Page 3 of Daring the Bad Boy
Rosie’s gaze landed back on Mr. Too Hot. “But what if I get hooked into this guy’s drama? He looks sort of lonely don’t you think?” The surly look had to have a cause? She wondered what it could be? Had he been dumped on Valentine’s Day too?
“Rosie, focus.” Tash snapped her fingers in front of Rosie’s nose. “You won’t get hooked into anything as long as you follow the three golden rules of booty call engagements.” Her friend held up her fingers to count them down, as if instructing the pottery class at the art college where all three of them worked on how to make the perfect throw down. “No surnames. No personal questions and under no circumstances are you to consider keeping him. Remember this is a use-him-then-lose-him deal. No relationship agendas allowed. Or you could end up getting hurt again. And that is not what this is about.” Tash’s gaze locked back on her prey. “But I don’t think you need to worry. I can spot a bad boy at thirty paces. If that guy ever had a mother, he’s not looking for another.”
“Right,” Rosie said.
Could she crush her curiosity about him? Ignore that blast of kinship? Put her desire to nurture on lockdown? Could one night of anonymous sex really cure her V-Day allergy and re-boot her love life?
She shot back the last of the chilly daiquiri to ease the dryness in her throat and refilled her glass. Then asked herself the toughest question of all.
Could she hook up with a complete stranger to find out?
Her pulse raced, as she listened with half an ear to her friends composing the ‘perfect chat-up line’, the hum of excitement surprising her.
An exceptionally hot complete stranger…
But then she saw the hot stranger’s brows draw down as he spoke to the barman, making the surly frown even hotter. And her anticipation raced straight back into that brick wall called reality.
Forget perfect. This chat-up line is going to have to be super-human if it’s going to get a badass like him to want to hook up with me.
*
“Give me a glass of whatever beer you’ve got on tap,” Caleb Landry shouted above the collective shrieking of the party of women behind him wearing bouncing pink dicks on their heads.
“Sorry, mate, the taps are out,” the barman replied. “We’ve got bottles of cherry-flavored lager or strawberry cocktails left and that’s about it.”
Cal scowled at the guy, who looked about seventeen. Son of a bitch, who did he have to kill to get a drink that wasn’t fucking pink tonight? “Guinness?”
Baby-face no
dded. “Bottled, yeah. Although I can’t guarantee it’s cold.”
“Not a problem, I’ll take one.” Cal had worked for six months in a pub in Temple Bar eleven years ago, back when he’d first arrived in Europe, age eighteen, looking for anonymity, adventure and a chance to take his photography to the next level. The pictures he’d taken in Dublin’s tourist mecca had mostly been of gullible tourists and hammered rugby fans, but while there he’d discovered the smooth, rich, restorative qualities of Ireland’s favorite stout. And smooth was what he needed tonight, to blunt the jagged edges after six days spent handling his old man’s affairs and dealing with the ghosts of his childhood, and twenty-four hours spent traveling back to London from the no-hope small town near Buffalo in Upstate New York where he’d grown up.
Drinking alone tonight would be bad, because of all the stuff he didn’t want to think about after burying his father – not to mention the nightmare that had accosted him at the funeral. So he’d jumped off the subway from Heathrow at Leicester Square and headed into Soho. Forgetting tonight was Valentine’s Day had been his second mistake. But he was stuck in the eye of the hurricane now until he got hammered enough to be able to face his empty apartment alone. Drinking anything pink, though, was out, because he did not need another reminder that every guy in this place was liable to get lucky tonight except him.
Hell, probably even Barman Baby Face.
What he wouldn’t give to have a warm body to take home and slide up against tonight. A body which was soft and round in all the right places and smelled of perfume and sin and could help take the emptiness away, no questions asked. But that wasn’t going to happen, because women always had questions, even when it came to one-night hook-ups. And anything resembling conversation was off the agenda after a week spent talking to funeral directors and lawyers and IRS bureaucrats … And that bastard, Decker.
We need to talk, son.
The strained words spoken by West Daley County’s chief of police at the crematorium echoed in his head from two days before.
Who the hell did the guy think he was? Trying to dump that crap on him at his old man’s funeral? Dan Landry had been the only father he wanted, the only father that meant anything. He didn’t want to know what had happened between Decker and his mother. Not now. Not ever.
His fingers clenched into a fist, all the fury and confusion that had burst out when he was a kid – and he’d seen the suspicious looks, heard the whispered comments, endured the taunts of the other kids – came flooding back. His knuckles throbbed with the familiar urge to hit out instead of holding back.
Don’t believe a word of it, kid, your Mom was a good woman. Whatever they said you’ve got to turn the other cheek, because you’re the only one who’s getting hurt.
The memory of his father’s weary faith in a woman who had never deserved it had Cal’s fingers releasing. He flexed his hand, and waited for the urge to pass. The way he’d finally learned to do back then, by using his camera lens to separate himself and his life from the endless gossip and name-calling and small-mindedness of the good people of West Daley – who all seemed to think that someone else’s business was theirs to own.
Shake it off. You don’t have to punch Decker. You just have to forget him.
He’d torn up Decker’s card, and he wasn’t ever going to contact the guy. So that was the end of it. No harm, no foul.
Even so, when the barman returned with his Guinness, Cal stared into the dark liquid and knew it was going to take a lot more than one bottle to get hammered enough to go home alone tonight. He took a long drag, and let the rich malty taste start to take some of the bitterness away.
But as he threw a ten-pound note on to the bar, slim fingers touched his forearm. He turned and tensed, the sight of the heart-shaped face beaming at him making him feel as if he’d just taken a sucker punch to the gut.