“Getting by.” He leaned a forearm on the bar and smiled at Avery. “You met Margaret?”
“I served her.”
So during their little chitchat, the lieutenant hadn’t introduced herself? “Margaret Peterson, this is Avery Mullins. Avery, Margaret is the—”
“Rowdy.” The lieutenant slid off the stool and up against him, her gaze smoldering. “Could we talk privately?”
Rowdy tried leaning back, but Margaret just followed. “Uh...”
Abandoning him, Avery said, “Excuse me” in clipped tones as she moved down the bar away from them.
The lieutenant’s thighs were against his, her br**sts almost touching his chest. She stared up at him with some silent message that Rowdy didn’t want to read.
Her tongue came out to dampen her lips, and she whispered, “Say yes, damn you,” with a smile that contradicted the words.
Hurry up, Dash.
“All right.” No way in hell would Rowdy take her to his office. He just knew what Avery would think if he did. “Let’s go to a booth.” Rowdy picked up her wine, then took her arm and started her toward the back near the billiard room.
“Thank you.”
There was no real privacy on the floor, not for anything...intimate. But in the booth, with the clatter of pool balls behind them and the jukebox in front of them, they could talk a little more freely without anyone hearing.
Rowdy seated her first, and then slid into the booth across from her. Peterson had her back to the room, but he could see everything—which was the point.
She leaned over the booth toward him, and being male, his gaze just naturally went to her boobs.
“Rowdy?”
“Hmm?” He got his attention up to her face—and saw a wealth of attitude before she masked it. Suspicion prickled.
She stared into his eyes. “I’m hoping you’ll agree to do me a big favor.”
Hopefully the favor had nothing to do with getting naked or horizontal. “If I can.”
“It’s...personal.”
The way she said that made him uneasy. Damn, but he hated games like this.
Luckily, he saw Dash come through the front door. He must have rushed to make it so quickly.
“Hold that thought. Let me take care of something and I’ll be right back.” Ella started past, and Rowdy caught her to say, “Her drinks are on the house, okay?”
Ella eyed Margaret, scowled at Rowdy and cocked out a shapely hip. “Sure, honey. Whatever you want.”
Great. Now Ella thought he was already stepping out on Avery. A week ago he wouldn’t have cared, but in the past week with Avery...yeah, it had started to matter.
A lot.
“She’s a friend,” Rowdy said, but damn it, he felt like an ass for explaining himself. “Forget it. Just give her whatever she wants until I return.”
With any luck, Peterson would play her games with Dash and let him off the hook.
Hoping Margaret wouldn’t yet notice Dash—just in case she planned to be stubborn about things—Rowdy made his way across the crowded floor to meet him. One way or another, he would excuse himself from her attentions.
He had something solid going with Avery, and he wouldn’t let an uptight, prickly, pain-in-the-ass cop ruin it for him.
* * *
PLENTY OF WOMEN noticed Dash when he came in. Rowdy supposed it was the prospect of fresh blood to the weekday crowd. Most of them had never seen Dash before.
After meeting under shitty circumstances—with serious threats against Pepper—he and Dash had hit it off. Dash was only a year older, and they shared a near-identical height of six feet four inches. But where Rowdy saw the worst in most everyone and everything, Dash saw the best.
He was a funny guy, much more so than his brother Logan. Of course, Rowdy’s opinion on that might be biased by the fact Logan was a cop and married to Pepper.
Like Logan, Dash was well-off, gifted with financial security from their parents. Rowdy respected the fact that Dash still worked damn hard at his construction company.
The physical labor showed, evidenced by all the female attention Dash got as he stripped off his coat.
And thinking about how the ladies were all drooling over him—Rowdy twisted around to look at Avery.
She was watching him.
Him, not Dash. Not any other man.
That fact filled Rowdy with incredible satisfaction.
Bringing him back to the here and now, Dash clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re this busy on a Monday night? Nice.” He gazed around. “The setup is different.”
“We’ve made a few changes. Got rid of the poles, put in a billiards room.”
“It’s looking good. More upstanding.”
“That’s the point.”
Smiling, Dash eyed a tableful of women. “I bet the weekends are insane.”
“We do all right. We’re not open on Sunday, but I have a new employee who’s working out, so that might be changing, too.” Cannon could fill in when Rowdy was away. He’d need to hire a few more people, especially someone to help Jones in the kitchen. But he’d figure it out.
“I can see it now,” Dash said. “Folks will hit up church first, then plan on Getting Rowdy.”
He never should have let Avery name the place. “The rowdiest crowd waits for the weekend. The weekday regulars aren’t too bad.”
“Obviously I’ve been away too long.” He nodded to two women flirting with him. “Sorry about that. Overload of work lately.”