Chapter One

Omaha, Nebraska

Jolene Angeles set her battered leather backpack down on the table with a sigh, took a giant slug of her Margarita and tried to look like she was not completely freaking out. She was sure that she was failing miserably, of course. Almost one full year of perfecting a poker face hadn’t let her down, but she knew that her shaking hands and shaking voice were giving her away. The tall, tattooed, gray-haired woman behind the bar had levelled her with A Knowing Look, after all, and Jo had felt transparent under the older woman’s steady blue gaze.

Sure, bartenders were experts in human nature and what trouble looked like, and ones who worked in rough dive bars even more so, but still… Jo knew that the scowling woman serving up her drink had clocked her as a woman on the edge, or in trouble, or both, and she didn’t like that. Not at all. It made her feel vulnerable, and also like easy prey to anyone looking for weakness and confusion.

She had no desire to feel or be either one of those things. Not ever again.

And anyway, she wasn’t on the edge or in trouble or confused, just for a refreshing change. But she was nervous. Oh, hell, yes. That she was.

Jo took a mighty slug of booze for courage and glanced around the hot, crowded bar, looking at the men under lowered eyelids. She was fully aware of what she was doing, of course, but that didn’t mean that everyone else had to be. No sense advertising that she was possibly looking for a one-night-stand, right? Surely that would attract exactly the wrong kind of attention and candidates and if nothing else, Jo wanted to be the one to make the choice. If she made the choice.

She wasn’t a woman used to making her own choices anymore. She hadn’t had the luxury, or the right, or the permission, or even the energy to do so. Not for a long, long time. But she’d made her first decision exactly ten months ago to the day – the Big Decision, the one that had saved her life and her sanity – and since then, her life had consisted of one decision after another. Most of them really hard, all of them major and stressful; she’d come to privately think of them as ‘capital D’ decisions. They were Decisions.

She’d made the biggest Decision exactly one month ago: she’d waited until her soon-to-be ex-husband had left town, she’d packed a single suitcase and she’d run. Since then, she’d been living in cheap motels and sleeping in her shit-box little car, paying cash and living off black coffee and gas station tuna sandwiches.

Tonight, though… tonight she was going to make a fun decision, a ‘lower-case d’ one. One that was based on pure selfishness and want and lust.

She was launching herself fully into a new life now – and she was determined to enjoy it. Revel and luxuriate in it. Even for just one night. Before the next round of hard work started.

Jo thought of that evening as the potential official beginning of her new life. Her coronation, maybe. And unlike her life so far – or most of the past five years of it, at least – she was going to do it right this time. She was going to make choices that made her happy… choices that empowered her and brought new experiences into her world.

Now. She needed to find the guy to help her do just that, in one way at any rate.

Jo looked around the room more slowly, rejecting out-of-hand the men standing around in groups, laughing and drinking. She was intimidated enough as it was, and the thought of approaching a guy in front of his buddies was not going to happen. Besides, she’d feel weirdly and horribly embarrassed and exposed if she picked a man up in plain sight of his friends, kind of like holding up a sign saying, ‘I’m going to go have sex with your buddy now! Byyyyyyye!’. Stupid and illogical, really, because if she left with any guy at all, the assumption of events to follow was clear – but there it was. No guys in groups.

Another decision made. Look at me go.

Happy to now be a woman with a clear mission, Jo stared around the bar again, seeking out single guys. Hmmmm. There was one at the bar chatting to the scary bartender with the x-ray blue eyes. Dark hair that curled at the nape of his tanned neck, a relaxed stance and best of all, broad shoulders.

Jo knew that most women went for a man’s butt, or that amazing 'v' that led teasingly down a hard stomach and into jeans and she wasn’t above looking and appreciating those things. But if she had to pick something that made her melt, it was a large, solid, muscular upper body. Preferably with some chest hair, because privately, she thought that smooth, gleaming chests on men were odd. Too Baywatch. Too shiny.

Broad Shoulders turned now, lifted his beer to his mouth and she saw a gleam on his left hand… oh, damn. Married. Well, nope, then. Even if he was game – like, in some alternate universe where a god like that would find Jo’s short legs and fat ass sexy – she wasn’t interested in helping him cheat. She didn’t care if the wife never knew, if Jo never laid eyes on her. As a woman who’d been cheated on many (many many) times by her soon-to-be-ex, she knew where her lines and limits were on this subject.