Excerpt of Bad Cruz by L.J. Shen

We were running late.

Actually, running wouldn’t be the best way to describe it.

We were crawling late.

My fault, naturally.

Cruz and I hit the afternoon traffic to Port Wilmington. His Audi was moving at a snail’s pace, stuck among a hundred more cars.

He’d been admiringly polite and silent the entire drive out of Fairhope, but by the throbbing vein in his temple, which was an interesting shade of pomegranate, I was pretty sure he was about to punch my tit.

“Remind me again,” he drawled, choking his steering wheel to death. “What held you up in Jerry & Sons for forty-five minutes while I loitered around the parking lot like a B-grade drug dealer?”

I’d stayed late because my new trainee waitress, Trixie, a single mother of two’s douchebag husband walked out on her for a younger model only three weeks ago.

She was having a mental breakdown—not entirely surprising seeing as it was her second shift and she’d never worked in her life—and I had to take over until her tables had been served.

Of course, I wasn’t going to out her story or explain myself to this haughty prick.

I owed him nothing.

“Already told you.” I popped the passenger’s sun visor down, sliding the mirror open to line my Cupid’s bow again, a nice shade of rose. “I had to choose the best lipstick color to go with my outfit.”

“You’re wearing your waitress uniform.”

“Exactly. Did you know there are over a thousand shades of pink?”

“Did you know,” he retorted, “the Elation boards in fifteen minutes and we are going to miss the cruise?”

“Nonsense.” I waved a dismissive hand at him. The secret was in the faux confidence. “We’ll make it in time, and it’ll be wonderful.”

“Those things are mutually exclusive. If you’re there, it will not be wonderful.”

“Ouch,” I said, extra flatly, for emphasis that I couldn’t care less. “Can’t we all just get along?”

“The chances of us ever getting along flew out the window when you punched my throat six years ago.”

I could not believe his audacity at casually bringing that up.

“I was aiming for your face.”

“You’re as untalented as you are violent, Miss Turner.”

“Whatever happened to letting bygones be bygones?”

“Those don’t apply in our case. You would’ve kept beating me to death if we hadn’t had an audience.”

I smiled nostalgically. “To death? No. But I probably would’ve damaged the crown jewels.”