Her shock was obviously the opportunity Carmine needed to go in for the kill. His chapped lips stamped down onto hers, big, grabby hands tugging her closer. Without being given time to suck in a breath, she had exactly zero oxygen in her lungs to sustain her as he mashed their mouths together. Feeling the beginnings of panic when no one came to her aid, Jasmine’s hand flew up and connected—smack—with his cheek. Once, twice. A third time.
Even after she slapped him, it took a few seconds for him to pull away. “What the fuck, Jasmine?” After a glance over his shoulder that found his group of buddies busting their guts laughing, Carmine’s hand closed around her right biceps. Tight. Tighter. “You’ve been asking for that all night, so I finally give it to you—”
Poor Carmine never saw it coming. To be fair, neither did Jasmine. One second, she was gearing up to knee Carmine in the family jewels and the next? He was on the dingy floor with an even bigger man straddling his neck, taking a punch to the face that gave even a pissed-off Jasmine sympathy pains. She couldn’t see her rescuer’s face, but through her haze of shock, she had one simple yet dominant thought.
Hello Shoulders.
They were broad and flexing and badass. Shoulders that made her think of Tarzan swinging through the jungle with a tiny blond woman clinging to his toga-covered body. Soap commercial shoulders that usually had frothy suds coasting down them in delicious rivulets while the man with a big white-toothed smile on his face lathered. God. Her rescuer could barely keep them inside his white long-sleeved T-shirt.
In Jasmine’s periphery, she could see a crowd was beginning to form around the brawl—a far bigger crowd than a fight usually warranted in the Third Shift. Some of them even had cell phones out, filming the action. What gives?
In an almost unconscious movement, Jasmine sidled around the fighting twosome to get a better look at her savior, but Carmine—finally realizing his ass was being kicked—rolled the newcomer over to lay a right cross of his own. Jasmine cringed at the thud of flesh on bone. Her date’s victory was short-lived, however, because Shoulders had the edge again within a split second, pinning Carmine down with a forearm to the throat, leaning down to get in his face.
“Took her three slaps to make you stop? Are you serious?” He pressed harder on Carmine’s jugular. “When a woman hits you, that’s a pretty accurate signal that she’s not into it.” A left hook crunched the cartilage in her date’s nose. “You know who else isn’t into it? Me. Can you tell?”
Carmine’s eyes were wide as saucers as he struggled to breath. Or speak. It was hard to tell since Shoulders commanded Jasmine’s attention. There was a familiarity about the newcomer…but she couldn’t know him. A woman remembered raw, commanding men like him. Men who spoke with conviction. They were a rare breed, and if she’d made his acquaintance, it would have stuck.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jasmine saw Carmine’s buddies set down their brews and hasten toward the fight, obviously intending to intervene. Jasmine stepped into their path, holding up a staying hand while tapping Shoulders with the other one. “Look, I really appreciate this, but you better take off before it’s five on one.”
Jasmine swore his wide, muscled back shivered beneath her touch. “What?” His tone was amused. “You wouldn’t be in my corner?”
God, that voice. Comforting and thrilling. Smooth and gritty. “You’re right, it would be five on two. I’ll take the bald one. He has a bum knee.”
His head turned just slightly, enough that she could see the rugged stubble on his chin, the strength of his profile. “I appreciate the offer, but you’re done fighting off men for the night.” As if pissed at the reminder of Carmine’s treatment, he cursed under his breath, regarding his opponent like a slime-covered slug. “When I let you speak, your first words better be an apology. We clear?”
Carmine’s eyes shot irate sparks, but after a beat, he nodded. Her rescuer removed his hold and stood, yanking Carmine to his feet by the shirt collar. “Sorry,” Carmine spat in her direction just as his friends reached them. Jasmine automatically tried to insert herself between Shoulders and the drunk locals, but he seemed to anticipate her move, grabbing her wrist and holding her away.
The men squared off for a tense moment before Carmine’s bald friend tilted his head one way, then the other. “Hold up. Sarge Purcell?” He elbowed Carmine in the ribs, who grunted and doubled over. “Old News. It’s the guy from Old News. I fuckin’ love that band, man.”
While everyone in the bar seemed to swell closer, repositioning themselves to get a better look at Shoulders with cell phone cameras at the ready, Jasmine’s jaw hit the floor in utter astonishment. Nuh-uh. No way in Hook was this giant enforcer with Tarzan body parts the kid she used to babysit. When he’d left Jersey, he’d been eighteen. Tall, sure. Handsome, yeah, okay. But growth spurts the likes of this weren’t possible, were they? She’d seen him on TV, of course. But television-size and life-size were two very different things, apparently, because Sarge had been remodeled from a one-story colonial into a big brick mansion.
Jasmine slid her grip around his elbow, noticing his muscles go taut, but too curious to analyze that reaction. She turned him around to face her and couldn’t stop the words poised on her tongue from stage diving. “Hol-y, hol-y shit.”
Sarge Purcell had turned into a man while he’d been gone.
And when he stepped closer, forcing her head back, and ran intelligent blue eyes over her face, Jasmine realized she needed to block all further thoughts pertaining to shoulders or Tarzan or soap rivulets. Those thoughts made her a pervert, didn’t they? Claro que si. Of course they did. Worse than a woman who simply found a too-young man attractive in passing, because she’d known Sarge as a preteen for God’s sake. Ribbed him when he shaved for the first time and nicked his face in ten different places.
Oh, but there was nothing left of that preteen inside this man with the bleeding lip and a five o’clock shadow. Until he stopped drilling her with those baby blues and smiled, the edge of his mouth kicking up just a notch. There he was. Thank God. Deep breaths, girl.
“You still know how to pick ’em, huh, Jasmine?”
“Hmm—what?”
Sarge jerked his chin toward Carmine. “You shouldn’t be in this place, with that guy, looking so pretty.”
You babysat him. You babysat him. “Turned into quite a smooth operator on the road, didn’t you?”
A little bit of light left his eyes. “Something like that.”
Why did she feel guilty all of a sudden? Shaking herself out of the weird trancelike state she was encapsulated in, Jasmine forced a welcoming smile onto her face. The kind you gave to the sweet kid you were babysitting when you’d brought him cookies as a surprise. “Word on the street is you’re staying with me tonight.”
His headshake was unrushed. “No. I’m not.”
A little insulted, Jasmine poked him in the chest, declining to consciously acknowledge he was hard as granite. “What? You’re too much of a star now to stay in my tiny two-bedroom apartment?”
A rain cloud moved across his face. “It’s not like that.”
“What’s it like?” Jasmine didn’t take any pleasure from delivering the guilt trip, but she needed to come through for River. Her single-mother friend had been dealing with far too much lately without wondering if her brother was spending the holiday in an impersonal hotel room. Even though the thought of Sarge’s mile-wide frame squeezing through her front door gave her an uncomfortable case of nerves.
She needed to stick to a game plan. As of now, that game plan was to treat this hot rock-star ass like the twelve-year-old boy in her memory. And if she was worried he would look around at her meager possessions and throw sympathy in her direction, she had to put it aside for tonight. “You still like grilled cheese? Come over and I’ll make you one.”