“Are you lost, baby girl?” The sultry voice of a rugged young man behind a bar I’m certain did not exist in the original home’s design catches my attention. I’ve been trying to take in everything around me. The thumping bass of hard rock, 70s music. The adjustment of my eyes in the dull lighting. The couple making out like teens on a couch in the corner.
Baby girl? I could be this boy’s mother, and he vaguely looks familiar.
“I’m looking for James Harrington,” I announce while my gaze struggles to pull away from the woman giving a lap dance on a man so visibly. Her tongue is halfway down the guy’s throat, and his hands are up the backside of her skirt.
Holy shit.
I quickly look away and focus on the bartender. He’s young, roughly the age of someone in college. My heart pinches with the thought.
Michael would have been a high school senior this year.
“Ranger know you’re coming?” he asks, tipping his head while looking me up and down. It’s a sexual glance. Since when does James go by Ranger? That was my nickname for him.
Then another thought occurs. I worry that telling this young man James is not expecting me might be the wrong answer for my safety.
“I’ve got this.” The rough, masculine voice of another pulls my attention from the bartender, and my sight lands on the man who led me to James last night. This character is solid, broad in shoulder, and silver in hair. His face reads don’t fuck with me, but he was helpful last evening.
If pointing me to my husband with a woman on his lap is called considerate.
He’s eyeballing me much like the bartender, assessing me, but it’s not appraising like the younger man.
“Evie, right?”
Stepping forward, I offer him a hand, but he glances down at it and crosses his arms instead of extending one. I clear my throat.
“Right, and you are?”
“A friend in your corner. Maybe.”
I nod, not certain what that means.
“I’m looking for James again. I was told I might find him here.”
The man’s eyes never leave my face. “Is that so?”
“Giant sent me.”
I’d always liked Giant Harrington, the eldest of the Harrington clan. James and he were close as brothers can be at one time. I knew from James that wasn’t the case anymore. He’d rejected his entire family, just like he tossed me to the side.
The brooding man before me lowers his shoulders, lowering the badass biker guard a bit.
“What do you want with him?” he asks, protective of his brother-in-arms, or is it biker brother? I don’t know the lingo. I’m not versed in Sons of Anarchy.
“It’s personal,” I state, feeling I owe James the decency to speak with him and let him decide how he wants to share things with others.
“Everything always was with you.” Finally, some familiarity in my strange surroundings. I spin to find James behind me. His stance mirrors that of the biker now at my back. If anyone ever told me being sandwiched between two bikers would be a turn-on, I’d tell them they were crazy, but the solid man behind me and the sexy man before me are doing strange things to my lower belly.
What is this?
The energy vibrating off James alone results in a pulsing beat in a place that should no longer thump for him. The presence of the other man behind me enhances the rhythm. Sexual vitality swirls around me.
Focus, Evelyn.
There is no point in acknowledging the attraction I’ve never lost for my husband. It was a dead-end street. He’d moved on as was evident by the hussy on his lap last night. So had I.
“What do you want, Evelyn?” The use of my formal name felt all wrong coming from such a smoky voice. Then again, whenever he grew frustrated with me during our life together, he’d pull out the name like a lash.
“We should talk.”
James glares at me. Blue eyes that were once cool water are now frozen ice. “Little late for that,” he mocks. He glances at his wrist as if he’s wearing a watch instead of the leather band, silver clasp, and beaded bracelet on his arm. “I’d say, you’re three months too late.”
It takes me a second to process what he means. Three months? We’d been separated for almost six years.
“You owe me a phone call,” he clarifies, and I want to snap at him. Since when do I owe him anything?
A phone call. The promise rings true with me, but I don’t wish to address it. Things were happening in May, and I didn’t feel right calling him.
“Listen, we don’t need to talk, really, I just need you to sign something when it arrives.”
James stands taller, and the man at my back mutters, “Oh, shit.”
I spin to face him. “I don’t think we need an audience,” I snark before my eyes drift to the couple still going at it like no one else is in the room. The woman’s undulating on the dude’s lap, but it’s his hand up the back of her skirt that really has her moving. I turn back to James.
“Is there somewhere private we can speak?”
“This is as private as I get with you,” James states, holding out his arms and twisting his neck to imply the middle of the room. A few people linger here and there, and a quietening around us occurs. Despite the music’s harmony and the couple’s grunts, everyone’s listening to the center of the room.
“Don’t make me do this,” I mutter, lowering my voice and linking my arms together, matching his defensive stance. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“There’s nothing you can do that will hurt me,” he states hard as steel. The comment pisses me off. I don’t know why I’m bothering to make this easy on him. This man ripped my heart out and took everything from me. I never blamed him for all of it, but he’s so determined to hate himself, he cast me aside like I never meant anything to him. He hurt me.
“Fine,” I squawk, arms flailing out to the side. “I’m here for a divorce.”
3
What A Woman Wants
[James]
To say I knew it was coming would be the truth.
To say it hurt any less coming from her mouth directly would be the lie.
When Evie left, I figured it was only a matter of time before we reached this point. But time kept ticking, and that pesky sucker called hope left me hanging on.
Maybe it would never come to this.
Maybe she’d come back to me.
Of course, I didn’t deserve her to return to me. I didn’t warrant a second chance. All my luck went down the side of a mountain, and I’d never be worthy of nice things again.
And Evelyn Sue Fitzpatrick had been one of the best things in my life.
For all my bravado to hear Evie’s mission, stated before the gathering, I suddenly feel sick with her announcement.
I want a divorce.
“Why?” It might be the stupidest question to ever pop out of my mouth.
Evie’s beautiful blue eyes widen, and her crossed arms lower. Her hands meet before her, and she twists them to clasp her fingers together. I’ve seen this pose before on her. She’d slip into it when she had something to tell me that was difficult for her to say.
“I broke the food disposal again.”
“I hit a curb and hurt the tire.”