Julie Walker - Born Wild

Eve frowned and started chewing on the side of her thumb. “Well, probably because of the conversation he and I had this morning, where he made it clear the only stops that…uh…bus makes are in Buddyville and Friendtown.”

“Ouch,” Delilah winced. The Friend Card: the worst one in the deck when it was played by the man a girl dreamed of being so much more. She could relate. Although, come to think of it, Mac hadn’t even offered her that option. Hell, no. He was firmly holding all his cards close to his vest, the exasperating jerk. And when she added, “That sucks,” she wasn’t sure if she was referring to Eve’s situation or her own. Perhaps both?

“Yes,” Eve grimaced. “It certainly does.”

Shaking away her own troubling thoughts, Delilah pulled on her bartender hat and tapped a ruby-red fingernail on the bar. “But you know what’s a guaranteed cure?”

“What?”

“One of my world-class strawberry daiquiris.”

Eve smiled wanly before shrugging. “Well, then serve me up. Because I need all the help I can get.”

And now they were really talking turkey, which was Delilah’s forte…every good bartender’s forte as a matter of fact. She was a pro at hashing out troubles and patching up heartbreak with Band-Aids in the form of alcoholic beverages.

“Still,” she propped a hip against the bar, narrowing her eyes at Eve, “I’m sensing there’s more here than a simple rejection. I’m sensing you’ve been…what? Having a bit of a dry spell, maybe?”

“Dry spell?”

“You know,” she waved her hand through the air. “No sex, or bad sex, which is sometimes worse than no sex.”

Eve’s blush stretched from the roots of her hair into the collar of her delicate-looking blouse. Delilah lifted a brow. She’d never seen someone actually do that, and she was a natural redhead…

Glancing down at the bar, Eve cleared her throat softly, and whispered, “Between you and me, I haven’t had sex, good, bad, or anything in between, for years. I have enough pent-up sexual energy to power all of Chicago for a month.”

Delilah chuckled. “I hear ya, sister.”

Eve flashed her a look of disbelief.

“Hey,” she motioned toward her boobs, held up by an industrial-strength underwire bra and tight T-shirt, “don’t let these things fool you. I’m incredibly choosy when it comes to men.”

Eve bit her lip, smiling, more comfortable now that they’d both shared confidences. It was another hallmark of any good bartender. “And you’d choose Mac if he let you?”

“In a heartbeat,” she admitted. “But, alas, he wants no part of me.” She shook her head, frowning, thinking back on all his rejections and trying and failing not to feel the sharp sting of them. What does he have against me? Again, she racked her brain and came up with a big ol’ handful of…nothing. “I think I’ll join you in that strawberry daiquiri,” she told Eve who laughed delightedly.

“I’d love that.”

Nodding, Delilah turned toward the freezer. Pulling out a bag of frozen strawberries and some ice, she mulled over Mac’s decree that she could use a little subtlety—Subtlety? Her? Pfft, as if—as she dumped the load in the blender before adding sugar, lime juice, lemon juice, and top shelf rum. From the corner of her eye, she saw Eve fiddling with her phone, playing a game or texting or something. Then the device jingled out the opening bars to a Styx song and, with half an ear, she caught the woman’s exasperated-sounding, “Enough with the phone calls, Dad. I’m fine.” That was followed up by, “No, I’m not going to come back home. And, no, I’m not going to make it to our weekly dinner tonight. Didn’t you read the email I sent you this morning?” Delilah hit the button on the machine, drowning out the rest of the conversation, and allowed herself to focus all her efforts on forgetting about one infuriating ex-FBI agent turned motorcycle mechanic.

Somewhere on Lake Shore Drive

5:13 p.m.

He ran a hand over his mouth once he thumbed off the cell phone, staring at the device as his heart thundered out a terrible rhythm. The time was now. It was do or die. Meaning, he’d better do what he’d promised or he was likely going to die.

It was awful, really, what it’d all come down to. But self-preservation won out every day of the week. And, yes, he fully realized there’d be many who’d disagree with him. Many who’d think he was the scum of the Earth for choosing himself over her. Hell, even he would’ve shouted from the rooftops a couple of years ago that no way, no how would he sacrifice her to save himself. But that’s only because he hadn’t been faced with the actual choice back then. When a person was faced with the actual choice of their life in exchange for the life of someone they loved, convictions often crumbled.

His certainly had…

It’s time. Time to finally end it.

Taking a deep breath, he punched in a number that made his upper lip curl with distaste.

“Yo,” a man whose accent was pure Southside Chicago gangster answered. “You got a location for us or what?”

“I do,” he said. “She’s at Red Delilah’s biker bar for the next hour or so. Hurry.”

“Don’t you worry. We’ll finish the job you were too chicken-shit to do on your own.”

Wishing he could reach through the phone and shove his thumb in the fucker’s eye, he satisfied himself instead by jamming a finger down on the phone’s keypad, instantly ending the call.

“Goddamn sonsofbitches,” he growled into the empty room, reaching for the decanter of scotch, disgusted to find his hands were shaking.

I’m sorry, my dear, sweet Eve, he thought as he raked in a steadying breath. I wish there could’ve been another way…

Red Delilah’s Biker Bar

6:01 p.m.

Fighting with the colorfully lit jukebox, trying to get the darned thing to accept her five-dollar bill, Eve felt woozy. And sad.

The wooziness was a direct result of having gulped down two of Delilah’s world-class strawberry daiquiris in record time. The sadness was a direct result of the way her life was going.

Oh, let me count the ways…

For starters, her PhD—the goal she’d been striving toward for three, long years—was on indefinite hold because not only had her laptop burned up in her condo fire, but now all her dissertation materials were sitting at the bottom of Lake Michigan. Also, someone, possibly someone she knew, was out there right now with a mind to kill her. And as if those two things weren’t bad enough, it now appeared that her love life—never a thing of beauty except for a brief, three-month period twelve years ago—was floating in the toilet while the Fates fiddled with the lever.

Yep. It’s official. You’re a real piece of work, Eve Edens.

She was just about to give up on the jukebox when the fickle machine suddenly decided that, yes, in fact it was hungry. It sucked in her money in one greedy gulp.

Victory!

It was a small win, sure, but at this point she was taking what she could get.

Scrolling through the options, she choked on a strangled sob when one particular number met her bleary gaze. Punching in the request for the tune, she used the rest of her money to jump the other songs currently waiting in the musical queue and turned just as the first driving drumbeat sounded.

This song reminded her of that magical summer with Billy and—

“Boo!” one of the patrons shouted. “No contemporary country music allowed on Sundays!”

“Can it, Buzzard!” Delilah yelled from behind the bar, throwing an olive at a bearded man Eve recognized from the two previous times she’d been in Red Delilah’s. Idly, she wondered if the old, potbellied biker actually lived there. Maybe he had a sleeping bag somewhere in the back? But then Eric Church started singing about young love and loss, and she closed her eyes, letting the familiar lyrics of “Springsteen” wash over her, wallowing—yes, wallowing; a girl was allowed to do that on occasion—in her own regret.

A memory of Billy lying with his head in her lap on a patchwork quilt under a tree in Grant Park, listening as she read from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, stumbled through her slightly sluggish, strawberry daiquiri-addled brain. He’d been idly twirling a yellow flower—A dandelion? She couldn’t recall precisely—between his thumb and forefinger. And when she glanced down at him, down into his handsome face dappled with the sunlight spilling in through the leaves, she expected to find his warm, laughing eyes closed. But his gaze hadn’t been shuttered by his lids and long, dark lashes. Just the opposite, in fact. He’d been looking right at her, and the expression on his face? Oh, sweet Lord, it’d made her heart jump in her chest. Okay, not jump. Leap! Because it was the first time she’d ever seen love in a man’s eyes. And not those pale-by-comparison kinds of loves like puppy or platonic. Heck no. It was romantic love. And oh, it’d frightened her almost as much as it’d delighted her…

Wistfully swaying beside the jukebox, lost in the bittersweet memory, she was completely caught off-guard and more than a little stunned—her eyes snapping wide—when the front door flew open with a bang. Of course, even more shocking than the unexpected interruption was the man in baggy jeans, gold chains, and a ski mask who immediately charged inside.