to do.” She rose from the bench.
Dumpster man swaggered toward her. “He’ll let you hold it for him.”
As she smelled the liquor on them, her uneasiness grew, but Viper didn’t believe in showing fear. “I couldn’t find anything that little.”
They hooted with laughter. Even though her knees had started to shake, she loved how tough she was. This summer hadn’t been a waste after all.
Except her wisecrack had opened the door to a camaraderie she didn’t want, and they were both closing in on her. “I like you,” the bearded one said.
Dumpster man had a narrow, sloping forehead and a unibrow. “Come on inside and have a drink with us.”
She swallowed. “Sure. Let’s go.”
But they didn’t move, and the smell of liquor and body odor was making her queasy.
