Tangled Up in Love (2 page)

What could have been touted as the most embarrassing moment of Zack’s career had instead become his and Grace’s answer to the question of how they first met. Dylan himself had heard the story going on about six thousand times now.

And Jenna Marshall was the ex-wife of another of Dylan’s friends, undercover CPD detective Gage Marshall. He supposed Jenna was actually going by her maiden name, Langan, again, but he knew that didn’t set well with Gage.

The others he recognized only because they seemed to come in every week or so with the rest of the group.

That in itself was an odd occurrence, seeing as how The Penalty Box was a sports bar, catering to hockey fans in general and Rockets fans in particular, with a primarily male clientele. The Box’s TVs were always tuned to some sporting event or another . . . sometimes more than one at a time . . . and the walls were plastered with hockey memorabilia. Not exactly a chick-magnet kind of decor.

Zack’s engagement to Grace had changed that, though. She’d started showing up to meet Zack’s friends, spend more time with him, and learn the intricacies of the game. Then, like bunnies, they’d started to multiply until an entire back table was filled with women and the bartender was forced to make fruity pastel girlie drinks in a blender instead of simply pulling a tap or pouring out shots.

It was a shame, to Dylan’s way of thinking. He also wasn’t too happy that he had to see Ronnie on a regular basis at the one place he’d considered his estrogen-free escape from the world.

Dylan tipped back his bottle of Coors, draining the last remaining drops just as Ronnie pushed to her feet and headed toward the bar with the empty pitcher from their table. Well, shoot, looked like they both needed a refill.

The legs of his chair scraped across the floor as he
stood and headed in the same direction, meeting her at the bar and resting both his forearms on the scarred mahogany surface.

“Hey, there, Chasen. How’s that tattoo of yours doing? Any pain or swelling I should know about?”

Ronnie cast him a withering glare, her lashes fluttering at half-mast over her coffee-brown eyes. “How would I be able to tell, Stone? You’re such a pain in my ass, I’m not likely to feel anything else down there.”

Ha! So he’d been right; the tattoo
was
on her butt. Now he just had to figure out where. Was it on the left cheek or the right? High up near her hip, or down lower on the soft spot?

“Good to know I’ve made an impression.”

She muttered something beneath her breath as the bartender came toward them, and Dylan bit back a grin.

“We need another round of margaritas,” she told Turk, handing him the empty plastic pitcher.

Turk was a tall black man with a shaved head, three silver hoops in one ear and two in the other, and a collection of tattoos that—unlike Ronnie’s—were easily visible above the neck and below the arms of his tight white T-shirt. He wasn’t the owner of the Box, but just about anytime the bar was open, Turk was there. And since he was roughly the size of a small redwood, he wasn’t opposed to playing the part of bouncer if the crowd got a bit too rowdy.

When Turk returned with a full pitcher, Dylan slapped a couple of bucks on the counter and said, “I’ll take another Coors.” The man handed him an ice-cold bottle, collected the money, and walked away without ever altering his hard, blank expression.

“I’ve gotta tell you,” Dylan continued, stopping Ronnie before she could escape back to her table with the fresh drinks, “I didn’t expect you to go through with it. I mean, you’re so uptight about your appearance, I never thought you’d mar your perfect skin with some big, ugly, permanent tattoo.”

“What?” she asked, one dark brow arching while the corners of her mouth turned down in a frown. “You expected me to wimp out?”

She was wearing a fire-engine-red skirt that stopped well above her knees and a jacket to match. Beneath the tailored jacket was a white silk blouse that opened in a V over her high, ample breasts and gave him more than a glimpse of her generous cleavage.

Outfits like this were the very reason he’d felt confident she hadn’t gotten the tattoo on one of her breasts. Because he’d have darn well spotted it by now if that had been the case.

He popped the cap on his new beer and took a slow draw before answering, his gaze landing on her full, ripe mouth. “Something like that.”

“It will take more than a lousy tattoo to send me running, Stone. Anything you can do, I can do better, remember?”

She tossed her head to the side, sending all that long, dark hair back over one shoulder. Damn, how did women do that?
Why
did they do it? Didn’t they know it sent every drop of blood straight from a guy’s brain down to his package?

It took some doing, but he pulled his attention back to her face. Running splayed fingers through his own dark blond locks, he snorted and said, “Yeah, right. Let’s see you write your name in the snow.”

“Nice,” she said, the word icicle-sharp and just as cold. “Not crude at all.”

“Honey, in case you hadn’t noticed, you’re standing in the middle of a sports bar. If you want to avoid crude, you should go down the street to that coffeehouse where all the boring folks hang out.”

“Thanks for the advice, but I’ll manage. Besides, I think better with a couple of drinks in my system, and right now I’m working on your next challenge.”

He took another sip of beer, his glance slipping to the pulse in her throat. Was her skin as soft as it looked? he wondered. If he leaned in and swiped his tongue over that very spot, would it taste salty like her mood or sweet like a woman should?

He took another, longer pull, trying to bring his imagination and his hormones under control. “Bring it on, babe.”

She licked her lips, and his temperature shot up another fifty degrees.

“Are you sure you don’t want to surrender now and save yourself the humiliation?”

“No way. I’m having a damn good time.”

“So am I.”

“Great.”

“Good.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

And with that, she stomped off, her tight, heart-shaped ass sashaying all the way.

“I hate that man with the flames of a thousand fiery Hells,” Ronnie spat as she returned to her table of friends and started refilling glasses from the pitcher
of slushy, pale green margarita that shook in her hand.

She said it. She meant it. So what was with the strange sense of exhilaration she always felt after one of their sparring matches? Even now, with adrenaline pumping through her system and rage burning in her brain, she almost wanted to dive back in for Round Two.

“What man?” one of them asked, glancing around the bar as though the offender would be standing under a spotlight.

“Who do you think?” Grace said. Blond and beautiful, she was the picture of calm, never a hair out of place, never an emotion left unchecked. Only her close friends knew she had a sharp wit and a tongue like a razor blade. “Only the same guy Ronnie’s been bitching about for the past year—Dylan ‘That Arrogant Jackass’ Stone.”

“Let’s just call him ‘The Jackass’ for short,” Ronnie clipped out, filling her own glass to the brim before plopping down on her chair with very little finesse.

“I don’t get it,” Grace said. “You’re such a nice person otherwise, and get along with just about everyone you meet, but put you within a ten-mile radius of Dylan Stone and you turn into a slavering she-witch.”

Ronnie’s eyes narrowed as she finished filling glasses and set the pitcher aside. “Payback’s a bitch,” she quipped, “and you’re looking at her.”

“So what did he do this time?” the petite, short-haired Jenna inquired.

“He asked if my new tattoo was sore.”

“Is it?”

“Of course it is,” Ronnie grumbled, taking a long, fortifying drink of her deliciously frothy tequila-laced
concoction. “It throbs like a suffering bastard and rubs against my clothes all day, every day.”

“Did you tell him what it means?” one of the other girls asked. The rest of the group chuckled, because they knew. Ronnie had divulged that little secret at their first knitting meeting after having the body art done.

“No way. Let him wonder.”

“Fuck him, right?” Grace teased.

A cocky, knowing grin spread across Ronnie’s face, and she reached around to pat a spot high on her left buttock. She didn’t even wince at the added sting it caused. “That’s right.”

“So it’s your turn to send him out on a dare. What are you going to make him do?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought of anything yet that’s adequately dangerous or embarrassing.” Her brows knit in a scowl. “He’s so obnoxious about thinking men are braver and more accomplished than women. I feel like daring him to walk into traffic blindfolded. A nice Greyhound bus to the temporal lobe would knock some of the smugness out of him.”

She lifted her head and met the gaze of each of her friends around the table, her eyes conveying her desperation. “Any ideas?”

“You could figure out a way for him to go through simulated childbirth,” Melanie, a mother of two, offered flatly. “That would shut him up and have him bowing down to every woman he met from now until the end of time.”

“You could send him for a bikini wax.”

Ronnie flinched slightly at that suggestion. “Don’t remind me. I still have that landing strip in my panties that is in no way ready to wave in approaching air traffic.
Plus, I don’t want to repeat myself, and I already made him get his legs waxed.” She smirked. “Wonder if
his
hair has grown back yet.”

“You could dare him to meet you at some no-tell motel for hot, sleazy sex, then leave him tied to the bed until the maid finds him the next day. And you could be there to capture his degradation on film.”

Ronnie laughed with everyone else, but inside, her stomach had clenched, and picturing Dylan tied to the bedposts, beneath her and at her mercy, sent an odd fluttering through the rest of her body.

Which was ridiculous, because he was a jerk, and if she was going to be attracted to any man at the moment, it certainly wouldn’t be Dylan Stone. She was only having this reaction because it had been so long since she’d had any type of sex that didn’t require batteries. After such a long dry spell, it was completely natural to have a physiological response to anything even remotely suggestive.

“How about walking across hot coals or dressing in drag and going down to the red-light district?” one of the women asked, bringing her focus back to the matter at hand.

“If you really want to trip him up on the men-versus-women thing, then he should have to do something women do on a regular basis and are really good at,” Melanie put in. “Like cleaning the house, getting a kid ready for school and to the bus stop on time, or making a Halloween costume from scratch.”

Reaching under the table, she retrieved her purse, which was oversized and stuffed to the gills. She pulled the knitting needles and skein of yarn she’d been working
with earlier that evening off the top and set them aside, then continued to remove items one at a time.

“Do you know any men who have to carry around the crap women do, especially ones with kids? They grab their wallets and keys and take off. The rest of us have to make sure we have tampons, tissues, makeup, and nail files. And if you have kids, then you have to walk around with a steady supply of Band-Aids, baby wipes, antibacterial lotion, snacks, toys . . .” Melanie punctuated her words by pulling every one of those things from her purse, including a couple of strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups and a tiny yellow dump truck that was missing one wheel.

“Yikes,” Jenna commented, blanching at the pile of junk cluttering the tabletop.

“So what are you suggesting?” Ronnie asked. “That I challenge Dylan to carry an overstuffed lady’s handbag everywhere he goes for a month?”

Melanie’s mouth twisted as she started loading things back into the purse, making its seams stretch and bulge. “He’s certainly welcome to carry mine. It’s no wonder women end up with osteoporosis. Most days, I’d swear I’m going to be a hunchback by the time I’m forty.”

She squinted an eye and twisted her mouth, lifting one shoulder much higher than the other in a near-perfect imitation of Quasimodo. “You guys will come visit me in the bell tower, won’t you?” she inquired in one of the funniest voices they’d ever heard.

They all laughed, and Ronnie nearly choked on her ill-timed sip of margarita.

“If we’re not already there with you,” Jenna promised, deliberately straightening her spine and throwing
her shoulders back, the model of perfect, chiropractor-approved posture.

A moment later Grace said, “I have a better idea,” so quietly Ronnie almost didn’t hear her.

Her attention was immediately drawn back to what had started this thread of the conversation—her ongoing feud with Dylan Stone. “What?”

One side of her friend’s mouth quirked up in a sly, conspiratorial grin, and she inclined her head in Melanie’s direction. Or more accurately, to the bag balanced on Melanie’s lap, a tangle of pale yellow yarn and two shiny, metallic blue needles sticking out of the top.

Ronnie looked at the purse . . . then back at Grace . . . then back at the purse.

And finally comprehension dawned. A slow smile spread and lifted her lips until she was grinning like an idiot.

“Grace, I love you, I really do. That’s it! It’s perfect. Not only will he
hate
it, but there’s no way he’ll ever manage it in only a month’s time.”

She sat back, the discomfort of the tattoo on her rear end forgotten as she laughed and began to mentally plan the text of her upcoming column, where she would stump Dylan but good.

“The next round’s on me, girls,” she announced, reaching for the near-empty pitcher and raising it over her head. “To my partners in crime. And The Jackass’s crushing defeat.”

Anticipation coiled in Dylan’s stomach as he sat back in his creaky old metal chair, crossed his feet on the corner of his desk, and opened the latest edition of the
Sentinel
to page six.

It was late Friday afternoon, which meant another one of Ronnie’s columns and another challenge doled out for him to complete. He wondered what she’d come up with this time. Fire eating? Firefighting? Cosmetology school?