Whiskey Flight - Violet Howe Page 0,2
my anger with Victor like a general rage against love and vulnerability. Since Victor wasn’t around to catch the brunt of it, Seth made an excellent stand-in target.
“I take it you and the deputy have a history?” Shannon said as she returned to wipe the bar in front of me.
Hmmph. That was an understatement. Seth had been my first crush in kindergarten, my glued-to-the-hip companion throughout elementary, my first kiss in junior high, and a key player in every single memory I had of high school and college. Hell, he was the only serious boyfriend I’d ever had. Not counting Victor, of course, but Victor had gone straight from stranger to spouse so quickly I didn’t count him as a boyfriend, and two months of living a lie couldn’t be taken seriously.
“A history? Yeah. You could say that,” I finally responded over the rim of my glass. “We knew each other when I lived here before. Thirteen years ago.”
“Dang. If you’re still that mad after thirteen years, he must have really screwed you over. Sucks to hear that. I’ve always thought Seth was one of the nice guys. I don’t know him that well, though. He doesn’t come in too often. Just the weekends he’s not on duty. All I know is he’s not one of those who hits on every girl who walks through the door, and he never gets wasted and acts an ass. Always tips well, too. Calls me by my name. Real respectful.”
I swallowed my whiskey and winced at the burn.
“Don’t let me change your opinion. Seth is a nice guy,” I said, coming to his defense in my guilt for somehow casting him in a negative light. “At least, he was when I knew him.”
Shannon sighed. “In my experience, men are either good guys at their core, or they’re not. They don’t tend to change much. I’m sure if you sat down and had a drink with Seth, you’d find he was pretty much the same person you knew him to be. But what do I know?”
A customer beckoned her from farther down the bar, and she smiled with a shrug as she walked away.
I glanced over my shoulder to see if Metro Man was still there, looking away quickly when I saw he was staring at me. I waited a couple of minutes, what seemed like an eternity, and then I turned on the barstool and did a quick scan of the bar, careful to start on the opposite end of where he sat.
The booths along the back wall were all filled with people laughing, talking, drinking, and eating. A typical Friday night out for friends.
A trio of ladies stood near the billiards table watching one man line up his cue stick and take his shot, and his opponent roared with laughter when he missed.
Three dartboards hung on the adjacent wall, and Seth had joined one of the groups tossing darts.
He was more buff now than when I’d known him. Years spent in law enforcement had bulked up his body, making him much more muscular than the scrawny teen of my memories.
Gone were the lustrous locks of his youth. He wore his dark brown hair cut too close to his head to form the wavy curls that I’d loved to twist around my fingers.
His jawline was more chiseled, the angles of his face sharpened by age, but his eyes were still the same soft chocolate brown they’d always been.
Tearing my gaze away from Seth to let it roam over the tables in the center of the room, I finally dared to look toward the stranger.
He was ready this time, waiting for the eye contact, and he lifted his beer in a toast as he grinned and gave me a nod.
I spun away so quickly that I damned near fell off the barstool, and then I propped my elbow on the bar and let my dark hair fall forward to shield my face from his view.
Was he taunting me? Was he letting me know he was aware I knew his purpose?
Or was I overreacting?
There’d been nothing sinister in his glance. It could have been flirtation. What if he wasn’t a hitman at all? What if he was simply a guy in a bar hoping to score on a Friday night?
Maybe I should have let Seth sit next to me. That would have at least discouraged any unwanted advances from Metro Man. On the other hand, if my initial instincts about the stranger were correct, associating