Considering the fact that I’d never been out on a date with Scott and had turned him down more times than I could count, their actions were beyond ridiculous. The McClaren’s head bouncer had zero claim on me and absolutely no right to expect anything from me if he managed to make it out of this brawl in one piece.
My jaw dropped when Wendy pulled a baseball bat out from under the bar and handed it to me. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
She jerked her chin toward where the men were all facing off against each other. “If things go to hell, aim for the balls.”
“I haven’t used a bat since middle school gym class,” I cried, trying to shove it back into her hands.
“I don’t need a bat.” She bent low and dug through her purse, which she kept on the bottom shelf. My eyes widened in shock when she pulled out a gun. “I have something better.”
“You bring a gun to work?” I hissed.
She flashed me a quick grin before inserting a magazine into the gun. “Yup, Scout would’ve made it impossible for me to bartend here if I didn’t agree to carry.”
I had about a million questions I would’ve loved to ask her, but Scott chose that moment to mouth off. “You’re too scared to face off against me on your own, huh? You had to call a bunch of your biker buddies in for backup?”
Sebastian stepped forward, his friends remaining ready for whatever came next while they held back and let him do his thing. “But it was never gonna be just you and me, was it? I clocked you signaling your bouncer buddies while you were pretending not to be crushed to find out that Ireland already had a man. Couldn’t run the risk of her getting caught in the middle. It’s my job to keep her safe.”
“Oh, yeah? You must be doing a crap job of it then. I’ve never seen you in here with her before tonight,” Scott jeered, the other two bouncers nodding.
Sebastian’s gaze shifted toward me, slowly moving over the upper half of my body, the only part visible from where I was standing. His lips curved into a smug grin as he focused on Scott again. “Looks to me like I’ve done a damn fine job, even from a distance.”
I sucked in a breath when the bouncer stalked forward to get into Sebastian’s face. “I call bullshit. Ireland would’ve mentioned that she had a boyfriend, and she’s never said a word about you.”
“When should she have mentioned me? One of the many, many times you tried getting my girl to notice you?” Sebastian shook his head and sighed. “Ireland is too damn nice, but I’m not. Take her rejection like a man, leave her the fuck alone from now on, and walk away while you still can.”
I hadn’t had the chance to share the details of the trouble I’d had with Scott, but Sebastian had picked up on enough of what had gone down tonight to sound as though I’d been complaining to him about Scott for months. His tone was full of conviction, and if I hadn’t known he was lying through his teeth, I totally would’ve believed him.
Scott must have been a tougher nut to crack, though. Instead of backing off, he decided to double down. “If you ever want to come back to McClaren’s, you’re the one who should leave. We have a zero-tolerance policy for fights, and I have no problem black-listing you and your biker buddies.”
Sebastian glanced over his shoulder at his friends, and one of them shook his head. “Nah, that threat has no teeth. Once we wipe the floor with their bouncers, I’m sure the owner will be less than impressed with their performance. And you know damn well I’ll have the proof to backup whatever story we want to tell.”
“That’s Hack. He’s not kidding. He could probably frame them for stealing money from the till or roughing up some innocent customers by doing a deep fake video or something,” Wendy whispered. “When the fight actually gets going, you’ll be able to tell who’s who from the club by the patch on the back of their cuts.”
It was as though her mention of the fight starting sent everything in motion. Scott swung at Sebastian, and all heck broke loose. The guys from the Silver Saints moved like a well-oiled machine that put the bouncers to shame. Two of them moved swiftly to face off against the two guys Scott had talked into being a part of this mess. The other three moved into a triangle formation around the men, standing guard so nobody else could interfere.
Once the fight was over—if you could even call it one since the three bouncers were shut down before they could do more than throw a couple of punches—one of Sebastian’s brothers, Patriot according to his cut, sent him a sly grin before asking, “What happened to the Silver Saints being a motorcycle club and not a matchmaking service?”