Page 4 of Waiting for Redemption

Holy hotness.

When he finally glances my way I quickly school my features, giving him the good ole closed-mouth grin—you know, the one you give to the coworker you don’t really like.

Off to a great start, Ruby.

“Ruby, this is Tank. Tank, Ruby.” Max introduces us. My smile morphs into one a little more friendly, and a lot less… creepy. Though he softens his from the big grin he just gave to Max.

“Hey.” He tips his chin up at me, shoving his hands into the front pockets of his blue jeans.

Big talker, this one.

“Hey, nice to meet you.” He nods politely without another word and I start to wonder if he just needs time to warm up to people or if it’sme.

“Man, this place hasn’t changed a bit,” he says to Max as they look around the bar.

“Why mess with perfection, ya know?”

“So you’ve been here before then?” I interrupt, wondering if we’ve met before but I somehow forgot.

“Just once,” he answers simply.

“Tank came by when he was home on leave a few years back. You may have been out on maternity leave now that I think about it.” Max gets quiet as he calculates the time to himself. I glance up at Tank, suddenly curious what he may be thinking. He stares down at me with an unreadable look before Max shakes his head, giving up his mental quest of finding out when exactly Tank was here last.

“Anyways. I’ll leave you to it.” He walks off, leaving us standing at the bar together. I try to repress the thoughts slowly creeping into my brain about how casually gorgeous this guy is.

There’s not a single thing about this man that doesn’t screamrugged.His towering height, the way his muscles press tightly against every seam of his shirt, and don’t get me started on the veins in his huge, tattooed hand that have all but demanded my attention. His dark brown hair is longer on top but buzzed around the sides and looks as though he simply ran his fingers through it to style it. His five o’clock shadow makes his bright green eyes almost hypnotic, like emeralds with just enough darkness behind them to make me curious about what they’ve bared witness to. Throw in the tattoos emerging from his Marine T-shirt and my chance at any kind of focus is shot.

“Okay, so… here’s your application, we just have to have it on file for legal purposes. Once you’re done with that I’ll show you around and if you have any questions feel free to ask.” He lets his eyes glide slowly up my body before landing on my own and he smiles. Still, the soft closed-off smile he gave me before, but a smile nonetheless.

“Got it.” He clicks the pen open and gets to work on his application, but I stand unmoving as I watch him. I see his jaw tick a few times as he looks over the sheet of paper, and I can see his eyes dart around as his hand hovers over theprevious job historysection of the application.

“You know, you’ve basically got the job, you don’t have to worry about filling that part out. Unless of course, you’ve been working the mail room in a prison, then maybe add that.” I tease, trying to ease some of the tension I can feel growing around him. He smirks at me and lets out a deep chuckle and moves down to the next section of the form.

“Thanks,” he says, so quietly I almost miss it. I feel a small sense of pride in my ability to get a laugh out of him, no matter how small it may have been. I don’t realize how entranced by him I am until Shane calls my name.

“Hey Ruby, Lenny’s asking for you.” Tank glances up at me through his eyelashes causing my cheeks to heat instantly, embarrassed I was just caught staring at him.

“Right, okay so just let me know when you’re done. I’ll be—over here.” I hike a thumb over my shoulder awkwardly, as a smirk appears on his face.

“Don’t worry. I’ll find you.” His gaze lingers on me another moment, stealing the breath in my lungs before he turns back to his paper, but his less-than-enthusiastic expression has me hanging back a little longer.

“Bartending, not exactly your dream job?” I scrunch my nose playfully, trying to tread lightly on the subject.

“You know, out of all the things I’ve done in my lifetime, I never imagined I would be working in abar.” He scoffs.

“Oh, it’s not so bad. We do weekly wet T-shirt contests, beer pong tournaments, and some of the guys even play Russian roulette in the parking lot, though that’s not one of the approved bar games but Drengr kind of does whatever they want.” I wave a hand dismissively in their direction.

“Are you serious?” He looks at me in mortified disbelief.

“Have you met the owner of this bar? Of course, I’m not serious.” I laugh as he lets out another small one of his own and his tongue peeks out to wet his bottom lip, momentarily altering my brain chemistry.

“Right.” He agrees quietly.

“But hey, even if it’s not aforeverjob, maybe it’ll still be fun for a while.” I smile, hopeful to shine some light on what seems to be a gloomy situation for him.

“Maybe.” Right on cue, Lenny calls me again from the other end of the bar.

“Calm your tits, Lenny. I’ll get to you when I get to you,” I holler back at him, offering Tank one last smile before leaving him to his paperwork.

---