Page 12 of Fighting for Irish
Chapter Four
Aiden watched as Kat picked up a tray of drinks from the bar and wound her way through the customers, noting her unusually flustered behavior.
Usually she worked her tables with an aloof grace and confidence. But at the moment, she reminded him of that kitten again. Her eyes constantly shifted, and she’d been startled more than once tonight. Her actions were classic paranoia.
The question was, was it due to what happened with Mullineaux? Or the cryptic placemat threat he suspected in fact did belong to her?
As though proving his point, she jumped when someone put a hand on her shoulder and she spilled an entire tray of tap beers. Aiden quickly made his way through the crowd, using his broad shoulders to push people to the side when they didn’t move fast enough for him. When he got there, Kat was in the middle of trying to calm a guy wearing a Skid Row T-shirt with apologies as she bent to pick up the broken pieces of glass. From the look of the guy’s pants, he’d caught the majority of the backsplash, and he was wicked pissed about it.
Aiden stepped in front of Kat and got in Skid Row’s face. “Hey, back off, buddy. It was an accident. She said she was sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t going to fix my pants, asshole. The dumb bitch should have been looking where she was going.”
Aiden flexed his jaw and clenched his fists at his sides. One, two, three… It was a total cliché, but counting was one of his tricks that kept him from going Hulk, smash! on every idiot who pissed him off. That, and staying stone sober. But instead of calming him, the numbers felt more like a countdown to how much longer before he gave in to his inner monster. He needed to handle this differently before that happened.
Signaling Xander to deal with the dick who was now insisting he and his friends drink free for the rest of the night, Aiden bent down to where Kat was trying to gather the broken glass onto her tray.
“You okay?” he asked by her ear.
Her body jerked and he could almost see the year of life he’d scared out of her leave her body. “Shit!” she said, dropping a large shard to the floor.
He turned her hand over to see a big cut weeping bright red on the heel of her palm. “Come with me.”
“Wait, I have to—”
“No, you don’t,” he said, yanking off his white T-shirt and wrapping it around her hand. The way it was bleeding, she’d leave a trail all the way to the office. Aiden hauled her up with an arm around her waist and ushered her toward the back, despite her protests. Before they got to the hallway leading to the business end of the place, he told one of the bar-backs to go clean the mess before anyone else got hurt. Then he took Kat into Lou’s empty office and closed the door.
“Will you please stop?” she said. “I’m fine.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. Have a seat.”
He grinned when he heard her huff in frustration while he retrieved the first-aid kit. She decided to sit on the desk instead of Lou’s chair, and he didn’t blame her. Lou was a large man, a profuse sweater, and not overly fond of showering on a daily basis. Opening the plastic case, Aiden took out all the supplies he needed and arranged them on the desk.
“Let me see your hand.”
Reluctantly, she held it up so he could unwrap his shirt. Once it was off, he tossed it in the trash. There’d be no saving it. He’d have to pay Lou for a replacement. Although, considering the only part that made it a uniform shirt was the “Lou’s Riverview” in black letters over his left pec, Aiden could just ink up one of his undershirts with a Sharpie and the old man would never know the damn difference.
He ripped open several alcohol wipes and gently cleaned the blood from her hand, starting on the outside and working his way in. He tried like hell not to notice how her knees brushed against his thighs or how her soft breaths feathered over his hand as he tended her cut.
Or how her long red hair fell like a silky curtain on either side of her face and she smelled like lilacs in the spring.
He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since she left in such a rush last night. Although, if he were being honest, from the first day he saw her working at Lou’s, he’d thought about her a lot more than he should. She was off-limits to him. Though she had a boyfriend, from what Aiden had observed in the month before the guy got locked up, they were about as much of a couple as Aiden and Xander.
Aiden had a feeling if he wanted to get between them, her boyfriend wouldn’t even put up a fight. Which didn’t make any fucking sense, because if Aiden had a girl like that, he’d kill anyone who tried taking her from him.
Hammer, meet nailhead.
That whole killing thing was the reason he didn’t allow himself to consider her as anything other than a coworker. Aiden only did no-strings-attached, and there was something about this mysterious woman that told him one night—or even several nights—with her would never be enough.
She sucked in a breath through clenched teeth when he carefully swiped a pad over the gash. Glancing up at her, he said, “That’s gonna need stitches.”
Before he even finished the sentence, her head shook back and forth. “No, it won’t. Just wrap it up, and it’ll knit itself back together eventually.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah, that would probably work if you didn’t need to move your hand for a few weeks. But if you wanna keep working, you need stitches or you’ll open the wound every time you move your thumb.”
Her eyebrows pulled together, and she drew her full lower lip between her teeth and bit hard.
“You afraid of needles and doctors?”
