Confess (The Blue Line Series Book 1) (2 page)

“Do you play, Cowboy?” She glanced over her shoulder and trained her jade green eyes on his. “Or have they finally declared staring at ass a spectator sport?”

He couldn’t coax the smile off his face. He added
tight ass
and
dry humor
to the list of assets running in his head. “I bet that mouth gets you in plenty of trouble, Angel.”

She ran her middle finger along her glossed lower lip. “Yeah. I’ve
never
heard that one before.” She narrowed her eyes in a slow roll as she passed him, leaving her full tray at the bar. “Connie,” she spoke to the blonde mixing drinks. “We have a regular Don Juan over here.”

Mitch drained the last of his beer, hiding his fascination behind the bottle rim. He didn’t want her confidence to turn him on the way it did. Taking his mind off the murders. Leaving him stranded in images of her coated in sweat.

He didn’t want to focus on her, but he couldn’t stop. He claimed the only unoccupied stool and watched her arrange glasses behind the bar.

“In case no one told you,” she said, glancing up from the rack of wine glasses. “This is a private room. Invitation only.”

He sat back on the stool and surveyed what he could only guess was an illegal game of high-stakes pool at the corner table. “I don’t see anyone complaining.”

“Arrogant,” she muttered, but he didn’t miss the slip of a smile under her carefully crafted straight face. “Tell you what, Cowboy.” She glanced up, challenge flickered in her stare. “It’s a slow night, and I’m short on tips. I’ll play you for drinks.”

He cocked his head, trying to guess her endgame but coming up stumped. “That’s an odd bet for a bartender. I win and you give me a drink. You win, I cover your tips and leave?”

“No.” She glanced around the room. “When I win, you’ll buy a round for the room,
and
tip me accordingly.” She winked. The slow, deliberate gesture sent him hurtling toward the edge of losing control.

Mitch glanced behind him, counted seven people at the tables, and another seven sitting on stools. “Fifteen drinks?”

“Worried?” Her lips seemed to wrap around the word, making it seductive.

Her tenacity surprised him, but the sheer confidence she exuded made him hard as hell with want. The way she rolled her bottom lip into her mouth and bit her cherry red flesh against the white of her teeth made her impossible to resist.

She pulled a new beer from under the bar, twisted off the cap and placed it in front of his stool.

“No.” He took a long, calculated swig from his fresh bottle and let his lips linger on the smooth glass until he caught the flush of her cheeks. “It’s not a fair bet.”

“What’s the fun in being fair?”

God, if she had any idea how her baiting turned him on she’d stop before he cleared the room and came across the three feet of bar between them to take her on the damn beer-soaked floor.

Her lips parted, followed by a shallow laugh that sent phantom fingers of heat wrapping around his straining cock. He hadn’t even touched her yet and she’d given him into a hellacious case of blue balls.

“Tell you what…?” He waited for a name.

“Laura.”

The coolness behind the blatant lie impressed the hell out of him. “Tell you what,
Laura
. You win, I buy the whole damn bar a round.”

Her eyes widened, but her lips stayed parked in a flat line. He didn’t give chase often, but she was making the game worth the trouble.

“And I’ll be sure to tip
accordingly
. But when I win, you’ll wake up in my bed tomorrow.”

Lacy backed up a step, her lips parted. Her eyes darted toward the back door. He could practically hear the gears shift in her head before she squared her shoulders and met him stare for stare.

He leaned in closer. “I’m not offering anything more than a night of hot sex. No strings. No broken promises. No hurt egos. Just you and me. One night. Then life goes on as normal.”

He turned to the game behind him. If she was as smart as her teasing little mouth made her sound, she’d take the pause for what it was, a courtesy exit. A way out before she agreed to a night of his brand of fun on his terms.

“Okay.” Her voice came low, throaty against his back. “Deal.”

He twisted to face her and restrained his surprise behind a stoic smile.

Lacy reached under the bar and plopped a deck of playing cards facedown beside his beer. “Five card draw, deuces wild, just like my Grammy taught me to play. You deal.” When he answered with a sideways glance she added, “I said I’d play you for drinks. I didn’t say which game.”

Lacy studied the callused hands of the stranger she’d secretly watched around the bar for the last week. He cut the deck of cards and shuffled them into a steeple.

“Why did you call me cowboy?” He glanced up from the deck and dealt back and forth between them.

Lacy had been lost, watching his nimble fingers work the cards with expert precision. No ring, which she could have guessed from the way he’d practically undressed her with his eyes back at the pool table.

She tried to guess his profession, a bar game she and Connie had perfected on long nights with few tips to keep them sane. His nails were trimmed short and clean, but his hands were tanned, like someone who worked in the sun for a living or enjoyed the outdoors. Imagining where else he might sport tan lines elevated her pulse and made breathing a conscious effort.

Pull it together, Lace. He’s just a tip like any other.

An overly dominant tip
.

She fanned her cards out face down on the bar and pulled up the top corners, trying to ignore his searing gaze on her. A three of clubs, eight and six of hearts, eight of diamonds, and eight of spades.

Not the best hand for a hustle, but she could make it work in her favor. Hell, at this point, she should go for the full hustle. Raise the stakes to cash and drop the profits into the tiny account she and Connie had started over a year ago to open their own place. She might be able to fleece first and last months rent on a place along Main Street from the guy if she played the cards right and used Connie as a lookout for Charlie since hustling the customers was frowned upon only slightly less than meaningless sex in the single stall bathroom.

“Huh,” she uttered, looking up from her cards and finding him staring her down like a slice of grade A beef tenderloin.

“You keep calling me cowboy? Why?” His timbre was low and strained. The roughness grated her nerves and sent them sparking under her skin.

“Your outfit.” She gave him a deliberate once-over. “Black leather racer’s jacket. Polo. Designer Seven jeans. Motorcycle boots and,” she pointed a blue-polished fingernail at the dusting of dark chest hair peeking up from his collar, “Aviators.”

Reaching out to flick the pair of dark glasses dangling from his open collar wasn’t one of her normal flirty moves, but the sudden need to touch him, to take some semblance of power in this game of wills, overrode her normally sound reasoning skills. “You’re the quintessential anti-cowboy. You belong in some mass-produced trendy clothing company ad more than a seedy little dump in no-place Tennessee. So, naturally I’d call you cowboy.”

She’d meant it as a joke, but the way his gaze narrowed and his chin lifted ever so slightly, he’d missed the humor.

“Really?” His mouth lowered into a frown, but under the dim light of the bar his eyes sparkled. “So we’ve just met and you’re already trying to change me? Are you always so possessive with your patrons?”

“Possessive?” The word was abrasive to her ears. “You asked a question, and I answered. Besides, you’re the one who’s stalked around this place for the last week like you own the deed to the building and a contract on everyone in it.”

He furrowed a brow and twisted his lips into a bemused scowl. He turned the corners of his cards up. “So, you enjoy branding people for their clothing choices, but that’s not considered a possessive trait?”

He watched her, his stare sharp in what she first perceived as drunken bravado. But his hands were too steady, his speech too clear, his gaze too penetrating to be anything but an air of supercilious confidence.

He was searching out her weak spots and making a direct hit with each condescending accusation.

His intense attention made every movement of her body feel overstated and scrutinized.

Damn, why did she have to be attracted to this guy with his darkened features and brutish good looks? Why did she always go for the hotheads? The possessors?

By the way he commanded control of the bar since first stepping in last Sunday and hitting things right off with the Rebel PD who hung out after shift change, he was no doubt a hotheaded and possessive bastard just like the rest of them.

She glanced at her cards, desperate to look anywhere but into those deep brown eyes staring at her as if the world had just suffered a zombie apocalypse and she was the last healthy woman standing. “People tip better when they think they’ve connected in some intimate way with their bartender. Nicknames pay the bills.”

“And you give them no choice in their nickname? Cowboy isn’t really my thing.”

A slow, sexy grin slid from one side of his face to the other, but underneath that layer of smugness she saw the hidden threat that awaited anyone who challenged his authority.

The intensity in his body made her shiver.

God, if there wasn’t something drop-dead sexy about the way this man did everything from hold a beer bottle to breathe.

“All right, Ace. Give me two cards.” She laid her discards on the bar and waited for him to take two off the top of the deck. He trailed his long fingers along hers suggestively. Heat shot up her arm, making the rest of her body tremble.

“Call.”

He watched her again from under those thick lashes, trying to intimidate her, she guessed. An invisible band of excitement-laced fear tightened around her belly and that familiar undertone of danger followed.

The first time a man tried to bait her into trusting him, she’d been eight and the challenge almost ended her life. Every man who’d dared try after failed miserably.

She flashed a smile upward, sending a silent Hail Mary to the gambling gods, trying not to imagine what it would be like to throw a hand, just this once. To let go. Be free. Live a little.

Lacy leaned back against the liquor shelf and studied her hand. She could almost feel the weight of his stare stroke across her body.

“Connie,” she called across the bar without lifting her gaze from her cards. “Go ahead and start a tab for…?” She cut her gaze back to the stranger.

“Mitch. Mitch Kilpatrick.”

She glanced back to the bartender. “Start a tab for Mr. Kilpatrick.” His name rolled off her tongue, smooth with an air of danger. “He’s buying a house round tonight.” She turned back to Mitch. “Show ’em.”

Mitch laid both the six of diamonds and spades on the bar. He pulled a third card from his hand and took his time turning it over, making the gesture as agonizing as possible.

Six of clubs.

“You’re enjoying this too much.” Tension pulled on her shoulders. She tried to relieve the stress by rolling them but stopped at Mitch’s baffled scowl. “Has anyone ever told you you’re intense?”

The corner of his lip twitched in answer. He held the next card between his fingers, taunting her by flicking it back and forth.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re impatient?” He stared at her, a mix of fire and frustration and something else she couldn’t quite read seemed to spark in his eyes. “Learning to be patient can be a very
enjoyable
experience.”

He was trying to throw her off the game and succeeding mercilessly. His next card dropped to the bar.

Eight of clubs.

“I’ll take a Maker’s Mark.” Lacy fanned her cards out on the bar and turned to Connie. “Make it a double.”

She had him, but the smile on Mitch’s face didn’t read defeat.

“You’re so sure of yourself, aren’t you? Confidence can be a damning trait.”

She watched his final card land face up between them. Her lungs clamped down, forcing a sigh out through her parted lips.

A freaking wild deuce.

Shit. Four of a kind.

Grammy’s rules had never failed her before.

“Lace.” Connie’s elevated pitch caught Lacy’s attention. Connie’s hand hovered over the white panic button underneath the bar. “White Stetson’s plastered again.”

Across the bar, Bret Adams, the same barely-legal boy who’d smacked her ass earlier and made the last several Sunday night late shifts a nightmare stood, staring at Connie as if he could reach across the bar between them and strangle her to death.

Lacy had been so absorbed in the card game and the stranger she hadn’t even noticed him enter the back room.

He swayed on his feet at the bar. “This shit’s watered down and tastes like ass. I’m not paying a dime for any of it.” He leaned his long torso across the bar, his jaw clenched. He brushed the empty shot glass beside him to the floor, and it was followed by the high-pitched shatter of glass.

The game behind them quieted. All eyes turned to the drama at the bar.

Connie, never one to back down from a good bar brawl, leaned in closer. Another inch from either of them and their foreheads would touch. “You weren’t whining a round of tequila shots ago. Where was your discerning drink palate then?”

By the way some of the regulars glared at Stetson, they’d jump in to defend their favored bartender soon if Lacy didn’t do something to stop the argument.

She needed to dissipate the tension, fast, before Connie laid Stetson out on the ground, and Charlie had yet another lawsuit on his hands.

Before she could speak, Mitch stood and kicked his stool back with a heavy, booted foot. “You drank the booze, kid. Now pay the tab so the rest of us can enjoy our night.” His voice was smooth and good-natured, but the authoritative undertone added weight to the already heavy air in the room.

Stetson’s lips curled back with a silent argument, but when Mitch pushed aside the front of his coat and revealed the Glock holstered to his hip, Stetson’s face paled, and he retreated a step.