Hot Pursuit - Denise A. Agnew [13]
Danny’s face was a mottled red, his eyes bloodshot. “She’s mine!”
Vic stood at the ready, feet slightly apart, arms at his side. Tension held his shoulders taut. “She doesn’t belong to anyone.”
She had enough time to be flabbergasted—two men were fighting over her.
Three bouncers headed right for Danny and grabbed him from behind. Vic held his hands up and backed away. He wasn’t fighting Danny, he was simply protecting himself from getting smashed in the face. Gasps and exclamations echoed around Lucy, then claps. People were clapping because of a fight? Then it occurred to her they’d clapped because of Vic’s quick thinking to deflect Danny’s hits. Lucy admired the fact he hadn’t busted Danny in the face. The bouncers continued to drag Danny outside. She heard someone say the police were on the way.
Vic turned to her, his arm encircling her waist as he eased her off the dance floor to stand in a secluded spot. “You okay? You’re shaking.”
“Me?” She realized her hands trembled, her body wracked with fine tremors. “I’m fine. Just adrenalin, I guess. What in the world did he think he was doing? I never thought in a million years he’d do anything like that. I’ve never seen him drunk.”
“Maybe you don’t know as much about him as you thought.”
As she gazed into Vic’s eyes, she realized she didn’t know as much about this man as she thought either.
Maybe that was the point. The time for pretending had left the building a long time ago. “In high school I was wrong about you. Tonight, when I realized who you were, I was wrong about you. When I walked in here tonight…” She took a deep breath for bravery. “I planned to find a hook-up. I wanted pure, unemotional sex and that’s something I’ve never done before. I saw you and you blew me away. You’re different than you were in high school.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. Mature, confident.” Dare she admit it out loud? She allowed her gaze to do a blatant once over that took in his whole body with ravenous admiration. “Hot.”
He chuckled softly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You aren’t the same woman either.” When she didn’t answer he said, “Do you still want the unemotional sex?”
She swallowed hard. “Yes.” Her not-getting-involved-with-military-types rule flushed right down the toilet. There couldn’t be emotions in this, in the short time they’d renewed their acquaintance. “Yes.”
All the way to her house, Lucy reflected on the night. Vic insisted on following her home. His SUV following her to her neighborhood did make her feel safer on a crazy night like this.
Cops had interviewed them at the bar and had taken Danny to sleep off a drunk. The bar owner and Vic could have filed charges against Danny but declined. As a result, Lucy found one more thing about Vic to admire. With all the commotion, midnight came and went without the sensual kiss she’d wanted.
Lucy had made a decision she hoped she wouldn’t regret bringing him here. Confusion certainly clouded this, the conviction that she’d been so sure not to make a mistake with a military man again. And here she was.
Maybe making that same mistake once more.
Her street was quiet with no traffic. The older neighborhood held houses built in the early twentieth century. Tree-lined, the area still had traces of snow on the sidewalk, and some Christmas lights lingered on homes nearby. She pulled into her driveway and drove around back to her detached garage. She had too much junk in her garage to park in there, so she braved scraping snow off in the winter and heating her car when temperatures dropped. Vic parked behind her and climbed out. Her heart started a new tattoo, an excitement of what might happen. She walked up to him, his features hard to see even though neighborhood lights kept the area from being pitch dark.
“Look,” he said, “if you want me to leave, I understand after everything that happened. If you think you want to patch things up with your old boyfriend, we can talk tomorrow or—”
“No.