“My name isn’t Harvey,” the bartender told her.
“I know,” she said. “But ‘give me a wallbanger, Mike’ just doesn’t sound the same.” She turned to Ty. “Right?”
“No ma’am,” he said with a grin. “Just not as funny.”
She tilted her head to the side and looked him up and down with a slight frown between her eyebrows as she took a sip of beer. “Okay,” she said after she lowered the bottle. “I give. What the hell are you doing here? You looking for some smoke?”
“No,” Ty said. “I was looking to get laid.”
She laughed out loud again. It was a big, boisterous laugh, the kind confident girls made; the ones who knew who they were and didn’t give a fuck what you thought. The kind of girl he liked but didn’t meet very often. Those curves, that laugh, her sexy southern accent. All he could think was damn. “Another time, another place,” she said. “Let me give you some advice. Go. This is not the place for you. Don’t even finish that beer.”
“I can’t,” Ty said, taking another sip.
She looked at her bottle, identical to Ty’s. “I know the beer isn’t that good,” she said. “So why not?”
“I can’t leave without you,” he told her.
“I am not the lay you’re looking for,” she said, like she was Obi Wan Kenobi. She pointed at the booth in the back with the bottle. “See that guy there? Tonight I’m his. And he doesn’t take kindly to guys hitting on me.”
“Then why’d you come over here?” Ty asked. He wondered what she meant by “tonight I’m his.” Was she a hooker? She didn’t act like one.
“To save your sorry ass,” she said smartly. “I’m starting to think I’m wasting my time.”
“Now,” one of the Hispanic guys said, standing up and looking at his watch. Suddenly half the bar got up and moved toward the back. His drinking companion put her beer down on the bar. Ty noticed it looked like she hadn’t had any even though he’d watched her sipping it.
“Got to go, honey,” she said to him with a wink. “When we go out the back, you go out the front.”
“Why?” Ty asked. He was confused as hell by this girl. She didn’t seem at all what she ought to be.
“Because I said so,” she told him, suddenly serious. “I really am trying to save your ass, okay?”
“Sissy,” the guy in the back called out. He was waving the girl over. “Git your ass over here. And bring your new boyfriend.”
“Shit,” she said under her breath. She glared at Ty. “You’re in it, now, boy,” she said. “You stick close to me and follow my lead, you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. His stomach had kind of bottomed out when he’d been singled out by her date for the night, and her crazy intense attitude wasn’t helping. When it came down to it, Ty was a lover not a fighter. But he might bust his knuckles up over her if he had to. Which surprised the hell out of him. He hadn’t given two shits about a woman in ages.
“Comin’, honey,” she called out. She grabbed Ty’s arm and dragged him after her. “I am not gonna let you ruin two long months of work,” she muttered under her breath. Ty didn’t think she knew he could hear her. He had to have good hearing when he did his job in stadiums full of fifty thousand screaming fans.
They mingled with the crowd and Ty got some curious stares as well as some scary blank ones. In about two seconds he was flanked by a couple of crackers with those blank stares. He’d watched enough bad TV and movies to recognize gang muscle when he saw it. They ended up out back in the parking lot, the two groups still separated, by mutual agreement it seemed. Sissy, if that was her name, had maneuvered them up to the front, next to her boyfriend. She let go of Ty and latched onto the cracker’s arm just as a big box truck pulled into the lot.
“What ya got for me, baby?” she said in a sexy little voice.
“Not for you, bitch,” he replied absently. “This is all for me.” He turned and gave her a cold smile. “Then Daddy’ll give you what you’re asking for.”
Well, Ty did not like the sound of that. He was about to say something when she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and stomped on his foot. Her look clearly said shut up. He frowned at her but kept his mouth shut.
The truck stopped and two guys jumped out of the cab. They looked like clones of the Hispanic dudes from the bar. Sissy and her boyfriend walked toward the truck, along with the muscle that had been flanking Ty and several of the Hispanic bar patrons. Ty had an itch between his shoulder blades that usually indicated he was about to get sacked. That didn’t bode well.
The back doors of the truck opened and one of the cracker muscle heads jumped inside. There were some low murmurs around him and he was pretty sure he heard the word heroin. Holy fucking shit. He’d walked into a drug deal. That officially made his visit to Kitty Licks one of the worst decisions of his life. The urge to grab Sissy and run for it was almost too much to resist.
Before long the guy from the truck came to the open door and crouched down to talk to Sissy’s boyfriend. As soon as he did, Sissy let go of the guy’s arm and backed off. No one else seemed to notice as one of the Hispanic guys came over to talk to the guy she was with. Suddenly a big duffel bag appeared out of nowhere and was passed from the cracker to the Hispanic dude.
Ty was torn. He didn’t want to leave the girl he’d met in the middle of this shit. But there was no way he could get caught here. He was barely clinging to the edge of the NFL with his fingernails as it was. Fuck, fuck fuck, he thought, looking around. He could see his car from where he was, parked in the glow of one of the only working parking lot lights, first row. He inched his way closer, keeping his eyes on Sissy, who was walking a little too casually back toward the crowd.
“Party on, now,” one of the guys behind him said. “Tater always throws a kickass party after a good deal.”
“I’m a gonna have me that girl of his,” another one said. “Shit if she ain’t the hottest thing he’s fucked in ages.”
“I think he’s giving her to the Sur gang,” the first guy said as if it was no big deal to give a living breathing human being as a gift to some gangbangers.
“Well, I don’t want none of that shit after,” the second said with disgust. Ty nearly turned around and punched him.
Just then her eyes found Ty in the crowd. With a subtle move of her head she indicated the parking lot. Ty slid through the crowd as she veered, walking toward the cars. As if on cue sirens cut through the night and there were suddenly cop cars spilling into the parking lot behind the box truck.
“This is the police. Drop your weapons,” a disembodied voice blared over a loudspeaker.
Pandemonium broke out as everyone began running for cars or the surrounding dark. Ty joined the melee, running for his car with a sinking feeling. There was no way he was going to get out of this clean. He yanked out his remote and unlocked the car. Just as he was pulling open the driver’s-side door, Sissy came running up, out of breath. “Give me the keys,” she demanded.
“Like hell,” Ty shouted. “Get in.”
“I’m a cop, genius,” she hissed at him. “Give me the fucking keys. Two months of undercover work is about to escape in that fucking red Mustang over there, and there is no way in hell I’m going to let you get in the way. So move it, or I shoot it.”
Ty looked over and saw that the guy she’d been with was jumping into a Mustang that barely slowed as it passed him. The car was headed out the opposite side of the parking lot from all the cops. “Why isn’t anyone else chasing him?” he asked incredulously.
“Because nobody listens to me,” she said in disgust. She ripped the keys out of his hand and climbed into his car. She took the time to pull off her heels and toss them out into the parking lot. Ty took advantage of her distraction to throw himself over the hood of his black Porsche and climb into the passenger seat. “Get the fuck out,” she yelled at him.
“No,” he said, trying to sound calm even though his heart was about to pound out of his ches
t. “My car. And you need backup.”
At that she barked out a laugh and threw the car into gear. “And that’s you?” she asked, peeling out of the parking space after her quarry.
“Yes, ma’am,” he shouted over the squeal of tires. “Usually I call the play, but tonight I’m going to follow your lead.”
Love stories you’ll never forget
By authors you’ll always remember
eOriginal Romance from Random House
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Broken Play Page 23