Don't Look Back (Warders of Earth) Read Online Free

the bar that spanned the length of the room. I swung my legs over and jumped down to the other side.
    A grime-stained farmer in a dusty Akubra and sun-faded clothes shambled up to the bar.
    “What’ll it be?” I smiled. Time to earn my pay.
     

Chapter 2 – WARDER
     
    Several hours later, I cast a swift glance at the old railway clock nailed to the opposite wall. A quarter to ten. Thank heavens, fifteen minutes to closing time. I flexed my aching feet inside my boots that felt as if they’d shrunk at least one size from all my running up and down fixing drinks, serving food, removing glasses and used dinner plates and picking up chairs. I was knackered. And those boots were definitely not work material.
    Yawning, my gaze tracked to the door when a group of laughing people strolled inside. I froze. I knew most of this lot. Several were from my old high school and who should push to the forefront to sashay up to the bar a big Cheshire cat smile on her face, but Crystal.
    Wait for it.
    After pausing to eye me up and down, Crystal indicated her equally well-dressed friends. “Drinks all round, Tara. We’ll have martinis. That is of course, if you know how to make them. Oh, and make sure you use clean glasses. We wouldn’t want to catch anything.”
    Longing to flick the tea towel I’d draped over one shoulder into Crystal’s face, I snapped my mouth shut and reached for the glasses under the counter.
    “Make mine a beer thanks.”
    Quiet even tones, distinctly male.
    The hairs at the back of my neck prickled. I glanced up to meet a pair of ice grey eyes in a smoothly handsome face. My mouth dried.
    His bad-boy aura made him appear older than what I suspected him to be; maybe two years older than my twenty. Three tops.
    He leaned on the counter, hands clasped lightly together, his posture beautifully showcasing bulging forearms and wide shoulders. Even better, he wasn’t overly tall, maybe five foot ten or a tad over. I’d briefly dated a basketball player and had suffered cricks in my neck from looking up at him the whole two weeks we’d been together.
    There was a tattoo on his upper left arm but it was hard for me to make out the pattern in the dim lighting. (I had a weakness for tattoos, they were on my ‘bucket’ list.) Anyway, I was too busy checking out the rest of him to care. Dressed in a tight black, v-neck tee and faded blue jeans and with slicked back blond hair and a day-old stubble lining a jaw any model would have given their left lung for, he looked like every girl’s dream come true.
    Lean, mean and screaming city-tough, I wondered what on earth had brought him to a place so obviously way off his radar.
    The expression in his eyes was cool, considering, as he locked glances with me for a long sixty seconds.
    Words tangled in my throat.
    Then he broke contact, straightened and half-turned to send a slow smile at Crystal who had plastered her bone-thin body clad in a white micro dress up against his back.
    “Gorgeous, isn’t he?” Crystal purred, rubbing against him and tossing back her long, salon-blonde hair.
    Clamping my lips together so I wouldn’t give into my longing to cut her down, I quickly attended to the drinks order. I poured the beer last and pushed the laden tray towards them.
    “Card or cash?” I held out my hand.
    Crystal rolled her eyes. “Plastic of course.” In a theatrical gesture she proffered her credit card.
    “Keep it, this one’s on me,” said the stranger digging into his pants pocket to retrieve his wallet which he flipped open and picked out a fifty dollar bill.
    “Isn’t Alex wonderful? We met on the station platform this morning when I was waiting for a package for Daddy. We hit it off immediately.” Crystal returned her card to her eensy clutch, closing it with a snap.
    “Good on ya, mate. Cheers.” Kevin Brewster grabbed a glass off the tray.
    Oh wonderful. Kevin and I had had a brief ‘thing’ last winter until I’d broken it off. The guy did