Asa

“What are you doing back here? The kitchen is closed.” Like she had any right to question where I went in this place. It was a diversionary tactic I knew all too well.

I just stared at her and didn’t say anything. I looked pointedly at her bag and then back up to her chilly hazel gaze.

“What’s in the bag?”

She shifted her weight, and there was no mistaking the sound of bottles clanking together. She was trying to smuggle beer out of the cooler. It figured. My night needed one more complicated female I had to straighten out to make it more of a headache.

“Nothing.” She went to move past me and the sound of bottles clanging together got even louder.

My hands were full, so I just moved my entire body into her path to stop her. Avett took after Darcy way more than Brite, her dad. Brite was a giant of a man with a beard that I was sure had folk songs written in its honor. Avett was petite and barely came up to the center of my chest, and she had to tilt her head back in order to keep glaring up at me. What she lacked in height, she sure as hell made up for in bad attitude.

“Put it back. Don’t do it again and this is the last you’ll hear about it.” When I was irritated, the South tended to be heavy and thick in my voice, and not in the same way it was when I used my drawl to get something I wanted or to make someone think I was nicer and stupider than I really was.

“Get out of my way, Asa.”

“No. You don’t get to steal from Rome. I don’t care what your beef with Brite is and I don’t care that you obviously would rather be out wrestling wild mountain lions than working here. I’m not letting you take advantage of Rome. He’s a good guy and he deserves better than that.”

We had a glare-off and for a second I thought she was going to try and step around me knowing my hands were occupied, but I think there was some kind of invisible thread, some kind of aura that we shared that made her instinctively know that she could get away, but not for very long.

She huffed out a breath that sent her pink bangs dancing across her forehead. She would be a really cute girl if she wasn’t such a pain in the ass and practically a decade younger than me. She was just a kid really and she sure as shit acted like it.

“I’m going to a party and I don’t have any money for beer. I didn’t think it would be a big deal to take a twelve-pack from the cooler. After all, my dad practically handed this bar over to the soldier for free. A few beers seems like a fair trade.”

I rolled my eyes. “It wouldn’t be a big deal. You know that Rome wouldn’t care if you asked him. But walking around like you’re owed something for some unknown reason isn’t all right with me, and I’m not going to let you do it.” I furrowed my eyebrows at her and shifted my weight. “How can you be broke? You just got paid on Friday.” Since she worked in the kitchen, I knew Rome paid her an hourly wage. It wasn’t enough to retire on but it was enough that it shouldn’t be gone in less than twenty-four hours unless she was up to no good.

Instead of answering me, she whirled around and went to put the beers back in the cooler. I waited until she came back out, and made her lead the way out of the kitchen back to the bar. I had been gone long enough that the band was done with their set and that meant a crowd had gathered and Dixie was standing behind the bar trying to catch orders up. I nudged Avett with my elbow and deposited my haul into her hands. I pointed to Royal, who was sitting stoic in the middle of the rush, her head bent down and her gaze locked on the bar top.

“Feed the redhead. Make sure she eats it, and if I ever catch you trying to steal again you’re out of here. I don’t care what I promised Brite or how much it would break Darcy’s heart.”

She gave me a baleful look and muttered just loud enough that I could hear it, “Funny coming from you.”

She wasn’t wrong. It was ridiculous coming from me, so I ignored her and dove into the mess of trying to sort the rush out. It was only half an hour until last call, so it proved to be a little trickier than usual. The weekends at the Bar were getting busy enough since Rome’s remodel that I thought maybe I was going to have to ask him about hiring another server as well as a bouncer. Business was good, and in order to keep it that way we needed to make sure the crowds got service just as good as the battered old veterans that littered the place during the daytime hours.

I tried to keep an eye on Royal. I was worried she was going to try and leave before I could talk to her and before I could judge if she was sober enough to drive, but she was in the same spot, head bent down, eyes focused on the bar, and her water was gone. She had also put a good-sized dent in the food in front of her, so that made me breathe a little easier. She was abnormally quiet and I wished I had thought to grab her shirt for her when I pulled her out of the crowd earlier. She looked rumpled, like she had just climbed out of bed, and that wasn’t doing a thing to help me remember why I needed to get her out of the tailspin she had been in ever since the week before Christmas.

I got last call done. I paid the band and thanked the lead singer for helping me out with the frat kids, and he in turn asked me if I thought Royal would be interested in going on the road with them as a backup dancer. I had to laugh and broke the news to him that she already had a full-time job. I didn’t bother explaining what it was because I doubted he would believe me anyway. I helped Dixie clear the floor, and when we started to move people toward the front doors, I stopped next to Royal’s side and told her, “Hang out for a minute.”

She didn’t respond but she pushed some of her hair out her face, tucked it behind her ear, and looked at me out of the corner of her eye.

I took that as silent assent and helped Dixie get everyone outside and gave her a hand putting all the chairs up so that the cleaning crew Rome hired could spit-shine the place before we opened again tomorrow. Dixie and I had a system since we did this together six nights a week, so it was work that went by pretty quickly. When I was done I went behind the bar, poured myself a Dalwhinnie on the rocks, and took myself and my drink back around the other side of the bar so I could sit on a stool next to Royal. Everyone teased me that I should drink bourbon or whiskey, being as I was from Kentucky, but I preferred the smooth and dirty taste of scotch. It sort of fit since I was both those things myself.

I took a swig of the drink and set it down with a thunk on the bar. I ran my hand through my dirty-blond hair and looked at Royal out of the corner of my eye.

“So this is what you do now? Get drunk, rile up the natives, take half your clothes off in public, and just generally act the fool? ’Cause I gotta tell you, after two weekends in a row of it, I think it’s probably time you find another bar to haunt.”

I saw her shoulders slump and she matched my side-eye look.

“Why didn’t you tell those guys I was a cop?”

I sighed and turned to face her. I really wished she wasn’t such a looker. It made trying to be level-headed and rational around her that much harder.

“Because even though you can carry concealed legally because of your badge, you still can’t be drinking while carrying a loaded weapon. That’s illegal and a headache you really don’t need.”

“All of a sudden you’re concerned with others being law-abiding.” A little bit of her sass was coming back and that was a nice change from her maudlin moping that had settled around her since I pulled her off the dance floor.

“No. I don’t give a flying fuck about others being law-abiding, but you’ve got a job you like, friends that care about you, and you’re way too young to be flushing it all down the toilet. Even if that seems to be your new mission in life. You need to get your shit together, Royal, before you’re too far gone to fix the mess you seem so eager to make.” She was barely twenty-three. That seemed a lifetime younger than me, even though I had a couple more years ahead of me before I hit the big three-oh.

“That’s funny coming from you.”

Second time I had heard that in less than an hour. Maybe I just needed to keep my nose out of it and let everyone learn their own hard lessons just like I had been forced to do. I picked up my drink and took another slug.

“Get it together or don’t, but this is the final warning about bringing that nonsense into my bar. You want to go down in flames, I guess that’s your call, but I’m not going to watch you burn.”

Something flashed across her eyes, something so sad and lost it really made me want to reach out and comfort her, but touching Royal was like touching a live wire and I already had a hard enough time keeping my mind out of my pants and my hands to myself when I was around her. She blinked those long-ass lashes at me, stuck her tongue out to flick it across her bottom lip, and I forgot how to breathe for a second. She did it on purpose. I had no doubt.

“One of these days you’ll come home with me when I ask, Asa.” She leaned over on the bar stool a little and put her hand on my thigh. My fingers tightened around the tumbler in my hand so hard I was shocked the glass didn’t break.

“Is that why you’re here? Is that what the show is all about? You really want to make that kind of mistake?” My drawl was thick enough that the words were languid and heavy sounding. I felt blood start to race under my skin and I had no doubt that my eyes were probably glowing bright gold in my face. It wasn’t often someone made me uneasy, threw me off my game, but Royal had done it more than once in our short acquaintance.

She pressed her weight forward and stopped when her mouth was just a fraction away from mine. I could almost taste her. In fact, if I stuck out just the tip of my tongue, I would be tasting her. I clenched my teeth to stop that from happening, even though I was pretty sure she would taste like candy and fire.

“It seems like all I make anymore are mistakes. At least making that kind of one with you would be fun.”

She used her leverage on my leg to push herself upright as she slithered off the bar stool in one seamlessly sexy move. It made me bite back a groan.

“If you don’t want me here, I won’t come back.” She tossed her heavy hair over her shoulder and gave me a steady look out of her dark brown eyes. “I really thought you would make this easier.”

I didn’t say anything as she walked away, steady on those killer shoes and missing her shirt even though it was winter in Colorado. She was obviously sober enough to drive, but I had no idea where her head was at otherwise.

Dixie locked the door behind the redhead and wandered over to the bar. She grabbed herself a bottle of Bud Light, which of course was sacrilegious in this Coors Light–dominated bar, and refilled my scotch.

“I don’t know how you’ve managed to turn her down more than once.” She shook her own strawberry-blond curls and grinned at me. “I’m not even into chicks and I think I would do her if she asked. She’s pretty amazing.”

I muttered a few swearwords under my breath and tossed the second round back in one swallow. It burned a little and I had to blink.

“She’s a cop, a cop that has arrested me. I have better self-preservation instincts than that.” In my experience, cops were not my biggest fans, and I really couldn’t blame them. I set the empty glass down on the bar and climbed to my feet. It was late and I needed a hundred cold showers. “Besides, she doesn’t actually wanna fuck, she just thinks she does.”

Dixie snorted. “That’s not what it looks like to me.”

It might look pretty cut-and-dried from the outside. Royal was pretty, I was pretty, and we definitely had a spark, but I hadn’t lasted as long as I had screwing over everyone whose path I crossed without learning how to look deeper, how to see the danger looming, and it was obvious to me that Royal was dangerous in more ways than one.

“That’s a very pretty girl with a very ugly hurt, and somehow she got it in her head that she deserves to be punished, to hurt even more.”

“So she’s trying to drag you to bed to punish her? That sounds kinky and fun.”

I tossed my bar towel at her and pushed up from the bar so I could do the nightly cash-out and go home. Now the idea of Royal in her handcuffs and nothing else was going to be running around in my head for the rest of the night. Like she needed any help being unforgettable.

“She feels bad and she’s doing everything in her power to make herself feel worse.” I didn’t know all the details of what had started Royal’s recent decline, but I did know her partner on the force, who really was her best friend and had been for most of her life, had been injured pretty badly in the line of duty and that Royal was currently on administrative leave while the department investigated the circumstances that had led to two cops being shot. One of the officers hadn’t made it and the other was still in the hospital. The other being Dominic, Royal’s partner. “I’m not looking to be any part of that.”

I had used enough people in my life, even those that loved me unconditionally, to know what being a means to an end for someone else looked like. I wasn’t going to help Royal self-destruct.

Dixie gave me a soft little grin that reminded me that even though she was tough as nails when she needed to be, she was really a romantic sweetheart at her center.

“Maybe you should give it a shot and you could make her feel better, and maybe she could make you finally see that you have changed over the last year or so.”

I just gave my head a shake and told her flatly, “That’s not what I do.” Nope; I destroyed things not repaired them.

I never lied about the man I had been for most of my life or the things I had done. There were so many kinds of really ugly, twisted, and dark things I was capable of and yet everyone that knew me now seemed to be under the impression that I had undergone some kind of transformation after coming out of the coma I had been in after I died and came back. The truth of the matter was I was never going to be a good guy. I was never going to be the type of man that made things better. Regardless of what anyone wanted to believe or how desperately it seemed Royal needed someone to wade in and pull her out of the mire, I wasn’t made to be a hero or a savior. I was already so far under the thumb of the specters of my past mistakes there was no way I could pull anyone else to safety.

The old saying was true, a leopard never changed its spots; and just like the lurking jungle cat, I was a predator through and through even if others wanted to think I had somehow become a house cat.

CHAPTER 2

Royal

When my phone, which I had left lying right next to my head the night before, went off the next afternoon shrieking Britney Spears’s “Toxic,” I almost rolled out of bed onto the floor in my haste to turn it off. I felt terrible. Partly because I was hardly sleeping anymore, so slipping into a restless catnap in the middle of the day was all that was sustaining me, but mostly because the number on the phone was the one I had been waiting for week after agonizing week to show up.

I silenced the bubblegum-pop song with a swipe of my finger across the screen and tried to sound more alert than I actually was when I gasped out a shaky greeting. I didn’t care what anyone thought of my awful taste in music. I slummed in the gutter all day long. I tangled with junkies, and wife beaters, and parents that neglected their kids every single day. I refused to listen to anything that wasn’t upbeat and full of infectious pop. My job wasn’t always fun, so I tried really hard to make sure the rest of the things in my life were.

“You do know I’m busting out of here today, right?”

I shoved a tangled hank of dark red hair out of my face and scrambled up to the edge of my bed. I chomped down on my bottom lip and tried to regulate my breathing. Of course I knew he was getting out of the hospital today. What I hadn’t known was if he was going to want me anywhere around him when he finally got the green light to go home. I squeezed my eyes shut and was so grateful that we weren’t face-to-face. Dominic Voss knew me better than any living soul on this planet, and if we were in the same room he would be able to feel the guilt and self-loathing I had been drowning in lately. Hell, if my current state of distress was apparent to someone as disconnected as Asa Cross, there was no way my best friend and partner could miss it. Dom being Dom, he would know it all came from what had happened to him on that callout from hell.

“I know. I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to come or not. I know your sisters are coming to stay with you until you get back on your feet and I didn’t want to get in the way.”

I sounded pathetic and ridiculous to my own ears.

Dom and I had been inseparable since we were five years old. There had never been a time when he didn’t want me around. There had never been a single moment in our friendship where I was ever in his way, and his entire family thought of me as one of their own. I think that made what had happened weigh even more heavily on my shoulders.

I heard Dom sigh and then he swore. His deep voice sounded strained as he gently scolded me. “Get your cute ass here, Royal. I’ve let you sulk for two goddamn weeks. Get over it. Shit happens and it’s gonna keep happening because that’s what being a cop is about. I’m in a fucking cast from my ankle to my junk. I have a broken shoulder and I can’t breathe without it feeling like I’m drinking acid. I look and feel like hammered dog shit, and my best friend hasn’t been around for any of it. Can you maybe knock it off now?” I couldn’t stop the tears that were starting to leak out of my eyes. I used a knuckle to swipe at them as I climbed to my feet. His next words stabbed through me like I was sure he intended for them to do. “I need you here, girly.”

We had always needed each other, both in our day-to-day lives and on the job. That was why I felt so bad. It was why I couldn’t get my head around how badly I had let him down. I was supposed to have his back like he had always had mine, and instead I had almost gotten him killed.

“I’m on my way.”

I hung up the phone after he barked at me that it was about time, and rushed around my apartment trying to make myself look presentable. After a hard night of drinking I never exactly looked great, but throw in a sleepless night and yet another rejection from an outrageously sexy, southern bartender and I probably could match Dom in the looking-like-crap department. I had dark shadows under each eye, I was way paler than normal, fine red veins threaded through the white in each eye, and I had really ugly bruises surrounding each of my wrists, which made shame and regret battle the guilt for the top spot in the flood of emotions I was choking on.

I knew better, I really did. I wasn’t the type to go out and lose control. I rarely drank, and when I did I always acted responsibly because I had a big picture to think about. Only lately that big picture had narrowed to tunnel vision and all I could see was Dom getting hit by bullet after bullet and falling over the edge of the fire escape on the side of the building. When I wasn’t seeing that, I was seeing the wife of the officer that hadn’t survived the shootout collapsing in the hall of the ER as another officer told her that her husband hadn’t made it. If that wasn’t enough to eat at my soul, the memory of my lieutenant telling me I had to turn in my gun and badge and go on administrative leave while the department conducted an investigation danced around in my head every second of every day.

In order to shake some of those awful thoughts loose, I was determined to do things I never did, things that made me feel free, so that’s why I was hanging out at the Bar. That’s why I was drinking like a fish, and really that was why I was unabashedly throwing myself at Asa Cross. I had never had to chase a guy. I had never been interested in the kind of guy that oozed charm and trouble the way Asa did. And I most definitely had never been one to mix business and pleasure. I knew Asa was bad news, barely tiptoeing on the right side of the law, and it was a firm rule that I never got involved with anyone that had been in the back of a police cruiser. Well, Asa had not only been in the back of my cruiser, but he had also been in and out of jail since before he was old enough to drive. The guy liked to make up his own rules and he didn’t have a very pretty past. Cops shouldn’t be romantically interested in criminals, even reformed criminals. But I was. In fact I was more than interested, but every time I made a move on him and he turned me down, it made me wonder if he could see the failure that was haunting me. I wondered if that was why he kept saying no.

I mean, I knew what I looked like. I knew that when we stared at each other there was interest and attraction glinting dark in his bronze eyes, and I knew he was the kind of guy that liked a sure thing. I was a sure thing. I needed something that felt good. I was searching desperately for something that would help me forget, even if it was for only a second, and I wasn’t afraid to admit that I wanted him. I made it so easy for him to say yes and yet he kept turning the other way. I didn’t understand it, so it only made me feel even more lost and adrift than I already did.

If he really wanted me to find another bar, I would. I only went to the dive he worked at because I wanted him to take me home. I wanted him to pull me across the bar and kiss away all the hurt and ugliness that was filling me up. I knew I was going about it the wrong way, knew that a guy like Asa had no use for someone that enforced the law and tried to keep the peace. Plus it was a long shot considering I had been forced by circumstance to arrest him for assault not too long ago. Asa might think I was pretty, and he might be trying to save me from myself since we had mutual friends, but I seriously doubted he was ever going to be able to look at me the same way I looked at him after I had snapped cuffs around his wrists and dragged him to the police station.

I pulled my hair into a messy ponytail, shoved my feet into a pair of battered motorcycle boots, and hit the front door. I was about to slam it closed behind me when I remembered to grab my keys. I was forever locking myself out of places—my car, my apartment, and even my patrol car on several occasions. It was a bad habit that was a pain in the ass for more than just me, but I couldn’t seem to shake it even after a mishap had almost led to the breakup of my neighbor and his lovely girlfriend.

I dashed back inside, frazzled and frustrated. I scooped the keys up off the spot they lived in by the door and rushed back out. This time the hallway wasn’t empty, and the neighbor’s girlfriend, who also happened to be my one and only female friend on the planet, was exiting their apartment across the hall. Saint was a sweetheart. Soft-spoken and serene, she just had something about her that had instantly called out to me. It was like the chaotic pace and often dangerous parts of my day-to-day died down and mellowed out when I was around her. I had forced her to be my friend even though she had fought me and the friendship at first. Now she was almost as close to me as Dom was, and just as concerned about my recent behavior.

She was dressed in scrubs under her heavy winter coat, so obviously she was on her way to work at the hospital where she was an ER nurse. Her coppery hair, which was several shades more orange in color than mine, was piled on her head in a messy bun and her face was scrubbed clean. Saint was a doll and could work the whole fresh-faced-girl-next-door thing. Unfortunately I wasn’t lucky enough to be able to rock the less-is-more look successfully, so the darkness under my eyes told the entire story of my wild night without me uttering a single word.

“Dom’s getting out of the hospital today,” I told her in a rush.

She blinked her soft gray eyes at me and the corner of her mouth tilted in a half smile.