Whiskey For Breakfast Page 7

  “Leroy, this is my friend Addison Holmes and her date Agent Savage. I don’t think I’ve ever caught your first name,” Rosemarie said to Savage.

  “It’s Matt, but no one ever calls me anything but Savage.” Savage shook Leroy’s hand and Rosemarie fanned her face.

  “I bet they don’t,” she said, licking her lips. “A woman likes a man who is a little unrefined. Isn’t that right, Addison?”

  “Absolutely. Shouldn’t the wine be here by now?”

  “They seem a little slow with the service,” Leroy said.

  “We were just headed to our table when we saw you sitting here.” Rosemarie’s hint was obvious, and I had two choices. I could invite them to join us and keep ordering more wine. Or I could send them to their own table and have what would most certainly feel like a date with Savage, where we’d talk about our personal lives and I’d surely end up saying something embarrassing and end up drinking more wine then I should. Then his thigh would touch mine and he’d lean close and, and then I might end up doing something I’d regret. Like seeing how high quality his sheets were.

  Savage was dangerous, and I knew my resolve would weaken with him unless I was in a committed relationship with someone else. I had strong feelings about fidelity since I’d been on the receiving end of unfaithfulness before. And the thing was, I was perfectly in my right to have a fling with Savage and ease my curiosity. But my gut was telling me it’d be nothing but trouble. My gut was usually pretty accurate. It was my brain that wasn’t always willing to listen to it.

  “Why don’t you join us?” I said. “We haven’t ordered yet either.”

  I felt Savage’s sigh more than heard it and I scooted toward him so Rosemarie and Leroy could fit in the booth. Once we were pressed thigh to thigh I realized I’d made a mistake of epic proportions.

  “Didn’t think that one through, did you?” Savage said against my ear. He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me in tighter and my nipples spiked and my flesh pebbled. I knew about my nipples because Leroy homed in on them like he had radar.

  “Nope. My mistake.” I sat my phone on the table and willed Kate to text me to let me know that an arrest had been made for the drug deals and that I could go home, but the screen stayed obstinately blank.

  The sommelier finally brought the wine to the table and I barely took time to taste the small amount he’d put in my glass for approval. At this point I didn’t care what it tasted like as long as there was alcohol in it. Rosemarie and Leroy were both drinking Maker’s Mark, so it was no wonder they were both a little rosy.

  “How long have you and Leroy been dating?” I asked once we’d placed our orders.

  “About three days. We met at the kennel club. He has a Great Dane too, and we found out we have so much in common.”

  “It was like kismet,” Leroy said, his brown eyes shining. He lifted his arm and put it around Rosemarie, but between his height and her voluptuousness, he ended up smacking her in the ear.

  Savage’s hand was resting on my shoulder, but I could feel him shaking, trying to hold in the laughter. I looked up at his face and it was completely blank of emotion. I had no idea how he did that. The only reason I wasn’t laughing was that I was too busy panicking about being in Savage’s arms.

  “We like John Holmes movies and bacon. And it turns out we go to the same massage therapist,” Rosemarie said.

  Leroy’s hand still rested awkwardly on Rosemarie’s ear and he leaned into her and bit at her bottom lip. My eyes widened and I didn’t dare look at Savage.

  “We’ll have to schedule a couples’ massage,” Leroy said against her lips, licking them one more time for good measure. My nose scrunched up before I could help it because I knew Rosemarie had probably French kissed her dogs before she left her house. “It’ll be so much better to have a happy ending with you there.”

  I’d chosen that unfortunate time to put a piece of bread in my mouth and I breathed it down the wrong hole. I couldn’t draw in oxygen and Savage was slapping me on the back. My eyes watered and I was glad my makeup was waterproof. The bread finally went down and I grabbed my wine and drained it. Rosemarie and Leroy were looking at me as if I were the person at the table who was embarrassing everyone. I reached over to grab the wine bottle to refill my glass and noticed Savage’s was empty as well, so I filled them both to the brim and then signaled the sommelier to bring another bottle.

  “I’m so glad y’all are finally on a date. It’s about time you got back on the horse, so to speak.” Rosemarie giggled and waggled her eyebrows at Savage and I took another sip of wine. “You wasted far too long waiting for that no good detective to come back around. What kind of man leaves a woman with a bullet in her leg?”

  I’d wondered that myself.

  “You’ve been shot?” Leroy asked, eyes wide. “Do you have a scar? Can I see it? I shot my little toe off when I was fifteen. You probably can’t tell by looking at me, but I sometimes walk a little off balance. Sometimes I’ll just fall over.”

  I finished another glass of wine and was feeling pretty warm all over. Savage’s fingers were gliding up and down my arm, and I’d already forgotten the speech I’d given myself about making poor decisions where he was concerned.

  Our food was brought to the table and the dinner conversation was pretty much a blur at that point. I watched Rosemarie and Leroy feed each other their food and swap a lot of tongue after each bite, but Savage and I pretty much kept our eyes on our plates and ate as much as we could without gagging.

  But the highlight of the evening came when Rosemarie slathered her roll with butter, and we all watched with rapt fascination as the butter slid off and dripped right into the middle of her cleavage.

  I grabbed my napkin and was passing it across the table when Leroy said, “No. Allow me.” And then he proceeded to put his entire hand between the fleshy mounds of her bosom and bring the butter back to see the light of day. But Leroy didn’t stop there. By the time he was done greasing Rosemarie’s chest she looked like a turkey about to be put in the oven on Thanksgiving day. “We’ll use this later.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” I heard Savage murmur beside me.

  Savage and I weren’t even a blip on Rosemarie and Leroy’s radar anymore. Rosemarie’s chest was heaving and Leroy’s glasses were fogged. All of a sudden Leroy reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet, throwing a bunch of twenties on the table. He grabbed Rosemarie’s hand and they ran out of the restaurant like their pants were on fire.

  “How do we keep running out of wine?” I asked.

  “You keep drinking it all.”

  My phone buzzed with a text message and I saw it was the all clear from Kate. Arrests had been made and the car had been impounded as evidence.

  “Too bad she couldn’t have texted that twenty minutes ago,” Savage said. “Let’s get out of here. We’ll catch a cab home.”

  My head felt heavy on my shoulders as I teetered unsteadily to my feet. I was guessing Savage had already taken the bill and overtipped the waiter for the sideshow that was Rosemarie and Leroy. I bumped into Savage and grabbed onto his shoulders for balance and felt him suck in a breath.

  “You’re very hard,” I said, poking him in the chest.

  “You have no idea. Feel free to poke two and a half feet down.”

  I smiled sloppily and walked my fingers down his chest. Wine worked miracles on me. I never had anxiety or worried about making the right choices when wine was involved. Savage grabbed my hand and I blew a raspberry at him. He practically hauled me up around the waist and lugged me out of Mambo to the street side.

  I breathed in the cool fall air and my head started feeling light again. Then all of a sudden we were in the back of a taxi and everything after that is pretty much a haze.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Saturday

  The alarm went off at 6am, and I slapped around on my nightstand until I found my phone and shut it off. It took me a few minutes to remember where I was and how I got th
ere. Then I looked under the covers to make sure I still had all my clothes on. I was still in the red dress but my shoes were sitting on the floor by the bed. Either Savage was trying to be a gentleman or he couldn’t figure out how to get the dress off. Either way, I was okay with it.

  I laid in bed for a few minutes and stared at the ceiling. My mouth was completely devoid of moisture and my head felt like someone had bashed it with a rock. What I needed was to roll over and go back to sleep, and I was just about to do so when I remember why I was supposed to get up at such a godawful hour on a Saturday. Mrs. Rodriguez liked cranberry muffins.

  I creaked and groaned as I rolled out of bed. I needed coffee in a bad way, but I needed to be out of this dress even more. I tugged at the top and pulled from the bottom, but somewhere during the night the dress had become a part of my body. I found a pair of nail scissors in the drawer of my dressing table, and I cut right up the seam until the dress was nothing but rags on the floor.

  I sucked in my first deep breath in almost twelve hours and then padded naked into the kitchen to get the coffee started. I had a moment of panic when I remembered my neighbor with the binoculars, but when I looked at all my windows the blinds were closed tight. Savage must have taken care of it before he left the night before. I caught my reflection in the toaster and grimaced. I looked exactly the same as I felt.

  I mixed up the batter for the muffins and put them in the oven, setting the timer above the stove. I took my coffee into the shower and stood there under the spray until I ran out of hot water. When I got out half an hour later I was at least coherent and there was color back in my cheeks. The dark circles under my eyes hadn’t disappeared though.

  I pulled on a pair of jeans and grabbed the neighborhood watch shirt Spock had left for me the day before. I assumed I was supposed to wear it at the meeting. When I finally got it over my head and pulled down over my chest I realized I it wasn’t a shirt meant to be seen in public. It was so tight my breasts were defying gravity, and it was short enough to show my bellybutton.

  “Oh, hell no.” I tried pulling my arm back through the sleeve to get it off, but I couldn’t bend my elbow in the right direction. Someone knocked at the door just as I was eyeing my nail scissors for the second time that morning. I swore and went to answer the door and then I swore again when I looked through the peephole and saw who was standing on the other side.

  “Go away,” I called to Savage through the door.

  “That’s not very nice. Especially since I was such a gentleman last night.”

  “Thanks for getting me home safely.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the part where I want you to be completely sober before I’ll take you to bed.” There was silence for several seconds. “I take it you don’t remember the cab ride home?”

  “Umm…no.” But now that he mentioned it I was starting to get flashes of memory. I felt heat rush to my cheeks. I was pretty sure there’d been a lot of groping and kissing in the cab. Most of it done by me.

  “You know I’m just going to stand here until you let me in, right?”

  I sighed and unlatched the chain and then I moved back with my arm over my chest. Savage’s eyes widened as soon as he saw me, and I knew from the glazed look in his eyes that the arm wasn’t a good deterrent. Savage was like a sexual Batman. He always homed in where it mattered.

  “Nice shirt,” he said. “It sure doesn’t look like that on Mrs. Rodriguez.”

  Savage was wearing his own neighborhood watch shirt and the sleeves barely fit around his biceps. His jeans molded to him in all the right places and I was pretty sure he had at least three weapons on him somewhere, but I had no idea where he would have fit them and I figured it was best to stay away from that line of thought before I started having hot flashes.

  This was the problem with Savage. He was hot. With a capital H. Any woman would be dead if her hormones didn’t go into overdrive the minute she stared at him. The problem was getting my hormones to listen to my brain.

  “I’m not wearing this shirt.” I started back toward my bedroom. “I guess you’ll have to kick me out of the club and have your meetings somewhere else.”

  Savage stopped me by placing his hand on my shoulder, and I immediately went into panic mode. Savage touching me could only lead to things I’d regret later, so I changed direction and went toward the kitchen so I could put some distance between us.

  Savage followed behind me but kept his distance. “I’m pretty sure Spock wouldn’t go for that. He seems to think you’re exactly what the neighborhood watch needs. He’ll probably change his mind once he gets to know you a little better. All in all we’re a pretty peaceful neighborhood.”

  I narrowed my eyes and put my fists on my hips, stretching my shirt across my chest tighter. Savage’s eyes widened and he swallowed hard as he took a step forward.

  “How do you feel about getting a knuckle sandwich?” I asked.

  “I don’t mind a little pain. Maybe we should talk about last night?”

  “Maybe we should just leave the past in the past. I’m all about living in the moment.”

  “Hmm. Maybe we should live in the moment tonight and go out again. This time with less wine. I’m okay with the groping.”

  I breathed out a sigh of relief when I remembered my plans with Nick. “I can’t. I’ve got some wedding rehearsal dinner I have to go to. Maybe some other time.”

  “Addison—”

  There was another knock at the door and whatever Savage had been about to say was shelved. At least for now.

  “You’d better get those muffins out of the oven,” Savage said, heading for the door as if he owned the place. “You don’t want them to burn. Mrs. Rodriguez gets mean if she doesn’t have her muffins.”

  We were going to have to have a serious conversation soon. If he kept at it, I knew he would eventually wear me down. He had a tendency to take charge whenever he was in the vicinity. I liked to tell myself I didn’t find the overbearing caveman routine attractive, but I was pretty sure my nipples were hard enough to cut glass, so it would’ve been a lie.

  I pulled the muffins out of the oven as Spock and another man walked through my front door. They both wore their neighborhood watch shirts and Spock had on a black trucker hat that said NAD across the front. Little tufts of his hair stuck out over his ears and beads of sweat dotted his mustache. He took a good look around the house before his gaze settled on me. I was pretty sure I’d never seen anything as disturbing as his inability to blink. His lidless eyes went straight to my chest.

  I’d seen the man who’d come in with Spock a time or two as I’d gone on my runs. He owned the house on the corner, and I was pretty sure he was married. He was on the hefty side and only a couple of inches taller than me, but his beard made him seem bigger since it hung halfway to his chest. I stared at him longer than I probably should have because he looked exactly like one of the cast from Duck Dynasty.

  “This is Byron,” Spock said. “He has binoculars like yours.”

  “You should remember to keep your blinds closed,” Byron said. “You’re a woman living alone and you never know who’s going to be looking in.”

  “That’s comforting advice,” I said.

  “Why are you avoiding Agent Savage?” Byron asked, taking a muffin from the basket I’d sat on the counter and bouncing it back and forth in his hands to cool it off. “He hasn’t been over to watch a movie in a while, and he didn’t stay long enough last night for any of the good stuff to happen. Did you guys have a fight?”

  “Agent Savage and I aren’t dating. We’re just friends. And I’ve been very busy with work.”

  He nodded and bit into the muffin so crumbs fell into his beard. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. There was no telling what he had buried in there.

  “I only wondered cause you’re gettin’ to that age. But you probably already know that.”

  I smiled with a lot of teeth and looked at Savage, but his face was
unreadable except for the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. The cops in my life had a much better ability than me to keep their thoughts to themselves.

  “How many people are a part of the neighborhood watch?” I asked Spock. I hoped I had enough muffins. Byron had already devoured two of them and was reaching for a third.

  “Six now that we’ve added you. Ted’s got a cold so he won’t be here, and Mrs. Rodriguez doesn’t move as fast as she used to.” Spock swiped his upper lip with the back of his hand and moved in closer.

  “Do you want to come over later?” he whispered. “I’m having a few friends over for a Lord of the Rings marathon. We’re roleplaying. I get to be Frodo.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “My friend Steve is playing Galadriel, but there’s an opening for Arwen Evenstar. Do you have elf ears?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “It’s okay. I’ve got extra.” Spock was a close talker and I didn’t really have anywhere to back up, so I reached for the basket of muffins and shoved them at him before slipping away.

  “I wish I could come,” I said. “It sounds like a lot of fun. Really. But I have a rehearsal dinner for a wedding to go to tonight.”

  “Do you need a date?”

  “No. I already have one. And one date is more than enough.”

  Savage’s eyebrows raised at my confession. “Busy weekend.”

  I narrowed my eyes when I remembered Nick had said the same thing the night before.

  “Who’s your date?” Byron asked. “That guy that dropped you off in the black truck the other afternoon? You didn’t kiss him goodbye. Is it serious?”

  “What do you do for a living, Byron? Are you always at home?” I asked.

  “Pretty much,” he shrugged. “I’m a website developer. Not much gets past me.”

  “Good to know.”

  “Here comes Mrs. Rodriguez,” Savage said.