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And I do. The regulars greet me like a long-lost friend. Tina the other waitress is nice, and before I know it, half my shift is gone. I work fast clearing tables and wiping them clean with a wet rag.
“What brings ya’ here darlin’?”
I spin around, heart pounding and my head tips back meeting the stranger’s intense gaze.
“I’m sorry. You startled me.”
“Didn’t mean to do that.”
“Smith? What in the hell are you doin’ here brotha?” Meat calls out.
I can’t hear his reply over the motorcade of bikes tearing into the lot. The engines roar to a stop and my mouth hangs open as twenty men enter the bar each hotter and more bad ass than the next.
“Hot damn. Get your ass in gear girl, because we just might make a month’s worth of tips tonight,” Tina informs me tugging down her top and applying a fresh coat of lip gloss.
“Who’s this?”
I try to act cool but damn these men are terrifying. Hot, but terrifying.
“Oh, that’s Devon. She’s the new girl. Whatcha drinkin’?” Tina asks flirting with them.
“Let’s break her in then. Get on the bar and lay flat.”
I look back and forth between the two unsmiling giants that pushed the glasses aside, expecting me to obey their command.
“Uh, I-uh…,” I stammer feeling unsure of myself for the first time in years.
“We’re just fuckin’ with you sugar,” the two men laugh.
“Oh yeah?” I answer hopping up and planting my butt down on the bar. Raising an eyebrow, my hand snakes behind me and grabs a bottle of Tequila. I place it next to me and grab the salt and lime, lift my shirt to prep for body shots. Just as I’m about to tip the bottle and pour, it’s yanked from my grasp.
“Get up,” Roger growls, yanking down my shirt. I try to sit up, feeling my cheeks burn. He pulls me off the bar. Toe-to-toe he leans down, the irises of his blue eyes burn like a spark of a flame before the fire ignites. “My office. NOW.”
I gulp, feeling like he’s swallowed me.
With a hanging head, I follow him as he raises the swing counter of the bar and walks out holding it up. I duck under his arm catching a whiff of laundry detergent and cigar smoke. It’s a weird combination but damn if it doesn’t affect me. I’ve dated too many men wearing suits and designer cologne, each more groomed and metro-sexual than the next. But Roger, he’s all man, with muscles and hands made strong by labor, not personal trainers. I felt the calluses covering his palms when he firmly grasped my arm.
His hand jerks the knob of his door, the tip of his boot kicks it open, and I feel like a kid entering the principal’s office.
He’s wound tight, refusing to look at me as he walks over to a wet bar and pours himself a drink. He raises it to his lips and pauses as if he just realized he’s holding a drink in his hands.
“Fuckin’ hell.” He slams the drink down uncaring that it spills over the rim onto the floor.
Unsure of what to do or say, I move over to a wall where a row of pictures hang. One, in particular, catches my eye; it’s of him, an older man with a breathing tube running through his nose and the same woman and man I saw in a pic out front. I snort, reading the banner hanging above their heads, “Happy 60thBirthday Meat.”
A waft of cigar smoke reaches me, and I turn finding him seated behind his desk, with snakeskin boots crossed at the ankles on top of a pile of papers. The cigar rests between two fingers as he puffs out the smoke in rings.
“I’ll pierce my left tit if you’re a day over fifty.”
His eyes drop to my breasts, and he smirks, “Don’t make that bet darlin’.”
“No way. I don’t believe it.”
“I’m not sixty,” he shrugs. “They wouldn’t let me pledge to Creed unless I was twenty-one.”
“So, you lied?”
“Yep.”