So now she was on the opposite end of the bar, looking for Denise. If it were up to her, they’d abandon the Eltons here and drive back to town right now. She’d rather be at home listening to Paul and Molly argue than here.
She was still fuming about the fact that Ted hadn’t listened her to tell him no. Alethia Parker would tell any man no she wanted to, and if he took issue with that, she had pepper spray in her purse and she wasn’t afraid to use it.
So that was the mindset she was in when some guy in a scraggly beard and a stained T-shirt noticed her and leered. “Hey, honey, you lose your boyfriend?”
“I don’t know,” she snapped. “He’s probably with your mom.”
In retrospect, that had been a dumb thing to say.
Scraggly got mad and grabbed her arm.
“I think you should learn some respect.” His breath was hot in her face. It did not smell minty-fresh.
“Let go of me.” She made sure to enunciate each word very carefully.
“No.” His grip tightened.
Ali looked down, hoping to God he wasn’t wearing steel-toed boots. Nope, she was in luck: dirty white sneakers.
She drove her four-inch stiletto heel down into his foot. He howled and let her go, and she darted off into the crowd as fast as she could go.
That was it, she was finding Denise and they were leaving right now!
She ran smack into someone, rebounding off his chest like he was made of stone.
She looked up—and up—to meet the cool, grey eyes of a man who had to be at least 6’3’’. He was lean and muscular and looked like he could take anybody at this bar without breaking a sweat.
Great, Ali thought. Now this guy would want a piece of her, and she was going to have to try and pepper spray him, except his face might be too high for her to reach.
But he wasn’t making a move. He was just looking at her, intently, and when she looked back, she saw that his eyes weren’t cool after all. They were warm, a warm silvery color that held her attention like nothing else ever had.
“Gotcha!” Scraggly had come up behind her without her noticing and grabbed her arm again.
Gotcha?
She tried to find it funny—it was funny, after all, like she was a mouse in a cartoon—but all of a sudden, the whole night seemed to crash down on her. Molly, Denise, Ted, Matt, Scraggly. She wanted to burst into tears.
She couldn’t cry in a bar in front of everyone. But somehow, a single hot streak escaped her eye makeup and made it down her cheek.
Then a big hand closed around Scraggly’s wrist and twisted.
“Hey!” Scraggly yelled, instantly letting her go. “What’s wrong with you? I saw her first.”
“I’m thinking she doesn’t want to see you,” said the grey-eyed man in a rumbling voice. “Seeing as how she was running away from you.”
“She needs to pay for what she said to me,” Scraggly whined.
The grey-eyed man stepped forward. “Excuse me,” he said to Ali.
Suddenly, with a graceful twist, he was between her and Scraggly. He stared down at Scraggly’s trucker hat. Scraggly tilted his head back and looked a little less sure of himself.
“Seems to me that you need to pay for what you did to her.” His voice was almost a growl. “We can do that here or outside.”
“No! Uh, no, no thanks.” Scraggly backed away abruptly. He had to shoulder a few guys aside to do it. Then his whiny voice rose again as he started making new friends a few yards away.
Ali let out a breath that she felt like she’d been holding for an hour.
“Thank you,” she said to the man.