Cheri balanced on the squeaky perch as she pressed her thigh across the leg of the man sitting next to her. It wasn’t an easy maneuver, considering her dress was way too short to sit that way, looking like a Band-Aid stretched across the hips of a Barbie doll. Her barstool buddy, a man she’d met just a little over an hour before, was obviously into her and she wanted someone, anyone, to help her take the edge off. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know his name; after two shots and three beers, she didn’t care. “Le’s gitt outta here,” she slurred, then draped her arms around his neck loosely and stared at him like she was in love. She wished that was the case, but was coherent enough to know that any attraction was entirely alcohol-induced. She also wished they could just skip right to the part where they couldn’t get enough of each other, because she needed to belong to someone. What did the bartender say the other night? “Regulars don’t make friends. They take hostages.”
Cheri was no stranger to intense love, or so she thought. Now, yearning for it sent a sharp pain ripping through her, one that no number of shots could dull. Remembering that love almost made her angry, and knowing the stranger on the other barstool was nowhere near the love of her life suddenly frustrated her.
“Y-Yeah, b-baby,” he stuttered, oblivious, then stood to take her up on her offer.
Who knows? Maybe taking this fool to my room will let me forget, if only for a little while. She grabbed her purse and planted her foot on the floor, seeking to find her balance as she slowly slid off the barstool.
She was just about to leave with the virtual stranger, to invite him to the hotel where she’d been living for the last month, when she felt a biting grip on her upper arm. She looked over her shoulder and saw the bartender glaring angrily at her, a person she’d been chummy with for a while, since she first showed up in his establishment weeks ago. After night after night of sitting in that bar, though, she’d grown tired of his company, and she was sure he felt the same.
“Aren’t you forgettin’ somethin’?” he snapped.
Cheri looked around. “No,” she replied with a wobbly shrug, genuinely clueless.
“You need to sign for the tab,” he said.
Cheri smiled. “He’ll get it,” she said, nodding toward the one who was about to entertain her for the evening.
“Uh, no he won’t,” retorted the man who had been groping her just seconds before, suddenly quite sober.
Instantly Cheri’s nerves cleared her fuzzy head, too. Her month-long drinking binge had changed her life dramatically. When she’d lost the love of her life, and her job of eight years, all she had left to support herself with a stolen credit card that she was now reluctant to use, outside of the necessity of her hotel bill. She assumed her friendliness toward her fellow drunk would be currency enough to cover her drinks. That little trick for treats sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t, and this time she was obviously not going to be able to pull off a drink-and-ditch. It proved fruitful at first, when she first started her dive into drunkenness, but in becoming a regular she’d somewhere lost her touch. The routine was getting old for the bartender, who had seen her in action night after night, then even in the late afternoons almost every single day.
“Sorry lady,” said the half-drunk partner. “I don’t even know you.”
“Well I don’t know you, either, asshole, and I’m sure as hell not about to buy your drinks,” protested Cheri with a stomp of her foot. Nor sleep with your sorry ass.
“You said you would,” he argued.
The bartender glared at Cheri, as if he was in full agreement with the man. “You ordered the round, and you told me to put it on your tab,” he said, crossing his arms. “You need to settle up…and don’t come back.”
“What?! This is a public place, and I have every right to—”
“’Fraid not, missy. I’m the owner of this establishment, and I’ve got a right to deny service. Consider yourself denied. There are plenty of other watering holes around here. This don’t need to be yours anymore.”
“Keep your panties on, Mel,” Cheri slurred. “I’ll sign for it.”
Mel rolled his eyes, ran the bill, and handed her the receipt and a pen.
As Cheri reached to sign for the purchase, her drinking buddy became friendly again.
“Fuck off,” she said, shoving him as hard as she could. She turned to the bartender as she held the pen, frozen above the dotted line. “Can I stay if there are…no more games?” she asked, arching a brow at him. “I really like this place, Mel. Hell, most of the time I even like you. Really, do you have any objections to me sticking around?”
“I object!” said a loud, booming voice behind her. “Don’t let her sign.”
The bartender’s face tightened with alarm when he spotted the man behind Cheri.
Shit! Cheri dropped her head, knowing the jig was up. She knew that voice, and it was clear that he was calling her bluff. How’d he find out so fast she’d used his card? Her brain couldn’t process it fast enough.
“You’re not an authorized signer or user of that card,” said Thomas Graham.
She didn’t even turn to face the man she’d been head-over-heels in love with once. Instead, she just rolled her eyes like some spoiled millennial, as if she was entitled to do whatever she pleased, and he was the one in the wrong for demanding she stop using his stolen credit card. “Buzzkill alert,” she said under her breath.
“You got that right,” said Thomas. “If she comes in here again, call me and then the cops,” he instructed, then easily handed his card to Mel, reaching right over Cheri’s head.
The drunk-cheapo Cheri had been eyeing, hoping to peg with her tab, was speechless. He stared at Thomas for a moment, a big and looming figure, then scooted away
“How’d you find me?” asked Cheri coyly, lifting her half-empty drink to her lips.
Thomas intervened and pushed her wrist to the counter, calmly but firmly, splashing the liquor out of the glass. “You’ve had enough,” he said. “As for finding you, it wasn’t hard. For one, you checked into the same hotel you were at before…”
Cheri smirked. “Do go on, Thomas. Before you brought a woman home hours after you declared your love for me, right? Fucking her while I was in your house, waiting for you like a patient, trusting girlfriend,” she added snidely.
His face scrunched up with pain, as if he’d eaten something sour. “I’ve known all along where you were,” he continued, doing his best to ignore her remark. “Every time my card is charged, I get an email. This little routine of yours is getting old. You’re nothing if not predictable.”
“Good,” she said sarcastically. “At least I won’t surprise you.”
He gripped her elbow firmly. “You can tell me all about it on the way home.”
“I’m right upstairs. I can walk to my room all by myself.”
“Not anymore it’s not. The bank’s closed. Your house is finished, and it’s time you go home sweet home.”
“You can’t tell me where to go!” she hissed. “Who do you think you are, my daddy?” With that, she tried once again to pick up the glass. “My sugar daddy, because you owe me.”
“Definitely not your father, but this Daddy Warbucks isn’t paying for your shit anymore, Cheri,” he said in a stern voice that told her he meant business.
Cheri stiffened, which made it difficult for Thomas to maneuver her. “Whatever, but I’m going by myself. I refuse to ride in that car where you did hell knows what with that woman. For all I know, her bare ass was on the seat!” she screamed, drawing several curious glares from the bar patrons and an angry one from Mel as he wiped down the counter. “Just get away from me. Give me the keys to my house and piss off!”
Thomas lowered his face close to hers.
Why does he have to be so damn hot? Cheri thought as she looked right into his eyes. She knew where that mouth had been, where his tongue had been, and her body shivered involuntarily just remembering those passionate explorations, fulfilled fantasies she’d never forget.
“You’re not going anywhere by yourself in this condition,” he announced with finality.
She wanted to tease him, to let him know she secretly found it almost intolerably hot when he was so commanding. She had to resist the urge to call a truce by offering her body up to him. She was usually quick to cave in to those desires when it came to Thomas, but this time he’d royally pissed her off and humiliated her, and remembering all that only made her madder. “This so-called condition is all your fault!” she yelled with a scowl.
“Yeah, I know,” he said, wearing an expression that made it clear that he meant it. “I’m an asshole, Cheri. I admit that. Now let’s go.”
“I already said I’m not going with you. My stuff’s upstairs, and I can handle it myself,” she said dismissively.
Thomas’s voice rumbled like thunder when he replied, “I’ve already handled it, and I’ll be handling it from here on out. You’ve been drunk for a month, Cheri. I’m sorry I hurt you. I intend to make it right, whether you like it or not.”
“Of course I don’t like it,” she said with a stomp of her foot, “and right now I don’t like you!” She glared at him again, at his handsome face as large as life in front of hers, and she couldn’t help but melt a little at the sight of him. It was tough to reconcile what a bastard Thomas Graham was with his amazing appearance; he was disarmingly good-looking, and that just made her want to smack him. “I don’t like you, and I’m not letting you handle anything.”
“You do…and you will,” he promised.