Fire & Ice (The Locklaine Boys #1) (21 page)

I smiled. “I would, but it involves talk of penises and reach-arounds, things not appropriate for delicate ears.”

“Yeah. Good call,” he grinned, kissing me again. “At least
try
not to get arrested again. Can you do that much for me?”

I looked up and scrunched my lips together as if in thought. “I make no promises. We can only follow wherever the night leads us.”

I gave him one last kiss before pulling from his hold and heading to the door. Dealing with belligerent customers wasn’t my favorite thing to do, but it came with the territory.

“Give her hell, sweetness,” Griffin leaned in and whispered in my ear just before we exited the mouth of the hallway into the front of Fire & Ice. I smiled at the light brush of his hand against my ass as he walked by while eyeing the woman at the counter at the same time. Griffin gave a little wave to my employees as he headed for the door and turned to shoot me a wink over his shoulder just before he disappeared. I could feel the goofy smile stretching across my face. God, I was falling for that man like crazy.

“Uh,
hello
!” the bitchy woman demanded. “Is it too much to expect a little assistance here?”

I wiped the happy expression from my face, making sure to replace it with a neutral mask as I went to deal with the entitled, self-involved, spray-tanned bimbo currently standing in my boutique, making a scene.

Time to show this bitch her place
.

“
I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU
told her she wouldn’t be able to squeeze her fat ass into a size two!” Navie cackled loudly. Once that girl had too many drinks in her, the filter came off and she yelled
everything
. You could go deaf if you were sitting too close to a drunk Navie.

“I can’t believe I missed it,” Tomas pouted, still butt-hurt he wasn’t on the schedule for today and missed out on seeing me lay the smack down on the bleach-blonde oompa loopma earlier.

“She made Tara cry!” I exclaimed, lifting my drink in the air, sloshing my dirty martini all over the place. Okay, so I might have been about three steps passed buzzed, but I was still at least two way from being totally sloshed. I hiccupped with my arm raised in the air, spilling even more. All right,
one
step away from sloshed.

“Excuse me,” the bartender called out to get out attention. “I’m gonna have to ask you to lower your voices. You’re disturbing the other patrons.”

Navie let out an affronted gasp at the same time Tomas propped his elbow on the bar and rested his cheek on his fist. “And I’m gonna have to ask you for your number,” he purred. “Mmm, boy. You’re just too sexy for your own good.”

Bartender Boy’s cheeks turned slightly red as he grinned shyly at Tomas’s blatant flirting. The situation might have been defused right then if not for Navie’s tendency to, in her words
get country on peoples’ asses
when she was drinking and got pissed off. I’d seen it before. It wasn’t pretty.

“Ex
cuse
me, Mr. Bartender Man,” she snapped her fingers. Her head waved from side to side and I couldn’t tell if it was from attitude or if she’d just had so much to drink she was having trouble holding her head up. “We weren’t being loud.”

Uh oh.

“I disagree,” some hoity-toity man a little further down from us chimed in. “You’ve been disrupting me and my date all evening.”

It had to be said, the man’s date was obviously with him for one thing and one thing only… and it wasn’t his stellar conversational skills or good looks. If gold digger was a scent, it would be whatever cheap-ass perfume she’s bathed herself in was.

“Oh, I’m
so
sorry,” Navie mocked loudly.

“There a problem over here?”

Shit
. That voice was familiar. As I slowly turned on my barstool, I sent up a prayer that it wasn’t who I thought it was.

“Not you again!” Navie shouted. Yep, it was him. The same burly bouncer she’d lovingly referred to as
cue ball
the one and only night I’d ever been arrested. Shit was about to go down. I needed to prepare. I started pulling off my earrings and reached into my clutch for a ponytail holder.

“What are you doing?” Tomas whispered from beside me.

“Getting ready,” I answered as I secured my hair to the back of my head. “Shit’s about to get real.”

“Uh…” he muttered worriedly as Navie stood to address the bouncer.

“We weren’t doing anything wrong. It’s not our fault Mr. Peanut over there has the personality of that stupid cat from all those Grumpy Cat memes. Hey!” she said, turning her attention back to the man who, surprisingly enough, looked almost
exactly
like Mr. Peanut. “I bet if you give her a hundo you’d at least get a blowjob out of the date. I promise, she’s not with you for the stellar conversation, dude.”

He gave an offended snort as his date mumbled, “She’s not lying,” loud enough for all of us to hear.

“Okay, that’s it. You guys are out,” the bouncer announced.

That was all it took.

Navie started bouncing up and down on her toes like a boxer while I climbed off my stool and prepared to have my girl’s back if necessary. “You wanna dance, Mr. Clean? Let’s dance.”

“
FOR FUCK’S SAKE! I
feel like I’m dealing with children!” Rowan shouted as he paced in front of the couch where Pepper, Tomas, and Navie sat, trying their hardest to remain stone-faced as their drunken giggles threatened to break free.

I’d been expecting my phone to ring well after midnight with a drunken booty call from Pepper. What I
hadn’t
expect was a call after midnight from Dex asking me if I could get down to the precinct because Pepper and Navie had arrested
again,
and he was stuck at home with a sick baby and wife and couldn’t go get her himself.

Needless to say, even though my dick was hard at the sight of her in those damn leather pants, I was pissed as hell. Rowan and I got to the station about the same time, and since I’d cabbed it, we decided to take the damn hooligans back to his and Navie’s apartment so we could yell at them without an audience.

“It’s not our fault!” Navie stated obstinately. “If Mr. Peanut hadn’t opened his mouth—”

“I’ll have you know,” Rowan interrupted. “The man you’re referring to, you know… the one you told to pay his date for a blowjob, is a goddamned state senator.”

She grew understandably quiet for a few seconds before whispering “Whoops,” earning a snort of laughter from Pepper and Tomas. When I shot them both a seething glare, they wisely shut up.

“I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal?”

“You don’t…” I had to stop to pinch the bridge of my nose. My eyelid had started twitching before I even made it to the station. If I didn’t rein myself in, I was going to have one bitch of a headache soon. “The man you attacked for a
second
time threatened to get a restraining order against you two,” I pointed at Navie and Pepper, “if he ever sees either of you again! You’re lucky he didn’t file charges.”

“Oh please,” Navie scoffed, plopping against the back of the couch and crossing her arms.

“We didn’t attack anybody,” Pepper objected.

“Navie,
once again,
ended up on the poor guy’s back. And you tried to clothesline a man more than double your size!” I yelled, finally losing hold of those reins.

“And it woulda worked too, if I hadn’t hurt my shoulder and fell down,” she mumbled under her breath, thinking I couldn’t hear, as she reached up to rub her shoulder.

“You fell down
trying to clothesline a three-hundred pound man
!” Rowan and I shouted at the same time.

Tomas raised his hand like he was in a goddamned classroom and stated, “I’d just like to point out that I wasn’t a part of that altercation. I was merely a bystander.”

The looks Pepper and Navie shot him could have peeled the paint off the walls. “Yeah,” Pepper growled. “Because you were too busy making out with the bartender like a punk-ass bitch.”

“I shoulda cut you,” Navie seethed, the ass-kicking redneck side of her having come out in full force.

“That’s it!” Rowan bellowed, drawing the attention of the room. “I’ve had it. Navie, go to our room.”

She looked at him in bewilderment. “Huh?”

“Go to our room. I can’t even look at you right now. I’m so disappointed. You need to get in there and think about what you’ve done.”

“But—”

“Go!” he snapped, pointing toward the hallway. Navie stood up and headed in that direction without another word, head hung and shoulders slumped. “And you,” he pointed at Tomas. “You’re in the guestroom for the night. Get your ass in there, and I don’t want to hear a
peep
from you. Understand me?”

Tomas stood from the couch with a “Yes, sir,” before scurrying away.

He turned his attention to Pepper, but she was ready for him. “I’m not attracted to you, nor am I afraid of you,” she snarled with a ferociousness that made my cock stir. “Boss me around, and I’ll punch you in your dick.”

He looked at me. “You got his little hellion here?” he asked, pointing in Pepper’s direction.

“Absolutely.” I looked at her and pointed at the front door. “You’ll move your ass if you know what’s good for you.”

“Listen here, you—” she started, but I cut her off with a hand over her mouth.

“One more word. Just one more word, and I swear to God, I’ll spank your ass so hard you won’t be able to sit for a goddamned week.” Her wide eyes bounced between me and Rowan, but I was beyond caring just how much my friend knew about my relationship with Pepper. “Now, if I uncover your mouth are you gonna say anything else?” She shook her head quickly. “You gonna move your ass?” That got me a nod.

I pulled my hand away and she shot from the couch and into the foyer. I looked over my shoulder as I made my way after her to see Rowan standing in the living room, arms crossed and a shit-eating grin on his face. “Not so fun when the shoe’s on the other foot, is it? This is what you get for giving me shit the first time they got locked in the drunk tank. Karma’s a motherfucker.”

“So are you, cuz,” I replied with a middle finger. The last thing I heard before closing the apartment door was Rowan’s loud laughter.