Seduce Me Tonight. Kristina Wright

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СКАЧАТЬ up to the light, studying it. ‘What’s with the cherries?’

      ‘For your first homicide. You broke your cherry, kiddo.’

      He rewarded me with the first smile I’d ever seen on his face, which served to reinforce how young he looked. ‘Thanks. You just made my night.’

      I felt something spread through my belly the way the cherry syrup spread through his glass. ‘Any time,’ I said, putting more meaning into the words than I intended.

      I left him alone to drink his cherry-flavoured soda, but there wasn’t quite so much tension in his shoulders as there had been when he walked in. That made me feel good. Bartending is about more than serving up drinks – it’s about understanding people and what they need. Or maybe I’m just trying to justify having the hots for a young cop.

      After that, we were on a first-name basis. Some nights, he’d walk in with that familiar dejected expression and say, ‘It’s cherry time, Kayla.’ Then, if the bar was slow, he’d tell me what he’d been through that night. Sometimes he’d wait for me if I was busy and that gave me a little thrill, even though a part of me believed he only saw me as his bartending therapist.

      I was there when Leo made his first suicide call and I listened without comment as he described the knife wounds on the woman’s wrist and how she looked almost happy in death. He told me about his love of animals and the first time he had to put a bullet in the head of an injured deer hit by a car. I dared to pat his hand when he told me about his first experience with a car full of drunk teenagers, half of them dead on the scene after a collision with a tree. That one brought tears to my eyes, thinking about my own two sons.

      They weren’t all traumatic events; some were good career firsts. His first search warrant, his first drug arrest, the first court case he won. Other firsts were just plain embarrassing and he’d relate them in hushed tones, looking over his shoulder to make sure none of the other guys overheard his shame. Some things he could laugh at, like the first time he caught a couple going at it in the backseat of a car. That one made him blush and his blushing turned me on.

      ‘They didn’t even care that they were sitting there naked,’ he said, naïve incredulity in his voice.

      ‘Lust makes people do crazy things.’ I thought back to some of my antics, not all of them in the distant past. ‘Lust is the devil.’

      He shrugged, as if he didn’t have a clue. ‘I guess.’

      We had an easy camaraderie that wasn’t quite like what I had with the other guys in the precinct. There was no swagger to Leo, no macho bullshit to peel away like layers of an onion. At night, after I locked up the bar and headed home alone, I thought about Leo in ways that would surely make him blush. Naked, sweaty, hard. Part of my heightened lust was the fact that I wasn’t taking anyone home any more. Not for a lack of trying on their part – I just wasn’t interested. I tried not to dwell on the reason I wasn’t interested.

      Then one night Leo came in looking like a man who’d lost his best friend. The lines etched into his exhausted, stricken face aged him by ten years. The bar was hopping more than usual that night, so it took me a good five minutes to make my way down to him.

      ‘Hey, what happened?’

      ‘Dead kid. Five years old,’ he said, as if giving a report. ‘Wandered off and drowned in the lake.’

      ‘Fuck. I’m sorry.’

      He bent his head. I thought he was crying, but then I saw that he cradled something on his lap. ‘It was his,’ he said, holding up a bedraggled orange and white kitten in his big hands. ‘Parents said he was in the yard playing with the cat, last they saw. Thought the father was going to strangle it, so I took it.’

      His words were punctuated by rough strokes of the cat’s fur. That little furball was all that was holding him together but a kitten wasn’t company enough to fight off his demons once the lights went out.

      ‘Let me get Quentin to close up shop for me and I’ll get you home.’

      ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ he said, a little too loudly.

      I ignored him and walked to the other end of the bar. I snagged Quentin as he went by on his way to serve a round of beer to a bunch of rough-looking bikers. ‘Can you close for me? I’ve got something I need to do.’

      Quentin looked from me to Leo. He’s been with me for seven years, as rough around the edges as some of our customers, but he’s a decent bartender and had become a good friend. ‘Got yourself another rescue?’

      ‘Something like that.’

      He winked, but there was no humour in his knowing expression. ‘Just watch yourself, girl. That one’s liable to break your heart.’

      I laughed. I knew about lust – lust could twist me six ways to Sunday. But love was for other people, and so was heartbreak. I hadn’t had enough time to fall in love before I’d fallen pregnant and love wasn’t a privilege I’d had as a young wife or a single mother. I hadn’t been heartbroken when my abusive ex-husband took off with one of my barmaids ten years ago and left me to finish raising two rambunctious boys. Love sure as hell wasn’t a luxury I could afford now. The idea of this sweet young kid breaking through my protective barrier, much less breaking my heart, was ludicrous.

      I shook my head and made my way back to Leo, who was trying to keep a hold on the mewling kitten. ‘C’mon, rookie. Let’s get you home.’

      ‘I haven’t had my cherry soda yet.’

      I knew he was in shock, so I humoured him. ‘I’ll make you one at home.’

      I guess that’s when it dawned on him that I wasn’t taking him to his house. ‘Oh,’ he said, long and slow, drawing it out like a deep, relieved sigh. ‘OK.’

      Out in the parking lot, I sized him up. ‘Are you OK to drive?’

      He nodded.

      I wasn’t convinced, but I let it go because I only live a couple miles from the bar. ‘Good. Just follow me.’

      My house is on a quiet dead-end road. It’s not much, just a little two-bedroom bungalow. The place had seemed cramped with two six-foot teenagers eating me out of house and home, but now with them gone – Ty off to the Army and Nate off to college – it felt huge and lonely.

      I waited to get out of my car until Leo’s truck pulled in on the gravel driveway behind me and he shut off his engine. He met me at the front door, the kitten tucked in the crook of his arm.

      ‘Hey,’ he said, as if we hadn’t just seen each other at the bar.

      He was nervous, I realised. That didn’t surprise me, really. The short drive had given him time to think and nervousness was cutting through the shock. What surprised me was that I was nervous, too.

      ‘Come on in.’

      I let us into the darkened house and turned on the lamp by the window, filling the room with a peaceful amber glow. I could feel Leo close behind me, his grief so large it felt like a third person in the room with us. The kitten let out a wail and that seemed to break the nervous tension between us.

      ‘Let’s get the little guy some food,’ I said. ‘I’ve got СКАЧАТЬ