Brendan (The Doherty Mafia Book 4) by Kasey Krane (summer reads TXT) 📗

“Since when do you give up on an ass like that?”

Maybe Tristian was right. Maybe I was changing.

Tristian walked away from me to the group of giggling girls and I turned away. One more drink and I was leaving the bar.

Tristian was nowhere in sight, neither were the girls. I smirked when I thought about Tristian having somehow convinced all of them to go with him to a hotel somewhere. Only he would manage something like that.

I grabbed my jacket off the counter and left a wad of bills for the bartender. I turned to leave because all I wanted to do was return to my apartment and sleep. But before I could go anywhere, I saw her.

She seemed to be a waitress. Short. Blonde. Curvy. The lights were messed up at this place and she wasn’t standing close enough for me to see her face clearly, but there was something about her that made me stop in my tracks. Did I know her from somewhere? There was something familiar about her.

The way she moved, the way she turned her nose up in the air.

But I snapped out of it pretty quickly when I saw her push a guy with her hands. She was standing at a table in the corner. There must have been at least four guys at the table and one of them had an arm around her.

It was pretty obvious that she didn’t like it. She tried to pull away from him but he kept overpowering her,stopping her from getting away.

It took me a second to decide.

I put on my jacket and then weaved my way through the crowd towards them. Nobody else seemed to notice what was going on with her. They were talking to each other but I couldn’t hear their voices over the music.

The girl may even have been shouting, cursing at him to leave her alone.

“Hello, gentlemen,” I said, walking up to them with my hands thrust deep in my pockets.

They all turned to look at me, and that was when I met her big blue eyes. She reminded me of someone, of some place I’d been to before. Fuck. I needed to think.

It was like she casted a spell on me.

“What the fuck do you want?” one of the guys said.

“I want you to leave this chick alone. Simple,” I replied with a bitter smile.

The guy who had his arm around her, stared at me, then turned to his friends and smiled.

“Get a load-a this guy. He’s going to come up here and tell me what to do.”

I gave them a moment to enjoy themselves, laugh together because it seemed like they needed it. One last laugh to mark the night.

I smiled at them when they looked at me again. Then I grabbed the guy by his collars and pulled him off the seat. The girl spun away and slipped to the floor, but I figured she was going to be all right as long as she got away from this bastard.

“I asked you nicely, motherfucker. I really don’t like being rude,” I growled before knocking him out.

Three

Rosalie

I was convinced something bad was going to happen to me. The guy who had his arm around me made it very clear he wasn’t going to release me unless I gave him something. What did he want? A lap dance? A hand job?

I wanted to cry. I screamed and thrashed while his friends laughed and he fondled me all over. Just as I expected, nobody at the bar seemed to have heard me scream. Nobody was going to come to my rescue.

I thought he was going to drag me to the toilets right then. His grip was strong and the more I fought him, the more excited he got.

And then this guy appeared out of nowhere.

I barely even had a chance to look at his face before he pulled the man off me and punched him in the face. His friends jumped off their chairs, meaning to attack the guy who came to my rescue. But then, another guy showed up.

I had fallen to the floor and I stayed there, backing into a corner while I watched the scene unfold. I could still feel that man’s paws all over me. I still had tears rolling down my cheeks. I wanted to be home. I wanted to be with Davey, have him curled in my arms. Even when all this was happening to me, I thought about protecting him.

The two guys wrestled with the three remaining men from the table. The guy who came to my rescue, and his friend—were clearly physically superior. They were both tall and muscular with short crew cuts and bulging biceps. They were the kinds of guys you didn’t mess with. The kinds of guys I knew to stay away from because I didn’t trust them. And yet, of all the people in the bar, they were the ones who came to my rescue.

I wanted to catch a good glimpse of the one who had pulled me off but he was too involved with the wrestling. At one point, he even took a punch in the face and it looked like his nose started to bleed. I winced in response to that, even though it seemed like he was unaffected by it.

Then the bar security arrived. Finally.

Two losers who wouldn’t have been able to break up the fight single-handedly if they didn’t have help from Rocky and some of the other staff.

The men were pulled apart. The guy knocked out on the floor was finally coming-to.

Ironically, it was the two guys who fought for me who were being pushed out of the bar. They were the ones who had started the fight. I scrambled to get off the floor and come to their defense. Even though I knew it wouldn’t matter. Ultimately, I would get the blame from Rocky for causing a scene and upsetting