Page 13 of Keeping Mr. Sweet

“I think it might be from the company he works with,” he says finally as he stops it and pockets his phone. “Similar format, logos, and hashtags. That kind of thing.”

“Can you ask your brother?”

“Can you stop growling at me like I’m the one you’re pissed at?” He raises a shaggy eyebrow into the curls that hang over his forehead.

“Sorry.” I exhale. “This whole thing just has me on edge.” I’m frustrated twice over by Ash’s behavior, and worried about how she’s handling the situation.

“Sure, I get it. I’ll ask Marco what he knows. If it’s not one of his, maybe he can find out who made it.”

The phone behind the bar rings and I leave it to go through to the answering machine. “Thanks. I appreciate it. And so does Ash.”

“You might want to answer that,” he says as my cell goes ballistic.

“Sam, can you come down to Mayhem Avenue ASAP?” a man’s voice carries clearly over a background of pop rock. “There’s a girl here. Says she’s your... What was that?” His voice moves away from the speaker and the sound is muffled, probably by his fingers. Then it’s clear again. “Right, she says she’s your dirty little video star. I don’t know what that means. Wait. Now she’s saying something about doing the splits, or showing me how wide she can spread her le...oh.”

“Fuck.” I yank on a tuft of my hair. “On a scale of one to ten how drunk is she?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I barely served her, but—”

“Doesn’t matter. She knows how to score free drinks.” In the background I can hear her singing, like she’s not too far away from him.

“Get down from there,” he says to her. “Come on now.”

“Stop it,” she yells. “I wanna dance. I wanna have fun.”

I slide off my stool, grip Ru’s shoulder. “Gotta go.”

Ash is dancing when I storm into Mayhem five minutes later. She’s dancing and swaying to the beat of the music as though she doesn’t have a care. Her bare feet stomp on the runner that lines the hardtop of the bar, while she fluffs her hair with her hands before throwing them up to the sky.

Around her a group of mostly guys has formed. The testosterone from that part of the room is strong, and the jerks that surround her jostle to grab her attention. She has more fans than the band at this point. Even if the guitarist was to strip naked, he probably couldn’t grab this lot’s attention. Those hands come back down, find her throat, and the curves of her pert little tits and slowly skate down her sides.

Someone wolf whistles.

“Yeah, baby.”

“More, sweetheart. You’re giving us such a good show.”

“Don’t listen to them, honey. You do you.” One of the only females in the group chimes in.

A prickly sensation shoots up from my gut and down my left arm as I bunch my jaw and fight the urge to march straight up to the bar and make her get down, even if that involves a fireman hold.

“Great. You’re here.” Jack sidles up to me on his side of the bar. So that’s who I was talking to over the phone. With all the background noise I hadn’t been able to tell if it was him or the other brother that usually tends the bar.

I glare at him and my eyelid twitches. It’s not his fault though. Not anyone’s fault Ash is behaving like this. She’s lost, and hurting. Must remember that. “You let her climb on the bar?”

“Trust me, I tried to stop her,” Jack says with a shrug as he watches the group at the bar. “The girl is a firecracker. Couldn’t get her to comply. Didn’t want to throw her out in case she found more trouble. Was going to ring Summer, because I’ve seen her in here with your sister, but she begged me to call you instead.”

“Thanks,” I say. Not much else he could have done anyway. “Let’s not involve Summer in this.”

The thin silk shift dress Ash was wearing earlier still clings to her curves, especially as she circles her hips and draws her hands up the inside of her thighs, catching the material and dragging it up too.

I know what these jerks are thinking while they watch her. They see her performance, this good time girl act, and they want her, even if just for a little while. I’m not immune. I want her too. But this girl on the bar doesn’t last. I want what’s underneath that. If only I could get her to see that she’s so much more than some guy’s fun time.

She pops one finger in her mouth and twirls some hair around her finger, and my gut turns into this little ball of fury so bad that I can taste blood. There’s no way I’m letting any of these jackasses get too close. I’m not her bodyguard, but I am the guy she seeks out when she needs someone to help her, to protect her.

“All right, you got her from here?” Jack asks as a guy at the other end of the bar grabs his attention.

I grit my teeth as one of the men beckons to her and she drops to one knee to accept the shot he’s holding out to her. She knocks it back as another hand shoots up in the crowd, the shot glass in his hand filled with Black Sambuca.

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