Leather & Lace

Chapter 2-1

CHAPTER TWO

A half-hour later, carrying her laptop case, Kristen wandered into Donovan's Bar & Grill and fell in love with the place. A combination of high tables and chairs in dark wood and emerald green walls gave the pub a comfortable atmosphere. Enlarged photos of Irish landscapes and points of interest hung in various groupings on three of the four walls. The fourth wall on her right was the setting for a beautiful cherrywood bar with brass accents. It ran the length of the long room with seating for at least twenty-five people with additional space between the bar and tables for those who preferred to stand. Behind the bartender and rows of liquor bottles was a large mirror framed with the same cherrywood. The Celtic carvings in the frame made it a work of art, and Kristen wondered how long it had taken to make such a majestic piece of furniture. Above the mirror, several flat-screen TVs hung from the ceiling, and they were all tuned to sports channels, except one showing a news report. The TVs were muted while classic rock played through unseen speakers throughout the room, loud enough to be heard but still low enough to allow patrons to talk without raising their voices.

After she took in the décor of the pub, she found herself checking out its current occupants. A few tables were taken with groups of two to four people, and a couple of old-timers, arguing good-naturedly over some sporting event, had settled in for the afternoon at the near end of the bar. Taking a step further into the room, Kristen glanced down to the far end of the pub and almost stumbled, certain she had tripped over her own tongue. Holy crap! Standing and sitting at the other end of the bar, talking to the bartender, were six men who were almost as majestic as the bar itself. Talk about a Playgirl calendar fantasy come true.

“Who needs twelve hotties when these six are available?” she muttered to herself. Each could take up two months, and Kristen would be more than happy.

“Hi, can I help you?”

Kristen's head whipped around to face the pretty young woman who had appeared next to her. She was dressed in a black polo shirt with Donovan's Bar & Grill embroidered on the left side and a pair of jeans. Her long strawberry blond hair was pulled up in a ponytail, and her overall look was neat yet complemented the laid-back feel of the pub.

“Oh, hi . . . I mean, yes,” Kristen stammered, then paused, forgetting where she was and why she was there. Okay, get your girlie parts and brain cells under control, she told herself. It's not as if she had never seen a bunch of good-looking men before, but damn, the testosterone rolling off the group had her almost melting on the spot.

Taking a deep breath, she regained her composure and told the waitress she was there to get something to eat, and no, she wasn't waiting for anyone else. She was eating alone. Yup, she thought. All alone. Table for one. Oh well—at least between the eye candy at the bar and her earlier fantasy in the shower, she should have more than enough inspiration to start on Master Xavier's story.

The young woman grabbed a menu from the nearby hostess stand and gestured toward the rest of the room. “Would you like a table or a booth?”

“A booth, please.” Kristen lifted her laptop case for the woman to see. “It'll be easier to get some work done.”

“Gotcha. No problem. We have a few regulars who work through their lunch breaks. They tell me the booths are more comfortable than the pub tables.”

Kristen followed the friendly waitress and realized she was being led closer and closer to the Sexy Six-Pack. The only unoccupied booths were at the back left side of the pub, directly across from them.

“Here you go.” The woman placed the menu down at the booth she was giving her. It was the second to last one before the kitchen door. “Can I get you something to drink?”

Kristen put down her laptop and took the seat facing the front of the pub. “Do you have any iced tea?”

“Yes, we do. Sweetened or unsweetened?”

“Sweetened, please.”

“Sure. I'll be back in a second. Oh, and the specials are on the back of the menu.”

She smiled as the young woman approached the bar and placed her order. Cheerful little thing. Since it was a school day, it was obvious the waitress was out of high school, maybe by a year or two. And if Kristen had to guess, she was only eighteen or nineteen years old. As she stood at the bar waiting for Kristen's iced tea, one of the Sexy Six-Pack leaned over and said something to the girl, which made her giggle and blush. Kristen frowned. Seriously? The guy had to be in his mid-thirties, and here he was, hitting on a girl who was just over the jail-bait age. Well, no one said perverts had to be ugly. Kristen had the sudden urge to say something, but she didn't know these people, and the girl appeared to be enjoying the attention.

She was about to turn back to take her laptop out of its case when movement from the other end of the Sexy Six-Pack caught her attention. Her breath hitched as her gaze met a pair of ice-blue eyes. Master Xavier.

Oh. My. God! Kristen couldn't believe it. If Master Xavier were a real, live person, this would be him. He had jet black hair, a little long at the neck, a firm jaw showing the start of a five o'clock shadow, and a body that almost had her glancing around to see if any of the few women in the pub had lost their panties. But it was those amazing blue eyes looking right at her as if they could see her soul, which had her spellbound. She was probably drooling, but, Lord have mercy, she couldn't look away.

When the man's right eyebrow arched in obvious acknowledgment of her stare, her mouth went dry, and she shifted her gaze to the floor before looking up again. Despite his intense look, she thought she noticed the corner of his mouth twitch as if he was holding back a smile. Oh God, she would love to see him smile and wondered how it would transform his face. If it was anything like the rest of him, she knew his smile would be devastatingly gorgeous.

Neither moved, and her eyes worked their way back up to his, her pulse pounding in her veins. Just when Kristen thought she would drown without a drop of water in sight, those eyes disappeared as her waitress returned, her body blocking Kristen's view of the rear half of the bar.

“Here you go.” The girl placed a glass of tea in front of her and took out a pad and pen from the small black apron tied at her waist. “Did you decide what you wanted?”

Shaking her head, Kristen tried to regain control of her senses and concentrate on the question. “Um . . . no. Can you . . .” She cleared her throat. “Can you give me a few minutes? I didn't look at the menu yet.”

“Sure, take your time.”

Anxious to see those eyes again, Kristen held her breath as the young woman moved away, only to see her Master Xavier look-alike was once again facing the bartender. Disappointment ran through her as she took a sip of iced tea to quench her parched throat and picked up the menu. Without a sound, she tried to will the man to turn around again as her gaze flicked back and forth from the menu to the bar area. This time she refused to observe him blatantly and kept her head bent forward. Anyone watching her would assume she was scanning the menu, but her eyes kept shifting to view him out of the corner of her eye.

A few minutes later, her lunch order was placed, and Kristen resigned herself to the fact that the man would not turn back around. She removed her laptop from its case, booted it up, and got to work.

* * *

Devon “Devil Dog” Sawyer couldn't help himself. He was used to being a voyeur at the club, but at his friend's brother's bar, he almost felt like a creepy stalker. Despite the feeling, he still spent the better part of the last hour staring at the brunette's reflection in the mirror. Well, it was only fair since she had stared at him first. And yes, now he'd gone from creepy stalker to a childish grade-schooler.

He and his teammates were taking advantage of a slow day to eat lunch and catch a Tampa Bay Rays baseball game when he first spotted her watching his friend, Brody, talk to Jennifer. For some reason, she frowned at them, and Devon wondered what she was thinking. The guys were always joking around with Jenn, otherwise known as Baby-girl, and there was nothing wrong with it. If it wasn't for them, Devon didn't think their niece would’ve adjusted to living in Tampa as fast as she had. The past six months had been rough on her, but it was obvious having her surrogate uncles around had helped her transition through the worst of it. Between them and the counselor Jenn was seeing, she was coming out of her depression and moving forward with her life. He was happy to notice she was smiling and joking more as time passed. She may have lost her parents without warning and had her world turned upside down, but her uncles were determined never to let her forget they considered her family. She would always be loved and protected by them.

Devon studied the five men who were like brothers to him—although his older brother Ian, on his immediate left, was the only one to whom he was related by blood. The others were brothers of his heart. They had gone through hell and back together and, by some miracle, survived with only a few battle scars. They always had each others’ backs, and it was rare if a day or two went by without seeing each other working at Trident, hanging out here at Donovan's, or playing at The Covenant—unless they were away on an assignment.

Brody “Egghead” Evans, standing at the end of the bar where Jenn picked up her bar orders, was the joker and flirt of the group, as well as their resident tech-geek. The man could put most computer hackers to shame, and despite the FBI's best efforts over the years to recruit him, Brody preferred to stay with his team—first with the SEALs and now with Trident Security.

Marco “Polo” DeAngelis, their helicopter pilot and communications specialist, sat beside Brody while talking trash about his buddy's beloved Dallas Cowboys. Marco had been born and raised in Staten Island, New York, and was a lifelong Giants fan. As he told it, no self-respecting Giants fan would pass on a chance to rank on a Cowboys fan. That was the only bad blood between the two men—otherwise, they were best friends, having known each other from basic training through SEAL training to being on the same team. Hell, they tended to be so joined at the hip, they’d even left the Navy at the same time to join Trident. So, to their friends, it came as no surprise when they shared their women on occasion. The duo was pretty popular with the submissives at the club.

He watched as Brody glanced over at the brunette and nudged Polo while tilting his head in her direction. The other man looked over his shoulder, then grinned at his ménage partner. “Sorry, Egghead, but I’ve got plans with my sister tonight. Some other time.”

Devon was surprised when his tense body relaxed. He hadn’t realized his muscles had gone rigid at the thought of the two men hooking up with the woman he’d been eyeing for the last hour or so.

Next in line of his teammates was Tampa native Jake “Reverend” Donovan, their sniper and younger brother of Mike, the owner of Donovan's, who was tending bar for the afternoon. While Mike had learned about the bar-restaurant business from their father and took over the pub upon the old man's death a few years ago, Jake had signed up for the Navy the afternoon he graduated from high school. From what Devon understood, the relationship between Jake and his father had been destroyed during the last semester of Jake's senior year following an argument. Foregoing the football scholarship to Rutgers that everyone expected him to accept, Jake ended up going to basic training. Devon didn't know for sure what caused the deep rift between the two, but he had a feeling it was over Jake's s****l orientation. It didn't bother Devon, or any of the other guys, that Jake was gay, but with the “don't ask-don't tell” policy, which had been in effect for years in the military, it wasn't something they’d discussed while in the Navy. After the military, Jake was more comfortable keeping his personal life to himself, and the rest of them respected his decisions while still letting him know they supported him. Hell, Devon suspected his younger brother, Nick, was gay, and it didn't bother him at all. Ian, Devon, and their friends all had their individual kinks and perversions, so who were they to judge anyone else?