Not good. He should have just rented a room for the night. Next time he would.
Because the nightmares never went away for long, he knew there would be a next time, and a time after that.
He was a twenty-nine-year-old man, and he’d been on his own for most of his life. But sometimes the ugliness of long ago closed in around him with the suffocating discomfort of a boy’s desperation.
Damn it, he hated his own weakness.
Disgusted, Rowdy dug out his wallet and retrieved two twenty-dollar bills. Now, with a new day ahead, he craved a few hours’ sleep. “Will that do it?”
“Thanks.” She curled her manicured fingers around the money and said with suggestion, “I get into town every couple of weeks.”
Rowdy unlocked the back door while saying, “Sorry, honey, but I already told you this was a onetime deal.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“Yeah.” His thoughts already moving ahead to what had to be done before he opened the bar, he held the door wide open for her. “It does.”
“If you change your mind...”
As gently as he could, he nudged her along. “I won’t.” She’d been a nice distraction, but nothing more. At the moment, he wanted to concentrate on the bar...and on Avery.
The woman left reluctantly—but she did leave.
Just as they all did.
And that’s the way he wanted it. Usually. But odd as it seemed, even though they hadn’t yet hit the sheets, he enjoyed Avery’s company.
Hell, he liked it so much that he’d made her the bartender as soon as he’d bought the bar. If he wanted her to stick around—and he did—there’d have to be no more sex in the office.
Unless it was sex with Avery.
And wasn’t that one hell of a nice idea?
* * *
IN THE PAST year, Avery had learned all sorts of things about herself. She was stronger than she’d ever realized. More determined. More resilient.
But it took every bit of her confidence to walk back into that bar before her shift. She couldn’t rid her brain of the darkly sensual image of Rowdy involved in such an intimate act. How he’d looked, how he’d sounded. So hot.
Being honest with herself, she knew that jealousy ran hand in hand with curiosity. They didn’t have an agreement, so he hadn’t betrayed her in any way. But she still felt...a lot.
Rowdy lived life by his own rules. How freeing might that be?
He took care of his business and accepted his responsibilities, but when it came to personal relationships, he avoided commitments and instead indulged a healthy sexual appetite. She wasn’t as pathetically naive now as she’d been a year ago, but she knew a badass bad boy like Rowdy was so far out of her realm of experience that it left her dizzy.
She couldn’t play with him without getting burned. She couldn’t indulge him without risking a broken heart.
Sadly, there wasn’t anything she could do with him—except work—so she might as well put anything more intimate from her mind.
But now that she’d seen him during a release...
No, Avery told herself, stop thinking about it!
Not even Rowdy was around when she returned and began rushing through her setup. She had enough to do that for a while, she managed not to stew.
At 3:00 p.m., only half an hour before he needed to open the doors, Rowdy strode in. Wearing faded jeans and a black T-shirt, freshly showered and with his hair still damp, he looked as delicious as ever.
She braced herself for the inevitable awkwardness, what Rowdy would say, what she would say.
It didn’t happen.
Rowdy went right to work setting up. Jones, the newly hired cook, and Ella, one of the three waitresses, also bustled about. The prep work kept them all too busy for chitchat.
She looked away as Rowdy stocked the cash register with small bills and change. She occupied herself elsewhere when he set up the dry-erase board with the day’s specials. She chatted up Ella while Rowdy did a general run-through of the bar.
But all the while, she was far too aware of him.
Rowdy, damn him, acted as if nothing had happened.
Maybe, for him, it hadn’t been a big deal at all. Maybe getting busted in an intimate sex act was something he took in stride.
He did repeatedly look her way. Avery knew because she felt it every time. The man had a way of looking that felt more like a hot, physical touch.
As the night wore on and customers crowded in, Avery’s tension grew. She’d expected Rowdy to confront her, at the very least to ask her why she’d been in the bar so early.
But he didn’t.
Was he avoiding her? Well, he’d have to eventually talk with her, but she wanted to put it off as long as possible. She still had to figure out what to say.
Best-case scenario, she’d follow his lead and play it off like it hardly had an impact at all.
During the dinner hour, while much of the crowd ordered off the limited menu, Avery took the time to tidy her work area. She didn’t have a barback so keeping the bar prepared was one of her main responsibilities. Whenever possible, she reorganized things.
Hustling along the length of the countertop, she grabbed up empty straw wrappers and cocktail napkins and wiped up a few spills. When she turned toward the sink, she almost plowed into Rowdy. Stumbling back two steps, taken off guard, she scowled up at him. “What?”
He didn’t seem to mind her acerbic tone. “Going to ignore me all night?”
A deep inhalation didn’t help. She said without thinking, “You were ignoring me.”
“No.” He turned them both so that he blocked her from view of the customers. “But every time I looked at you, you got so red faced I thought you might faint.”
Yeah, and now that he mentioned it, heat scalded her cheeks. Hoping to exude disinterest, Avery tried to elbow him out of her way. He was so rock solid that she didn’t budge him a single inch, so she stepped around him with haste. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bull.” He crossed his arms and leaned back on the bar. “We have to talk about it.”
At the breaking point, she started to blast him, but instead got caught up in the flex of his biceps, how his soft cotton T-shirt stretched over his chest, how the denim of his jeans had faded over his...fly.