Erin McCarthy: It’s About Time

“He said he’s not leaving until he finds a woman to sleep with. Tonight.”

What? Well, that wasn’t worth the buildup. She’d at least been hoping for a midnight serenade of the ex or something. But it was not news for a man to bury his problems between a woman’s thighs. This guy had probably slept with a dozen women in the past two years in his quest to forget or get over his wife. The world revolved around sex, not love, as she had seen over and over again as a prosecutor.

“That just sounds like another Friday night man on the make to me.”

“Except he hasn’t been with a woman since he left his wife.”

Trish didn’t know which was more curious-that an able-bodied man in his twenties had willingly gone two years without sex, or that he had shared that fact with Joe.

“How do you know?”

“By beer number five, he was starting to get loose-lipped.” Joe shuddered. “Look, it was a really embarrassing conversation for me. I think I’m permanently scarred.”

Trish bent over to retrieve her shoe and tried really hard not to brush her hair against the sticky black lip of the bar counter. “Then why the hell are you telling me? I don’t want to know about his sex life any more than you do.” In fact, less. The only person’s sex life she cared about was her own, and how she could actually get one.

“So maybe if you go down there and talk to him, you’ll distract him and he’ll forget about it. He’s not in any shape to be picking up a woman. He’ll probably wind up married to a stripper by the morning if he doesn’t chill out on the beer.”

Why was it her job to save him? He was a big boy. Really big boy. He could take care of himself. Trish sipped her water, thinking. She blew her hair out of her eyes. She studied the guy, his arms as wide as porch pillars. He looked like he could pick up a building, all muscular and brawny.

She wanted to be alone in her sulk.

He looked over then. Sexy, deep-green eyes stared at her blankly, glazed with alcohol. Damn, he was cute.

She groaned, knowing she was going to regret this. “Dammit. Fine, I’ll talk to him.”

“You’re such a good person, Trish.” Joe clapped her on the shoulder, almost knocking her off her stool.

It wasn’t a compliment people usually paid her. She was reliable, efficient, and ruthless with criminals in her job, but no one had ever attributed inherent goodness to her before. She wasn’t even sure that’s why she acted now. But there was just something about a guy with six bottles of beer and a broken heart that had her standing up.

“Drinks are on me, Trish.”

“Then get me two bottled waters.”

Under the pretense of grabbing a book of matches, Trish sat in the chair next to Caleb. “What are you watching?” she asked, looking up at the TV. Baseball, of course. It was September.

He didn’t look at her. “The game.”

“Who’s winning?” She squinted through the dim light at the TV, seeing little men standing idly around a baseball diamond. In baseball, it always looked to her like the players were waiting for something good to happen, and that given the choice, they’d rather be eating barbeque.

There was silence. Trish discreetly shifted her bra strap under her black clingy dress and marveled at how huge this guy next to her was. Joe was big in a fleshy sort of way. But this guy was massive, his T-shirt straining against rippling muscle-and he towered over her, even sitting down. It was fascinating for a woman who spent all her time with professional men, who tended to be a little pale and thin, though with impeccable suits. She’d never dated a man who could snap her in half with his bare hands. Maybe that had been a mistake.

His rudeness didn’t bother her. She wasn’t even sure he’d heard her. He seemed to be floating in an alcohol haze, and when Joe put the waters in front of her, she gestured for him to clear away the empty beer bottles.

“Get me another one, Joe.” The giant tilted the bottle in his hand and drained it.

Joe nodded. “Sure, Caleb.”

Trish glared at Joe. Hadn’t he been the one to say this guy needed to go easy on the beer? Watching Caleb, she had to agree, and apparently it was up to her to be his salvation, savior, Saint Trish. That was her. Sure thing. Not.

But she did feel significantly less sorry for herself than she had when she’d walked in the door, and she owed it to Joe’s friend to save him from himself. Especially if he had truly loved his wife, the prospect of which she found strangely compelling. For some weird reason, she wanted to believe a man could love a woman enough to be upset when she got remarried, and Trish didn’t want this guy to cheapen that by having a one-night stand, his judgment impaired by alcohol.

Nor did she want to see his name come across her desk as the defendant in a crime of passion. Those were always such a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Leaning over the counter, she grabbed the beer out of Joe’s hand when he returned with it. Using her best courtroom voice, she pushed it out of Caleb’s reach. “Take this back and don’t bring any more. I’ve cut him off.”

Caleb Vancouver had a good little beer buzz going, but he wasn’t drunk yet. Not the way he wanted to be, at any rate. Snapped out of his stupor by a stubborn woman’s voice, he glanced over at her.

“What?” he said, taking her in with one swift glance.

Woman wearing a scowl, looking at him like he was a pathetic lush, that’s what he saw. Caleb wondered if she was right. He was feeling pretty damn pathetic.

She was very attractive. But definitely not his type. Not what he was looking for. He had come to the bar to find a woman, true, but the smiling, laughing, big-hair kind who thought nothing of going home with a guy she’d just met, and didn’t expect or want a phone call after the fact.

So far he hadn’t seen any likely candidates, which was starting to piss him off. A guy goes two whole friggin’ years without sex and then he can’t even find one chick to sleep with? It didn’t seem right. Not that he was looking all that hard, if he were totally honest. Somehow his plan to celebrate April’s wedding with a drunken night of sexual revelry had disintegrated into him sucking down beers by himself in a sulk.

And he suspected, despite the physical urges and the emotional need to stick another woman in his bed, if only for one night, that he wouldn’t actually go through with picking anyone up. Hell, he’d been there for three hours already and hadn’t spoken to anyone besides Joe.

He’d never had a one-night stand in his life. Of course, maybe that was because he’d married April right out of high school. But regardless, he wasn’t a sex-with-a-stranger kind of guy. He liked to know a woman, liked to learn how to please her, share an intimacy in bed and out, before and after.

“I said you can’t have any more beer,” came the persistent voice.

Caleb shifted on his stool and took another gander at the bossy broad next to him. Who the hell did she think she was?

If he wanted a beer, he’d have a beer, and some woman with nice shoulders and a scowl couldn’t stop him. No one could stop him, especially not when he was determined to drink enough beer to forget how annoyed he was, and he wasn’t nearly there yet. It was going to take a lot of beer to get over his confusion that his ex-wife was marrying a guy old enough to be her grandfather. And was so happy she was beaming. Glowing. She’d never glowed with Caleb, and it bothered him.

“Get me another beer,” he told Joe.

“No,” the woman next to him said quite clearly.

Was this the morality committee? Annoyed, he turned to her. “I don’t mean to be rude, but would you mind your own damn business?”