Headed for Trouble - By Suzanne Brockmann Page 0,117
shook her head, muttering something that sounded like, “Why do I do this to myself?”
Any conversational opener was a win, so Shane took it for the invitation that it wasn’t. “Do what to yourself?”
Another head shake, this one with an eye roll. “Look, I’m not interested.”
“Actually, I came over because I saw that you were limping,” Shane lied. “You know, when you came in? I trashed my ankle about a year ago. They giving you steroids for the swelling?”
“Really,” she said. “You’re wasting your time.”
She wasn’t as pretty as he’d thought she was, from a distance. But she wasn’t exactly not-pretty either. Still, her face was a little too square, her nose a little too small and round, her lips a little too narrow. Her short hair wasn’t blond as he’d first thought, but rather a bland shade of uninspiring light brown. She was also athletic to the point of near breastlessness. The thug he’d tangled with earlier that evening had had bigger pecs than this woman did beneath her tank top.
But those eyes …
They weren’t just brown, they were golden brown, with bits of hazel and specks of green and darker brown thrown in for good measure.
They were incredible.
“Be careful if they do,” Shane told her. “You know, give you steroids. I had a series of shots that made me feel great. They really helped, but ten months after the last injection, I was still testing positive for performance enhancing drugs. Which was problematic when I tried to earn some easy money cage fighting.”
She turned to look at him. “Is that it? You done with your public service announcement?”
He smiled back at her. “Not quite. I did a little research online and found out that that particular drug can stay in your system for as long as eighteen months. I’ve still got six months to kill.”
“Before you can become a cage fighter,” she said, with plenty of yeah, right scorn in her voice. “Does that usually impress the girls?”
“I’ve actually never told anyone before,” Shane admitted. “You know, that I stooped that low? But it is amazing what you’ll do when you’re broke, isn’t it?” He finished his beer and held the empty up toward the bartender, asking for another. “Pete’s paying,” he told the man then turned back to the woman, who’d gone back to staring at her whiskey. “I’m Shane Laughlin. From San Diego.”
She sighed and finished her drink, pushing the empty glass toward the far edge of the bar and pulling her second closer to her and taking a sip.
“So what are you doing in Boston, Shane?” he asked for her, as if she actually cared. “Wow, that’s a good question. I’m former Navy. I haven’t been out all that long, and I’ve been having some trouble finding a job. I got a lead on something short term—here in Boston. I actually start tomorrow. How about you? Are you local?”
When she turned and looked at him, her eyes were finally filled with life. It was a life that leaned a little heavy on the anger and disgust, but that was better than that flat nothing she’d given him earlier. “You seriously think I don’t know that you’re slumming?”
Shane laughed his surprise. “What?”
“You heard what I said and you know what I meant.”
“Wow. If anyone’s slumming here … Did you miss the part of the conversation where I admitted to being the loser who can’t find a job?”
“You and how many millions of Americans?” she asked. “Except it’s a shocker for you, isn’t it, Navy? You’ve never not been in demand—you probably went into the military right out of high school and … Plus, you were an officer, right? I can smell it on you.” She narrowed her eyes as if his being an officer was a terrible thing.
“Yeah, I was officer.” He dropped his biggest bomb. “In the SEAL teams.”
She looked him dead in the eye as it bounced. “Big fucking deal, Dixie-Cup. You’re out now. Welcome to the real world, where things don’t always go your way.”
He laughed—because what she’d just said was pretty funny. “You obviously have no idea what a SEAL does.”
“I don’t,” she admitted. “No one does. Not since the military entered the government’s cone of silence.”
“I specialized in things not going my way,” Shane told her.
“So why’d you leave, then?” she asked, and when he didn’t answer right away, she toasted him with her drink and drained it. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”