The second book in the Chinooks Hockey Team series, 2003

The Life of Honey Pie

Of all the smoky bars in Seattle, he had to walk into the Loose Screw, the dive where I worked five nights a week pulling beer and choking on secondhand smoke. A careless lock of black hair fell across his forehead as he tossed a pack of Camels and a Zippo onto the bar.

“Give me a Henry’s,” he said, his voice as rough as velveteen, “and put a hustle on it, babe. I don’t have all day.”

I’ve always been a sucker for dark men with bad attitudes. One look and I knew this man was as dark and as bad as a thunderstorm. “Bottle or draft?” I asked.

He lit a cigarette and looked at me through a cloud of smoke. His heavenly blue eyes were packed with sin as his gaze lowered to the front of my tank top. One corner of his mouth kicked up in appreciation of my thirty-four D’s. “Bottle,” he answered.

I grabbed a Henry’s from the cooler, popped the cap, and slid it across the bar. “Three-fifty.”

He grasped the bottle in one big hand and raised it to his lips, those eyes watching me as he took several long pulls. Foam rose to the top when he lowered it, and he licked a drop of beer from his bottom lip. I felt it in the backs of my knees.

“What’s your name?” he asked and reached into the back pocket of his worn Levi’s to pull out his wallet.

“Honey,” I answered. “Honey Pie.”

The other corner of his full mouth lifted as he handed me a five. “Are you a stripper?”