Shattered Glass

DANI ALEXANDER

Shattered Glass Copyright 2011 Dani Alexander.

All rights reserved. Published 2012.

ISBN:

ISBN-13:

Publisher: Dani Alexander

Cover art: Dani Alexander

The right of Dani Alexander to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77

and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of Dani Alexander's imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead or somewhere in between; businesses, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

I dedicate this book to Troy and Gene. Two men who have

always accepted the crazy, weird and often abrasive person I am, but who have had to fight to be accepted by the world despite being the most loving, kind people anyone could hope to know.

My heartfelt thanks to Tim, Sara, Sian, Anke and my husband, without whom I would have crawled under the table and covered my head. Even as a writer, there aren’t words enough to express the depth of my gratitude for the help and support you gave me.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Colorado’s Finest Diner was ugly. I had an excess of time to study it in the two hours I waited for my no-show informant.

Brown booths. Yellowed walls and floors. Yellowed tables, for that matter. The window on my right displayed beat-up Fords and Volkswagens that were roasting on pavement and swimming in refracting light. The inhabitants of the diner were more interesting. Teenagers mostly, snacking on fries and chicken fingers. Baubles bounced from their eyebrows and black-painted lips while they chatted energetically. My gaze hopped from one table to the next. With all the boisterous laughter and the rapid fingers texting, it was the quiet, methodical busboy who caught and held my eye. He was wearing bunny slippers.

Dingy pink and brown ears languished against aged linoleum, making a soft sh-sh sound as the man gathered used dinnerware and placed them in a tub at his hip. Curious about the wearer, I skipped over the ripped pajama bottoms and stained tank top, to his face. My breath caught.

Model beautiful, with thick red hair and millions of freckles, the man was as incongruous to the setting as those endearing slippers.

“Gaines says he’ll get Alvarado there,” Detective Luis Martinez relayed into the cell phone tucked against my ear.

“Uh huh,” I replied. Vice busts weren’t that interesting right now. Bunny Slippers was pierced. Lots of places. Little rings, nipple high, were outlined under his tank top and the ones in his ears and eyebrow glinted. I immediately began to speculate where else he was pierced.

“Glass?” Luis huffed into my ear. “Glass, get your head in the game.”

Blue eyes. No, not just blue, blue like glacial waters, like romantic poems, like heavens and moonstones. Cornflower blue.

And—

Blue like romantic poems?
What the ever-living fuck? I turned away quickly and tried to concentrate on Luis’s voice.

“What? Oh.” I gave my head a shake, scattering the strange thoughts. “If Gaines says Alvarado will be there, we go with that. My guy is a no-show. Gaines is all we have now.” I hoped that was the response Luis was waiting for because Bunny Slippers was coming my way, and I lost all ability to think.

“Can I take that for ya?” He had a deep drawl. Not Texas, like my mother, but perhaps Alabama or Georgia. I was so wrapped up in the voice that it took a moment to follow the long, slim finger pointing across the table at my syrup-filled plate. My attention snapped back to the busboy.

Up close Bunny Slippers was even more gorgeous, and older than I’d originally assumed. Freckles dusted his skin from forehead to fingers. A colorful tattoo of the god Hermes covered the right arm from shoulder to elbow. A busboy with an interest in mythology?

“Glass?” Luis growled.

My brain had left the building. “Huh?” I replied brilliantly, to the busboy, not to Luis. I could barely hear Luis. Cold blue eyes.

That was all I could concentrate on. Cold but captivating. I had always thought freckles went with innocence, but there was nothing innocent about those eyes.

“Glass?
¡Carajo!
Glass!”

What was someone who looked that good, doing working as a busboy in a place this ugly?

“GLASS!” Luis blasted into the phone, a stream of Spanish invectives following the shout.

The yell snapped me out of my daze. “What the fuck, Luis?

Someone is talking to me here. Settle your dick down.” Great, I had now acknowledged that while I knew slippers-boy was speaking to me, I had just been staring at him. The slight smirk spreading across the man’s perfect lips told me he had noticed the gawping, too.

With considerable effort, I flicked a glance to the plate, knowing there was a question in there somewhere.

“Your plate?” The busboy motioned again, leaning across the table. The scent of tobacco, soap and cinnamon made my mind go blank again. I closed my eyes and inhaled, unconsciously lifting a hand to brush my knuckle on the underside of the man’s reaching arm.

Apparently this was an awesome time to not only discover I had a bunny slipper fetish, but to violate someone’s arm in public. Some
guy’s
arm.

“Yeah,” I said stiffly, dragging my offending appendages into my lap before they did something stupid, like tweak a nipple

ring. Luckily, the guy hadn’t noticed the knuckle-assault, or else he was just choosing to ignore it. Please let it be the former.

I felt twelve again, those nervous flutters in my stomach appearing for the first time since I had let Mitzi Baylor tongue kiss me in eighth grade. Okay
, let
is probably the wrong word.

More like forced her tongue into my mouth while I tried to protect my tonsils from unexpected removal. The memory was enough to jar me back into reality a second time. I checked my phone. Luis had hung up. With a sigh, I tucked the cell into my pocket. I’d deal with Luis at work tomorrow.

Bunny Slippers had long since grabbed my plate and was making his way back to the kitchen without a single backwards glance. He hipped the swinging door and disappeared into the back. It was only then that I managed to exhale.

Get a grip, idiot. This is a bad time to ogle teenagers.

Is there ever a good time to ogle teenage boys?

All these weird thoughts were giving me a headache. The guy was just interesting. That was all. Like spotting an exotic flower in a field of—I really needed to stop thinking like my eleven-year-old poetry-writing cousin. Actually, I just needed to leave. Stop thinking about this and leave. After paying the bill, I slid sunglasses over my eyes and pushed out into the summer sun.

Little beads of sweat popped up on the bridge of my nose, tempting me to remove the offending eyewear. But the light bouncing off my side mirror convinced me that dealing with irritating sweat was better than being blind.

Colorado heat didn’t blast so much as bake. It was a deceiving warmth, slowly building like a preheating oven and

just as dry. The other trick of summer in the Mile High City of Denver—breezes. They moved lackadaisically, intermittently dying out and then ambling back, providing little in the way of their supposed function: cooling. By the time I had walked across the small parking lot and opened the door to my Jag, my hair was hot enough to fry an egg, and I dearly wished to be wearing shorts rather than full length khakis. I pinched the fabric of my cotton shirt and waved it while the single breeze that rolled through offered only a tumbling brown paper bag and no relief from the warmth. Across the street, a bank marquis announced the date and today’s temperature: ninety-seven degrees.

Ignition on, A/C maxed, I left the door open while waiting for the air to cool. Maybe another breeze would surprise me and suck the staleness from the car. Sitting half-in, half-out, I heard the door opening in the alley beside the restaurant. I saw him in the rearview first, then swiveled in my seat to check the back window.

Bunny Slippers leaned against the wall, dragging a foot up to brace behind him and cupping his hand over his face. I fixated on the tattoo marking the web of his fingers, my pulse jumping.

When the hand dropped to his side, he took a long drag of his cigarette. His mouth puckering and blowing a cloud of smoke toward the sky was sufficiently erotic enough to ignore the nag of the tattoo and focus on his lips.

I hated smoking. The smell alone was enough to nauseate me. But right then, more than anything, I wanted to be that cigarette.

I was unsettled by an onslaught of unbidden fantasies, which

ranged from pressing my lips against the guy’s neck to grinding our hips together. I wasn't sure how long I watched him, but I knew it was long enough for my neck to cramp. Sweat accumulated under my glasses, spreading to my forehead and upper lip and eventually dripping down my temple. The cool air blowing from the car created a stark contrast to the heat outside, but I wasn’t at all sure it was what made me shiver.

His head swiveled slowly against the wall, turning to my Jag.

No smirk this time, but those eyes were no less beautiful for being empty. The pit of my stomach clenched.

I had seen that look before—abuse victims, prostitutes, dealers, pimps, they all carried it. Grief, sudden and powerful, poured over me in waves, making me avert my eyes. Broken boy, was all I could think. Broken people were dangerous. I swung my legs in and slammed the driver’s door, backing quickly out of parking spot. It took every ounce of my will to avoid glancing into the rearview mirror as I pulled onto the street.