Page 7 of Sirens
Forget it.
Why did mermaids always have their perfect tits out? And the mermaids with red hair? Was that a thing, or one of those Disney visuals that just hung out in the general mythos?
Due to the immortal poetry of that sainted knight, Sir Mix-a-Lot, people always assumed he was an ass man.
Which…he was.
But Trent McGarvey’s kryptonite? Big, soft, natural breasts.
The lady in question winked as she walked past him, her chest flushed pink with exertion. He felt a foreign surge of heat that emptied his mouth of all moisture. He cleared his throat and tried to think of something to say, but she and her swinging ponytail bopped away before he’d landed on a sufficiently pithy comment.
Her confidence was magnetic, even if he didn’t want to admit it. He wasgone. What that meant? He wasn’t sure. All he knew was…
No other woman in the room existed.
She acted coy, like she didn’t notice him watching her, avoiding eye contact as she wiped down glasses and restocked limes.
Trent wasn’t fooled—the surreptitious glimpses she stole from beneath her lashes and the faint glow to her cheeks gave her away.
He couldn’t help but notice that Maggie also kept glancing toward the door with expectancy, her green eyes flickering with an almost palpable sense of anxious anticipation.
Was she waiting for someone special? An enemy? A long-lost family member?
A love interest?
Trent winced at a pang of curiosity and, if he were honest with himself, a touch of jealousy.
He wasn’t a detectiveyet, so he should cool it with the hyperawareness.
“Barkeep!” bellowed Myrtle Le Grande, everyone’s favorite pansexual septuagenarian, as she helped her wife, Vivian “Vee” Prescott, onto a barstool. “I’ll have the slipperiest of nipples and my lady, here, will have her usual pitcher.”
Trent had to squint against Maggie’s megawatt smile. If anything, she needed to register that thing as a weapon of massdistraction.
“Pitcher of what?” Maggie asked, grabbing a few glasses from beneath the bar.
“Scotch,” Vee moaned in her stolid British accent before dramatically resting her forehead against her hands.
“It’s been a day,” Myrtle explained, before whispering behind her hand, “She’ll take a half and half with Newcastle and Raven Creek Nitro Stout, please.”
“Still in a pitcher?” Maggie asked.
Vee groaned again.
“A bucket, if you got one,” Myrtle translated.
“I’m on it.”
Trent’s mouth twitched as he counted the sixth time Maggie turned to the dark corner behind the hanging speakeasy lights to Google a cocktail recipe.
Slippery Nipple. Irish Cream, Sambuca, Grenadine. Sweet, slick, boozy, and should coat the tongue with a silky layer ofcream and sugar. A favorite of drunk coeds on spring break and…apparently stressed-out lesbians.
“Want to talk about it?” Maggie asked the pile of Vee’s silver-streaked hair as she placed the pitcher beneath the nitro stout tap.
Don’t tell her. Do. Not. Tell her that she should be pulling the lighter ale first, as it would settle on the bottom beneath the stout!
Trent bit down hard on his tongue so the mansplaining didn’t fall out.
Myrtle watched Maggie with all the one-eyed speculation of an old-timey prospector panning for gold. “You’re new here.”
