Maybe Helga has the magic touch after all.
I cover half the distance between the door and his table wishing he would look up and stand or smile or give me a sign he’s my number twenty-eight. The faded blue jeans, and untucked white button down give him just the right combination of classy and rough. His dark hair is clean cut, short with a squared off jaw line that is covered in a short black beard.
Heather’s words and my own tag line start to play over and over in my head.
When you least expect him, expect him.
Here goes nothing.
As I close the space between us, he finally looks up; our eyes meet and a shock wave pulses through me.
I should introduce myself, but I’m not even sure I remember my own name.
Then, I hear a voice from over my left shoulder.
“Jessie. Jessie Patrick?”
I flip my head around to see a guy dressed in skinny black trousers and a matching jacket that looks two sizes too small. His hair has dark black roots, but the tips are highlighted platinum blond.
Suddenly, I feel nothing.
“You’re Jessie, right? Helga showed me your picture.” He steps toward me from the back hall, where the buzzing ‘restrooms’ sign flickers above him as I nod in reluctant agreement. “I’m Derek. You wanna drink?”
I turn in his direction, toss a quick glance over my shoulder as a shudder of disappointment replaces the sonic boom I felt a moment ago. I shrug my shoulders then shift my gaze to the floor trying to retain my bearings.
I let go of my downward gaze to see Derek is standing just in front of me. His eyes are glassy, and his breath holds the scent of more than a few beers laced with other liquor.
Not lucky number twenty-eight, Heather.
I can’t help the one last look where my hopes for something different sit reading F. Scott Fitzgerald, then back toward Derek, who is now looking down at his phone. The dream boat at the table is looking at me from over the edge of his book, green eyes the color of a shamrock cut through my daydreams as I force myself to turn on my heel and head to where the next forty-five minutes of my life will be lost.
Chapter 2
Torin
What.
The.
Fuck?
She doesn’t belong here.
She belongs under me.
And not just for a night. For every night.
Did I just think that? What is happening?
Nothing like her has ever walked through the door at a shit stain of a cop bar like this. It’s where a lot of us come after shift to disappear. Three decades of Detroit cops have kept this place afloat in an area of slow decline where the surrounding street’s businesses have long been shuttered and dark.
The place itself is a nothing bar with no top shelf liquor and four taps of cheap, domestic beer. The walls are covered with newspaper articles about big busts and pictures of officers that gave it all in the line of duty.
Besides being a hangout for cops, Lucky Charlie’s only other claim to fame is the damn food. They don’t have a menu, but every day they have a full home cooked meal that tastes straight out of a southern kitchen. Two generations of Bertha Henry’s family have cooked here and for many of us, it’s the only good meal we get in a day. Today, it’s fried chicken with mashed potatoes, corn bread, black-eyed peas, fried okra and rhubarb cherry pie for dessert.
Besides that, the lighting is shitty, but the bathrooms are clean, and no one bothers me, so this is where I sit three to four evenings a week.
Today, everything feels different.
The girl who just walked through that door brought a light inside that has my dick instantly hard and my heart about to beat through my chest wall. Normally, I sit here after a shift, eat a damn good meal and read. I know it doesn’t fit the stereotype for a Detroit detective, but my mom was an author and her love of literature rubbed off on me. I’m working my way through all the classics she collected over a lifetime and it makes me feel like she’s still with me in a small way.
But right now, Daisy and Gatsby are all but forgotten on the table in front of me.
There’s an ache below my belt that is new. It’s as though my heart and my cock have finally come together in some sort of long sought-after merger.
I’ve seen lots of pretty girls in my life.
Dated some of them.
But this girl? I feel like I just got smacked with a two by four.
The light from the fixture hanging above her casts shadows over a figure that is a work of fucking art. She’s the definition of Rubenesque; curves and soft turns, plush hips and fucking tits that I could bury my face between and never come out.