Page 6 of Hey, Daddy

I’d actually had a really shit day and decided that maybe I needed to take some time off to adjust my attitude.

I’d been hoping for a break from reality, but it seemed like life wasn’t going to give me that because for the next thirty minutes, I’d stood behind my stool with my foot on the peg and drank my beer standing up talking shop.

Mackey was a good guy and all, but he never knew how to read the room.

Or the person, so to speak.

A laugh had me glancing over my shoulder at the booth seating behind me, and my body stiffened.

Because, right behind where I was standing, the most beautiful woman in the world sat laughing about something.

Her head of black hair that cascaded down her back, and she had the most beautiful laugh I’d ever heard.

She reached up and wiped her eyes free of tears, then turned.

That’s when our eyes met, and I felt my entire world shift on its axis.

I was a forty-year-old man, and I could confidently say that I’d never felt this kind of guttural reaction in my life when it came to a woman.

Attraction, yes.

Need and want, double yes.

But this?

No.

Yet there I was, experiencing it.

I felt like a teenager as I stopped what I was doing and turned around to lean on the bar, giving myself a better view.

My elbows rested on the bar behind me, the beer dangling from between two fingers, one of which was curled around the rim.

“You even listenin’ to me?” I heard Mackey ask.

“No,” I admitted.

He laughed. “She’s pretty hot.”

I hated that I had an irrational surge of jealousy hit me at his words.

It shouldn’t matter.

I shouldn’t care what he had to say.

Yet, I did.

“I gotta go anyway,” he said. “My woman will kill me if I’m gone for too long.”

“See ya,” I said.

He chuckled, and I heard it fade away but didn’t take my stare off the woman who was now blushing furiously and trying to look anywhere but at me.

The two women at the table with her kept looking from me to their companion and back.

If I had to guess, they were sisters. They all looked a lot alike, despite their hair colors not matching. One of the women in the booth with my mystery woman had golden blonde curls. The other woman had that same blonde hair, but it was straight.

Two of them had the same eyes, though.

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