Mercy wondered how much convincing it would take to get her out the back door into the alley.
“First pitcher’s on the house, boys,” she said cheerfully, setting the tray down and passing out their three mugs.
Walsh took his silently, but RJ flashed her a wide grin and said, “You’re a doll, Holly.”
Her mouth gave a self-deprecating little twist and she rolled her eyes, the move sincere and becoming on her. “Don’t thank me, thank Jeff,” she said of the bar’s owner. “He says you guys are a great tourist attraction.” Quick smile with dimples, sparkle in the eyes. They were green, Mercy noted. Bright, glittering green.
She turned them up to him, her expression friendly, polite, good-natured…and without a hint of invitation. There wasn’t a thing flirtatious about her as she said, “You’re new.” It was a bold statement, and could have been punctuated by a saucy hip swivel and lowered lashes. But from her, it was just a statement, this bright punch of words off her tongue. And Mercy had been on the receiving end of enough lasciviousness to know that this girl had not a scrap of sexual intent in her. In fact…maybe…yeah, there was a touch of nervousness there, a little raw scab of fear she was good at hiding. You couldn’t change the smell of fear, though, and beneath her gardenia perfume, Mercy could smell the fear. That was his job, after all.
Huh.
“Yeah,” he said. “Mercy.”
“Holly,” she said, with a little dip that was almost a curtsy, flashing her dimples. “Lemme know if you need anything else.” She looked at all three of them then. “I’ll be back to check on you in a few.” And off she went with a swish of silky shorts to another table, tray tucked under one small arm.
“See?” RJ said. “She’s just…something’s off.” He shook his head and poured the beer, frowning as he tried to puzzle it out.
“She’s scared,” Walsh said. A quick glance to the Englishman’s ever-present flat expression proved that he’d detected the fear, too. His blue eyes touched Mercy’s and they acknowledged each other’s perception. “Of what, who knows. But she ain’t interested in letting any of us help her figure it out.”
RJ snorted. “Not us, no. But she’s got her sights on somebody for sure.” He motioned across the bar with his mug, and Mercy was surprised to see that Michael had a corner booth all to himself.
The guy was reading, some thick hardback book open on the table in front of him, hand stroking idly through the condensation on his beer mug. His usual lack of expression seemed appropriate for once, given what he was doing. If it weren’t for the cut, and the hard bulges of muscle visible beneath the long, thin sleeves of his shirt, he would have looked like a professor. As it was, the benign, emotionless picture was set off by a certain terrifying aura of calculated violence.
And Holly made a beeline for him, sliding into the booth across from him, letting her tray rest against the seat, propping an elbow on the table and saying something to him with a smile that set her whole face to glowing.
“Michael?” Mercy asked. “She likes him?”
RJ nodded. “Asks about him when he isn’t here. Always trying to get us to give her details about him. Poor girl’s got it bad. And he doesn’t even know she exists.”
As if to prove the point, Michael’s head lifted from the book slowly, his gaze impassive as it moved over the girl’s face. He gave a fractional nod in response to something she’d said. Then lifted the left side of the book, showing her the cover. Holly grinned again and launched into a happy burst of chatter. Michael watched her with the detached scrutiny of some woodland predator. And there were all the signals Holly hadn’t given the rest of them: the curve of her body, the way she squeezed her breasts together, the soft tilt to her chin, the way her hand kept creeping across the table like she wanted to take hold of him.
Mercy glanced away. “The world’s a fucked up place.”
And then it proceeded to get more fucked up, as Ava and her boyfriend walked in the front door.
**
By the time they climbed back in the truck after the royal UT campus tour, Ava felt lighter, more like the girl who’d decided, some months before, that dating Ronnie was the healthiest thing she could possibly do for herself. Dinner? he suggested. Why not. How about Bell Bar? That was a local spot if any place could be deemed such. So there they went, for beers and hot wings and a nice wind-down to the day in the warm, dark-smelling bar that was tourist-friendly enough for Ron, and club-friendly enough for her.
They were seated, at one of the low round tables beside the bar, before she realized that Mercy was there.
Her tongue promptly glued itself to the roof of her mouth.
“What can I get you to drink?” their waitress, a booby brunette was asking, as Ava tore her eyes away from Mercy’s tall shape over at one of the tall tables.
“Um…” She glanced up in time to see Ronnie scoping out said boobs. Screw the beer. “Whiskey rocks,” she said.
The waitress didn’t blink. “Jack?”
“That’s fine.”
Ronnie gave her an appropriate frown as he ordered a Heineken.
Ava looked away from his censorious concern, and her eyes went again to Mercy, without her consent. Why did he have to look so good? Why wasn’t Ronnie – why wasn’t anyone – enough to drag her heart away?
She snapped back to the moment, but not fast enough. Ronnie twisted, and glanced across the room, to the table of three Dogs. When he turned back, he looked grim. “Which one is he?”
Ava felt her throat constrict. “Which one is who?” She tried to play dumb.
“Okay, I may not have a clue about this club stuff, but I’m not so stupid I can’t see that you obviously had some sort of thing with one of these guys. What was the name ? – Mercy?” He nodded and tipped his head toward the table of Dogs. “Which one? He’s over there, isn’t he? And that’s why you look like you just got punched in the stomach.”
The waitress returned, with perfect timing, and set down their drinks. Ava ordered them a basket of wings and a plate of fries, and threw down half her drink in one swallow as the brunette stowed her pad and walked away.
Ronnie may have enjoyed the cleavage, but once the girl was gone, he was laser-guided on Ava again. “So?” He lifted his brows.
She sighed, and ran her finger around the rim of her heavy glass tumbler. “Mercy, yeah,” she said, feeling defeated. There was no sense pretending at this point, not if he’d figured it out. Her face heated and she furthered the problem with another slug of Jack. “He’s the tall one, with the black hair.”
Now it was Ronnie’s turn to look like he’d been punched in the stomach. “What?” He twisted around in his chair and took a good long stare at Mercy; he had to be seeing the same stalwart man she saw, the way he made all furniture seem insubstantial. “No.” He was shaking his head when he turned back around, his eyes wide, face pale. “No. No way were you ever with that guy.”
Down went the rest of the whiskey, and her stomach crackled with the flames. “Believe it.”
He sat back and his eyes glazed over for a long minute.
Here it came: the judgment, the ridicule.
But Ronnie said, “You understand you’re worlds too good for someone like that, right?”
She blinked. The whiskey had made her head light and her limbs heavy. The warmth was spreading, a hot tingling out through her fingers. In a distant way, she was offended. Don’t insult him, she wanted to say. He’s incredible and I will always adore him and shut up, Ronnie, just shut up.
But his gaze was earnest and his words had been a compliment, an offer of comfort.
“I wouldn’t say worlds…”
“I would. You’re going somewhere, Ava. You’re smart, and talented; you’re a good student, you apply yourself–”
She snorted. “Didn’t know I was dating my high school guidance counselor.”
He grinned, face coloring. “I’m being serious.”
“So was she. And also not a fan of the cl
ub.”
“I didn’t say–”
“I know.” She grinned back. “It’s just that you guidance types tend to discourage ‘intelligent, talented’ girls from spending time with career criminals.”
It took him a beat to realize she was kidding, then laughed. “Just trying to keep young, impressionable–”
She wiped her hand down his beer bottle and flicked the water droplets into his face, which set them both to chuckling.
When they’d sobered, she said, “He doesn’t want me, Ronnie. He made that abundantly clear five years ago. Let’s not let him ruin our evening.”
He nodded. “Fair enough. But what about that one?” He pointed toward Littlejohn, sitting at a booth alone, with a view of them and the door, looking uptight and too-serious.
Ava sighed. “That one’s here to stay, unfortunately.”
“Prospect, get over here.”
Littlejohn – lanky, messy-looking kid striving hard to please his new president – jerked to attention and came to Mercy’s table, almost sending another patron sprawling in his haste. “Sir?”
By this point, Mercy had downed more than his share of the beer in the pitcher, and then ordered two rounds of Johnnie Walker Red. His old friend. It was probably a bad idea to say what he was about to say.
“Prospect, you’ve been following them all afternoon?” He nodded toward Ava across the room, sharing fries with her little punk.
“And not a hair out of place,” Littlejohn said, puffing up his chest a bit proudly.
RJ laughed.
Mercy said, “Lemme ask you something.” He leaned against the back of his stool, arms folded. “What do you think of that boyfriend of hers? Does he look shifty to you? You know, just your bodyguard opinion. Off the record.”
“Jesus Christ, Merc,” RJ said.
Walsh pulled the Johnnie Walker deftly out of reach – both glasses.
“Hey,” Mercy protested, and Walsh held up a finger in silent refusal.
“Um…” Littlejohn scratched at his hair. “Shifty like…how?”
“Like shifty,” Mercy said, exasperated. Jesus, why was this kid so thick? And why couldn’t he come up with any appropriate synonyms? He wasn’t drunk. Not really… “Like…no es bueno.”
“Oh, look,” Walsh said, “he’s trilingual.”
Mercy flipped him the bird. “Write me a sonnet, Shakespeare.” And turned back to the prospect.
“This is so not good,” RJ muttered.
The prospect was not-so-subtly studying Rodd or Todd or whatever-the-fuck-his-name-was across the bar. He rubbed his chin. “I think he seems…well, like a pussy–”
“Yes!” Mercy slapped the table. “Thank you. It’s like I’ve been trying to tell them.”
Walsh shook his head with a delicate look of disgust. “No, you haven’t.”
“He’s a total puss,” Mercy continued. “But…shifty, too. Like, a shifty pussy.”
RJ made a choking sound.
Walsh gave a rare chuckle. “Shifty pussy.”
Mercy nodded, aware that he shouldn’t have been this dead serious, and that his vocabulary should have been better.
He felt himself sway a moment, catching the edge of the table, suddenly aware that the room was boiling hot.
Shit, he was drunk.
“Prospect.” He grabbed the kid’s shoulder and dragged his ear in close; Littlejohn staggered, but caught himself manfully, and didn’t complain. I like him, Mercy thought. He says Sir and he agrees with me. Next year, I’m voting “yeah” to patch him in. “Listen to me.”
“You’re not whispering,” Walsh informed him, helpful as always.
“Fuck you. Listen, prospect, I need you to do something for me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I need you to keep your eyes glued” – miming of eyes gluing with his fingers – “to the shifty pussy. If he breathes wrong, I want to know about it. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes, sir. Absolutely.”
“Good boy.” Mercy turned him loose and clapped his shoulder hard.
“Yes, sir.”
The prospect went back to his post, and Mercy looked at his two brothers. RJ was grinning. Walsh looked like someone’s mother.
“I want my drink back,” Mercy said, and Walsh moved the glass even farther away.
“Well that’s not happening.”
Ava ordered her second Jack with Coke, but by the time she’d finished it, she realized her mistake. The room became fuzzy-edged and slightly mobile, the lights amber orbs that swayed over the top of Ronnie’s head. Ronnie himself had become a sort of impressionist version of a person, the lines of his face indistinct.
Ava rolled her glass between her palms, watching the amber droplets cling to the bottom, a dazzling spectacle with the light passing through the tiny beads. “I should drink whiskey more often,” she said, in a voice that didn’t sound like her own. “It’s good.”
“You hate whiskey,” Ronnie reminded her. “And I think you may have had a little too much of it.” He gave her a slender grin.
She aimed the mouth of the glass at him. “Let me amend my former standing: I love whiskey.”
He coughed a hollow laugh. “You ready to head out?”
She glanced at the basket of wing bones and the burnt ends of French fries left over, and nodded. “Yep.”
But when she moved to stand, the floor shifted under her pumps. “Oh.” She threw out a hand and steadied herself against the table. She smiled a smile so wide it hurt her face, one she didn’t intend, and knew she was good and tipsy. “Shit. Okay. You were right.” Her laugh was high and unlike her.
Ronnie came to her side and pulled her arm through his. “Little too much?” he asked, still with that small grin.
“A lot too much. For me, anyway. I’m a lightweight.”
“Not from where I’m standing,” he joked as she leaned against him, and she stomped on his foot on purpose with her next step. “Ow.” He chuckled.
In her alcohol haze, she almost forgot to glance over at Mercy on their way. Almost. And when she did, she wished she hadn’t.
He was sitting with Walsh and RJ, an empty pitcher on the table, and he was saying something to the same brunette waitress that Ronnie had been eyeing, something that brought a gleam to his dark eyes and flashed his canines in a way that was half-smile and half-snarl. He looked predatory and gorgeous, and she wanted to burst into noisy tears.
She must have made some sort of sound, because Ronnie’s arm slid around her waist and he said, “You okay?”
“No.” She dropped her eyes away, staring down at her feet. For a second, the room spun as she tried to rectify the sight of prim black pumps and pressed skinny trousers. Where were the heavy boots? The jeans?
This is me, she reminded herself. The new me. Because the girl in the jeans and boots had died the night Mercy had come knocking at her door in Athens.
She wanted to howl. She wanted to hit something. She wanted to curl into a ball on the greasy barroom floor. She’d had too much to drink, and she knew that was part of the problem, but not the whole of it. The most painful thing of all was this realization that she’d left her home, her life, her self behind, because it hurt too badly to be the girl who Mercy didn’t love.
“It’s too hot in here,” she muttered, and Ronnie steered her toward the door.
The crisp night air, faintly damp and smelling of the river, flooded her lungs when they stepped outside, cooling her heated face, whispering through her hair. The street was dressed in big dollops of lamplight, smaller, cozier pinpricks flickering in windows of restaurants and closed-up shops. Up above, stars winked in the velvet indigo drape of night. Autumn was coming, that first faint brush of Canadian snap in the breeze.
It was home. It was her city, her place, her smells and sights and sounds…and she wasn’t Ava, not anymore. She was grieving, grieving for the girl she’d been, and wishing she could go back there.
She let Ronnie help her around the
side of the building, halfway toward the parking lot in rear, and then she shook him off and pressed her back to the brick façade of the bar, sighing deeply, and drawing back in the river-smell.
“Is the world spinning?” he asked, softly.
She closed her eyes. “Yeah.”
She felt him move in close to her, that shift in the air, the subtle brush of warmth down the length of her as he pressed her back against the wall and kissed her.
Ava kept her eyes shut, clutched at his shoulders, and pretended he was someone else.
**
A few hours and a hot shower cleared the fuzziness from her head, leaving her just tired, her muscles loose and relaxed, her heart heavy. It was almost midnight when she left the bathroom in her pajamas, shaking out her hair and working her sore scalp with her fingertips, on her way to check that Ronnie was all set on the sofa.
He was already passed out, curled on his side in a way that made him look about twelve, face pressed deep in the pillow.
The lights were on in the kitchen, she saw, and then she heard the distinct crackle of paper.
Go to bed, her common sense told her, but she went into the kitchen instead.
Ghost sat at the table, what looked like a map spread before him. He held a steaming mug of coffee in one hand, and made notations on a notepad with the other, frowning to himself, lips moving as he held up his end of some silent argument.
Ava tried to back away silently, but his head snapped up, dark eyes fixing her in place.
“I thought you were in bed.”
Her stomach squeezed in that old unpleasant way. She kept waiting for that magic age after which he’d stop being an indifferent drill sergeant. Twenty-two wasn’t it. “On my way there,” she said, and started to turn.
“Ava.” To her surprise, his expression went through a strange sequence of twitches, like he was trying to soften it and wasn’t quite sure how. Unless he was giving her that proud papa grin, he was either blank or stern in front of her. It was Maggie who got the softer side – sometimes. Nevertheless, Ava saw a struggle in him, a hilarious effort toward kindness. “Sit down a sec.”
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