Artistic License

by Elle Pierson

  In this case, it was a little difficult to avoid the reality of Jeeves jumping up and clawing happily at her backside, or the sound of her cousin snickering on the doorstep.

  Reaching behind her to pull Jeeves down before he accidentally ripped off her skirt and tipped the scene over into a complete farce, Sophy hurriedly backed away from Mick, her cheeks flaming with her seven hundredth flush of the day. Tongue kissing in front of family members – mortifying.

  She coughed, and her gaze skated over Melissa’s malicious delight to land on Dale. He was standing behind her cousin with his hands in his pockets and an expression on his face she’d never seen. On Dale, that is. She’d seen that particular shade of aloof on Mick plenty of times. Dale, however, was like Sean – larger than life, emotions hung out in the wind for all to see.

  Uneasily, she glanced back up at Mick, and saw that he too was watching Dale. His mouth was set grimly.

  It occurred to her that she seemed to have been involved in quite a number of these Wild West stand-offs in the few weeks since she’d met him.

  Fortunately, there was Melissa to break the tension this time, and she did so by waving a worse-for-wear shoe in Sophy’s face. “This is a Ferragamo pump,” she said crossly, outrage having reclaimed its position from amusement. “This is a dog puke covered Ferragamo pump.”

  Sophy blinked, forced her attention back to Melissa, attempted to drag her brain along for the ride. “What?” she asked blankly, and then frowned. “Why were you wearing your Ferragamos around the house on a Monday morning?”

  “I’m sorry, is that the point? No.”

  “Sorry to interrupt…this,” Mick broke in hastily, his male alarm obviously going off at the prospect of women arguing over shoes, “but I have to get going, Sophy, or I’ll be late for my meeting.”

  “Oh. Sure. Of course.” Sophy shoved at a stand of hair that had fallen loose from her bun. “Um, call me later? Or something.”

  “Aren’t you working tonight?” he asked, one hand playing with his keys, rotating them over his knuckles. He cast another long, hard look at Dale, who was still standing silently in the hallway.

  “Oh,” she said again, flustered. God, this day. This month. “Yes, I am. I’m on from five until twelve again.”

  “I’ll pick you up outside the bar at midnight,” he said, and his tone brooked no arguments.

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. The Army sergeant staccato hit her straight in the tolerance nerve, but she would rather be safe than proud. She hadn’t been looking forward to walking home alone again, not until they had figured out whether there was anything to worry about. “Fine,” she said stiffly, then belatedly realised it was still a favour, even if it had been delivered unwrapped and without ceremony, and added, “Thank you.”

  He nodded, said a brief goodbye to a fascinated Melissa and clenched his jaw in Dale’s direction, which might have been guy code for a greeting had it not been accompanied by a stony glare.

  The car engine hadn’t faded from earshot when Dale spoke for the first time, abruptly. “I have to get going too,” he said woodenly, and Melissa stared at him in surprise.

  “What? I thought we going to get coffee and head in to work.”

  He wasn’t looking at either of them. Bending to pat a mechanical hand to Jeeves’s head, he muttered an apology and a vague mumble about picking something up at a store before their shifts started.

  He all but jogged to his car.

  Melissa raised a quizzical brow at Sophy.

  “Was it something we said?” A grin spread across her face. “And speaking of what obviously hasn’t been said – what have you been up to, chicky?”

  Sophy groaned, and buried her face against Jeeves’s neck.

  By ten o’clock that night, she was beginning to wonder if someone had been spiking her perfume with pheromones. She had been asked out twice, which might have been more flattering if one guy hadn’t vomited on the dance floor immediately after her refusal, and the other hadn’t instantly turned and tried his luck with the next woman who got in his path. Another gentleman, using the term with every nuance of sarcasm, had directed his every drink order to her cleavage for the past two hours, and someone had actually pinched her on the bottom. Pinched her bottom, like she was a cocktail waitress in a comedy burlesque show.

  All of which was pretty miserable, but relatively harmless. It was a newcomer to the bar who was setting off the more serious alarm bells on her creep radar.

  He was young, probably younger than she was, about twenty-one or so, and heavily built, packed with muscle through the arms and chest. He had been sitting at the counter for about twenty minutes, all but ignoring the beer he had ordered, and staring straight at her with a horrible, expressionless, dead sort of perusal. Serial killer eyes, if she was going to be melodramatic about it.

  There was nothing openly lascivious about the observation, but it was so relentless that it was prickling the hairs on the back of her neck. Every flight instinct she possessed was urging her to get away from him, but the bar was packed, they were short-staffed, and she felt entrapped and claustrophobic.

  Ten minutes later, Ben, the other bartender on duty, leaned close and shouted over the music that one of the waitresses was late back from her break, and there was a booth over by the sound system waiting for a tray of cocktails. He was already reaching for it when Sophy seized the opportunity to get out of her watcher’s line of sight for a few minutes.

  “I’ll take it!” she called back, and arranged the heavy tray carefully on her arms, hoping for the best. It was not one of her marketable skills, negotiating a clear route through throngs of dancers with eight sloshing cocktails.

  It turned out be a poor decision all around.

  Seven glasses survived with their contents intact, but she was returning to the bar to replace the piña colada she’d spilled mid-journey, coincidentally during a club remix of Rupert Holmes’s Escape – always nice to have a thematic soundtrack for her mistakes – when she bumped into a hard chest.

  Starting to utter an apology that would never be heard over the music, she looked up and stiffened as she encountered the intense stare of her erstwhile admirer. The frightening blankness – and it was amazing what a different effect that sort of blank impassivity could have, depending on the individual man emitting it – had gone, replaced by a definite flare of…what? Interest? Determination?

  Sophy was actually getting quite frightened. She cast a quick glance around. There were people absolutely everywhere, but not one familiar face. It seemed ridiculous; what could he do to her in a crowded public space, after all, but that didn’t halt her increasing panic.

  Then he just grabbed for her. Actually seized her by the waist, a complete stranger, and started to tug her toward the side of the room, toward the exit, his grip steely against her ribcage.

  It was so shocking that, for a couple of minutes, she stayed frozen, passive, in his grip. Then adrenalin flooded her body in a rush of jittery strength, and she yanked back against his hold, possibly made some sort of shrieking noise that was swallowed up by the thumping percussion.

  Unbelievably, it seemed that he was going to be able to remove her from the room without anyone batting an eyelash, when there was a blur of motion and she was wrenched violently free of his hold.

  She skittered back on her heels, and her surroundings dipped and swayed for a dizzy moment, exacerbated by a sudden pulse of the detested strobe lighting. The sound of shouts and whooping seemed to get louder all of a sudden, and as her stunned brain began to chug into gear, she realised that the music had been turned off and all attention was focused on the two bodies struggling against the counter. Voices were either calling for the police to be summoned or joining in with a stupid “Fight, fight, fight!” chant.

  Sophy stared through dazed eyes at Mick, who had both hands bunched in her assailant’s shirt, up by his throat, and was hauling him almost off his feet, pressing him up against the oak bar. Glasses and bottles were s
hattered all over the surface, liquor spilling to the floor.

  The other man managed to break free, swung out with a punch that Mick blocked and returned with interest. They were almost evenly matched in size, but to judge by the lethal expression in his eyes, Mick was soundly winning in motivation.

  Her heart lunged and almost stopped when the bloody creep swung out his arm and seized a broken beer bottle, but the sight of the lethal, jagged weapon seemed to jolt some common sense and bravery back into the wired crowd. A handful of other men shoved forward and waded into the fight, helping Mick to disarm and restrain the brawny, struggling figure.

  Sophy stood, shivering, her arms wrapped around her torso, watching the scene with almost a sense of detachment. She belatedly recognised the owner of the bar, John, in the little group of better-late-than-never Good Samaritans. She hadn’t even realised he was in-house tonight. Ridiculously, she felt a rush of guilt and embarrassment, as if she’d committed an employee misdemeanour in attracting the attention of a criminal sleazebag.

  People were starting to chatter excitedly as the immediate danger passed and faces were turning to look at her. Fingers pointed in her direction, and her fidgeting increased.

  All she wanted was to go home.

  She couldn’t even look at the man on the floor. Mick had secured his hands with a length of cord, and was speaking in quick, rough sentences to John. He was casting frequent glances over at her, scanning her body for damage, searching her face for panic. He looked more furious than she’d ever seen him.

  Sophy pulled her gaze from his, stared determinedly at the floor, tried to block out the sights and sounds of the staring crowds around her. Her thoughts were as agitated as her twitching muscles, leaping from one fragment of feeling to another. She was shocked; she was horrified.

  She was completely confused. Who was the guy? Was he the anonymous gifter? Brad Pitt seemed more likely to have bought her a pâte de verre vase than that blank-faced bastard.

  Overriding it all, she felt intensely stressed and stupidly mortified. She had never been involved in such a situation in her life. She was the centre of very negative attention, it was a nightmare, and it seemed like the last straw in a whirling chaos of recent experiences.

  She fully recognised that her reaction was unfair, almost unbelievably so, and born of lingering shock. But for a few seconds she felt almost bitterly angry with Mick. Every forced mental change, every embarrassing scene of late seemed to revolve around him, and she let her resentment show in her eyes, just for an instant.

  Long enough. He glanced over at her again, and she saw his face change. He looked…struck, as if she’d landed a knockout punch where the assailant had failed.

  It was all just…too much. Sophy felt her face crumple, put up her hands to hide it. She wasn’t crying; she just couldn’t hold it together anymore.

  She jumped slightly when arms came around her, then almost fell into his hold. Mick’s palm came up to cup the back of her head, his fingers deep in her hair. Even after she’d hurt him, he was still there for her. Something about that seemed overwhelming, too much to think about tonight.

  Words were rumbling through his chest, against her ear. “…you all right? Sophy?” she heard at last, and she pulled back long enough to nod.

  The sound of sirens was loud outside now, uniformed police officers swept in, and most of the bar’s patrons swept out. Most of them were unlikely to have anything worse than a parking ticket on their conscience, but a police raid obviously destroyed the buzz of a good night out.

  Sociopaths brandishing broken bottles they could apparently take in their stride.

  For the second time in her life, and within the space of a month, Sophy found herself giving evidence to a policeman. Mick, at her side, his hand clenched around her hip, his mouth white and pinched, fired back questions of his own. She listened in continued bewilderment as they learned that there had already been a watch out for the man, as he’d tried something similar earlier in the evening, at another bar across town. He was also a suspect in an attempted assault that had taken place before Christmas.

  Haltingly, she mentioned the anonymous gifts, and the cop made a note, and asked her to come in and make yet another report the following day, but none of them thought the incidents were related. She had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time tonight, and unlucky enough to match the physical type the assailant seemed to target.

  Just an unfortunate coincidence. One of those things that happens every so often in every town and city.

  It didn’t happen to her.

  John came over and patted her arm, told her to go home right away and to leave the rest of her shifts that week. Sophy thanked him politely, and wondered if she was ever going to be able to set foot in the bar again.

  She couldn’t remember getting out to Mick’s car or the drive home, but her awareness returned when they pulled up outside her house. At the sight of the warmly lit windows and her polka dot gumboots lying on the step, she burst into tears.

  Mick immediately unsnapped his seatbelt and her own, and reached to pull her into his lap. It was a tight, awkward fit; there was barely room for his knees alone behind the wheel, but he managed to manoeuvre her close. She lay quietly against his chest as he stroked her back and ran shaking hands over her arms and neck. Her hands were clenched in fists near her wet cheeks, and her tears soaked into the fabric of his shirt.

  “Jesus,” he said on a long expulsion of breath.

  Quite.

  “Thank Christ I was early,” he muttered into the damp hair at her temple.

  For the first time, it occurred to her to wonder how exactly he’d managed that timely rescue.

  Sniffing, scrubbing ineffectually at her face with her hand, she straightened and looked at him. “What were you doing there?” she asked, trying not to think about those terrifying seconds before he’d appeared.

  Although the whole incident was starting to take on an unreal, blurry quality, like it was something she’d seen on TV right before falling asleep.

  Mick grimaced. “Obeying a lucky instinct?” He gave a half-shrug, his concerned eyes moving across her features. Her swollen, blotchy features. It was probably a good sign that she could feel a rush of self-conscious vanity about her running nose. “I don’t know. I just had a feeling, ever since I left your place this afternoon.”

  “What, that my shift was going to coincide with a once-in-a-blue-moon would-be abduction?”

  “No. Fuck. No.” Mick scowled blackly, rubbed his thumb over his bristly jaw. “About Gallagher.”

  “About Dale,” Sophy repeated. She was developing a wicked headache in the centre of her forehead. Pushing against Mick’s chest, she made a graceless return to her own seat, and he let her go.

  “About Dale and those bloody packages.” Mick turned the key in the ignition, switched off the idling engine. “You know he’s the one sending them.”

  He didn’t phrase it as a question, but a statement of fact.

  Sophy shook her head, but her denial was not nearly as emphatic as it had been the first time this subject had been raised. She had eyes and she had a brain, and she’d seen everything that Mick had doubtless seen in their silent encounter with Dale that afternoon.

  She…wondered. That was all. And this was one of the last things she felt like discussing right now.

  “I need to go to bed,” she said, and even to her own ears, her voice was exhausted and flat.

  Mick reached for his door handle, and she put out a quick hand, stopped him. “A – alone,” she stammered, colour rising in her cheeks. “I just – I think I need to be by myself for a little while, okay?”

  It obviously was far from “okay”. A person could bounce coins off Mick’s jawbone. His gaze was a fierce, piercing black on hers.

  “I –” He stopped, hesitated, the muscles in his throat moving as he swallowed. “I don’t want to leave you.” The words seemed to have been wrenched out of him.

  Renewed
tears stung Sophy’s lashes. “I know,” she said, barely above a whisper. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t – deal with all this right now.”

  “Deal with this.” Mick’s voice was equally flat. “Deal with what happened tonight? Or deal with me?”

  “I can’t.” It was the only answer she had.

  “Sophy.” He looked down at his hands, seemed to realise they were fisted, the knuckles white, and made an obvious effort to straighten them. “I’m sorry that – that you had to see – that I –”

  She realised immediately where he was going with that train of thought, maybe why he looked quite so shattered, apart from his horror at what could have happened to her.

  Even in her own torn-apart state, she couldn’t bear him to have those sorts of doubts. She reached out a hand, placed it over his own, and watched as his fingers turned and folded around hers with an almost brutal strength.

  “Mick,” she said. “I’m so grateful. If you hadn’t been there… And honestly,” she said, and was completely serious about it, “I thought you were actually quite restrained. The bastard tried to drag me out of the bar, and then came at you with a broken bottle. At the very least, I was expecting you to throw him headfirst into the pool table.”

  She managed a tiny smile, and lied, hoping to pull him back from his mood. “I’m almost disappointed.”

  The whole scene had been too much for her. But there was no way in hell, whatever happened between them from this point on, that she wanted to be mentally associated with his mother, afraid of him and thinking he had a propensity for violence.

  He was silent for a long time, watching her closely, and eventually, finally, something eased a fraction in his eyes. He didn’t quite make it to a smile, but he did produce a wry sort of grimace. “They’d better throw the fucking book at him,” was all he said.

  Geez. She was probably going to have to appear in court this time. She was obviously starting to recover from the shock, since these lesser horrors were queuing up to take precedence over the “what ifs”.