Open Season Read online

  The other man, lean and blond, also clad in the de rigueur jeans and T-shirt, grinned. “C’mon, Jeff, don’t be selfish.” Deftly he unhooked Daisy’s hand from Jeff’s and spun her away from him.

  Daisy looked over her shoulder at Jeff, her eyes a little wide as she wondered what would happen. Jeff grinned and shrugged, then motioned to the table where he would be.

  “Are you friends?” she asked the blond man.

  “Yeah, we work together. I’m Denny, by the way.”

  “Daisy,” she said again.

  The love song ended and the band immediately swung into a foot-stomper. Lines formed, and Denny pulled Daisy into position. “Wait!” she protested frantically. “I don’t know how to do this!”

  “It’s easy,” he yelled back. “Just follow my lead.”

  The line dance involved some stomping and whirling, and she managed to stomp and whirl not too far behind the rest of them. She and Denny bumped into each other at one point and she began laughing at herself. She was so out of place here, in her old-money classic clothes, surrounded by jeans and tube tops, but this was fun. She hadn’t been here ten minutes yet, and already two men had come on to her. That was more attention than she’d had in . . . oh, thirty-four years.

  The line dance ended, and the band segued into another slow song, for a breather. Denny had barely gotten his arm around her waist when another guy cut in on him, and he surrendered her to yet another man. This one was older, probably in his fifties, with a close-cropped gray-and-brown beard, and not much taller than she was. He could dance, though. He grinned at her, said, “My name’s Howard,” and expertly twirled her. Daisy laughed, giddy with excitement and joy as their hands caught and he twirled her back into his arms.

  Howard didn’t mind showing off his expertise, so Daisy polished up her rusty skills as fast as possible and did a credible job, she thought. She was nowhere near as good as he was, but at least she didn’t stumble, and she didn’t step on his toes.

  After Howard came Steven, and after Steven was a guy named Mitchell who had big brown eyes and a shy smile. By that time Daisy was breathless and more than a little warm. “I need to sit this one out,” she gasped, fanning herself with her hand.

  Mitchell slipped his hand under her elbow. “I’ll get you something to drink,” he said. “Beer? Wine?”

  “Just water, for now,” she said as she walked off the dance floor and looked around for a place to sit. The tables were just as crowded now as they had been five dances ago.

  “Ah, c’mon, have some wine,” Mitchell cajoled.

  “Maybe later. I’m really thirsty now, and water’s best for that.” Besides, she had to drive home.

  “A Coke, then.”

  His big brown eyes said he wanted to buy her a drink, and she was thwarting him by insisting on water. She relented. “Okay, a Coke.”

  His shy smile bloomed. “Wait right here,” he said, and plunged into the crowd.

  That was easier said than done. The swarming, shifting crowd constantly forced her to move this way and that, and within five minutes she was quite a distance from where Mitchell had left her. She peered toward the bar, trying to pick him out of the mass of bodies, but she didn’t know him well enough to recognize him in a crowd and, besides, it might take him a long time to get the drinks. The new shoes fit very well, but they were still new, she had danced five dances, and her feet hurt. She wanted to sit down. She rose on tiptoe, trying to spot an empty chair.

  “Looking for a place to sit?” a burly guy yelled, and looped a beefy arm around her waist before she could react, hauling her down on his lap.

  Alarmed, Daisy immediately tried to jump up. He laughed and tightened his arm, pulling her back, and instinctively she put her hand down to brace herself. Unfortunately, she braced herself on his crotch, all of her weight bearing down on her hand.

  He yelped, a high-pitched sound that rose above the din of music and voices. Suddenly aware of where her hand was and what she was feeling, Daisy squeaked and tried to leap up again, and her downward shove brought an even higher sound from the burly guy. Actually, it was now approaching a scream, one that brought heads turning their way.

  Her face heated and she began struggling in earnest, but she couldn’t find her balance or purchase, and wherever she put her hand seemed to be wrong. She felt something soft grind under her knuckles, and the burly guy turned purple.

  My goodness, it was amazing how things escalated. Distracted by the steam-whistle noise coming from the burly guy, a man accidently walked into a woman and made her spill her drink down her dress. She screamed, and her boyfriend swung at the other man. A chair overturned, a table was shoved, and there was the sound of breaking glass. People scattered. Well, some people scattered; others seemed to leap in their eagerness to join in the fray.

  The melee was like a tidal wave, sweeping toward her, and she couldn’t get to her feet to escape it.

  An iron clamp suddenly wrapped around her waist and hauled her off the poor guy’s lap. He collapsed on the floor, wheezing and holding his privates with both hands. Daisy squealed and clutched at the clamp, surprised to find it was merely flesh, but there was no way she could wiggle free. Her feet didn’t even touch the floor as she was swiftly carried away from the tangle of heaving bodies and swinging fists. The nightclub’s bouncers were wading in now, cracking heads left and right and roughly restoring order, but Daisy didn’t get to see what happened because the bouncer who carried her waded through the throng as if it were water, moving people out of his way with his free arm, and before she knew it she was bundled out the door and deposited on her feet with a thud.

  How humiliating. Her first time in a nightclub, and she was thrown out.

  Her face burning, she turned to apologize and found herself staring up at Chief Russo. The apology froze on her tongue.

  There was the sound of more breaking glass inside, and a stream of people suddenly erupted out the door as the more prudent decided to leave while the leaving was good. The chief caught Daisy’s wrist and hauled her to the side, out of the way. The yellow neon sign spelling out the club’s name spilled light down on them, not even giving her the protection of darkness. Maybe he wouldn’t recognize her, Daisy thought in panic. Her own mother hadn’t even recognized her—

  “Well, if it isn’t Miss Daisy,” he drawled, in a very good imitation of a southern accent, and her hope of not being recognized was blown out of the water. “Do you come here often?”

  “No, this is my first time. I can explain,” she blurted, feeling her face turn red.

  He stared down at her with narrowed eyes. “I can’t wait to hear it. In the space of thirty seconds you castrated a guy and started a brawl. Not bad for your first time here. Let me know when you’re planning on coming back, and I’ll stay home that night.”

  Well, no way was he going to make her the blame for that fiasco inside, she thought indignantly. “It wasn’t my fault. That man grabbed me, and when I put my hand down to brace myself, I... ” Her voice trailed off as she tried to find a delicate way to describe what had happened.

  “Grabbed his balls and smashed them flat against the chair seat,” Chief Russo finished for her. “I was about to step in, but when he began hitting those high notes, I figured you had the situation well in hand, so to speak.”

  “I didn’t mean to! It was an accident.”

  Suddenly he grinned. “Forget about it. He’ll think twice before he grabs a strange woman again. Come on, I’ll walk you to your car.”

  She didn’t want to be walked to her car. She didn’t want to go to her car at all. Wistfully she looked at the door. “I don’t suppose I could—”

  “No, your dancing is over for the night, twinkle toes. You need to get out of here before the sheriff’s deputies show up.”

  She sighed, because she had been having such fun—until she had accidentally castrated the burly guy, of course—but she supposed the chief was right. The deputies might just arrest everyone and sort