***
I was nervous.
I’d dropped my mom’s clothes off at the hospital, and now we were on our way to The Back Porch, a restaurant that was sure to be a hopping place at eight o’clock on a Friday night.
It was also a cop and firefighter hangout. Or so I’d been told.
I’d never been there.
In fact, I’d never been out to a lot of places in the city.
When we’d moved here, we’d literally had no money.
I could count on two hands the number of times I’d gone out to eat during my high school years.
And that’d only continued as I’d put myself through my prerequisites at the local community college and then started nursing school.
I’d worked my ass off at an electronics store while going to school, and I’d kept my student loans down below ten grand rather than the forty-to-fifty grand it’d cost other students who didn’t have any help financially.
It’d taken me an extra two and a half years to do it that way, but, in my opinion, it was worth it.
Barely any debt meant being able to afford my bills.
Which also meant that I didn’t get the luxury of going out to eat.
I’d graduated school, then gone straight into working in my field until I had Colt.
There was just no time, no money, and, honestly, no inclination to do so.
Now, I was excited.
We were in Tai’s truck, and I had my eyes closed as I listened to the whine of his large tires eating up the main highway that ran through Kilgore.
The window was down and my hair was flying every which way, even with me having put it up into a pony tail.
I opened my eyes and looked sideways when I felt the truck come to a stop.
The red light in front of us had the lanes at our sides quickly filling up, and neither one of us missed the loud roar of a motorcycle pulling up beside us.
I looked down and my eyes widened when I saw the sexy man on the back of the bike.
He was on the older side, and I felt my pulse speed up as I took him in.
“Whoa,” I said, turning back when the motorcycle rumbled beside me. “That’s loud.”
“That’s Sam,” Tai said.
“Sam who?” I asked, studying his face.
“Sam Mackenzie. He was my brother’s CO when they were in the army,” he explained.
Then I felt his truck rock as he revved the engine up in response to Sam’s revving.
And when I said rock, I meant the whole damn truck swayed from side to side as the engine roared deafeningly.
I giggled and Tai’s translucent green eyes turned to me with amusement dancing in them.
“What?” He asked, a grin playing at the corner of his mouth.
“Are you going to race him?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“You’re not even going to try?” I teased.
His grin turned mocking.
“You want me to?” He asked.
I nodded.
It sounded like fun.
“Alright, hold on to your titties,” he said.
I shrieked when he took off, covering my mouth and clutching onto the window like it was my lifeline.
The bike was slow to get started, but I could see the clear joy on the man named Sam’s face. He was having fun.
“He’s letting me win,” Tai said.
The scanner that Tai had mounted underneath the dash squawked and drew my attention.
“Unit two, we’ve got a report of drag racing on Highway 259,” the dispatcher said in a disembodied voice.
I gasped and turned to Tai, only to see him laughing so hard no sound was coming out.
“Slow down!” I urged, on the way to being out of control in my yell.
I’d never in my life had trouble with the law, and I darn sure tootin’ wasn’t going to start now.
Instead, he stopped at the next red light like it was the most normal thing in the world for a man that’d just thoroughly broken the law.
The man in the motorcycle pulled up next to Tai.
He was laughing.
“What the fuck, man?” Tai yelled over my body. “What’s going on?”
“I’m sorry, but someone wrote on the back of your truck and I was reading the letters,” he said.
My mouth dropped open.
He wasn’t supposed to know yet!
I brought my finger up to my lip involuntarily and absently started to chew on my fingernail as I tried to think of a reason as to why I’d written that on his tailgate.
I could feel Tai’s eyes on me.
“What’s it say?” Tai asked.
Sam chuckled.
“It says ‘honk if you like my ass’,” he said. “My horn isn’t working right now, so I couldn’t let you know how much I liked your butt.”
I started giggling when Tai’s eyes turned to me.
“Does it really?” He asked.
Sam nodded.
“Light’s green!” I yelled.
Neither man moved.
“Cop’s on our ass,” Sam said without turning his head at all.
Tai glanced into his rear view mirror.
“Do you think he wants to race?” Tai asked.
Sam grinned.
“Let’s go a little way up to the donut shop before we stop,” Sam suggested.
Tai grinned.
“10-4.”
Then we were off again, and I was covering my face with my hands as we did.
We did, in fact, pull over into the donut shop. However, no lights ever turned on.
Tai pulled into the parking lot first, followed by Sam, who still had a huge shit eating grin on his face.
The cop’s new SUV, a vehicle the city had recently starting replacing all of their cars with, pulled up in front of Tai and shut his car off.
Tai followed suit, followed shortly by Sam.
The silence was deafening.
A broad shouldered man with red hair stepped out of the car, one foot and then the other crunching on the gravel beneath his feet.
His face was hard and blank as he looked first at Sam, then at Tai.
“License and registration,” the cop said.
Tai crossed his arms over his chest.
Sam shook his head.
The red-headed cop placed both hands on his hips, the right one moving closer to his gun, and my heart started to pound a little faster in my chest.
I slapped Tai across the leg, and he grunted at me.
He still didn’t hand over his license, and I started to hyperventilate.
The cop, a red-haired, Scottish-warlord lookalike, reached for his radio.
“Dispatch, this is Unit two. I’ve got a 10-10 in progress,” the officer said into his mic at his shoulder.
“10-4,” I heard through the man’s mic, as well as Tai’s radio under the dash.
Tai’s breath caught.
The officer turned to study me.
Then he grinned.
“Alright, boys. Who wants to explain why we had to field calls about the two of y’all drag racing? Normally, it’s the high school boys and girls we have to worry about. Not grown ass adults,” the cop asked.
Tai got out of the truck and Sam dismounted, the three of them crowding around my window as they spoke, but none of them acknowledging me.
“It was an accident, officer,” Sam said unconvincingly.
The officer grunted in reply.
“So where y’all headed?” The officer asked, leaning against my door just past the mirror, giving me a very clear view of him.
My heart picked up for a different reason this time.
Mainly because I was within touching distance of three insanely hot men.
And I knew I had their attention, even though none of them were directly speaking to me.
“The Back Porch,” both Sam and Tai said at the same time.
“What’s going on there?” The red headed officer asked, reaching into his pocket for something and pulling it out.
It was gum.
The kind that kids ate with the fruity zebra looking dude on it.
“Want some? I’m Downy, a friend of Tai’s” he asked, offering me a stick.
I hesitantly reached my hand forward and took a piece.
“T-thank you,” I said.
He winked.
“There’s a live band. Max was dared to sing, and some of the boys from the band offered to play as his backup,” Sam explained.
I blinked.
“You’re shitting me,” Downy said. “How’d you get him to do that?”
“Wasn’t me. It was actually Lennox, Bennett’s wife,” Tai explained.
Who was Lennox? Or Bennett?
“Who’s Bennett?” I asked curiously.
“Bennett’s a KPD cop. He’s the brother of Payton, Max’s wife,” Sam explained.
That was clear as mud.
“And what’s the significance to him singing?” I asked.
Thirty minutes later I was in awe.
Downy, the officer I was introduced to finally, was sitting on a stool beside me with his back against the bar.
Tai was sitting on the opposite side with his arm along my back.
I was valiantly trying to resist the urge to lean into Tai.
I wanted nothing more than to have his arm around me, but I didn’t let myself do it.
It was like I was in high school all over again, as I tried to sneak covert glances at Tai, as well as trying to smell him and strike up conversations with him.
It didn’t work out so well for me.
The bar was too dark, so I couldn’t see much of him. It smelled like beer and liquor because a waitress had spilled her entire tray of drinks in front of Tai, Downy and Sam.
Then she’d proceeded to bend over in front of them, showing off her cute little ass, as she cleaned up the mess.
I’d just rolled my eyes.
If only she knew that none of the men even acknowledged her blatant come-ons.
I had struck out, three for three, seeing as it was too loud in the bar to hear myself chew, let alone hold a coherent conversation.
But what made up for it was the sexy beast on the stage.
He had short blondish brown hair and a scar on the side of his face that probably really hurt when he got it.
His voice, though, was what held everyone’s attention.
The sheer and utter beauty of his voice had everyone entranced as they listened to him sing Johnny Cash.
When he slipped into a perfect rendition of The Dance by Garth Brooks, I nearly melted into a puddle of goo like the rest of the ladies in the bar.
“Geez,” I said, my throat starting to clog up.
My thoughts strayed to Colt.
When my emotions started to pull me under, Tai’s arm wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me toward him.
My butt came off the stool, and I let my feet slide to the ground.
Then, suddenly, Tai had his arms around me and I was breathing in his scent like I’d wanted to do all night long.
He rested his badly-in-need-of-a-shave face against my forehead and started to sing right along with Max.
Then again, everyone was singing with him.
Garth Brooks was likely the only singer that everyone knew all the words to, so it was inevitable.
“Want a drink?” Tai asked, sensing my need to be distracted.
“No, I’m finished drinking. I haven’t had this much to drink since I was a freshman in college,” I laughed.
“Oh, boy. We’ll have to fix that,” Tai teased.
His chest rumbled with his words, and I had to bite my lip to keep the moan from slipping out past my lips.
“How was your dinner?” He persisted.
A smile lifted up the corner of my lips. “I’m stuffed. I think that they purposefully give you too much food so you won’t be able to leave for a while in fear of ripping your pants.”
He looked down at my pants with a raised brow, and I giggled.
I was still in my hospital scrubs.
Normally, I wouldn’t wear them out like this.
There were a lot of things that got on a nurse’s scrubs during the day, bodily fluids being one of them. However, when Tai had come to tell me about my mom, I’d only been at work for less than two hours. It hadn’t had time to get too badly soiled.
“They’re not stretchy, if that’s what you’re thinking. They’re fitted,” I said defensively with a narrowing of my eyes.
He chuckled, and I felt the rumble of his chest against mine.
“You ready to go?” He asked. “I know you have to be tired.”
I closed my eyes and thought about that.
Was I tired?
Yes.
Did I want to go?
Yes.
Did I want him to leave me?
No.
And that was exactly what would happen if I said that yes, I was ready to go.
“No. Not yet,” I said instead of the truth.
This was the most normal I’d felt in ages, and I didn’t want him to let me go.
He did, though, thirty minutes later as the last call was announced over the bar’s speakers.
“Let’s go, pretty girl,” Tai ordered, standing me up from where I’d been leaning against his chest for the last 30 minutes.
We walked out with the same group that we’d arrived with.
Although Sam had acquired a drop-dead, gorgeous blonde woman who was apparently his wife.
She was wrapped around Sam’s chest, laughing into his side as Sam spoke about something obviously very funny to the woman.
Downy was on his phone talking to who I assumed was his wife since he was talking about his ‘shit head kids’ to nearly the entire bar.
Tai was silent at my side, his arms down by his own sides as he walked.
I missed his body heat.
I wrapped my hands around my chest and looked down at the gravel beneath my feet as my Crocs dug into the loose rocks.
They made crunchy squish sounds as I walked…right into Tai.
“Shit!” I cried, startled.
I looked up at his face to see him staring at a man across the parking lot that was leaning against his truck.
The man was making out with a woman who he had pressed against the gleaming red paint.
“What. The. Fuck.”
It was then I saw the man had his hands up the woman’s skirt, and he was furiously working his digits.
“Wow,” I said. “Classy much?”
“Slutty, if you ask me,” Tai grumbled, walking forward until he stopped at the passenger side door.
He opened it up and helped me in, like he’d done each time I’d gotten in, and slammed it shut.
When the couple still didn’t move, he got into his side, then started the motor.
He revved it up for good measure, rocking the truck as he’d done earlier in the night.
I laughed out loud when I saw the couple scream and scramble away from the truck.
It really was that loud.
And we’d gathered the attention of Sam, his wife, and Downy, as they, too, laughed.
The man that was using Tai’s truck as an object to screw his woman against, glared at Tai. It was a promise that some sort of retribution would be served.
“Do you know him?” I asked once he pulled out of his parking spot.
“Yeah. Know the woman better, though,” he answered evasively.
“Oh?” I asked. “How?”
“Used to date her,” he mumbled, his voice sounding clipped.
“Oh,” I said.
That made sense.
I realized he wasn’t a monk. I also realized that he was an incredibly good-looking man. It wasn’t surprising that he would be able to get a woman that was that pretty.
And, boy, had that woman been pretty.
Slutty, yes, but still pretty.
Then again, if Tai had been doing that to me, I don’t know that I would’ve cared where we’d have done it, either.
Instead of dropping me off at home, he drove to the parking lot where I’d left my car and pulled up directly behind it.
I was disappointed.
Him dropping me at my car meant he really was just dropping me off. If he’d dropped me off at my house, it would have meant that I’d been carless, and then he might feel responsible in getting me to my car in the morning, or later in the day, seeing as it was now nearly three in the morning.
I opened the door and slid out of the truck, my feet landing on the asphalt with a soft crunch.
I turned around to look up at Tai, seeing him smiling down at me from inside the truck.
“Hope you had a good night,” he said. “Let me know if you or your mom needs anything, okay?”
I nodded, wondering what’d caused the huge change in his demeanor from the man in the bar that allowed me to lean against him, to this man, the one that was distant and acted like he didn’t really want to be anywhere near me anymore.
“Sounds good,” I lied as I forced a smile at him and slammed his truck door closed.
I was nearly to my car when I heard his truck door open up.
I hurried faster, clicking the unlock buttons on my car door and dropped inside.
Well…almost.
Tai caught me by the arm before I could fully descend and pulled me back up.
“Ack,” I said, turning to look at him.
His beautiful green eyes stared down into mine, boring straight into my soul.
Leaning into me so close that the only thing that separated us was our clothes.
He was hard…everywhere.
“Come to dinner with me tomorrow night at Jack’s?” He asked.
I swallowed.
“I can do that,” I said breathlessly.
He grinned and stepped back, and I felt the loss of body heat like a physical blow.
“Be careful,” he said.
I dropped into my car, looked up at his face, then started it up.
Tai closed my door, and I refused to look into my rearview mirror until I was far enough away that he wouldn’t know I was looking.
But he was already gone.