Her Forbidden Hero (6 page)

“Well, then, I guess. Just tell Pete you’re interested. See what he says.”

Which reminded her about a conversation she needed to have. “I will, thanks. Do you need me for anything else?”

He grinned, his cheeks going curiously pink. “Nah. Go do your thing. I’ll catch ya later.”

With a wave, she set off in search of Pete.

…

The bar was like a goddamned cage.

Marco paced back and forth, taking orders and delivering drinks in a way he
knew
was barely civil, but unable to force even the cursory niceties he usually managed.

Ever since Alyssa had cornered him in the hallway, peered up at him with those imploring brown eyes, and cupped his face in her hand, Marco had felt raw and exposed, like his skin no longer protected his insides.

Jesus. If Van hadn’t interrupted them, Marco wasn’t sure what he might’ve said, what her gaze and her touch and her very presence might’ve drawn out of him.

“What’ll you have?” he asked a woman who pushed through the crowd to the bar.

She perfected her posture and smiled from under her eyelashes. “Two Coronas with limes, please.”

Marco ignored the offer in her too-broad smile and too-deep cleavage and concentrated on the mechanics of retrieving the bottles, popping the caps, and placing the wedges of lime into the necks. He’d just turned to the next customer when he heard a voice call for an order at the side counter.

As his hands worked through the motions of the customer’s drinks, he cut a quick glance to the waitstaff counter and found Alyssa standing there, smiling in a way that looked too much like hope for his sanity. Just what was it she was hoping for?
I’m your friend
—that’s what she’d said earlier in the hallway. But that wasn’t the story her gaze told.

He traded the man his drink for money and called to Alyssa, “What do you need?”

Her smile wavered. “Two chardonnays and a Sam Adams.”

He kept his back to her as he worked. With no intention of making eye contact, he settled the drinks on her tray.

“Thanks. This band is really good, isn’t it?”

He felt her expectant gaze on him but didn’t return it. “No time to pay attention.”

Disappointment washed off her and made him feel like a total asshole, especially given how much they’d always connected over music, but her eyes were too damn full of concern and affection. His plan to keep his distance couldn’t afford even a single slip, no matter how awkward, tense, and
long
the dinner service felt.

Because he’d wanted to slip. Wanted to open his mouth and let her help him shoulder the living nightmare of the last year. Affection and acceptance burned in her gaze, and he couldn’t let himself give in to it. The last thing she needed in her life—all fresh and shiny and just starting out in the world—was the burden of someone as fucked in the head as he was.

And that wasn’t even taking into consideration the shitstorm that would likely be Brady’s opinion.

When he glanced back, Alyssa was gone.

“Order in,” another voice called.

Marco found Kim standing on the far side of the bar, tapping on the countertop to the beat of the current song. She rattled off her drink order and Marco got to work filling it. “I’ll be right back,” she said before darting through the
Staff-Only
door.

Marco settled the drinks on her tray, but by the time he’d taken care of two more customers, Kim still hadn’t returned. Scanning the bar, he found everyone satisfied for the moment, so he checked Kim’s tickets on the computer connected to the register and found the table to which they belonged—close enough he could run them out before any fires erupted behind the bar. He scooped up the tray and walked onto the floor.

Without permission, his gaze sought and found Alyssa two rows over. She was crouched down next to a table with a man’s arm around her shoulders. She sidled out from under the guy’s grip, but then he grabbed her hand. Blood roared through Marco’s ears and his head throbbed. As she freed herself, Alyssa offered the man a polite smile that Marco knew was uncomfortable, not genuine.

A hand settled on his arm and he flinched.

“Thanks, honey,” Kim said with a smile, pulling the tray out of the death grip he had on it. Though they didn’t talk much, Marco respected the older woman. She did her job, avoided the drama some of the other waitresses engaged in, and was always kind.

“This been going on all night?” he asked.

She followed his gaze. “She’s fine. Handling everything like a real pro. I’ll keep an eye on her, though.”

Marco dragged his eyes away from where the man continued to hold Alyssa’s attention. He nodded and swallowed a thick knot suddenly filling his throat.

“You go on, now, before there’s a mob scene at the bar.”

“Right.” He stalked back to work, restless suffocation morphing into a head-splitting ache and murderous fantasies every time his brain very unhelpfully resurrected the image of the man groping Alyssa.

And damn if the thing most likely to trigger the memory wasn’t Alyssa herself. Each time she came into the bar, Marco’s blood pressure spiked. It took every ounce of discipline and restraint he had to keep from making a big scene of the beating-the-shit-out-of-a-customer kind. And now he couldn’t
not
look at her, because he had to be sure she was all right. And that meant he couldn’t avoid noticing her beautiful smile, the column of skin that ran down her throat and continued somewhere under the V-neck of her shirt, the full mounds of her breasts pushing against the white cotton. It wasn’t long before lust joined the rage flowing through him and he found himself fighting the urge to throw her over his shoulder and drag her the fuck out of there. Away from the eyes and hands of that man—of
any
other man.

Problem was, right at this moment, Marco couldn’t promise to let her go once he had her in his arms.

…

The dinner service turned out to be a total madhouse, proving Pete’s insistence that Alyssa complete three training shifts before she waited her own tables probably made sense. The venue was sold out, the bass of the band pounded through the hall, making it so loud she had to lean close to the patrons to hear them, and the drink orders flowed in steady all night. It was so crazy, Kim needed her to run a big table with a party of ten largely by herself.

All those drink orders necessitated a constant back-and-forth to the bar, where Marco filled her tray with an alternating cycle of grunts, glares, and dark expressions that made her body hot, no matter how unfriendly they seemed on the surface. At one point, he sloshed the foam off a glass of beer, slamming it down too hard in front of her. And it wasn’t just with her—Marco didn’t seem to be playing well with anyone. The men around the bar eyed him with a hard-edged respect and the women with something that made her a whole lot less comfortable, but none of them tried to chat him up. Marco was far from the outgoing, gregarious bartenders she knew from her old waitressing jobs. If this was what Van and the others were seeing, no wonder they questioned Marco’s character. He was downright surly. Still freaking gorgeous, though, and wasn’t that annoying.

She needed to talk to him but was just too busy to do it during the dinner service. By the end of the night, her feet were tired, her ears were ringing, and she longed for a hot shower—or another dip in the pool. But at least Kim had let her keep the tips from the table she’d managed, putting fifty dollars in her pocket and ensuring she had enough for another hotel room.

But first, she had to figure out what was going on with Marco.

Finished with her part of the closing routine, Alyssa made her way into the bar and leaned against the flip counter where the waitstaff placed their orders.

Marco was sliding clean drink glasses into an overhead rack. He’d discarded his button-down over the far edge of the bar and wore only a tight black tank. Alyssa couldn’t help but stare at the way his ripped muscles moved as he worked. And the undershirt left little to the imagination about just how cut he was underneath.

He turned and grabbed more glasses from a dishwasher tray behind him, continuing what he was doing, never looking at her, but Alyssa knew he was aware of her by the tension in his shoulders and the way his gaze avoided her. Loner complex or not, she refused to believe he wanted to keep her at a distance, too. Not after everything they’d been through together.

She drummed her fingers lightly on the bar. Once. Twice. Her concern morphed into exasperation, then annoyance, and finally anger. “Any chance you’re going to explain the silent treatment?”

He glared her way, then set the empty dishwasher racks off to the side on the floor.

“Marco, I don’t understand—”

“You got that right.”

“Got what right? I don’t even know what we’re talking about. All I know is you’re kinda being an asshole and I haven’t the foggiest idea what I…”

The words died in her throat as Marco abruptly turned, stalked across the space behind the bar, and flipped up the counter in front of her. She retreated as he stepped through the gap, and then he grabbed her by the arms—firm enough that she knew he had her, but not enough to hurt.

“How many times did you get grabbed out there tonight? Huh?” He pushed her back one step, then another, until her spine came flush against something unyielding. He braced his hands on the wall above her shoulders and towered over her, six-foot-three-inches of pissed-off versus five-foot-four-inches of turned-on. “How many guys laid their fucking paws on you?”

Alyssa could barely breathe, let alone respond. Her heart was a speeding train in her chest. How had he even known what had happened on the floor, anyway? Besides, she’d handled it. Kim had prepared her for the rowdy ones, plus you didn’t grow up in a violent household without knowing how to dodge some unwanted contact. The self-defense classes she’d taken in college taught her the rest. So what if one guy kept putting his arm around her shoulders when she leaned in to take his orders and another grabbed her ass? No blood, no foul, and all that.

“I can tell you this goddamn much. There is at least one man in this town who is lucky to be alive tonight.”

“Marco,” she whispered.

He pounded his fist on the wall. “I can’t…you c-can’t…” He shook his head.

“Marco,” she said again. “I’m okay.”

He stared at her a long moment, blue eyes blazing and his breathing hard. Slowly, he leaned in, his tongue flicking his bottom lip.

Alyssa’s mouth dropped open. Oh, God, how many times had she dreamed of this? She tilted her head and held his gaze, her whole body alive with anticipation. Her hand fisted in his shirt, pulling him in or pulling herself up—she wasn’t sure which.

The second she touched him, he blinked and his eyes went wide, like he’d just realized what was happening. The fire in his gaze disappeared and his expression went dark. “You’re not okay. You’re too naïve for your own good.” He spun on his heel and stalked away, slamming the folding counter down behind him.

He had to stop thinking about her this way because it was so easy to want to lose himself in her. Too easy. Alyssa represented his old life, his old self. She made him remember that person. That must be why she appealed to him now—she made him believe he could be his old self again. But it was just a mirage. That life, that man—they were gone, buried in the ruins of a mud hut thousands of miles away.

Marco gunned Betty’s engine and tore out of the rear parking lot. A line of traffic waited to exit at the light. Sitting at that damn signal tested the last thread of his patience, and the leather steering wheel creaked under the stranglehold he had on it.

Green. Fucking finally.

He turned right before he thought to do it—
away
from home. Last thing he wanted to face right now was the horrific nightscape of his usual REM pattern, especially on the chance his dreams would be as vivid as last night’s.

Ten minutes later, Betty came to a halting stop in a space in front of Max’s, the local gym he’d worked at in high school and continued to patronize ever since. His fists were jonesing to make contact with
something
, and since the jackoff who had pawed his Alyssa was off the menu—for tonight—he’d take option B, thank you very much.

When had he started thinking of her as
his
?