You’re an asshole,” I told him before nudging my empty fingerprint smudged glass to his edge of the bar. The only truly clean area in the place.

The bartender, Murphy Wilcox, didn’t even spare a glance toward me as he spoke. Complete disinterest. Not that I cared about that. “Yeah, that’s the way to get someone to do what you want. Go home. You’re drunk.”

I glared at his profile while he checked water spots on glasses. “No, I’m not. I only had two beers.”

“Then you’re a lightweight, and you’re drunk. Leave, Mara. I’m sure you have a busy weekend coming up.”

My continued scowling seemed to have no effect on him. Disgruntled customers must come with the territory, or maybe Murphy just left dissatisfaction in his wake. “What the fuck do you know about a rough day? You’re not headed back to a sandbox in the pit of the world to get shot at or blown up.”

He surged toward me this time, placing his hands on the bar so he could lean in, but I didn’t flinch. The alcohol swam too deep for me to react in any sort of way, even as the bar creaked from the force of his hands on its edge. His breath smelled of spearmint gum and peanuts. “Save your pity party for someone who cares, little girl. The Army was your choice. You live with it.”

He spun away as I sputtered on my anger like a key turning a dead engine over and over. When I couldn’t yell at him, I seized the small empty peanut bowl, the only thing in arm’s reach, and threw it at his back. I missed by feet. He rounded on me again, this time with a glare of his own. All eyes and cheekbones, his hit more effectively. That glare slapped me hard enough to set my cheeks burning. But he wasn’t going to leave it at that. He threw a red and white checkered dishtowel on the counter, came around the bar, and hauled me off the stool by the upper arm. His fingers dug in deep, pushing through the drunken haze just enough.

“Are you going to drag me out like some day-drinker renting a stool?” I grumbled as I stumbled along beside him. He was a foot taller than me and had double the gait. The dull gray interior of the bar flashed around me as he pulled me beside him. Dings of the ancient corner pinball machine followed me out the door.

“No, I’m going to drag you out like a drunk who needs to go home.”

He released me outside with a little shove. I spun back in the snow stuttered gravel. The cover of shadows provided by the burned out streetlights making me braver. “Fine, fuck you. No one likes your shithole bar anyway.”

He tucked one hand into his black jeans pocket and pointed toward the next door motel with the other.

The cold began to sink in, and the urge to scream at him was starting to abet. He was right, as usual, the perfect town saint who nursed the sick and old by day, and another kind of sick and old by night. Fuck him. Fuck this town. I squared my shoulders, wishing I’d put my jacket back on. It had to be about twenty outside, and if I didn’t go now, he’d have the satisfaction of seeing me shiver.

I turned toward the motel, not meeting his eyes. Then the bar door he’d locked open released and closed hard, sending a shockwave of sound through the parking lot.

It wasn’t action, but reaction. Something programmed in me. I dropped to the snow covered gravel, the tiny stones cutting into my belly where my t-shirt had ridden up. My hands were on top of my head, face tucked down and toward my chest. In the silence, all I could hear was my heartbeat loud and heavy, roaring in my ears. It took longer than it usually did for me to realize what happened, the beer’s fault. I came out of the adrenaline haze slowly, like blinking awake too early in the morning. The rocks felt sharper, and the snow felt colder, the darkness and light battling against each other, playing tricks on my vision. Even the gentle tinkle of my ID tags under my shirt sounded like gongs in my ears.

Murphy’s voice pulled me to reality as he knelt down beside me in the snow. “Shit, Mara, are you okay?”

I blinked up into his ice blue eyes, all his black hair disheveled and unruly. He looked like a sun god’s angry brooding cousin. Pale skin and dark hair and simply stunning.

He gripped my hand, and the rest of the world crashed in. I jerked away and scrambled out of his shadow from the overhead street light.

My actions caused him to topple over with a curse. While he struggled with a mound of salty, slushy mush, I managed to stand upright. I gave myself props for not sprinting to my room. But I sure as hell walked fast. Once the door separated me from Murphy’s all-seeing eyes, I slid down the faded brown wood to the floor. Every part of me shivered, but not from the cold. It was like someone hooked up a car battery to my brain, and I couldn’t control it. The motel room décor that hadn’t been redone since the early 80’s failed to help as well. I spent a minute forcing the air in and out of my nose, slowing my breathing, trying to impart some logic to my racing mind. Tears had begun a slow leak down the side of my face. If I ignored them, maybe they would stop.

It took several minutes of sitting on the dingy orange carpet rocking back and forth until I felt sane enough to stand. The last time this happened, I researched it. The doctors called it a panic attack. I called it fucking inconvenient.

Murphy’s shocked face came to mind; he’d never held a high opinion of me. Now, he could add insanity to my long list of faults, along with weakness. I shouldn’t be reacting this way still.

There was nothing to do about it now. Instead of worrying about Murphy, I skirted the bed that didn’t quite fit the outdated room to the thankfully clean shower. Hot water could cure anything.

A knock sounded at the door as I began drying my hair, the straight brown strands holding more water than they had any right to. Hoping my orders hadn’t been changed, I marched across the room and jerked the door open. I’d been expecting a member of my squad. Instead, I found Saint Murphy shivering in the snow, clutching my jacket.

For some reason, every time I saw Murphy, my brain short circuited and flipped to defensive. So my next outburst was a surprise even to me. “What do you want?”

He pushed into the room and closed the door.

“Please, come in,” I mock waved, stepping back from both him and the gust of chilly air which cut through the room.

I eyed him as he tossed my coat on the chair. “You didn’t leave a tip.”

“So barging into my room at midnight seemed like the best way to get one? You had my wallet in my coat. You could have helped yourself.” Saint Murphy was too good a man to take more than what he was owed.

I began to squeeze more water from my hair. A silence settled over the room, and I glanced up to catch him staring. Murphy and I had known each other for over twenty years. I’d never seen that look on his face before. “Stop staring at me like that.”

A heartbeat passed. “Like what?” he said, gruffly.

I’d been with men before. In fact, I’d been scoping out Murphy’s bar-back a couple hours ago. But this look was all need and sweat and damp sheets. I would not let him see how it affected me. In fact, Saint Murphy shouldn’t be making me feel…needy. It was probably against his too rigid moral code.

In my brooding, he shifted closer. So close I could smell the beer and liquor on him. Not that anyone around here would mistake the scent of him for indulgence. After what happened earlier, I couldn’t meet his gaze. “You can go now.”

“Are you always so bossy?”

I opened my mouth to set him in his place, but he held his hand up. “You don’t need to answer that.” He stared down at the towel squished swell of my breasts. For a second, I thought he was going to remove my towel, but then he stepped back and whisked his shirt over his head in the way men perfected, two hands grabbing at the back of the neck and pulling forward.

I wasn’t sure if I should stay quiet so I could stare or to ask when the tall lanky kid from high school got abs. I opted for the former.

“Well, I think that’s the longest I’ve ever see Mara Williams at a loss for words.”

“Oh, I have words. They are just trying rearrange everything in my brain since this”—I gestured at his tight toned torso—“is a revelation.”

Finally, his sardonic smile shifted to something resembling arrogance. Or pride. How often they went hand in hand for men. “Hauling around kegs and crates for years offers a better work out than the gym.”

“Note to self, date more bartenders.”

His grin shifted to a scowl. “I never said anything about dating you.”

Tired of standing in front of him practically naked, I slipped into the bathroom and jerked on boy shorts and an old, too big PT shirt, dark gray with stiff reflective letters across the chest reading: Army.

When I returned, Murphy still had that look on his face. Like I’d said I was pregnant and we were running away to be married. Part punch in the balls, part I saw a ghost.

“Relax, Saint Murphy, no one expects you to take the town reject courting,” I mocked.

He wrenched back. “Don’t call me that.”

I grabbed the towel off the floor and continued drying my hair. “What, you mean, Saint Murphy?” I knew damn well what he meant, but I couldn’t help challenging him, as if we couldn’t exist peacefully in the same space.

“You’re not an idiot. You know what I mean. Why the hell do you call me that anyway? There is nothing saint like about me.”

I paused in my last squeeze of the towel. “You’re kidding right?” I ambled closer to see him better. He really had no idea. I dropped the towel at my feet and braced my hands on my hips. “Saint Murphy, the patron saint of the crossroads between the middle of nowhere and anywhere but here.”

His eyes narrowed, and he took one step forward. I canted my neck back to meet his eyes. They appeared darker now, like a thunder storm passed behind them. I kept pushing him. “You’re always rescuing someone. People who don’t want to be saved. People who don’t need to be saved. People too far gone to be saved…” I trailed off in a whisper.

I couldn’t meet his eyes again. He picked up his shirt and began to yank it back on.

“Murphy, stop, just tell me why you’re here. What do you want?”

His haunted gaze brushed against my equally damaged one, and it hit me. Murphy battled the same aching loneliness as me. But his next words gutted me. Like a bayonet plunged in with a twist.

“I’m not stupid enough to think I can save you, Mara. I’m not even stupid enough to think I register higher on your radar than a barkeep in a town you once called home.”

“So…” I still couldn’t figure out why I needed to push him. Why I needed to hear it when I wasn’t even willing to allow the words to pass through my own brain. Maybe if he said it, then I could claim it too.

He threw his shirt on top of my coat. “Will you just shut the hell up and let me give you what I know you need?”

I tried to start arguing again, but he reached out and dragged me to him, crushing my lips to his with an intensity I didn’t know he possessed. My mind tried to rationalize me kissing Murphy, Saint Murphy, fellow high school reject Murphy. But then the hormones fired, adrenaline spiked, and those soft lips I’d never considered past shutting them up forced mine open, and his tongue swept into my mouth. He tasted like diluted lemon. Citrus muddled in cold water. He was cool and calm and clean.

My brain shut off. I wrapped my hands up in his hair. He took it as invitation and skimmed a hand down my back to cup my ass. His strong work roughened fingers ignited sensations along my bare skin as they met.

I severed the kiss with a gasp and stared up at him. Reality clattered through me like a bag of marbles in the hands of a small child. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Why not? You were more than amenable to taking my bar-back to the storeroom. Who’s 21 by the way.”

“Okay, maybe I was drunk.”

“On two beers, may I remind you.”

I pushed his chest, but his response was to move his hand from my ass up my shirt to rest on the bare skin of my lower back. “We both know you aren’t going to kick me out. You might hate me, but needing sex before you go back to that sandbox, as you call it, trumps your loathing.”

“I don’t hate you,” was all I could manage.

“Well, you certainly don’t like me either. I swear to God, if you call me Saint Murphy while I’m fucking you, I will stop and leave you wet and angry.”

I sucked in a breath. He wasn’t wrong. I had a lot of bare masculine skin at my fingertips. I didn’t think I could turn him away. “Say fuck again. Like you did before.”

He leaned down and brushed his lips against the delicate outer shell of my ear. “Fuck,” he whispered.

The word trickled through me liquid and languid, and I soaked it up like a woman stuck in the desert far too long.

“Oh, you like it,” he added. I didn’t answer, but he walked me backward and pinned me between his lithe frame and the cold wall. “Do you want me to tell you how many times I’m about to make you come?”

I let out a sigh. This was happening, and I might as well enjoy it. I’d had worse hate fucks. “Just wait…tell me why you’re doing this.”

He dragged his bottom lip between his teeth and let it pop out slow. I stared mesmerized. Then he stepped back and palmed his silver belt buckle. “I support the troops.”