January in Atlantis - Alyssa Day (red white royal blue .txt) 📗

Damn, but she was gorgeous. He wasn’t sure why he thought so, but he did. She wasn’t someone he’d necessarily notice walking down the street, except for that incredible red hair. She wasn’t bold or brash, and she was too thin—too pale. But something about her—the force of her personality—infused her face with a quiet beauty.

Except when she smiled. When she smiled, she was vividly, gloriously radiant.

He’d found himself thinking about her all day long. Wanting to learn more about her. Wanting to feed her Atlantean delicacies until she lost that thin, haunted look. Wanting to show her the wonders of his home.

He even wanted her to meet his brothers and their new wives. Of course, he needed to meet their new wives too. They could have a great big family dinner and introduce everybody to everybody and—

Family dinner? Was he already thinking of her as his family?

Talk about ridiculously premature.

And yet…

She looked up and met his gaze in the mirror and smiled. Just for a moment, she smiled at him. A private smile, only for him. A warm smile that held welcome. That said she was glad to see him. But it only lasted for a heartbeat, and then the realization of what they were going to be walking into hit both of them all over again.

Eva whirled around. “Did you—”

Flynn held up a hand to stop her from saying anything in public. “No luck yet.”

Her shoulders slumped, and Flynn again found himself wanting to pick her up and carry her out of there. Carry her far away from any danger.

But first they had to find and rescue those girls. Damn the Dark Angels. Flynn wished they’d all fall into a pit and burn in hell.

Eva put her elbows on the bar and leaned toward Flynn. “I think we should—”

The front door slammed open so hard that the glass in the little window shattered. Flynn spun around and reached behind his head for the hilt of the sword that wasn’t there. It was still in its sheath on his bike.

Damn. He had his knives, but he suddenly, urgently wanted every weapon in his possession within reach so he could protect Eva from… three women in cotton dresses?

Was one of them carrying a broom? Maybe they were the cleaning staff?

What was happening?

“Noel!” the biggest of the three bellowed. Although, to be fair, they were all three big. At least six feet tall each, they all looked sturdy enough to pick up a cow. Or, at the very least, to deal with Noel the scumbag.

The steady drone of voices and laughter went completely silent. Flynn, Eva, and everybody else in the bar watched as the woman stomped over to Noel and poked him in the chest with the broom handle.

“I hear you’re up to it again,” she screamed in a voice that surely could be heard all the way to Atlantis. “I warned you. I warned you what I’d do.”

“Now, honey,” Noel began ingratiatingly, cringing away from the broom.

“Don’t you ‘honey’ me.” Mrs. Noel, for that’s who she must be, looked around the bar and then pointed her broom handle in a sort of sweeping way that encompassed them all. “Okay, you’re done. Bar’s closed. Get out.”

There was one or two mumbles of disagreement, but that quickly died out when the angry woman fixed her stare on any dissenters. The customers fled with varying degrees of haste, all of them openly staring at the drama as they went.

“Give me your wallet,” Mrs. Noel ordered her husband, who hastily complied. Then she stomped across the bar toward Eva.

Flynn moved to stand between the two women, but Eva’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“I’ve got this,” she said, gently but firmly.

When Mrs. Noel reached the bar, she looked Eva up and down. “Are you Eva?”

Eva nodded. “I am, but you don’t have to worry. I quit. I was just filling in tonight because Missy’s sick.”

The woman frowned. “I was worried about you, honey. I want to apologize for that perverted little jackass. He swore he’d stopped bothering the help. If I’d known sooner, I’d have done something about it.”

She opened Noel’s wallet, took out all the cash inside, and thrust it at Eva. “It’s not much. Maybe a thousand bucks. And if you want to sue him, I totally understand. I’ll even testify about the crap he pulled in the past.”

Eva hesitated, but then she took the money and nodded at Noel’s wife. “I won’t be suing. I’m moving on. But maybe, on my behalf, you could make sure he never does this to anybody again.”

“Oh, that won’t be a problem,” Mrs. Noel said grimly. “Noel is out of the bar business now. I’m taking over the cantina. Noel is gonna be a farmer from here on out.”

Flynn looked across the room to see how Noel was taking this news, and he was unsurprised to see the asshole trying to sneak out the door.

Too bad for Noel that it was nearly impossible to sneak out a door when it was guarded by two more Amazons the size of his wife. They each grabbed one of his arms and held on tight. Noel wasn’t going anywhere except back to the farm.

Flynn laughed for the first time in a long, frustrating day.

Noel’s wife glared at him. “What are you laughing about?”

Flynn smiled at her, keeping an eye on the broomstick that was propped up against the bar. There were certain parts of his anatomy he preferred to protect. “I just love it when a good woman happens to a bad man, ma’am. And you seem to be a very good woman.”

She sniffed at him but seemed placated, which meant that she didn’t decide to ram her broomstick into his balls, which was good. She nodded to Eva, who nodded back, and then Mrs. Noel stormed across the room, grabbed her wayward husband by the ear, and dragged him out of the bar. They stopped at the doorway, and she looked back. “Eva, do me the favor of locking up and just drop the keys back through the mail slot, if you would?”

Flynn thought it said something about the woman’s judgment—which had obviously improved in the years since she’d married Noel—that she trusted Eva to close up the bar. But clearly she did, and just as clearly Eva deserved that trust.

“Yes, I will. Thank you,” Eva added, glancing at Noel and then back at his wife. “Thank you.”

The woman nodded, took a firmer grip on her husband’s ear, and the four of them left the bar.

“I’m kind of glad I got here in time to see that,” Flynn admitted. Eva’s face was set in proud, stern lines, like the face of an avenging angel, and he wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms and kiss her until she couldn’t breathe. His warrior princess.

Instead, he tried for casual. “But now that you’re off duty, how about we go get some dinner? I’ve been driving all over this corner of the state, and I’m starving.”

“I could eat,” she said. Then, with brisk efficiency and a bit of help from Flynn, they got the bar closed up in no time. Just as they were walking out the door, however, Eva saw an older woman walking by on the sidewalk.

“Mrs. Arnold? Will you please do me a favor, ma’am?”

Mrs. Arnold, who looked to be in her sixties—not that Flynn was all that good at judging human ages—was walking a fluffy dog on a sparkly pink leash. She looked over at Eva and smiled.

“Oh, hello, dear. I haven’t seen you since I got my Muffin here from the shelter. Are you still volunteering there and helping out?”

“I am,” Eva said, but Flynn saw a flash of pain cross her face. “In fact, though, I have to leave town for a while, and I’m just closing up the bar for Noel. Will you please do me a favor and look inside and verify that everything looks the way it should before I lock up? I don’t mean to be paranoid, but you know