“These team building events suck the big one,” Brenda muttered.
I raised my glass to my lips as I stifled a laugh. We were standing in the bar area of Jack’s, a sports bar, while we waited for our large group to be seated.
At the front of the room, Shawna was giving a speech about teamwork but we weren’t listening. Brenda and I were too busy making snide remarks as we guzzled down drinks.
A couple of years back, the department staff ran into issues playing nicely with each other so Shawna introduced mandatory team building dinners to smooth things over. They translated into fake conversations among co-workers eager to crawl up the boss’s ass over free food and drinks. Brenda referred to them as a quick slap-and-tickle, office style.
Normally the optimistic one, I had recently reached a new limit with the magazine. Along with Stuart and my boss, everything about it was grating on my last nerve.
Maybe I was just tired. I had spent the majority of the afternoon attempting to rewrite my draft and leave out any abrasive language against Kean, but the only thing I accomplished was to delete several paragraphs of it.
The information Gloria had produced kept rolling around in my brain. It viciously clashed with Kean’s brutish behavior when I mentioned Dr. Duarte, not to mention his nasty demeanor at the restaurant. Still, she saw a side of the man no one else saw. At this point, I didn’t think I wanted to know any side of him, even from a distance.
A waiter approached holding a tray full of drinks. “Who ordered the red-headed slut and a whiskey sour?”
“We did. Mine is the whiskey sour and my friend here prefers red- headed sluts,” Brenda piped up, grinning from ear to ear.
Once we had our drinks in hand, Brenda made a toast. “Here is to a much-needed night of booze and to hell with deadlines, brown-nosers, and men with tiny dicks.”
She had to mention dicks. I clinked my red-headed-slut against her glass while I tried not to think of the not-so-tiny dick that had been pressed against my hip. I took a swig of my drink just as Stuart walked up. “Did I miss anything?”
“Not a thing,” I replied frostily.
I was still fuming over how Stuart had held back information about Kean. It lowered my opinion of him, which was a shame because Stuart actually looked good in the button-down shirt and dark jeans he had on.
An idea suddenly came to mind.
Facing Stuart, I flashed him the most flirtatious smile I could conjure up. He grinned as he took the bait, reaching out with the back of his hand to run it affectionately over my cheek.
A jostle from my opposite side threw me a bit off balance.
“Whatcha doing, Ciaran?” Brenda asked in a singsong voice.
“Just humoring Stuart,” I responded under my breath so only she could hear.
Brenda had been so busy with her article, I hadn’t gotten the chance to fill her in on all the drama I was having with mine.
Leaning over to look at Stuart, Brenda gave me a thumb up. “Humoring can be a good thing.”
I was shoving her thumb back down when Stuart’s cell phone rang.
“I’ll be right back. I have to take this,” he explained and took off towards the bar’s lobby.
“Well, about fucking time.” Brenda sighed. “He has been dying to bang you for months.”
I picked a piece of imaginary lint from my shirt. I wanted to explain banging wasn’t exactly where I was going with this but there were too many co-workers around that would love to get ahold of some juicy gossip.
A waiter entered the room and announced they were ready to seat the group.
I set my drink on the bar and handed Brenda my purse. “Brenda do me a favor. Take my purse to the table and save us some seats. I’m going to let Stuart know they are taking us to our table.”
Stepping into the lobby area, I found Stuart leaning up against a wall with his cell pressed to his ear. He noticed me immediately and watched as I moved towards him.
Just as I reached where he was standing, he tucked his phone into his jeans pocket.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. I came to tell you we are being seated.”
Keeping to my plan, I ran the tip of my tongue over my lips causing Stuart’s attention to hone in on my mouth. His hand shot to my hip and pulled me closer.
“Stuart, can I ask you something?”
“Angel, you can ask me anything.”
“How do you and Dr. Bennett know each other?”
Stuart’s eyes lowered to the neckline of my t-shirt dress where the skin above my breasts was exposed. “We went to the same high school.”
My body stiffened. Worried my reaction was going to give me away I rubbed a hand against the row of buttons on Stuart’s chest.
He needed to keep talking. I needed to keep him talking.
“Were you friends?” I purred.
Stuart clasped both my hands over his heart. “No, we weren’t. We didn’t run in the same circles at all. Kean was a couple of years ahead of me in high school. He was one of those rich popular assholes who thought he was above the rules. You know the type everyone loves, no matter what. He had a reputation for sleeping with anything in a skirt. The sad thing was, nobody cared. He was worshiped because his family had money. That was until one day when he assaulted a younger student.”
My hands fisted in his shirt. Did he just say what I thought he did? “That can’t be right. There has to be some mistake.”
“Ciaran, there’s no mistake. They found the girl crying in an empty classroom with her shirt ripped to shreds. She was bleeding from her mouth and nose and she was hysterical. Kean admitted to it when he was arrested and questioned.”
The memory of Kean’s darkened eyes with his hand around my throat lit up in my head, then just as quickly faded away. It was followed by the memory of Gloria’s voice, as she told me about how he helped those children. I was ninety percent sure Kean would never hurt anyone like that.
“There is no way Kean would do anything like that.”
Stuart’s grip on my hands tightened. “Kean? Since when do you call him Kean?”
Disregarding his question, I pulled my hands free of his and stroked at his chest again. “What happened after they found the girl?”
Stuart frowned but answered. “The same thing that always happens with pampered spoiled rich kids. He confessed and his family threw a bunch of money at the problem to make it go away. He was suspended for a couple of weeks but returned as if nothing had happened, which was complete and utter bullshit. Because he had money, the faculty and the school board put everyone else in the school at risk by leaving a monster in their midst. The family of the girl moved to another state because they were so traumatized by the situation.”
I wasn’t sure when it happened but sometime during Stuart’s last comments, his hands had moved to my face and were cupping my jaw. I shook my head and took a step away from his touch.
“Ciaran, you need to stay clear of him. People don’t change. He had violent tendencies as a teen and he is no different now, except his preferences have changed and he preys on adult women instead of young girls. Write your article, expose Kean Bennett for the monster he is and move on.”
“Are you saying I should include the alleged attack in my assignment?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. He got away with forcing himself on a female, which isn’t right. You hold the power in your hands to correct a past wrong.”
Warning bells went off left and right. Stuart was too adamant for my liking but I was curious as to what else he might know. I wanted to bring up Dr. Duarte but didn’t want to take the chance of accidentally giving away information he wasn’t aware of.
While all this was running through my brain, I failed to notice his arm had wound around my waist. Pulling me flushed against his chest, Stuart tucked his face into the side my neck. “Ciaran, do you know how much I want you?”
Revulsion. I felt nothing but revulsion. I placed my palms against his chest and pushed hard, forcing my body away from his.
Protectively wrapping my arms around myself, I took a deep breath. “Stuart, why don’t you head in and find the group. I’ll be there shortly. I’m just going to grab my drink from the bar.”
He stared at me blankly for a couple of seconds before wrapping a clammy hand on the nape of my neck and grinding a kiss onto my closed mouth. His tongue stabbed at my lips as he tried to breach them but I refused to open. He sighed and stepped away. “I’ll let them know you’ll be right there.”