“Good call,” he muttered.

She bent to put Gus to the floor, torturing Benny by giving him a direct view of her ass with her tight skirt stretching tighter, thankfully straightened, turned, and walked back toward the hall.

Gus looked at Benny, then down the hall toward Frankie and immediately started waddle-trotting after her.

She came out in flip-flops, got some plastic bags just in case, and they took Gus for a walk.

After, Ben made it all the way to her bed before he peeled off her dress.

Twenty-five minutes later, when he made her come, she moaned her secret into his ear.

It consisted of three words.

“Love you, Benny.”

***

“My turn!” Frankie announced when Ben came back from the bathroom at J&J’s Saloon and approached where Cheryl and Frankie were sitting.

She laid a hard but quick one on him that obliterated any possibility of wingman status (not that it wasn’t already gone since he was there), grinned into his face, then part-walked, part-strutted, and part-bounced to the back where the bathrooms were.

She did this with every male eye in the joint following her ass covered in the tight skirt of her dress, or her long legs that were bare and led into a pair of hot-as-hell heels.

So although Benny appreciated the view, it was also irritating as fuck.

“You’re a new breed of badass,” Cheryl noted, taking his attention to her.

“Come again?” he asked, seeing she was studying him closely.

“Not the show-up-and-demand-to-go-out-with-your-woman-to-make-sure-she-doesn’t-get-into-trouble move. That’s not a new breed of badass, that’s the usual one. The after-she-gets-shot-let-her-stick-her-neck-out-and-do-it-with-the-Chicago-mob-at-her-back move.”

Jesus Christ.

Frankie told this woman what was going down? How long was he in the goddamned bathroom?

His stomach tightening, he slid in front of her, did it holding her eyes, necessarily and intentionally getting close because there was no room, but also because he had a point to make.

“She shouldn’t have told you,” he said low.

“No shit?” she asked in return.

He didn’t reply to that.

He ordered, “And you aren’t gonna say dick to anyone.”

Her eyes narrowed.

He’d been around Cheryl once before, at Vi and Cal’s wedding.

Frankie called her edgy.

Benny and any other man who took one look at her would call her hard.

When she met them at J&J’s, reminded of that hardness and seeing it without her in a bridesmaid gown, happy her girl was happy, Ben understood this was why she wasn’t getting laid.

Men didn’t like hard. They liked soft. They didn’t mind attitude and there were those, like Benny, who wanted that. Some men could get off on the challenge of smoothing out sharp edges, or knowing that was what a woman gave out in the world, but when he got her home, she gave him the sweet underneath.

But Cheryl was straight-up hard. Her eyes said “you are not getting in there no matter what you try, so don’t bother trying.” And everything about her said she’d take what she wanted, and if you got anything out of that, she didn’t give a fuck. This would mean you wouldn’t get anything out of that except maybe an orgasm, but not a good one.

This woman wasn’t about exploring the possibility of building a future or just having a good time and some laughs.

This woman was about riding you hard until she found it, climbing off even if you hadn’t, getting dressed, and going home.

The loyalty she gained from Vi and now Frankie made him wonder what made her like that and why she didn’t put out what she gave to her girls in order to at least get laid and at most find herself a man.

“You do not know me, but I am no dumbfuck,” she said in a voice cold as ice, proving his thoughts true.

“I figure you aren’t, I’m just remindin’ you not to be.”

She ignored that and stated, “But you do know your woman so you know she isn’t one either. If she couldn’t trust me, she wouldn’t have said squat.”

She was right.

But the stakes were high.

“She’s playin’ with fire,” he pointed out.

“Then don’t let her get burned,” she shot back.

“And I’m doin’ that by makin’ sure you know to keep your mouth shut and don’t do somethin’ stupid like thinkin’ you can help your girl by makin’ this a Laverne & Shirley scenario.”

Her eyes slid to the side.

Jesus.

“Which one are you?” he asked, and her eyes came back. “Laverne or Shirley?”

“I know a guy who’s ace at surveillance,” she told him, chin lifting slightly.

She was Laverne.

“There it is,” he muttered, looking away and reaching for his beer.

“And you should be involved, a guy who owns a pizzeria?”

He took a pull off his beer in an effort not to allow that remark to irritate him before he reminded her, “She sleeps at my side.”

“And my mom’s got high blood pressure. Takes meds for it.”

Benny shook his head. “Cheryl, I got a man in Chicago who got the story of what I could give him while my woman was gettin’ sexed up to go out for drinks with her girl, and in doin’ that, tease every guy here, none of ’em who are ever gonna get close to tappin’ her ass, all of ’em wantin’ to, and all of that annoying the fuck outta me. And this man has resources. Your surveillance guy might be tight, but I’m thinkin’ my guy has that covered.”

Suddenly, she grinned, and if he had a vagina, he would advise her to turn that grin to the room because it was almost cute, definitely playful, and showed she had a sense of humor. All of this in a way that, with her big hair, nice tits, and show of skin, would mean her dry spell would end in about the time it would take to walk back to the bathrooms or get to a car.

“I see your point,” she said through her grin.

“Thrilled, babe,” he muttered around his bottle of beer before he took another pull and moved to sit on Frankie’s stool.

She sucked back some of her cocktail.

When she did, Benny threw her a hint. “Just sayin’, might be good you troll for talent in a bar that’s not the bar where you work.”

She looked at him.

“Yeah. I see that. Problem is, I make some cake here, but it’s the only bar close. I’m not about to get nailed for drinkin’ and drivin’ so I cab it when I hit the scene. And me payin’ hefty cab fares means I can’t buy six packets of Oreos for my boy every week ’cause that kid eats the whole damn thing the minute I take it out of the bag.”

Another thing that would make her a winner if a man knew about it: she gave more of a shit about getting her kid Oreos than getting herself laid.

“Then maybe you should widen the net and not just fish in bars,” Benny suggested, and her head jerked in surprise.

“Like where?”

Shit, he walked right into a discussion he did not want to be in and it was a discussion with no exit door.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “What kinda man you want?”

“A man who looks good, fucks better, and likes kids.” She gave him her limited wish list and tipped her head to the side. “Got any friends?”

“You willin’ to move to Chicago?”

“No.”

“Then no.”

She gave him another grin, even as she told him, “Just to say, you’re crampin’ my style.”

He glanced through the bar that wasn’t packed, but it wasn’t a slow night either, then looked back to her. “Anyone here you’re even remotely interested in?”

“No.”

“Then let me buy you a drink and you tell me about your boy.”

Her grin turned into a smile at the mention of her boy, a smile that, if she put it out there, might get her more than just laid, just as Frankie came back, asking, “I miss any action?”

Benny started to make a move to give her back her stool, but she made her move faster, sliding in in a way that forced him to shift a thigh and twist on the stool so she could press her hip and side to his crotch and chest between his legs that were up, feet on the rungs of the stool.

Much better than him standing behind her on the stool, pressed to her back.

“No action,” Cheryl answered. “Night’s a dud.”

“Yo, babe.” They all heard.

Ben was about to twist his neck to look, but he didn’t when he saw something flicker over Cheryl’s face when she heard the voice and her eyes shifted beyond Frankie.

It was only there a second, but he caught it, and if he wasn’t mistaken, it was pain. The kind you get when you want something you can’t ever have, you know it, you’re resigned to it, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.

“Yo, Merry,” Cheryl replied, and Ben finally looked to the good-looking, tall, dark-haired man who stopped at their sides. “Merry, this is Frankie and Benny,” she went on. “Kids, this is Garrett Merrick. J&J’s regular. Detective at the BPD. Decent guy, as far as I can tell, who can hold his liquor and is smart enough to laugh at my jokes.”

“Jesus, Cher, you wanna share my shoe size?” Merrick asked, smiling down at her in a friendly way that said that was all it was. Friends. He had zero interest in getting in there.

“Shoe size ten,” Cheryl stated, turning to look at Frankie and Benny.

“One off,” Merrick muttered, and Cheryl looked back at him.

“Which direction?” she asked.

“Not sayin’.” he answered.

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Please, God, for all my sisters, make it one size up.”

Merrick burst out laughing. So did Frankie. But Ben just chuckled and he did it feeling shit.

And he felt shit because she was a good woman. A hard one, but a good one. And now she was a good one going out of her way to be funny because she liked this guy, but knew he was not the kind of man who had an interest in taking on whatever shit made her hard. He preferred soft. She had no shot, it didn’t enter his mind, and him being a regular meant she read that on him every time he showed. So she was grasping on to all she could get.