Great Sass (Providence Family Ties) - Mary B. Moore Page 0,4
but when we’d gotten there, I’d been unable to stop my feet from following her inside.
And what I saw wrecked me.
It was ingrained in me to respect personal boundaries, and I’d never been so appreciative of that before in my life.
And she’d let me in.
For someone who felt like they had no control, letting someone into their personal space was huge. That feeling only got better when what I was doing helped her.
Sadie Dahl was an enigma in many ways. She looked genuinely confident and had a smart, sassy mouth, but if you looked at her eyes, you saw the truth. She watched anyone who approached her with wariness and caution, and sometimes when men made sharp moves with their hands or arms, I swear she was doing everything to stop herself ducking and hiding.
I was still mulling over the riddle of Sadie Dahl as I walked back to where Archer was waiting for me at the bar when I heard my name being hissed by the riddle herself. Pivoting, I leaned on the bar top and waited, admittedly amused by it all because she was scanning the area around us like she was about to divulge top-secret information.
When she finally looked back at me, I grinned and raised an eyebrow, deliberately goading her into feeling slightly pissed at me so that she wouldn’t feel vulnerable while she was saying what she needed to.
“Okay,” she huffed, crossing her arms. “Thank you for the daisy. I really appreciate it.”
Not wanting to make a big deal about the reason she’d used the daisy, I went with a dirty response, which would hopefully piss her off enough to distract her from the problem for the rest of the night. Hopefully, it would also get her thinking about a specific body part of mine that definitely thought about Sadie a lot.
“Baby, you can pluck my daisy anytime you like.”
And with that, I carried on walking to my seat. A glance over my shoulder had me bursting out laughing, though, when I saw how red her face had gotten in the time I’d had my back to her.
Sure enough, she shot me the birdie and then hurried over to where a customer was waiting to get served.
I made sure to keep an eye on her the rest of the night. I didn’t see her hands shake, but I definitely saw her mouth “wanker” at me a couple of times.
Chapter Two
Elijah
Life out of the Coast Guard was like the brakes in your car failing when you were at the top of the hill with a descent that went for thousands of miles ahead of you.
One minute you were stable, you could see the whole world ahead—the next, you were falling with zero control over your fate.
Added to that, I no longer had my best friend, so I had zero foundation under me.
Some weeks I had no nightmares, some I had them frequently like the one I’d had tonight where I was being dragged underwater while I held onto Cooper. I swear I could even taste and smell the sea.
Mind and heart racing over the memory of holding his body, I threw the covers off my legs and got out of bed. It was better to beat the shit out of something than to relive one of the worst moments of my life. At least for me, it was!
So, picking up my phone, I dialed the number I’d gotten after taking part in a fight in Florida when I’d visited my parents.
The underground circuit was a close-knit community. One organizer knew another, fighters had heard of each other and knew who they wanted to fight at some point, and the spectators were eager for the thrill of seeing it play out in front of them.
Me—I just wanted to get rid of some tension and to have the pain snap me out of this repetitive cycle of bullshit I had going on inside my head.
“Pepper Pizza. How can I help?” a young guy’s voice answered after it’d rung three times.
“I need a pizza with just pineapple and anchovies,” I told him, following the directions I’d been given and holding back the gag that wanted to accompany the words.
This time when he spoke, he sounded slightly sharper than he had previously. “Just pineapple and anchovies?”
“Yeah, hold the cheese, too.”
There was some rustling, and then a deeper voice asked, “What’s the name?”
“You can put it under Ross,” I instructed, giving him my fight name.