Shattered Glass

  SHATTERED GLASS

  BY

  DANI ALEXANDER

  Shattered Glass Copyright 2011 Dani Alexander.

  All rights reserved. Published 2012.

  ISBN:

  ISBN-13: 978-1470005863

  Publisher: Dani Alexander

  Cover art: Dani Alexander

  The right of Dani Alexander to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of Dani Alexander's imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead or somewhere in between; businesses, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard workof this author.

  Dedication

  I dedicate this book to Troy and Gene. Two men who have always accepted the crazy, weird and often abrasive person I am, but who have had to fight to be accepted by the world despite being the most loving, kind people anyone could hope to know.

  Acknowledgements

  My heartfelt thanks to Tim, Sara, Sian, Anke and my husband, without whom I would have crawled under the table and covered my head. Even as a writer, there aren’t words enough to express the depth of my gratitude for the help and support you gave me

  .

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Fucking Bunny Slippers

  Colorado’s Finest Diner was ugly. I had an excess of time to study it in the two hours I waited for my no-show informant. Brown booths. Yellowed walls and floors. Yellowed tables, for that matter. The window on my right displayed beat-up Fords and Volkswagens that were roasting on pavement and swimming in refracting light. The inhabitants of the diner were more interesting. Teenagers mostly, snacking on fries and chicken fingers. Baubles bounced from their eyebrows and black-painted lips while they chatted energetically. My gaze hopped from one table to the next. With all the boisterous laughter and the rapid fingers texting, it was the quiet, methodical busboy who caught and held my eye. He was wearing bunny slippers.

  Dingy pink and brown ears languished against aged linoleum, making a soft sh-sh sound as the man gathered used dinnerware and placed them in a tub at his hip. Curious about the wearer, I skipped over the ripped pajama bottoms and stained tank top, to his face. My breath caught.

  Model beautiful, with thick red hair and millions of freckles, the man was as incongruous to the setting as those endearing slippers.

  “Gaines says he’ll get Alvarado there,” Detective Luis Martinez relayed into the cell phone tucked against my ear.

  “Uh huh,” I replied. Vice busts weren’t that interesting right now. Bunny Slippers was pierced. Lots of places. Little rings, nipple high, were outlined under his tank top and the ones in his ears and eyebrow glinted. I immediately began to speculate where else he was pierced.

  “Glass?” Luis huffed into my ear. “Glass, get your head in the game.”

  Blue eyes. No, not just blue, blue like glacial waters, like romantic poems, like heavens and moonstones. Cornflower blue. And—

  Blue like romantic poems? What the ever-living fuck? I turned away quickly and tried to concentrate on Luis’s voice.

  “What? Oh.” I gave my head a shake, scattering the strange thoughts. “If Gaines says Alvarado will be there, we go with that. My guy is a no-show. Gaines is all we have now.” I hoped that was the response Luis was waiting for because Bunny Slippers was coming my way, and I lost all ability to think.

  “Can I take that for ya?” He had a deep drawl. Not Texas, like my mother, but perhaps Alabama or Georgia. I was so wrapped up in the voice that it took a moment to follow the long, slim finger pointing across the table at my syrup-filled plate. My attention snapped back to the busboy.

  Up close Bunny Slippers was even more gorgeous, and older than I’d originally assumed. Freckles dusted his skin from forehead to fingers. A colorful tattoo of the god Hermes covered the right arm from shoulder to elbow. A busboy with an interest in mythology?

  “Glass?” Luis growled.

  My brain had left the building. “Huh?” I replied brilliantly, to the busboy, not to Luis. I could barely hear Luis. Cold blue eyes. That was all I could concentrate on. Cold but captivating. I had always thought freckles went with innocence, but there was nothing innocent about those eyes.

  “Glass? ¡Carajo! Glass!”

  What was someone who looked that good, doing working as a busboy in a place this ugly?

  “GLASS!” Luis blasted into the phone, a stream of Spanish invectives following the shout.

  The yell snapped me out of my daze. “What the fuck, Luis? Someone is talking to me here. Settle your dick down.” Great, I had now acknowledged that while I knew slippers-boy was speaking to me, I had just been staring at him. The slight smirk spreading across the man’s perfect lips told me he had noticed the gawping, too.

  With considerable effort, I flicked a glance to the plate, knowing there was a question in there somewhere.

  “Your plate?” The busboy motioned once more, this time leaning across the table. The scent of tobacco, soap and cinnamon made my mind go blank again. I closed my eyes and inhaled, unconsciously lifting a hand to brush my knuckle on the underside of the man’s reaching arm.

  Apparently this was an awesome time to not only discover I had a bunny slipper fetish, but to violate someone’s arm in public. Some guy’s arm.

  “Yeah,” I said stiffly, dragging my offending appendages into my lap before they did something stupid, like tweak a nipple ring. Luckily, the guy hadn’t noticed the knuckle-assault, or else he was choosing to ignore it. Please let it be the former.

  I felt twelve again, those nervous flutters in my stomach appearing for the first time since I had let Mitzi Baylor tongue kiss me in eighth grade. Okay, let is probably the wrong word. More like forced her tongue into my mouth while I tried to protect my tonsils from unexpected removal. The memory was enough to jar me back into reality a second time. I checked my phone. Luis had hung up. With a sigh, I tucked the cell into my pocket. I’d deal with Luis at work Monday.

  Bunny Slippers had long since grabbed my plate and was making his way back to the kitchen without a single backwards
glance. He hipped the swinging door and disappeared into the back. It was only then that I managed to exhale.

  Get a grip, idiot. This is a bad time to ogle teenagers.

  Is there ever a good time to ogle teenage boys?

  All these weird thoughts were giving me a headache. The guy was just interesting. That was all. Like spotting an exotic flower in a field of—

  I really needed to stop thinking like my eleven-year-old poetry-writing cousin. Actually, I just needed to leave. Stop thinking about this and leave. After paying the bill, I slid sunglasses over my eyes and pushed out into the summer sun.

  Little beads of sweat popped up on the bridge of my nose, tempting me to remove the offending eyewear. But the light bouncing off my side mirror convinced me that dealing with irritating sweat was better than being blind.

  Colorado heat didn’t blast so much as bake. It was a deceiving warmth, slowly building like a preheating oven and just as dry. The other trick of summer in the Mile High City of Denver—breezes. They moved lackadaisically, intermittently dying out and then ambling back, providing little in the way of their supposed function: cooling. By the time I had walked across the small parking lot and opened the door to my Jag, my hair was hot enough to fry an egg, and I dearly wished to be wearing shorts rather than full length khakis. I pinched the fabric of my cotton shirt and waved it while the single breeze that rolled through offered only a tumbling brown paper bag and no relief from the warmth. Across the street, a bank marquee announced the date and today’s temperature: ninety-seven degrees.

  Ignition on, A/C maxed, I left the door open while waiting for the air to cool. Maybe another breeze would surprise me and suck the staleness from the car. Sitting half-in, half-out, I heard the door opening in the alley beside the restaurant. I saw him in the rearview first, then swiveled in my seat to check the back window.

  Bunny Slippers leaned against the wall, dragging a foot up to brace behind him and cupping his hand over his face. I fixated on the tattoo marking the web of his fingers, my pulse jumping. When the hand dropped to his side, he took a long drag of his cigarette. His mouth puckering and blowing a cloud of smoke toward the sky was sufficiently erotic enough to ignore the nag of the tattoo and focus on his lips.

  I hated smoking. The smell alone was enough to nauseate me. But right then, more than anything, I wanted to be that cigarette.

  I was unsettled by an onslaught of unbidden fantasies, which ranged from pressing my lips against the guy’s neck to grinding our hips together. I wasn't sure how long I watched him, but I knew it was long enough for my neck to cramp. Sweat accumulated under my glasses, spreading to my forehead and upper lip and eventually dripping down my temple. The cool air blowing from the car created a stark contrast to the heat outside, but I wasn’t at all sure it was what made me shiver.

  His head swiveled slowly against the wall, turning to my Jag. No smirk this time, but those eyes were no less beautiful for being empty. The pit of my stomach clenched.

  I had seen that look before—abuse victims, prostitutes, dealers, pimps, they all carried it. Grief, sudden and powerful, poured over me in waves, making me avert my eyes. Broken boy, was all I could think. Broken people were dangerous. I swung my legs in and slammed the driver’s door, backing quickly out of parking spot. It took every ounce of my will to avoid glancing into the rearview mirror as I pulled onto the street.

  I aimed the Jag downtown where my tuxedo was getting fitted.

  The tuxedo you’re getting married in, Austin. The tuxedo you’re marrying Angelica in, Austin, I reminded myself.

  Not a Cock Sucking Fixation

  Downtown was a maze of cross streets which, like slippers-boy, were incongruous with the rest of their surroundings. While most streets across Denver ran vertically and parallel to each other, some cruel genius decided to build downtown streets diagonally. Although I had lived in the city all of my adult life and had been made to study every street when I had patrolled as a rookie, downtown still remained the most frustrating area to navigate. I usually ended up making at least one wrong turn. And since the streets alternated one-way, whenever I missed one, I had to drive a few extra blocks to get back on track; which meant running into a gazillion traffic lights and waiting for the Light Rail trolleys or shuttle buses to pass. Which also meant that today I was later than I otherwise would’ve been, and I had to call my fiancée.

  “Mm, you’re late. What have you been up to?” Angelica’s soft voice, filled with amusement, was about the only thing that could make me smile right now.

  “Ogling young, pretty boys in diners,” I replied. As predicted, she laughed.

  “Long as it’s not pretty girls.” Static told me she had covered the mouthpiece. “Jeffrey wants to know how long it’ll be until you get here?”

  “If I can find a parking spot, and a street that doesn’t lead one way to hell? Maybe fifteen minutes.”

  “You said that an hour ago,” she reminded me.

  “I’m downtown now. Looking for a parking spot.”

  I flipped off a street sign that didn’t conform to my need to go right, earning a glare from a misunderstanding motorist who yelled, “Cocksucker!” as I passed. I briefly considered rolling down my window and explaining that I was not, in fact, a cocksucker; that it was just that one fantasy. And besides, I was fairly sure I had a bunny slipper fetish, not a cock sucking fixation. That seemed like a lot of information to impart in the second and a half we had before he pulled ahead of me, so I let it slide.

  The fact that I was more comfortable owning up to the slippers thing and not the cocksucker thing was mildly disturbing. I’d rather have a footwear fetish than a sudden attraction to penises? Yeah, that sounded about right.

  “Just park anywhere. You can afford the ticket.” Angelica had no logic when it came to money. Her idea made complete sense to her. Paying for a ticket was infinitely easier than finding a legal parking spot. And as a trust fund baby, I could just as easily pay it. The only problem was that downtown also enjoyed a healthy respect for tow trucks. And no one was going to tow away my beloved Arturo—so named after my training officer.

  “I see an open lot. Be there in fifteen. Love you.” I hung up after hearing her reply in kind and then pulled into a garage parking structure. After parking and paying, I walked the half block to the 16th Street Pedestrian Mall.

  The mall stretched, coincidentally, sixteen blocks, straight down into the heart of the business district. Large granite sidewalks extended six feet out on either side of the shuttle bus lanes. Restaurants, office buildings, outdoor cafés, street vendors, shopping centers and upscale boutiques huddled together on each block. The tailor was at the far end of the mall—not a long walk, but, with the crowds, an annoying one.

  The only vehicles allowed on the two-lane road between the sidewalks were police cars, vendor trucks and environmentally friendly shuttle buses. Otherwise, the mall was strictly foot traffic. On weekdays, it teemed with businessmen and women, as well as tourists. In the evenings and on weekends, suburbanites bustled past street performers and the homeless. Almost half of the dirty outstretched hands belonged to teenagers. They were the ones that I had difficulty ignoring. Especially today, with the image of that broken boy still haunting my conscience. My gaze kept wandering down to feet, checking for bunny slippers.

  I jammed whatever bills and change I had into their hats or hands, until, when I ran out of cash, I had to jump on the overstuffed shuttle. The shuttle wasn’t air conditioned, so I arrived at the tailor shop baked and glazed with sweat like the main dish at a luau. Angelica was too engrossed in a gold tie to notice my disheveled appearance.

  Pricks and Bunnies

  Angelica was, as always, elegant and beautiful. Her brown hair fell into soft waves at her shoulders, and her summer halter dress glowed bright with white polka dots.

  “Austin, I’m rethinking the gold,” she said when the bell over the door announced my arrival. Her lips were pursed in deliberation as she held up the
gold tie with a navy print, tapping her patent high-heeled shoe against the marble floor.

  Grateful for something new to think about, I pushed the weirdness of redhead fantasies out of my head and gave my attention to Angelica. Propping an elbow on a nearby shelf, I rested my chin in my hand, basking in the air conditioning. “We could make a rainbow of all the colors you’ve run through, Angel.”

  Her lips pursed for a moment then slowly curved upward. “Bit political,” her hand waved, “But I’d go with that. We could have a gay wedding. Rainbow suits and ties? Jessica would be pleased.” She regarded the ceiling in contemplation. Only her teasing smile gave away she wasn’t serious.

  “I refuse to make such a suit, mademoiselle!” Jeffrey, of Jeffrey’s Custom Tailor, was a small man with long pointed nose, frizzy grey hair and a constantly furrowed brow. Though that last descriptor might be due to our presence, rather than a permanent state. Not that I could blame the tailor. With each of our six visits, Angelica decided on a different style or color. So far, poor Jeffrey had been commissioned for three different suits: one black, one brown, and most recently, one navy; as well as two tuxedos.

  “I don’t really think she wants a rainbow suit,” I reassured him, hiding my grin. To Angelica I raised an eyebrow. “Is your sister gay now? I’m losing track of her sexuality. One week bi, one week straight. It changes faster than our wedding colors, and that’s saying something. What are they now, by the way?”

  “I don’t know. I think she’s still testing the waters. She told mom she was going to Pridefest and ride a Harley naked with some woman called…” She tapped her perfectly manicured nail against a pile of shirts, “I don’t actually remember what she was called. Something that sent mom into fits because it was definitely female.” Putting down the gold tie, Angelica held up a grey cravat dotted with dark flecks for my inspection. “Navy and silver? Can we see that navy suit again, Jeffrey?”