Price of Angels (3 page)

              He raised his brows as he looked down at her. “About…”

              “That girl Holly. The one with the boobs you always look at.”

              There was a wicked curve to his smile. “Is this you telling me you want a three-way?”

              “
No
.” She gave him a murderous look that made him laugh. “I just noticed, is all, that she’s been crying ever since Michael left.”

              Mercy sighed and shook his head. “She’s got it bad for that weirdo. No accounting for taste. Maybe he finally gave her the brush-off.” He drew up indignantly, one hand braced on his hip. “And I don’t always look at her, you know.”

              “Really,” Ava said, dryly.

              “I don’t. What the hell do I want with some waitress?”

              The funny thing was, though he was still joking, she could see the gleam of seriousness in his eyes. He wasn’t the kind to play the field just for the fun of it. There were too many demons in his head for him to be satisfied by the thrill of strangeness. He needed his comfort, that trust, the relaxation that came from totally knowing a person.

              But Ava shrugged and said, “What everyone else wants, I suppose,” as she got to her feet.

              It was still early – twelve weeks – but she already felt ungainly and heavy in the middle. Psychosomatic, probably.

              Mercy picked up her laptop for her, closed it and slid it into the shoulder bag she used to carry it. “Sounds like someone hasn’t been getting enough attention,” he said, sending her a meaningful look that finally got the best of her composure and made her laugh.

              “You do nothing but pay attention to me. I can’t believe Dad hasn’t fired you yet.”

              “Fire me?” He pressed a hand to his heart, his dramatic taken-aback expression stage-worthy. “I’m his favorite son.”

              “Can’t argue with you on that one.” She made a face on behalf of her brother, Aidan. He was probably sitting in the clubhouse right now, feeling sorry for himself, about this exact issue.

              She reached for her bag and he slung it over his own shoulder with a little headshake. He’d be carrying it.

              “Ghost and me, we’ve come to an understanding,” he continued, pulling out his wallet and peeling off enough cash to cover his dinner, their drinks, plus a more than decent tip. “He was just telling me today that he understands, what with us newly married, that I need to be spending a lot of time at home with you right now.” He grinned. “In bed, mostly.”

              “The day my father says something like that is the day we check him into the mental health ward.”

              Mercy laid the money down on the table, not waiting for their check, and extended a hand for her, pulling her up lightly to her feet. “Okay, maybe he didn’t say it with words,” he conceded, drawing her up against his side as they headed for the door. “But I could see it in his eyes. We’re connected like that.”

              “Uh-huh.” Within the warm circle of his arm, she buttoned up her wool coat and popped the collar against the chill that awaited them outside. “And this connection you have with him. It’s the reason you’ve been getting off work so early this week, right?”

              He grimaced. Ghost had asked him to work overtime the last four days in a row. Ava saw nothing of him during the daylight hours, unless she went by the bike shop, and even then, her father would try to shoo her away, insisting they had a backup of import bikes that needed Mercy’s delicate touch.

              “Dad,” Ava had said in reprimand, not buying the excuse.

              “What? The man takes nine weeks off from work, I’ve got shit for him to do when he gets back.”

              Either way, she’d enjoyed having dinner with her hubby, even if she’d been too green to eat anything herself.

              His arm was around her shoulders, but somehow that wasn’t enough. She slid her arm around his waist, inside his cut and jacket, around the hard lean middle of him, pressing herself into his side. She heard his light breath of a chuckle through his nostrils, felt his fingers tighten on her shoulder, the little signs that he marveled and delighted in her intense affection. Her sweet boy. Her sweet, broken man.

              “How’re you feeling?” he asked quietly, pausing as they reached the door, his free hand on the push bar.

              “Better,” she assured. “The ginger ale helped.”

              He pushed through the door, towing her along with him, and Ava gasped at the sharp punch of December air as it blasted her face and tunneled down into her lungs. “Damn.” She turned her face into Mercy’s shoulder as they stepped out onto the sidewalk and the warm bright comfort of Bell Bar was cut off behind them with a metallic clang of the door falling back in place.

              “Walsh said something about it snowing for Christmas,” Mercy said, lifting his voice to be heard above the rippling breeze.

              “Wouldn’t surprise me.” Her jaw clenched and she burrowed closer to Mercy as they walked, awkwardly, together like this, back toward their apartment. Walking the short distance to the bar had sounded fine earlier. It seemed like a stupid idea in retrospect.

              “Poor
fillette
,” he crooned in a voice that was half-laugh, half-come-on. “Cold little girl.” A playful voice she knew all too well.

              “It’s freezing,” she said, in her own defense. “Yeah, I’m cold.”

              Once they were out of sight of the Bell Bar door, he spun her back against the brick wall, landing her gently against it, covering her body with his, his open leather jacket shielding her from the worst of the wind.

              Ava gasped in brief surprise, then laughed. “
What
are you doing?”

              “Warming you up.” In the smeared light of the streetlamps, she saw the quick gleam of his teeth as he beamed a wicked grin down at her. One of his big hands reached through the gap between her coat buttons, slipped beneath her sweater, covered her belly. “You don’t want the baby getting cold, do you?”

              “The baby’s plenty warm in there.”

              His hand moved lower, shoving boldly into the waistband of her leggings, fingers toying against the cotton screen of her panties.

              Ava closed her lips against the scandalized, delighted sound that tried to leave her throat. Her hips titled in automatic invitation, her body responsive to his touch at a moment’s notice. But she said, “The baby’s not
down there
.”

              “Good, I don’t wanna have to share.” He bent to kiss her, his hair swinging forward to tease at her face. It smelled like the flowery Herbal Essences shampoo he used; felt like watered silk on her skin.

              “
Mercy
,” she protested, even as her neck stretched and her lips parted.

              The loud and unhappy grumbling of a rattletrap car engine going past brought her back to her senses. He kissed her once – it was warm and verging toward hot – before she gave him a little shove. “Not on the street,” she said, laughing. “Not when it’s this cold, and there’s people driving by, and we’ve got a warm bed waiting on us at home.”

              His hand slid from her leggings – she regretted that, if she was honest – and he tossed a glare over his shoulder at the rust bucket Buick limping along in front of the bar at a halfhearted one mile an hour.

              Ava reached to lay her hand over the breast pocket of his cut, his chest, his beating heart beneath the layers of leather and cotton, and the tattoo of her teeth inked into the skin above. “We don’t have to steal time anymore,” she reminded, an excitement pulsing through her words. Just the sparse contact they’d had so far had heated her skin, faded the breeze to an annoyance, a dim scraping at her skin that was no match for the heat storm building inside her. “We can take however long we need.”

              His gaze came back to her, a soft, tender expression lurking just behind the cocky smirk he presented to her. “We can, can’t we?” There was a small note of wonder in his voice, trace of that disbelief that still lingered in both of them. They were married now. No one could keep them apart. No one could threaten them with anything.

              “Let’s go home,” Ava said, reaching for his hand, threading her fingers through his long dark ones. “I’d rather have you naked anyway.”

              He grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

There were still tears in her eyes. Holly blinked at them furiously and dabbed at them with a napkin, but they kept coming in little trickles, leaking away from the buildup of frustrated sobs that wanted to burst out of her. She wouldn’t allow that sort of crying, of course. Crying had never served her a purpose a day in her life. But she’d been so patient, had been working all this time to cozy up to Michael, and he’d rejected her flat-out. If he had no interest in her body, what was her currency to be, then? What could she trade to get what she wanted? What she so desperately needed. Killers weren’t killers, she knew, out of the goodness of their hearts.

              “Holly, hon.” Carly drew up in front of her as she stood in front of the soda station, trying to restore her composure. The other waitress, small and brunette like Holly, was on eye-level, and there was no hiding the wet sheen of tears from her. She laid a hand on Holly’s arm. “What’s the matter?”

              “Oh, nothing.” Holly forced a smile and made a few final dabs with the napkin. “Just allergies, probably.”

              Carly made a face, not fooled. “Did that guy say something to you?”

              “Which guy?”

              A gentle grimace. “The one you…the one you always sit and talk with. That creepy guy who doesn’t ever say anything.”

              “He says things,” Holly defended, before she could catch herself, then, in a rush: “And it’s not about him, anyway. Something must be blooming. Ragweed, maybe.”

              “In the middle of December, yeah,” Carly said, frowning. “Look, you’re closing up tonight, right?”

              Holly nodded and jammed the crumpled napkin into the pocket of her silk uniform shorts – boxing shorts in keeping with the boxing theme of the bell, because Jeff the owner claimed the old ring bell mounted above the bar was signed by Muhammad Ali.

              “Let me cover for you,” Carly said. “You go home, get some rest. You’ve been pulling really long shifts.” Her expression said she was worried about Holly.

              “That’s sweet, Carly, but I couldn’t–”

              “Can and will,” Carly said, nodding, her mind made up now. “You go take a hot bath, watch crap TV, go to bed early. I took all that vacation time last month; I’m glad to close up tonight.”

              “I really should–”

              “Go home, is what you should do. Go, shoo.” She made a waving motion that left Holly smiling.

              “Thank you.” Holly was exhausted, if she let herself think about it. Maybe that’s why Michael’s refusal was so devastating: she was just too tired to handle it right now.

              On impulse, she pulled the other girl into a fast hug. “Thank you,” she repeated. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

              Carly snorted, like she knew. As Holly went to punch out, Carly called after her. “And don’t you waste one tear on that weirdo loser. There’s a million other guys better than him. You deserve better.”

              When her back was turned, Holly felt her mouth twist in a wry grimace.
Carly, if only you knew
, she thought.
I don’t deserve anyone
.

              The owner, Jeff, wasn’t in tonight, so there was no one to protest her punching out early and stowing her apron in her cubby. Her jacket was one she’d bought at a secondhand store here in Knoxville, her first week in town, with a crumpled wad of cash. It was brown leather, with zippered pockets and feminine darts at the waist, a collar that snapped across her throat if she chose to fasten it there. Very appropriate for a waitress trying to make friends with a biker, she thought. But it was hopelessly little protection against this December cold snap; the wind cut right through it. She pulled it on and zipped it up, as she stood in the break room, because that was all she had. At Target, she’d bought a child-size pair of cheap red cotton gloves, and she tugged them on too, along with her five dollar matching red scarf, which she knotted tightly under her chin.

              She left Bell Bar via the rear door, the one that fed into the alley, and the coldness outside snatched the breath from her lungs, squeezed tight at her sinuses and gave her an instant headache.

              The alley was narrow and more than a little slimy. The one good thing about the cold was that it had pushed back the normally strong stench of the dumpsters. The overhead security lamp offered precious little in the way of light, and the shadows lay thick across the asphalt, most of them human-shaped and misleading.

              Holly was glad she hadn’t walked to work. In the small grubby lot behind Bell Bar, her car waited.