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

I ran in, I couldn’t see Rosalie in there anywhere. She was a waitress, so shouldn’t she have been working the floor? But the place was crowded, packed full of drunk idiots and she could have been anywhere.

I combed through the people crowding the place, looking at as many people’s faces as I could in order to locate her. The problem was that the lighting was shit, the music was too loud and the people were getting rowdy. I had to push past them to make sure I was doing a thorough-enough search.

Not that I knew exactly why I gave a shit. She literally ran away from me in the middle of a conversation, while I was trying to determine how I knew her. And now that she had run away, it made me suspicious that she had something to hide.

And I hated not knowing the full story. If she was trying to hide something from me, I needed to get to the bottom of it.

But that wasn’t the only reason why I was determined to find her.

I saw something I liked.

She had the kind of body that made a woman, a woman. The kind of body I could sink into. My cock throbbed to life the moment I set my eyes on her, and I had kinda gotten into the bad habit of always getting what I wanted.

And right then, I wanted Rosalie. I wanted her sweet cherry lips wrapped around my hard cock. Right after she told me exactly why she ran away from me.

I looked in the toilets, slamming the doors of the cubicles with my fists. She wasn’t there either.

Finally, I decided I would have to get past the asshole staff and check in the back storage rooms for her. I expected them to stop me when they saw me but I didn’t care. I was willing to knock out a few more of them if I had to, if that meant finding Rosalie again.

Thankfully the bar was too busy and nobody seemed to notice when I strode past the counter and into the back hallway. It was dark and empty with only two doors. One would have led me out to the back alley behind the bar, and if she went through there then there was no chance of me finding her tonight.

So I opened the other door. It was the store room.

There was one flickering bulb hanging from the ceiling while crates of liquor and bar snack supplies filled every wall and corner.

Right there in the middle of the room stood Rosalie, staring at me wide-eyed like a deer caught in the headlights. And it looked like she had been crying.

“What are you doing here? Why are you here? How did you find me?” She blurted out these questions one after the other, her eyes darting everywhere. And even in the dim light of that cramped store room, she looked like the most beautiful woman on Earth.

She had delicate fairy-like features, big eyes and long eyelashes, a soft chin and a long smooth neck.

“Those are a lot of questions, but I have an important one for you—why did you run away from me?”

Rosalie said nothing, just kept her lips tightly pursed together. That made me even more determined about finding out the truth. She made an effort to not speak to me or reveal anything.

“You’re not helping yourself by not talking to me and explaining,” I added.

Her nostrils flared again, and it almost made me smile because she looked adorable. Did she really think she was intimidating me with that look?

Slowly, she crossed her arms over her chest.

“And what are you going to do to me, Brendan?” She said my name in a way that made it sound notorious. Like she had a personal vendetta against my name alone. This chick clearly knew me and I needed to find out how.

“I’m going to wait here until you tell me what’s going on,” I replied.

“I have nothing to say to you. I have to get back to work,” she said.

“I’m sure you do, which is why things will be a lot easier if you start talking.”

The truth was—I had no idea what to make of this. I couldn’t think of one good reason why she would act cagey around me.

“Don’t you think I’ve been harassed and assaulted enough for one night?” she hissed.

“Yes, I do think so, and you can be sure that I won’t be doing either of those things to you.”

“But you’re here, locking me in this room and demanding things from me. What do you call that?” Even though she was clearly angry with me, she took care to not raise her voice. Which made me believe that she didn’t actually want me to get caught with her in the store room.

“I haven’t locked you in here, Rosalie. You are free to leave whenever you want. I’m just saying that I want an explanation and I’m going to get to the bottom of it eventually. If there is something you would like to say to me, now is the time to say it.”

She had her hands clasped together. What was she crying about? What had I done to make her cry? Or was she crying over the men who were assaulting her? Was I completely wrong in my interpretation of the situation? Was she just having a tough night?

The more she stared at me with those big beautiful eyes, the more I started entertaining the idea that I had been wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have made it all about me. Maybe she was going through a trauma from what happened to her tonight and she just needed to be by herself.

Maybe it was all in my head—just because I was attracted to her.

Rosalie shook her head, hanging it low as she stared at her shoes.

“Really, Brendan, there’s nothing to say.”

I stepped towards her. She looked up at me with a jerk.

What was I thinking? Why did I put her in