LAKEVIEW TAVERN

A scene from Cherry Blossoms Book 2: Bachelorette. This is the night Geoff first meets Rocco, his wife Nia's new boss. Rocco is the brother of her old boyfriend, Dino. Nia is on the biker bar's dance floor with some of her girlfriends while her husband, her ex, and her future lover all watch her.

***

From the book:

Standing there watching his wife dance with her pretty friends, an uneasiness melted over him. He could lose her. She could fall in love with another man.

Watching her body move, her sweaty skin and her graceful legs below her short skirt . . . But he and Nia were best friends, and they were in love and they had a baby girl they were raising. Still, she was a drop dead bombshell with long legs and a sexy smile and charm and humor. Maybe he was never good enough for her. Maybe that’s all he ever was: Nia’s best friend. Maybe they never should have been a couple, like he was just in the right place at the right time all those years ago. A timing eclipse where he appeared good enough and safe enough for her and she was tired of all the macho dick-slinging she was getting, tired and hurt and fed up. If she’d stuck it out, maybe she’d be going home tonight with a different man she’d call her husband, some tall, rugged beefcake whose arm she’d look wonderful on. He’d take her home and give her the big old pipe she craved and do all those manly things in bed that Geoff only dreamed of. Maybe he’d still be her friend and meet her for coffees on Sunday mornings or come to her house and bake her some sweet treats.

Standing on either side of him now, Rocco and Dino, two hockey-playing neanderthals with big dicks. And she’d fucked one of them already. Sucked him and put her finger up his ass when he came in her mouth. Probably. Most assuredly. The other one he knew she wanted to do those things to. And he told her she could. He had a fantasy where she did them both at the same time. He felt a sudden guilt, like maybe he was corrupting her. She’d been reformed, and he’d been her redeemer and now here he was urging her to be her old bad self. Just because it made him hard, and he wanted to be like that old nostalgic Geoff that made everything better for her after she messed up with yet another bad boy. This was who she was, though. She was a bad girl. She wanted this, too. They both wanted it—and now they were married and inseparable. Rock solid. This would be fun and they would enjoy it and then it would be over and just a sexy memory for them.

The two big brothers were watching Nia, too. Both turned, their shoulders against Geoff, swigging Canadian from bottles and leaning back against the worn rail of the bar. Nia danced in the lit room, danced now to Kim Mitchell while the haggard drunken old bikers encouraged her and her friends. All of them having fun, shaking their asses, hands up over their heads, five young women screaming lyrics at each other through their drunken smiles. He loved her more than anything.

“Ay, you believe this is the guy who stole your Nia?” Rocco said, leaning forward and talking to his brother.

Dino looked down at Geoff, face grave and unimpressed.

Geoff said, “Hey, Dino.”

“Hey,” Dino said, slow and steady, expression not changing.

Geoff looked back to Rocco, staring at Nia, licking his beer-soaked lips, his eyes red and watery, shaking his head in apparent admiration.

“Yeah,” Dino said, watching Nia as well, cool and level, his eyes locked on her body out there. “She was the one. Fuck, was she something.”

The way he said it squeezed at Geoff’s insides, made him twist and hurt in a strange and exciting way. Nia was something, but her heart was all his.

A nearby woman’s voice: “The one what?”

Dino turned to see his wife, Stacy, next to him. Not smiling, not having fun. Stacy was striking, a beautiful face and a great figure, but she’d been giving birth and raising kids for some time now and she was no Nia. She knew she was no Nia. Stacy watched Nia on the dance floor, standing like her husband and his brother, and the woman’s husband.

Dino shifted, uneasy but didn’t say a thing. Then he turned his back to the room and put his elbows on the bar and rubbed his face, looking off to the side, out the window at the lake, but just seeing his own reflection.

Stacy watched Nia dance. Her eyes filled with hatred, her once pretty mouth turned down and creased with lines.