Free Depth Perception by Linda Castillo Page B

wasn't going to be easy.
    Shoving her uncertainties aside, she pushed through the front door and entered the bar. Lou Reed's Sweet Jane blasted from mammoth speakers loud enough to rattle the nails right out of the roof. A group of men and a tall blonde in black leather hovered around a pool table at the rear. Two bikers eyed her, but there was no hostility on their faces, no whispers behind her back. An odd sense of relief flitted through her that inside this most disreputable of establishments, she'd found the one place in Bellerose that did not shun her.
    She elbowed her way through the throng of bodies toward the bar. An unexpected frisson of tension went through her when she spotted Bastille. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, revealing muscled forearms. His button-down jeans were faded nearly white and hugged his lean hips with the perfection of custom trousers. Nat sidled up to the bar and slid unobtrusively onto a stool.
    For several minutes she watched him work unnoticed. He seemed completely at ease behind the bar and served up drinks with the finesse of a man who'd done it many times before. She thought about Faye's assertion that he was attractive and realized she'd been right, though Nat had long since ceased to put any weight in such superficialities.
    Even so, she couldn't help but notice his smile. It was the smile of a man who enjoyed what he did. A man who enjoyed being around people. A smile like that was a dangerous thing in a man like Nick Bastille, and she quickly reminded herself that he'd spent six years in prison for murder ....
    "Well if it isn't the minister's wife come to gloat."
    The words went through her like an ice pick stabbed into her back, and Nat felt every inch of it all the way to her spine. Slowly, she turned. Cold dread spread through her when she found herself facing Ward's brother, Hunter Ratcliffe. He was standing less than a foot away from her. So close she could smell the whiskey on his breath, see the mean glint in his eyes.
    Her heart began to pound. "Hunt ... "
    “I gotta hand it to you, Nat-a-lie, you have some nerve showing your face around here after what you did to my brother."
    She felt the words like a punch, but didn't allow herself to react. "I didn't do anything to Ward or Kyle." She glanced over his shoulder to see the two men behind him, watching her, their eyes glassy with alcohol and malice. "I don't want any trouble."
    "Sugar, you invited trouble the day you put a bullet in my brother's heart."
    For an instant, she was so shocked by the ugly words and his open hostility that she didn't know what to say. Then she looked down at the beer bottle in his hand, realized he was drunk, and shock gave way to anger. "You have no right to speak to me that way," she said, hating it that her voice was quavering.
    "You deserve a hell of a lot worse than anything I could say to you. You ought to be in prison instead of sitting pretty on that barstool."
    Hunt Ratcliffe was slightly built, but he had a mean streak that more than made up for what he lacked in stature. She'd seen it in the years she and Ward had been married. Hunt never had the guts to turn that meanness on her-Ward never would have tolerated it-but she'd always known he had a dark side. Judging from the look in his eyes, she was going to get a taste of it tonight.
    "What the hell are you trying to prove by coming back?" he asked. "Do you think the people in this town are going to forgive and forget? Do you actually think they're going to welcome you back?"
    "You know I didn't hurt Kyle or Ward."
    He smiled, but it was the kind of smile designed to hide something ugly slithering just beneath the surface. ''Me and a lot of other people in this town think you did a hell of a lot worse than hurt them."
    "You're wrong."
    "Was the evidence wrong, Nat-a-lie?"
    "I wasn't indicted, Hunt."
    "Goddamn bleeding hearts let you go because you were laid up in the hospital. The rest of us think