by Avery Flynn
“Yeah. What the fu—” Red Hat stopped talking when Anders tightened his fingers.
“Dahlia’s not a whore.” Anders didn’t know that for a fact. For all he knew, she could actually be selling sex along with craft beer, but he wouldn’t let these guys laugh at her.
Red Hat started turning a little purple, so he loosened his grip.
“You her boyfriend or something?” The Blonde had a cloth napkin over his face, which was soaking with blood. But he was drinking beer with the other hand, so he couldn’t be hurt too badly.
“What if I am?” Anders didn’t know what made him say that. If they recognized him, a Google search would prove his words wrong. The league’s only virgin player was legend on the fucking Internet, thanks to his teammates’ big mouths and a couple of shithead sports reporters.
Red Hat sputtered. “Sorry, man. We didn’t mean any harm.”
“You don’t think it’s harmful to call someone a ‘whore?’”
“Nah, man. We was just joking.”
He lifted Red Hat up by his jaw. The guy squealed, and Anders felt a flash of guilt. “I don’t care if you were joking. Don’t joke about that. Not with her. Not with anyone.”
Red Hat tried to nod, and Anders calculated the pros and cons of clocking him now that he’d assented to his demands. On the pro side, it would feel great to make this guy hurt. On the con side, it might be harder to argue his way out of issues with the authorities. The Blonde might see that as a serious act of aggression and abandon his makeshift tourniquet and beer to defend his buddy.
He didn’t have to make a choice because Dahlia walked back into the bar. “These two really tried to steal beer?”
Anders dropped Red Hat, who stumbled and sat on the floor between the stools, but not before bumping his lower back and skull on the mahogany bar. “Ow. Fuck.”
“Tsk-tsk.” Anders was surprised to look up and find Dahlia chastising him. “That seems like a pretty steep punishment.” She looked him up and down as though the sight of him with his hand around Red Hat’s throat turned her on. “But I do appreciate your commitment to the job.”
She pulled another pint and sat it next to the half-empty one he’d abandoned to kick some ass.
“Thank you.” He smiled at her again as he returned to his seat. She winked at him, and he felt it like a stroke against his skin.
He sat down and finished his half-full beer in one swallow. She moved over to the assholes who’d been talking about her.
“You guys okay?”
Both of them looked over at Anders nervously, as though they were wary that he would get up and hit them again. They were right to be worried. If they so much as looked below Dahlia’s neck, he would dismantle them.
“I’m not going to hit you again.” The as long as you keep your stupid mouths shut was implied. Anders turned to Dahlia. “I’m sorry about that.”
She smiled at him, and he was glad to see it. “Seriously, did they really try to steal a beer? I was only joking.”
She wiped up the counter in front of him again, though she should probably have been paying attention to the other end of the bar. Where the blood was.
“No.” He wasn’t sure what more he should say. Maybe it would be better if she didn’t know they were talking about her, but maybe talk would turn into action when he wasn’t around. She should know that. “They were talking about a woman.”
“Me, right?” She shook her head and put her hands on her hips. “Those motherfuckers.”
“You swear a lot.” Anders normally didn’t have a problem keeping his mouth shut. But something about her made him want to say everything he was thinking. She’d make a great reporter. But he realized how that might have sounded, felt his neck flush in embarrassment, and backtracked. “I mean, that’s totally fine if you find that swearing helps.”
“I’m sure you’ve heard much more colorful language than mine, Mr. Professional Hockey Player.” Her eyes didn’t quite light up, but they conveyed more interest than they had since before he’d told her.
“I’ve never heard such colorful language from someone so…colorful.”
She furrowed her brow, leaning with both hands on the bar. She wore a white tank top, and he caught enough cleavage to realize she wasn’t wearing a bra. If he hadn’t already been blushing, he would be now. He looked away, out over the lake, so expansive that it was like the ocean up here.
The bar and restaurant hung out over a rocky break, and the sound of the waves crashing against the beach below filled the silence. He hadn’t meant to insult her, he didn’t know how to charm a woman.
“You’re not the typical hockey dickhead, are you?”
He looked back at her then, careful to keep his gaze on her face. She had her nose wrinkled up, the only creases on her pale, bare skin. “I don’t think I am.”
“Well, those motherfuckers were the typical hockey dickheads in high school. And now, without anything to do but drink in my bar and try to get me to trip and fall on one of their dicks, they’ve gone to seed.”
“I could see why they’d want that.” Anders couldn’t believe he’d said that out loud. He spent most of his time trying to fend off puck bunnies—not because he didn’t want to have sex eventually, but because he wanted to have sex the first time with someone who didn’t have anything to gain. He wished at least once a day that he didn’t have principles. He wished he hadn’t grown up chubby, hadn’t had acne, hadn’t been born painfully shy. He wished his parents hadn’t been so terribly religious.
Most of all, he wished that he wasn’t such a dope when it came to talking to women. Maybe he could say something that didn’t make him sound like a “typical hockey dickhead” if he wasn’t so behind in this particular area.
He’d been waiting for her to pour the remainder of his beer over his head, walk off in a huff. She didn’t give a shit that he was a professional hockey player. Hell, she’d been a lot flirtier when he’d scowled at her. Now that he’d as much as told her that he wanted to have sex with her, he was sure that would never happen.
Instead, she laughed, and looked at him like she had when she’d told him he couldn’t be cranky in her bar. When she was done with her little chucklefest, she leaned over and looked him right in the eye. Close enough that he could smell the fresh sweat of her skin and a hint of candied lip stuff.
“You’re honest.” Her gaze slipped down to his mouth, which he’d unconsciously been wetting with his tongue. “I like that. Definitely not a typical dickhead.”
His eyelids got heavy, and he almost let himself reach out and touch his mouth to hers.
But a crowd of guys walked into the bar, yelling out her name and demanding beers.
2
Anders, the Viking Giant who’d made her belly go heavy, disappeared at some point over the next half an hour. It was just as well because a bachelor party of guys up on the North Shore for a fishing weekend showed up and occupied her for the next three hours. She didn’t have time to clean the bar in front of him a fourth time. But she still wanted more of his dimples.
And she wouldn’t have minded had he stuck around when she poured the bachelor party its fifth round of shots. They were tipping well, but she knew more than one of them would end up patting her on the ass before the end of the night.
The be-mulleted creeps she went to high school with—the ones whom he’d beat up—also left after three more beers. She’d known what they had to say about her. Earned or not, she’d had a reputation before she’d left for culinary school. Her reputation was a product of what she now knew was sexual assault, but the people who knew her back then didn’t draw the distinctions. To them, she’d been asking for it.
At least her cousin hadn’t had any more emergencies in the dining room. The fact that Lilly couldn’t run a service on her own was problematic enough. This wasn’t even their busy time—summer was hopping, but early fall and spring were where it was at.
Dahlia shouldn’t be here. She should be back in M
inneapolis, opening her restaurant in a week. Instead, she was slinging drinks at her family’s resort. Fuck, she wasn’t allowed in the kitchen. That was her uncle’s domain. It didn’t matter that she’d graduated from the Cordon Bleu in Paris. Too fancy for the rest of us. She could hear the venom seeping out of her uncle’s words, even if they were in her own head.
It wasn’t like she wanted to change everything, she just wanted to introduce the Thunderbay Cove kitchen to a few mother sauces, maybe a beouf bourguignon instead of chicken and wild rice soup as a lunch special, once a week.
But no, because she’d failed when she’d tried to leave home, she wasn’t going to get to do that. She would be the barmaid. She’d smile and put up with the locals who thought of her as a warm, wet hole. And she would be grateful for the opportunity to come home. Some people weren’t quite so lucky.
The bachelor party stayed until the dining room closed, and got louder. Lilly walked out, probably hoping that one of them was single. When she looked at Dahlia hopefully, she shook her head once, and Lilly’s face fell.
Poor kid, she should get out of this town. She was only a few years younger than Dahlia, but she’d never left town, never been on a plane before. She always knew she wanted to stay in Tofte and raise a family. Only thing she needed was a guy to do that with, and this wasn’t exactly the best place to find a husband.
Thunderbay Cove was an upscale resort, but it was mostly families. And low-key bachelor parties. The only guys around for more than a few days or a week were there to work at the resort for the season. The only permanent people were ones they’d known all their lives. And, unfortunately, they were accurately represented by the mullet brigade from earlier.
Lilly went behind the bar and played bar back until all but two of the bachelors stumbled back to their rooms.
“You want me to stick around?” Lilly pointed to the stool where Anders had sat. She hesitated, as though she’d already thought about it as his stool.
Weird.
She shook her head. “You want me to go?” Lilly sounded confused. Usually, if Dahlia had a group of guys at the bar or the kitchen closed, she always wanted Lilly to stick around.
“I want you to stay. I was just—uh—thinking about this guy that was in here earlier.”
Lilly squealed and hopped on the stool. Dahlia turned to grab her cousin some wine and collect her thoughts.
At the last second, she grabbed a second glass. She didn’t normally drink on the job, but her nerves were so jangled from thinking about a guy. She hadn’t had the time or energy to think thoughts like these since she’d come up here. Since Dylan had dumped her and tanked her career.
“Tell me about this dude that’s knocked you out of your silly man fast.”
Dahlia rolled her eyes and poured them both a generous glass. “Nothing is going to threaten the man fast.”
Saying that, she didn’t believe herself. That wasn’t to say that Anders was her type. Hockey players had not been her thing since high school, since she’d been dumb and drunk and wanting to feel like she fit in. And professional hockey players were also professional man whores. She’d probably get herpes from thinking about touching his penis.
“He’s not a threat to the man fast.” She hadn’t had sex or gone on a date since breaking up with Dylan and losing her restaurant. She wasn’t here to get seasonal dick like Lilly. She was here to save up enough money so she could go back to Europe, apprentice in a three-Michelin star kitchen and get her good name back. “No.”
“Come on. You have to have a little fun.”
Dahlia shook her head. It didn’t matter how hot he was. Hot wasn’t going to get her out of town any faster. Even though everything about him totally worked for her—the massive height, the blond- and twinkling-blue-eyed-Viking thing, the aw-shucks bullshit dimples—none of that changed that she was taking a break from dating. She had to focus on getting her career back; that was the true love of her life. As long as she worked hard and never let a man get in the way again, her career would never let her down. “Fun isn’t going to get my savings account replenished.”
She took a gulp of wine and walked back over to the remaining members of the bachelor party to see if they needed another round. Both of them were leaning heavily on the bar, and each other, they still needed another round.
“Dude, I almost crashed my car when I saw Anders Sorenson walking up the boardwalk when we got here,” one of the guys said. Though she hated guys who started sentences with the word “dude” more than anything other than typical dipshit hockey players, her ears perked up.
“Too bad, man, about that fall he took in Game Six.” Another one of the guys shook his head slowly, as though he was explaining that someone had died. “Without that knee thing, he would have been a fucking legend.”
She felt even more righteous in her plan of staying away from Anders. The only thing worse than a typical dipshit hockey player was probably a legendary dipshit hockey player. Who started sentences with “dude.”
Unfortunately, Lilly moved down the bar toward the bachelor party. Dahlia must have telegraphed her interest in their conversation. Or, she’d taken too long to get back to Lilly to spill her guts out about Anders.
“There’s a pro hockey player staying here?” Lilly turned to Dahlia. “Is that the one who was in the bar today? He was hot, but I had no idea he was a celebrity.”
Jesus Christ. Although Dahlia might be a hockey atheist, Lilly certainly was not. All three of her brothers played from pee-wee until high school. Sean even played for the Johnnies while he was in college. Lilly had been a hockey cheerleader, for fuck’s sake. The last thing that Dahlia needed was a walking, talking hockey boner instead of a head server.
“Tell us why he’s legendary?” Lilly was like the family dog; she could never leave a tasty morsel on the ground.
“Lilly—”
“Don’t give me that. You had your I-want-to-fuck-him face on. I know that face.”
“Good luck.” The other bachelor party dude snorted.
His friend punched him on the arm. “He’s a good hockey player.”
The first dude pointed at Dahlia. “But he’s not going to fuck her.”
A pit formed in Dahlia’s stomach, the kind she was familiar with. The same kind of pit that had formed when she’d realized that everyone in the senior class knew about her passing out and getting passed around at homecoming, the same kind of pit that had formed when Dylan had told her about his fiancée. It was the familiar kind of physical reaction that she liked to describe as “this is why I can’t have nice things.” For fuck’s sake, she couldn’t have a crush on a guy for a few hours without someone ruining it. Didn’t matter that she didn’t know why she couldn’t have it; it was enough that she knew she couldn’t.
“Dude, she’s hot. Of course he’d fuck her.” Of course he would. He was drunk, and very much a bro. She was irresistible to the male version of “basic bitch.” But she was a tiny bit relieved that she hadn’t morphed into being unfuckable as a matter of course in the past six months.
“You must not read Deadspin regularly, man.”
“At least I don’t read it to jack off, dude.”
“Man, I can’t believe you’re getting your dumb ass married next weekend.”
“What does knowing about sports have to do with me getting married?” “Dude” had a point there.
By now, even Dahlia wanted to know why Anders would obviously never fuck her. She and Lilly watched this tennis match; it was riveting as well as stupid at this point.
“Dude’s a virgin. He does not fuck.” Man could have said that Anders was an alien from a planet where the men were physically incapable of copulation, and she would have believed him more easily than she would believe what she said.
Unless—maybe he noticed her swearing so much because he was some sort of Jesus freak. “Is he like Tim Tebow? Married to Jesus until he’s married to his sweet, Christian, beauty queen of a wife?”
That wasn’t unheard of, especially around here. Dahlia thought it was maybe lack of exposure to new and interesting genitals that made staying a virgin easy this far up North, but she hadn’t thought about it a lot after she left her baggage and reputation behind.
Dude pointed at her and laughed. “You’re funny. I’d totally fuck you if I wasn’t engaged.” He pointed at Man. “He’ll still fuck you, though. And I can guarantee he’s a tender lover.”
Man saw that as a moment to interject. “He doesn’t know that I’m a tender lover firsthand, so you know.”
Lilly, deadpan, said, “She’d actually be more interested in fucking you if your friend knew for a fact that you’re a tender lover.” Lilly was right. That was the only way Dahlia would ever get the kind of threesome she wanted—if she found two dudes who liked kissing other dudes. “But, let’s get back to the point here. Is he impotent?”
Man shrugged, apparently not that keen on having sex with Dahlia—just offering, as one does. “Well, the article posed several theories, but he’s apparently not religious. They did post some unfortunate pictures of him from high school that his teammates got a hold of.” He puffed out his cheeks. “Total chubster and a pizza face.”
Dahlia wanted to slap him so hard it would look like he’d been branded, but she managed to keep her calm because she wanted more information. “But he plays professional hockey now.”
Even butt-ass ugly pro hockey players could get laid because—money. And Anders was anything but ugly.
“It’s the bounty.”
“What bounty? What are you talking about?” At this point Dahlia was yelling at the guys. The looked stunned, so she grabbed them two more beers. “Last call. Finish the story. Use your words.”
“His teammates put a bounty on his virginity. Sorenson wouldn’t talk for the story, but rumor has it that he won’t sleep with anyone until they lift the bounty.”
“How much?” Dahlia couldn’t quite reach Lilly to slap her, but that made her want to.
“It’s up to like $150,000 now.”
Dahlia’s eyes bugged clear out of her head. She looked at Lilly, and they were wearing the same expression for a split second. Until Dahlia’s conscience kicked in. She couldn’t, could she? No. That would make her an actual whore instead of just the whore avatar in the imaginations of all the men in Tofte.