Megan Hart - Captivated - Letting Go / Seize the Night

She paused. Both of them stared each other down.

“Besides,” she added, “you act like I come in here every day looking frowsy. And that, I know for a fact, is not true.”

Mark smiled and tipped his head back in laughter loud enough to make Jonas and Patty both peek over their cubicles to see what was going on. He spilled some coffee on the floor in his delight, which made him put his mug on the counter. He pointed at the coffee station.

“Get someone to take care of this. This is disgusting. And you,” he said to Colleen, “leave early today. Get that abomination out of my office before it makes me puke.”

“I have work to finish,” she said mildly, but Mark cut her off with a furious hand gesture and a scowl.

“Out!” He said. “As a matter of fact, everyone, out! Go home early today. It’s going to be wretched out later. And take tomorrow off, too. I don’t want to see any of you until Monday.”

“We’ll still get paid, right?” Patty popped her head up again. She was already pulling on her coat.

“Maybe.” Mark had turned, heading for his office.

Jonas coughed. “You have to, Mark. It’s in our contracts. We get paid when you close the office.”

“Fine, fine, fine.” Mark didn’t look over his shoulder, just disappeared into his office and closed the door.

Jonas, Patty and Colleen shared a look. Of the three of them, Colleen had known Mark the longest. Her relationship with him was the most complicated because of their history, but that didn’t mean she liked him any better than anyone else did. Colleen was grateful to Mark. She always would be. But he wasn’t easy to deal with on any level.

“He’s such a pain in the ass,” Jonas said, clearly agitated.

Mark’s office door opened. “I heard that. I should fire you.”

Jonas slowly, slowly, slowly raised his middle finger. Patty let out a muffled giggle. Mark slammed the door.

“He can’t fire me, ever,” Jonas said. “I added it to my contract, and he signed it, that crazy jackoff.”

It was not the best of office environments, but then it was also never boring.

Back in her office, Colleen quickly checked her appointment calendar, made a few calls to rearrange some things due to the “weather-related office closing” and shut down her computer. Getting out of work unexpectedly early was the equivalent of a snow day in elementary school, and she intended to make the most of it.

She’d been to the market earlier in the week, but made another trip now to stock up on milk, bread, eggs, toilet paper and chocolate, the staples for any snow day. She added some tortilla chips and salsa, a few gossip magazines and, on impulse, a bottle of bath oil some clever stock person had featured near the romance novels and a display of funky battery-lit candles with lights that flickered. She bought some of those, too.

It was lucky Mark had let them go early, because by the time she’d finished her shopping, the store had been nearly emptied of the same kinds of things she was buying. Two women almost got in a fistfight over toilet paper. And outside, the first white, fluffy flakes had begun falling.

In the ten-minute drive back to her apartment, the snow had become thick enough to make it hard for her to see, even with the windshield wipers going nonstop. Colleen pulled into her parking spot, not looking forward to having to dig herself out and do the parking-space shuffle. Last year, two of her neighbors had nearly come to blows over a space. Life in the city, she thought, remembering the heated driveway and three-car garage she’d given up when she left Steve.

Even if she had to shovel herself out from under three feet of snow and defend her spot in hand-to-hand combat, it was worth it.

The snow had made darkness fall even earlier than usual for January, and by three-thirty Colleen had turned on all the lights in her living room. She’d started a Crock-Pot of chili simmering for tomorrow, with some baked mac ‘n’ cheese for tonight’s dinner. Comfort food, perfect for winter weather. She’d put on some soft music and pulled out a book to read, wondering if it was too early to get in the bath. If she waited a while longer, she could go to sleep right after. She could watch a movie in bed. She could stay up late playing games on her phone. She could eat whatever she wanted, sleep however she wanted, wear whatever she wanted.

Do whatever she wanted.

And as always, even four years later, this freedom sent her spinning in dizzy, delightful circles in her living room until everything slipped sideways and she had to sit down, hard, to keep herself from falling.

Colleen clapped her hands to her face to hold back the laughing sobs that tore at her throat and made her stomach sick. Nothing came without a price, especially freedom. She could do what she wanted because she’d sacrificed a lot to have it.

It was still Thursday, but the weather outside made anything but an emergency too much to deal with. And it wasn’t an emergency, was it? To sit at the bar and order that drink the way she did every week? Nothing bad would happen if she didn’t do it. And maybe, Colleen told herself, it was time to stop going at all.

And then her phone rang.

Chapter Three

“When I was a kid, you had to listen to the radio station at five in the morning to figure out if school was canceled.” Jesse held his phone up to John’s bored face. “Now they text you the night before. So, hey, at least I don’t have to get up early.”

John tossed a towel over one shoulder and leaned over the bar to look out the front windows as best he could. “We should close early. Nobody’s gonna come out in this mess, and anyone who’s here should be getting home, anyway. Hell, I want to get home. It’s nasty out there.”

All the storm watch warnings had been right on target for once. The flurries had started that afternoon and grew increasingly heavier as the day passed. The weather forecast was calling for six to eight inches of snow by 2:00 a.m., which was normally when Jesse was closing up and heading home. But John was right—the weather was bad enough that if they could shuffle out the three people gathered around the table in the front, it would make sense to close up early.

As it turned out, the trio was finishing their drinks and signaling for the check even as John started running the register receipts and getting the few glasses that had come out of the kitchen back on the shelf. He told the small kitchen staff to pack up and head out, then turned to Jesse.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Just as Jesse was getting ready to agree, the bell over the door jingled, and in she came. Colleen, the Thursday night special with the sad eyes and love of onion rings. He’d been certain she wasn’t coming tonight and telling himself that he didn’t care. But here she was, stamping her feet and brushing the snow off the shoulders of her heavy black coat. White flakes covered her light blond hair. In the few seconds before they melted, they looked like a circlet of flowers.

“We’re—” John started.

“I got her,” Jesse said, already pouring the glass of whiskey, neat, and sliding it into the spot she always took.

“You’ll close up?” John asked.

Jesse barely gave him a glance. “Yeah. I’ll take care of it. Lock up the back, okay?”

“Got it.” John clapped him on the shoulder, gave Colleen a nod as he passed, and then...

They were alone in the bar.

“Nice night.” Jesse twisted a wedge of lime into the glass of seltzer and put that in front of her, too. He’d meant it as a joke, but Colleen gave him a blank stare. No smile.

“Yeah, it’s great. Thanks.” She pulled the glass of seltzer closer, but didn’t take a drink. She looked at the whiskey, and her mouth twisted.