Espresso Shot Read Online Free PDF

around me, and I turned to find Koa at my side, grinning like a Pacific shark. “We really had Matt going there, didn’t we?! I thought he was going to drop a rock!”

    “Ha-ha, yes, very funny,” I said, and was about to add more, but Koa’s attention had already shifted back to the dancer, which didn’t surprise me. (Men typically preferred staring at a woman rather than actually listening to one.)

    Above my head, cloth fluttered down like autumn leaves. The audience hooted, whistled, and howled. I spied Roger Mbele shaking his head, a bemused expression on his face, and that’s when I realized the door to the bar’s public front room was still wide open.

    I moved to shut it and found half a dozen male customers from the bar standing there gawking, eager to get an eyeful of the stripper. When one of the college kids whipped out a cell phone and held it up—presumably to start snapping pictures for the Internet, I shoved the group back.

    “Sorry, private party!” I told them and began to close the door in their faces.

    But I couldn’t shut it all the way. I looked down to find a heavy black boot blocking my efforts. The boot was scuffed and dirty, attached to a guy in his late twenties: too old to be an undergrad, I thought, too skeevy to be a grad student (probably). He was close to six feet and wiry, with a studded leather motorcycle jacket and a black shirt decorated with creepy Day of the Dead skeletons. His skin was pale but flushed, as if he’d been drinking (big surprise). He had a few days’ scruff on his jaw, his stringy brown hair was disheveled, and a stud earring of a white skull was snickering at me from one earlobe.

    “Who do you have to know to get invited to this party?” the guy said, his breath violating my nose with a reeking mix of bad dental hygiene and a great deal of tequila. “Who’s the guest of honor?”

    “Nobody special,” I assured him. “It’s just a party. Now, please let me close the door.”

    The man’s unblinking stare remained fixed. “Lemme in, lady. I won’t drink your booze.” He pointed to the Breanne look-alike. “It’s the ho I wanna meet.”

    “Forget it.” I pushed harder on the door. His heavy boot remained planted.

    “And what if I don’t, bitch ?”

    My eyes narrowed. Like most suburban girls, I’d grown up with the usual “be nice” lessons. Good manners were a sign of good character; and the last thing a modest girl would ever want to do was be the cause of an awkward scene. After years working a service counter in this town, however, I’d learned other lessons. To guys like this, for instance, courtesy was a rope to strangle women with.

    “Stop giving me trouble, scumbag!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “Or I’ll call our bouncer!”

    People in the bar’s front room frowned in my direction, but Koa heard my yell (a miracle over the raucous noise) and immediately moved behind me.

    “Trouble, Clare?” the big Hawaiian asked, crossing his massive arms.

    “Not if this guy steps away from the door!” I yelled, this time with close to three hundred pounds of heavily muscled backing.

    Eyes shifting to Koa’s ham-sized biceps, the jerk’s scowl deepened. Finally, he turned around. Heavy boots clomping, he walked back to the front room’s mahogany bar. The bartender approached the man as he plopped down and poured him another shot.

    I shut the back room door and sagged against it. As the Breanne look-alike finished her act, I studied the vintage tin ceiling. Then I heard a burst of exuberant applause, and a moment later, the statuesque young dancer slipped away. Clothes bundled under her arm, pumps and attaché case in hand, she ducked through the room’s back archway, bolting by the tavern’s kitchen and disappearing into an alcove that led to the ladies’ room.

    Roger Mbele walked by me a moment later, his jacket draped over his arm.

    “You’re not going to the gentlemen’s club?” I asked, not entirely