In Rides Trouble (19 page)

“Cheers.” Eve clinked her glass against Becky’s, threw the liquor to the back of her throat and swallowed, hissing as the hard burn hit her belly.

Slamming the shot glass down on the bar, she woozily turned to her friend. “My knees are still a mess. I can’t stand the way they look, so skirts are out. And jeans hurt too much which means…” She made a rolling motion with her hand. “…it’s leggings or nudity. I’ve been choosing leggings.”

Becky gave her a sympathetic look before leaning one elbow on the bar, cupping her cheek in her hand. “Can you believe we were held hostage by pirates? It all seems kinda like a dream.”

“A nightmare, you mean. And speaking of…”

“Say no more.” Becky lifted a hand. “I had a doozie the other night. Ran out into the hall with my pistol loaded.”

“I wish I had a pistol,” Eve declared hotly. Maybe then she wouldn’t feel so scared all the time. Maybe then she’d be able to scrub out the images of those six terrible days from her sleep-deprived brain. “I also want to start taking self-defense classes.”

“I’ll drink to that. Delilah!” Becky grinned sloppily, holding up that finger again, “Uno mosh!”

“No way.” Eve shook her head, actually feeling the last four shots of rot-gut whiskey sloshing around in her belly as she hopped from the barstool. “I can’t take another shot, or I’m going to barf.”

“Hehehe. The über ch…chic,” Becky hiccupped, “and oh-so-classy Eve Edens just said barf.”

“It’s a word, isn’t it?” She looked around blearily, surprised to see so much leather and so many tattoos and so much facial hair…

Where
in
the
world
am
I?

Oh yes. A biker bar on the east side of the city.

She, Eve Edens, queen of Bergdorf’s, was getting hammered on cheap whiskey in the diviest of dive bars, filled with the scariest of scary types, and listening to the crappiest of crappy Def Leppard songs. Every time she heard this one, all she could think about was hot, sticky sweet feet.

Ew!

Something had to be done. Immediately.

Stumbling over to the jukebox, she fished in her pocket for a couple of bills and, after smoothing them out on the edge of the machine, slid them into the cash slot. And even though Red Delilah’s was the dive-iest of dive bars, she was pleased to find it sported one of those fancy jukeboxes that connected to the internet so she could pick any song her little ol’ heart desired.

And what did her little ol’ heart desire?

Why, Chaka Khan, of course.

Just
stand
aside, Bridgett Jones!

She paid the extra fee to have her song jump the others lined up in the music queue, and spun away from the jukebox, swinging her hips and waving her arms in the air as the driving beat blasted from the huge speakers that hung from the every corner of the bar.

“
I’m every woman,
” she belted at the top of her lungs and motioned for Becky to join her out on the dance floor, er…she glanced down at her feet and the crushed peanut shells beneath them. So maybe this wasn’t a dance floor, but it was a
mostly
clear space, and that’s all she needed to get her groove on.

Becky vigorously shook her head, and Eve quickly decided she was having none of it. Chaka absolutely demanded dancing.

She ran over and tried dragging Becky off the barstool, which turned out to be far more difficult than she ever dreamed. The woman was small, but she was strong.

“You might as well go dance,” the redheaded bartender told Becky, “because I’m not serving you another drink for at least an hour.”

Becky gave her a scowl which blatantly said,
ya
big
party
pooper,
and opened her mouth to reply, but Eve interjected, “Come on. Can’t you hear that? Chaka’s on the jukebox!”

“Listen to your friend,” the bartender advised. “She’s wise beyond her years.”

Uh-huh. Except a wise woman would have laid off the shots three pours ago.

“But I don’t want to dance,” Becky grumbled petulantly as she grabbed on to the edge of the bar, stubbornly anchoring herself there as Eve tried to pry her fingers away.

“We have to dance,” Eve insisted. “That’s why God gave us parts that jiggle.”

“What’s gotten into you?” Becky demanded, one eyelid drooping lower than the other.

“Whiskey.”

“Oh yeah.” Chuckling drunkenly, Becky hopped from the stool, and together the two of them stumbled out to the “dance floor.” For the next few minutes they danced, sang and laughed at the catcalls they received from the peanut gallery like they hadn’t a care in the world. Becky had to shoo away some guy named Buzzard when he came to grind up against Eve, his big beer belly pushing into her back until he almost knocked her over in his fervor.

Just when the song was about to end and she was digging in her pocket for more money to reload the tune, Becky suddenly raised her hands to her eyes, her shoulders trembling.

Thar
she
blows!

Okay, so they were finally going to get down to the business of what had brought them here, to this seedy bar in a bad part of town in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon.

When Becky called earlier, voice strangely tight, begging Eve to meet her here, she’d dropped everything. Because Becky didn’t ask for help unless the situation was dire, and although Becky’d been all smiles and laughing demands for shots up until this point, Eve knew it was only a matter of time before whatever was tearing her friend apart on the inside broke through to the surface.

It appeared the breakthrough was in full effect.

Finally.

Whew.
One more shot and she was sure she’d find herself flat out on the peanut shell-strewn floor. And talk about one place in the world a girl would not want to end up. Especially if she didn’t fancy catching a terminal case of ptomaine or hepatitis.

“Shh.” She wrapped a comforting arm around Becky’s trembling back and started herding her toward the rear of the bar and the booth pressed far into a shadowy corner.

“I…I promised myself I,”
hiccup
, “wasn’t g-going to do this h-here,” Becky sobbed.

“It’s okay,” Eve assured her and tried to keep them both upright as they unsteadily wove their way around tables and chairs and the occasional five-gallon paint bucket filled with salted peanuts. “We’re almost home free.”

Just as she said it, they reached their destination, and she pushed Becky onto the red vinyl seat of the corner booth before throwing her purse on the table. Sliding in opposite, she was happy to be sitting because the blasted room suddenly decided it was a grand idea to do a slow tilt.

She should
not
have taken that last shot—or the previous four. She had to grab on to the table to keep from sliding under it.

“I can’t be-believe I’m crying in the middle of Red Delilah’s,” Becky sniffed as she looked around for something on which to wipe her nose. Finding nothing, she used the back of her hand, and Eve figured a good friend would make her way up to the bar and ask for a napkin, but right now she was doing her level best just to remain sitting upright.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, frowning when the second word came out sounding more like
dushn’t
. “Nobody’s paying us any attention except for maybe that guy.” She hooked her thumb at the man sitting in the booth opposite them. He was wearing a baseball cap that obscured his eyes and most of his face.

Becky swung her bleary gaze over, and something changed in her face, her eyes sharpened. “Hey, you—”

Just as she said it, the guy got up, grabbed his beer and ambled off in the direction of the men’s room.

“Hey!” Becky yelled at his broad back, and Eve shushed her.

“What are you doing? Leave that poor man alone.”

“I think I know ’im,” Becky said, shaking her head. “He’s ex-CIA, and he’s been hangin’ around here and…oh, what does it matter?” She moaned before planting her forehead on the table in front of her.

Ex-CIA? Mr. Baseball Cap? He certainly didn’t look like any government agent Eve’d ever seen. Where was the black suit? The dark shades? Of course, she’d recently learned a man’s appearance meant nothing when it came to his job, because
Billy
was apparently some sort of government agent and he looked more like a poster boy for the WWE so, like the saying went, there’s really no telling a book by its cover.

Billy
.
Oh, dang. She wasn’t going to think about him, because then they’d
both
be bawling their eyes out.

She reached across the table to pat Becky’s shoulder. “So, come on, spill. Why’d you invite me here?”

“We did it last night.”

“Huh?”

“It, it,
it!
Me and Frank.”

“Oohhhh.” Eve was strangely sober all of a sudden, or maybe she was just strangely somber. It was hard to tell…

“Yep.
Oohhhh
is right.”

Eve couldn’t imagine. The man was so big and…scary-looking and…
big
. “So, uh, how was it?”

Becky glanced up, her brown eyes bloodshot, her eyeliner smeared until she resembled a drunk raccoon. “Wonderful…
awful!
” She groaned again and replanted her forehead on the table.

“Well, which was it? Wonderful or awful?”

“The sex was wonderful,
beyond
wonderful,” she mumbled into the scarred surface of the table. “It was transhen-transcendent really.”

Transcendent sex. Another thing Eve couldn’t imagine. “So, then, explain the awful part.”

“The awful part happened this morning!” Becky wailed. “When I met the woman I thought was just a friend with benefits! But she’s not that. She’s so much more, and I think he must love her because they have a little boy together! Oh, God!” She buried her nose in the crook of her arm to stifle the sound of her hard sobs.

What?
“Back up. Back way,
way
up. He’s in love with another woman?”

Becky nodded into her arm, sniffling loudly.

“Well then, I don’t understand what the heck he was doing having sex with you.”

“I sedush-seduced him, Eve,” Becky admitted tearfully, raising her head and blinking so quickly Eve knew she was having trouble focusing. “He came to my room to talk to me about some stupid reporter and I…I stripped.”

“
What?
”

“Yep.” Becky wiped her nose with the back of her hand again. “I just whipped off my sh-shirt and shorts and stood there in my birthday s-suit, all but daring him to walk away.”

“You stripped in front of him?”

“That’s what I just
said
.”

“I know. I know, it’s just…” Eve shook her head, having a hard time imagining anybody, even Becky, being that audacious. Wow. “Uh, okay. So you stripped in front of him, all but daring him to walk away, and I guess he…I guess he didn’t?”

“Nope.”

Yes, because what man would? Becky was lovely and, despite her chosen career, infinitely feminine. Plus she had that rebellious streak and a couple of tattoos, so she pretty much embodied that quintessential combination of good girl and bad girl that all men found irresistible…

“But he’s in love with someone else? Did you know about her?”

“Sort of.”

“
What?
What does that mean?”

“It means I knew he was seeing someone. He’s…he’s,” Becky hiccupped again and made a face of frustration at her body’s inability to control itself, “he’s been seeing her for a few years. But I figured it c-couldn’t be that serious. I figured maybe it was just a friends-with-benefits type deal, and hey, if that’s the case, why couldn’t that friend be me, you know? But then, as we were all waiting to see him after he came out of his shoulder surgery, I met her and she’s…she’s…” Becky buried her head in the crook of her arm again, muffling her voice. “She’s really beautiful, Eve. And nice. And funny. And did I mention he must love her because they have a s-son together? But I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know or I never would’ve…How could I have known? He was supposed to list them with JSOC back when he was still with the Teams, but he didn’t!” When she looked up, her expression was devastated.

“What do you mean he was supposed to list them—”

“Doesn’t matter.” Becky cut her off. “What matters is that he has a son. And the little guy looks just like him,
just
like him.” In her mind’s eye, Eve saw a little boy with linebacker shoulders and a bevy of scars. “Well, he looks like Frank must’ve looked at about three or four. All rough and tumble with these huge, soulful gray eyes…”

“Geez Louise, Becky.”

“I know! And to make matter w-worse, come to find out Frank thought he was going to die today so…yep, that explains everything.”

“
What?
” Was it Eve’s imagination or had she been using that word a lot during this conversation?

“According to Michelle, that’s her name by the way,
Michelle
, just like that Beatles song, ‘Michelle ma Belle,’ and she
is
, Eve.”

“You aren’t making a lick of sense.”

“Belle. Pretty. She’s so pretty.”

“Becky, that hardly has anything to do with anything at this point.” Eve wasn’t sure if it was her level of drunkenness or Becky’s level of drunkenness, but this was one of the most difficult conversations she’d ever tried to follow. “Why did Frank think he was going to die today?”

“Oh yeah, uh…because he did once before.”

“Did what once before?”

“
Die.
Are you paying any attention to what I’m saying?”

“I’m
trying
.” Lord knows she was trying but—

“I guess he’s got some weird allergy or something, and he’s had a bad reaction to anesthesia before and ended up flatlining only to be brought back, so he convinced himself he wasn’t going to live through this surgery, which is why he…why we…oh, sweet Jesus!” Becky covered her face with her hands, choking on a sob.

Cheese and rice, and Eve thought
her
love life was a disaster…