Out Bad

  Out Bad

  Janice M. Whiteaker

  One

  “Who’s that?” Joe nodded across the bar at the sandy-haired blond chatting with his buddy Heath's wife. He watched as the woman laughed, leaning back in her chair, tossing her long hair over one shoulder and ignoring all the looks coming her way.

  “Nobody you'd want to mess with.” Heath tipped a half empty bottle to his lips.

  Joe took a sip from the top of his whiskey, his eyes never leaving her over the rim of the tumbler. She stuck out like a sore thumb in this place. In a real good way. “I beg to differ.”

  “Well if you’re in the mood to beg, maybe she’s right up your alley after all.” Heath raised his finger to the bartender, ordering another beer. “She’d chew you up and spit you out without breaking a sweat.”

  He could make her sweat. He was positive of that. In his younger days, he would have tried to prove it. Probably even tonight, but he was no longer young and no longer stupid.

  “She a friend of Gabbi’s?”

  Joe noticed her the minute she’d walked in and much to his dismay, so did every other man within eye shot. In a sea of black Harley shirts and Miss Me jeans, she was like an oasis sparkling against the horizon.

  A gold glittery shirt slipped off one creamy white shoulder. Jeans that fit her long body like a second skin met boots with impossibly tall, ridiculously thin heels that most women wouldn’t be able to stand in, let alone saunter through a packed bar in a way that made every desirable part of her body sway just right.

  Heath sighed dramatically from the stool beside him. “I’m telling ya man. Don’t even think about trying to mess with that woman.”

  Setting his drink on the bar he tore his eyes from her and turned to the best friend he’d ever had. “Why does it matter to you?”

  Joe eyed him suspiciously. Something was up. In the past three years, nobody spent more time than Heath trying to get him to talk to any pretty girl they came across. So why not this one?

  Heath was peeling the label off his half empty bottle of beer, occasionally looking up at his wife and the mystery woman, then shaking his head. He finally put the bottle next to Joe’s drink on the bar and leaned in. “That’s Gabbi’s sister.”

  Joe looked back across the bar at the two women. Never in a million years would he have figured that out on his own.

  Heath’s wife Gabbi was one of the best women he knew. The best woman he knew. She was a good wife, a great mom and one hell of a cook. Meeting her made him think differently of the way a wife and mother could be. Should be.

  She wasn’t, however, tall. Or thin. Or blonde. Or stunningly beautiful. Cute definitely, but the woman beside her was much more than cute. More than pretty. She was the kind of woman a man couldn’t help but take notice of, as evidenced by the number of appreciative looks she was getting from the men in the bar. Not to mention the number of dirty looks she was getting from the women with those men at the bar.

  He turned back to Heath. “So you’re trying to protect her?”

  Joe knew it shouldn’t, but it hurt his feelings a little that his friend wouldn’t want him around his sister-in-law. Heath more than anyone knew how hard he’d worked to turn his life around, hell, he’d even helped.

  His friend laughed. Laughed so hard he had to wipe tears from the corners of his eyes. “Not her. That's her sister's job.” He pointed his finger right at Joe’s chest. “I'm trying to protect you.”

  Joe looked across the bar wondering what it was about this woman Heath was so worried about. His buddy was trying to deter him, but all he managed to do was make Joe even more intrigued by the woman he'd already struggled to look away from for the past hour.

  Her looks alone were enough to make most men wish she was theirs, but Joe wasn’t most men. He was at a point in his life where good looks would simply be icing on the cake. A pretty face didn’t necessarily keep you warm at night or stand by you in hard times. A good woman did. A woman like Gabbi.

  Or possibly someone a whole lot like her, all the way down to her genes.

  He wanted to meet her.

  Not in spite of what Heath said, more like because of it. Heath wasn’t the kind of guy to be intimidated by many things. He was a father to two spunky little girls, a husband to their even feistier mother, and a hardened detective for Christ’s sake. If this woman had the ability to ruffle a man like that, she might just be what Joe needed... No. Wanted in his life.

  “Why didn't you explain Gabbi's sister a little, uh, better?” He knew she had a sister, but last he heard she was living out of town. And he certainly never heard she was easy on the eyes. There was only one explanation.

  "She married?" It shouldn't have disappointed him as much as it did, but the idea of ending up with a wife even a little like Gabbi, plus upgrading his friends to in-law's, was more than enough to have him interested.

  "No."

  "Engaged?" He tried to keep his voice even, but new ideas about the future he'd been working so hard toward were running laps through his mind. And they were picking up their pace.

  Heath shook his head. “I told you man. She is not what you’re looking for.” He glanced up.

  “Shit.”

  Joe followed his line of sight to the table occupied by the sisters. The seats they’d filled two minutes ago were empty.

  “Hey boys.”

  He heard Gabbi’s voice behind him and resisted the urge to turn around. The hair on the back of his neck pricked knowing the woman he'd been watching all night was standing closely behind him. He glanced at Heath, the look of dread on his friend’s face almost making him laugh. She couldn’t be that bad. Even if she was, that might not be a terrible thing either.

  Finally, he decided he could safely turn around without looking too eager. He gripped the bar and used the leverage to slowly spin the stool under him to face the two women.

  If a woman ever had ‘fuck off’ written across her forehead, it was the tall drink of water standing in front of him looking everywhere but at him. Finally her eyes landed on his.

  “Hey Joe.” Gabbi scooted past him and propped herself between Heath’s legs before snuggling into his chest. “I’m gonna go. I’m tired and my ass is sore.”

  Gabbi’s sister still hadn’t turned away from him. Her eyes stayed fixed to his until she was bumped by a drunken biker as he threw his arm around her shoulders. She slowly turned her head to look at the hand he let rest dangerously close to her left breast.

  “Hey sweetheart.”

  The man had most of his body pressed against her right side, but she didn’t even flinch.

  “I been eyeing you all night.” He looked up and down her front, his eyes pausing on her chest. “How ‘bout you and me go somewhere a little more alone?”

  She cocked an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed by his incoherent offer. “No thank you.” Her voice was low and not even the least bit sweet. Using her index finger and thumb, she picked up the man’s hand from her shoulder and dropped it.

  “Frigid bitch."

  The man was a good two inches shorter than she was in her heels, and over served enough to be very unsteady on his feet. He made a V with his fingers and held it up to his lips, wiggling his tongue between them as he tried to take a step backwards.

  Joe was just getting out of his seat to help the guy out for some fresh air when the drunken Romeo bumped into a group of people and overcorrected, falling face first toward Gabbi’s sister. She stepped back out of the way of his flailing body and watched as he landed at her feet, never batting an eye.

  For a second they both stood looking at the unmoving man on the floor beneath them.

  “You always have men falling at your feet?”

  Her gaze snapped up to meet his. Her expression softe
ned.

  "No. I'm not usually--" She blinked hard, her more serious expression returning. She looked back to the man on the floor, nudging him with the pointy toe of her brown leather boot. She leaned across the bar immediately catching the eye of the guy behind it.

  “There’s a man on the ground passed out. You may need an ambulance.” Her voice was calm, her manner straightforward.

  She stepped over the man, siding up to Gabbi and Heath who were wrapped up in their own conversation and missed the whole fiasco. “Gabbi, I’m sorry, but I'm exhausted. It’s been a long day and I’m really ready to go.” Joe almost thought she looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "I need to get out of here."

  Her voice sounded tight or maybe just tired, but he was having a difficult time focusing on anything other than the smell of her perfume. After a day filled with smoky bars, bike exhaust, and leathery sweat, her sweet rosy scent was like a breath of fresh air drawing him in.

  “I’m coming.” Gabbi pecked Heath on the lips and turned to head past Joe, noticing the man on the ground for the first time.

  “Holy shit what happened?” She directed her question his way.

  “Too much tequila I think.”

  “Oh.” She stood silent for a minute obviously unsure how to proceed. She turned to where her sister stood, then back to him. “Uh, this is my sister Gwen. Gwen, Heath’s best friend Joe.”

  Gwen’s eyes studied him intently. “Anybody ever tell you, you look like Tarzan?”

  Joe flinched inwardly. He spent years getting away from the nickname he was given his first day in the club. Every time he heard it was like a knife to the gut reminding him of all the terrible things he had done when he was known by that name.

  Every time someone mentioned it, he considered shaving off the shoulder length hair that was the most obvious reason for the comparison. But he liked his hair. It wasn’t what made him Tarzan back in the day and not having it sure as hell wouldn’t be what kept him from being Tarzan now. “I’ve heard that before.”

  A slightly amused smile curved one side of her mouth. “I bet you have.”

  Gabbi grabbed her sister’s arm and began tugging her toward the door. “We’ve got to go Joe. I’ll see ya later.”

  He watched as the two women made their way through the crowd, sidestepping the paramedics as they came busting through the entrance, scanning the crowd in an effort to find their victim.

  “Here.” He raised his arm, catching their attention then turned back to the bar to finish his long neglected drink as the lights of the bar brightened and the music was turned down.

  Heath leaned around him trying to get a look as the medics crouched beside Gwen’s would be suitor. “What happened there?”

  “Drunk.” He downed the rest of the now warm and watered down liquid. “Tried to hit on your sister-in-law.”

  “She hit him?”

  “What? No she didn’t hit him.”

  “Jesus. You hit him?” Heath rubbed his hands up and down his face.

  “I told Gabbi this wasn't a good place for her.” Heath started muttering under his breath, the only words Joe could make out were something about women and pains in the ass.

  “Nobody hit him but the floor.” He glanced over as they loaded the inebriate onto a stretcher and shoved him through the crowd.

  “Why would you think she punched a guy for hitting on her?”

  Heath was watching as they wheeled the guy out of the bar. “Stranger things have happened.”

  The minute the door closed behind them, the lights dimmed and the speakers once again blared classic rock for the fifty bikers looking to end their evening on a high note.

  “Looks like they had a good turnout today. Hopefully made a bunch of money.”

  “Yeah.” Heath looked relieved to be discussing something besides his very attractive and supposedly uninteresting sister-in-law. “Kids with cancer always get a big crowd.”

  Joe nodded. “As they should.”

  Nothing got a bunch of hairy, tattooed bikers to open the wallets chained to their jeans like a sick kid. Especially when it was the kid of a fellow biker’s son. As the man made his rounds through the packed establishment, thanking everyone for coming, he was greeted with handshakes, hugs, and tears. It was a marked contrast to most similar events he’d participated in during his former life.

  “Glad you came out?” Heath’s voice in his ear snapped him out of his little jaunt down memory lane. It was a trip he tried his best never to make, but tonight made it hard to avoid.

  “I am.” He was mostly. He got to ride in a group again. This time to do good.

  He hadn’t ridden with more than one other rider, usually Heath, in years. Today he got to ride with at least fifty other bikes. Men and women, old and young, all out to enjoy the day and raise money for a good cause. “It’s been a long time.”

  “How’s it feel?”

  “Good.”

  In the years since his life had changed, most of the time he spent on his bike was alone, trying to work out where he’d ended up and figure out how to never end up somewhere like that again. His bike was like therapy to him and probably cost the same amount.

  “I’m glad.” Heath pulled his phone out of his pocket and sent a quick text. Gabbi was probably letting him know she made it home. “You’ll have to come out more often.”

  It had taken more than a few invitations for Joe to be ready to ride like this again. He wasn’t sure how it would make him feel, what it would bring back. Having done it and ended the night feeling good about it made him proud of how far he’d really come. It showed him he really was headed in the right direction.

  Heath leaned in close and nodded across the bar. “I think that little filly over there might be lookin’ for a good time.”

  A middle aged woman sitting with a couple other women at a table in the corner was eyeing him, heavily.

  “First off, she hasn’t been a filly for years. Second, there is nothing little about her.” Almost on cue, she giggled at something one of her friends must have said causing her extremely large chest to bounce all over the place.

  “Third, I’m not a good time.” He stood, shoving the stool away with the backs of his legs. “I’m gonna take that as my cue to call it a night.”

  “You haven’t been out in forever man and you’re going to go home at—” Heath checked his watch. “Holy shit it’s after one. We need to head out.” He jumped up, nearly knocking his stool down, grabbing it before it hit the floor. “When this crowd tries to leave it’s going to be ugly.”

  Joe scanned the crowd. Heath was right. There probably weren’t too many sober people here.

  Throwing a couple extra bucks on the bar, he turned to follow Heath out. The closer it got to closing time, the higher the chances got of bikes banging together. So did the odds of getting pulled over, and if a cop pulled Joe over it could be a difficult situation to say the least.

  “I’ll follow you until we’re well away from here.” Heath fired up his bike.

  Joe nodded and started his own Harley. His previously decent mood darkened as he rode away from the bar, his friend following just in case he needed to throw around his badge. It always seemed no matter how hard he tried, how successful and upstanding he became, he would never be able to completely escape the life he used to live.

  Two

  Gwen pulled her BMW into the garage and climbed out as the overhead door slid closed behind her. She stepped onto the travertine tile of her mudroom, the stiletto heels of her boots clicking against the hard surface.

  After latching the door and resetting the alarm, she made her way into the kitchen, the staccato sound of her steps bouncing off the walls of the silent house. Opening the fridge, she grabbed a giant bottle of water out of the door and headed down the hall.

  She was exhausted. It had been a hell of a week at work and the last thing she’d wanted to do tonight was leave the peace and quiet of her house. Her initial plans for the evening consisted o
f a nice long session on the stair stepper and some number crunching in her pajamas with a glass of wine. Then Gabbi called.

  So, against her better judgment, Gwen agreed to come out.

  She’d been in the bar less than five minutes before she regretted her decision. Immensely. If you were playing the game about one of these things not being like the others, you would have found the odd thing immediately. It was her.

  Every other woman in the place was wearing sparkly jeans and black shirts, their hair pulled back from riding all day, skin tanned from hours spent in the sun on the back of a motorcycle. She’d rushed in from work, tugged the bun out of her hair reorganizing the resulting curls with an iron and threw on the outfit she thought would be the most appropriate.

  It wasn’t. She stood out like a disco ball in a dark room, drawing every eye her way.

  She was forced to spend the evening being ogled by men of every generation and level of inebriation. Luckily just about every one of them was with their lady friend which kept them at bay and out of her hair. No one actually even spoke to her. Well, except the guy who ended his evening making out with the floor of the bar.

  That wasn’t actually true. There was one other man who spoke to her. A man with dark hair that waved down to fall into his even darker eyes. With tanned skin, not just from the sun, but genetics. The golden richness made the white of his teeth stand out, even in his barely opened mouth as he spoke.

  The same man who turned out to be her brother-in-law’s friend. His best friend.

  Propping herself up against the railing of the stairs, she unzipped her ankle boots one by one and slipped them off, hooking each over a finger. Tucking her water bottle in the crook of her arm, the cold immediately seeping through to her skin, she climbed the plush carpeted stairs to her room.

  She pulled off her clothes and left them in a pile on the floor, dropping her boots on top. Cranking on the shower, she turned the tap to almost scalding. As tired as she was, a shower had to happen tonight. She smelled like a bar. Not a nice bar either.

  Gwen stood in front of the mirror, inspecting as she waited for the water to heat up. She was really pale. She turned to the side. Maybe a little too skinny. Maybe more squats would help get a little more shape to her ass. Or maybe spending a little less time parked in the chair in front of her desk.