Her Reluctant Blue Cavalier: Indigo Knights Book VII Read online

  Her Reluctant Blue Cavalier

  A.J. Downey

  Contents

  BOOK SEVEN

  COPYRIGHT

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Also by A.J. Downey

  About the Author

  BOOK SEVEN

  Published 2019 by Second Circle Press

  Text Copyright © 2019 A.J. Downey

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by an electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner and are not to be construed as real except where noted and authorized. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or names featured are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used.

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Editing by Barbara J. Bailey

  Book design by Maggie Kern

  Cover art and Indigo Knights logo by Dar Albert at Wicked Smart Designs

  Model - Lovett Taylor

  Photographer - Golden Czermak @ Furious Fotog

  Dedication

  To Barbara and John. You know why…

  Authors Note

  It’s sad I have to preface this work with this, though in the light of the rampant plagiarism that’s shocked our little book world, I feel it’s necessary.

  This book contains poetry that is not my own. Each work I have included herein is a public domain work, meaning it is not subject to copyright. Each work referenced has been attributed to its original artist and has been meticulously copied in its original form as possible. I have included work from such greats as Robert Frost, Edgar Allen Poe, Shakespeare, and others to honor them and to create something unique and special between my two characters.

  Their works stand the test of time and are some of the most romantic words ever written. I hope that you find as deep a meaning and love in them as I do.

  Prologue

  Skids…

  I looked up from where I was running a clean cloth over the bar. The bell above the door usually couldn’t be heard above the din of the bar and restaurant on any given night, but it was early yet, and we were closed. Only reason the door was even unlocked was because we were expecting interviews. For a restaurant and bar, we had a decent turn-over rate, that is to say, a low one, but we did have a need to replenish waitstaff on the regular.

  We tended to hire on college students, and when they transferred or graduated it was outside our control and we had to hire on new people to keep us running.

  The girl that walked through the door was young and blonde. Her long, straight hair was pulled half up and out of her face which had on understated makeup. She was pretty, all wide blue eyes and porcelain skin as she shut the door behind her. An ornate metal clip winking with crystals caught my eye from where her hair was held back.

  She turned and smiled at me and asked in a light, but sure, voice, “Are you Marshall McDaniel?”

  “I am,” I said, tossing my rag up onto my shoulder, putting my hands flat to the bar. I leaned forward just a bit as she walked up, her graceful, long legs almost gliding across the restaurant’s floor.

  “I’m Colette Bishop. I believe we have a ten o’clock.” She held out her hand and I pushed off the bar and shook it. Her hand was soft, but her grip firm and I could already tell I liked her. She was bold, unafraid, and looked like an adventurous girl.

  “Nice to meet you, Colette. Most people around here call me Skids.”

  She raised an eyebrow slightly, almost imperceptibly, but didn’t ask. I smiled and gave a nod towards one of the fixed barstools she stood next to.

  “Have a seat. Can I get you a drink?”

  “Ah, yeah, water with a slice of lemon? If the lemon isn’t too much trouble,” she said.

  I smiled a little bigger and said, “No, no trouble.”

  I fixed her water-with-lemon and set it on a bar napkin for her, pulling my reading glasses out of the breast pocket of my shirt and putting them on. I picked up her application off of the stack of them by the order screen off to one side and skimmed it.

  “So, what’s a prima ballerina want to waitress at a dive like this for?” I asked.

  “Mm,” she swallowed the sip of water she’d just taken and laughed lightly. “One, I’m just a ballerina – entry level, and two, that makes me a starving artist. It doesn’t pay for – er ‒ it doesn’t pay well at all, and most of us end up holding second jobs. Third, and not the least of which, this place is beautiful and I wouldn’t ever call it a dive.”

  Well, she’d passed that test with flying colors. I smiled and gave a nod, saying, “How is your primary gig going to affect availability for this one?”

  She smiled as though she were the cat that’d caught the canary and shot back, “Sounds like I’m hired.”

  I laughed and said, “Don’t go putting the cart before the horse, now…” But yeah. I got a good vibe off of her, I think she was going to be our ‘it’ girl for the open position. She had moxie and a fire behind those eyes of hers that I liked.

  We talked; she answered questions and asked some pretty damn good ones of her own. I was suitably impressed and it took just about everything in me to say I’d give her a call rather than to just hire her on the spot.

  “You know, I’ll be waiting for that call,” she said with a wink, just before going out the door. “Don’t disappoint me, now.”

  I laughed and gave a wave and watched her walk past the windows and up the street. She’d been dressed business-casual in a nice blouse, high-heeled boots, and a pair of nice slacks that hugged her ass. I think I probably lingered on that ass a touch too long as she crossed the alley mouth and went out of sight.

  “Can’t do that if you hire her, Old Man,” I chided myself, and with a chuckle, I put her glass in the dishwasher and swept the bar napkin into the trash.

  At the end of the night, as I sat upstairs at my little dining room table, I went back to her application and swept the others aside. I’d call her in the morning. Hers was the only face I could even remember out of the lot of them from today.

  I took that as a sign.

  1

  Colette…

  “Ah, ah, ah! Hands off the merchandise, boys!” I called playfully and went onto my toes, holding my tray high and spinning lightly out of reach.

  I caught Skids’ eye as he worked behind the bar. He didn’t miss a thing and I was grateful for it. It was one of the reasons I loved working here. No matter what time, what the occasion, or who was all up in the Cormorant, Skids was a constant and ever-watchful eye and he always backed us servers up.

  It was no surprise when I went to the server’s station at the end of the bar to load up a tray of drinks that he drifted over to check in with me. He was like that with all the girls.

  “Coco.” He called to me by the childhood nickname that’d somehow just become my name. “Everything alright over at seventeen?”

  “Just peachy!” I called back over the loud cheering as one of the fighters on the television screens went down.

  “That guy gets handsy with you again, you shout it out. I’ll have him out on his ass in a heartbeat. Not in my bar!”

  “That’s what I love about you, Boss-man! You always got a sistah’s back!” I blew him a kiss and his bright blue eyes lit up, his smile warmed me down to my toes and I whisked the loaded tray off the bar top, raised it high, and threaded my way through the thick crowd.

  It was always crowded on fight nights. A healthy mix of city civilians, off-duty cops, firefighters, and yuppies from the nearby business sector who were working the weekend packed the bar and restaurant to capacity. Tonight was no exception. Laine, the hostess, was actually to the point she was having to turn people away. Wouldn’t do to go above the mandated capacity and violate fire code with the city’s fire code inspector sitting at table five with his wife.

  I’d been working here for almost a year and I wouldn’t have changed it for the world. We were between shows at the In
digo City Bay Ballet Company and I had picked up a rare weekend shift. Usually, I worked Monday through Thursday in the evenings after practice and I never passed up extra.

  As it was, I lived with four other people in a cramped three-bedroom apartment, two streets over and on the other end of Bayside Park. It was, honestly, a two-bedroom apartment. That third bedroom was supposed to be like a little office and wasn’t much bigger than a shoebox, but that shoebox was mine to myself, so I was happy. I’d been so done with sharing a room after dance school.

  Everyone who lived in the apartment was with the company, but that apartment was still costing each of us over five hundred a month and that wasn’t counting bills and the like. City living was expensive as hell and ballet dancers didn’t get paid at all what they were worth.

  “Hey, you sure you don’t maybe wanna come play with me after your shift? Come – aw, come on! You’re breakin’ my heart!” the guy from seventeen cried when I swept past and wouldn’t give him the time of day.

  “I’m gonna be breakin’ more ‘n your heart in a minute you don’t leave my waitstaff alone!” Skids boomed out at him.

  “Man, why you gotta be like that?” the man cried and Skids shook his head.

  “Just leave her alone, rookie!”

  I smiled to myself and set drinks down at the table I was serving, two down from the boisterous lot at seventeen, and the guy, my age, maybe a little older, pouted at me but gave it up. I laughed and took empty glasses with me back to the bar.

  “Thanks for the assist, Boss,” I murmured and went around and back to the kitchen to check on my food for table twenty-three.

  “Sit down a minute, girl. You’ve earned it.”

  I groaned and dropped onto a barstool and cast a grateful look at my other boss, Reflash, who had spoken. He gave a little laugh and Skids chuckled along with him.

  “You know, when you come out here at the end of the night, it’s always like watching a dragon come lumbering out of its lair.” I told him.

  “Oh yeah, how’s that?” he asked, pouring himself another pint glass full of water from the bar’s soda gun.

  “I’ll tell yah if you pour me one,” I said, looking longingly at the glass in his hand, suddenly parched.

  “I got it,” Skids said, scooping ice into a glass and dropping a couple lemon slices from the garnish box into the glass. Reflash handed him the soda gun and Skids filled the glass with water and passed it to me.

  I took a drink, casting grateful eyes over the rim of the glass in Skid’s direction and, lowering it, said to Reflash, “The kitchen is totally your domain, just like out here is Skids’. We don’t really see you all night, but we hear you and when you finally come out it’s like we get to find out how the night really went.”

  “Am I that bad?” he asked, and Kristy, another waitress, cracked up, nodding. Skids laughed too.

  “You can be,” I said. “If the kitchen did poorly, you come out here ravenous for souls. If it was a good night like tonight, no one feels the need to duck and cover. Looks like it was a good night, because no one needs to run from the dragon.”

  “Fuck me, am I really that bad?” he asked, and Skids laughed outright.

  “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings!” I cried, suddenly embarrassed. “I thought you knew…” I felt myself flush, my face heating all the way to the roots of my hair.

  “Naw, it’s eye-opening. I don’t want to be a miserable boss.”

  “You aren’t,” Kristy said.

  “Easy for you to say, you work out here for this guy. Patron saint of patience,” he said jerking a thumb in Skids’ direction.

  “Well,” Skids declared. “Now you know about it and knowing is –”

  “Half the battle,” Reflash finished with him. Skids shot me a wink behind his partner’s back and I tried to cover my smile with the rim of my glass.

  “So, it was a good night, I take it?” I said, after I had taken several swallows from my glass.

  “Yeah, you know. Minimal screwed-up orders means minimal waste. Wasn’t too shabby back there.”

  “Killed it out here at the bar,” Skids said, looking over the print-out from the register.

  “Looks like we all live to see another day,” Reflash said affably and I gave a feeble, ‘Yay’, still feeling bad about putting my foot in it.

  “Oh, wow, that’s my ride. He’s early,” Kristy said, and I smiled at her.

  “Go on, get out of here. I’ll do your tables for you.”

  “Really?” she asked, and I nodded. I would probably regret it, with how tired I was, but Kristy worked just as hard as I did and would do me the same favor some night, I was sure.

  “Night, Kristy!” Skids called, without looking up from his nightly paperwork as he went through the drops in the safe.

  I finished my glass of water and sighed, standing up, my feet giving me a hard, hot, throbbing ache that went all the way to my knees.

  “That’s my cue,” I said, and started going through my tables making sure the salt, pepper, malt vinegar, ketchup, and whatever else needed the attention was topped off before wiping everything down and putting up the chairs.

  We all worked quietly, just dragging through shutdown and prep for the next day over the next hour or so.

  “Your friends coming to get you?” Skids asked when they hadn’t appeared.

  “You mean my roommates?” Most of the time, one or two of them came by the restaurant to walk me home but they were all out of town for the coming winter holidays. We tended to take them before the actual holidays hit, when we had performances just about every weekend for The Nutcracker. It was an ICBB tradition.

  “Oh, nah, not tonight. Everyone’s out of town for ‘Christmas’ with their families before production starts.” I put ‘Christmas’ in air quotes.

  “And you were just planning on walking back to your place alone?” he asked.

  I kind of gave a shrug, I mean, I kind of had to when there was no one to walk with me…

  “At three-thirty in the morning?” he asked. “In Indigo City?”

  “Well, yeah… I mean…” I laughed uncomfortably. It sounded monumentally stupid when he put it that way.

  “I’ll give you a ride,” he said decisively, and I blinked.

  “Wait, like on the back of your motorcycle?” I squeaked, excited.

  He grinned and he laughed. “I don’t own a cage. I could ask Reflash to –”

  “No, that’s fine!” I cut him off quickly.

  He raised his eyebrows, amused and asked, “Ain’t you ever ridden before?”

  “Nope, always wanted to,” I answered. “My mother would have killed me, though.”

  “Oh yeah, why’s that?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Only daughter, ballet runs in the family, terrified of a career-ending injury, I’m her favorite human on the planet…”

  “Okay, okay!” He waved me off. “You’ve made your point.”

  “Just don’t drop me and we’re cool,” I declared.

  “Let me guess, what your mom doesn’t know…”

  “Oh, no! I tell her everything. This is sure to drive her up the wall.”

  He laughed at my matter-of-fact and satisfied tone. My mother and I had a good relationship. A really good one. We were best friends. More like sisters than mother and daughter. She was an ingénue with the Pacific Northwest Ballet when she got pregnant with me in the nineties. Sadly, my dad didn’t stick around. I never even knew who he was. Having me put a dent in her career as a dancer, but she never, not once, made me feel like I was a letdown. The exact opposite in fact: I was her most treasured thing on the planet.