Anticipation

“Chicks have always dug him,” AJ said.

Nick shrugged. He liked women and they seemed to like him. It worked. AJ wasn’t a bad-looking guy and he made decent money as a site foreman for his father’s construction company, but he had an attitude problem that women picked up on. Chicks. “I’ve been trying to tell you for years, that’s your problem. They’re not chicks. They’re women. They know you think of them as chicks.”

“Man’s got a point,” Tim said, refilling his beer. Nick held out his empty mug and Tim did the honors. “Marsha says ‘chick’ is demeaning.”

AJ shook his head. “Nah. That’s not it at all.” AJ poured extra hot sauce on his wings. Nick had tried one of AJ’s wings several years ago. Personally, he thought there was a lot to be said for still being able to feel your tongue when eating. Nick picked up a mild drummette and bit into it while AJ rambled on. AJ was fond of the sound of his own voice. “Nicky’s addicted to women. They sense it and they want to provide his fix.”

What? AJ was—

“You’re full of it,” Matt said, dipping a carrot stick in blue-cheese dressing. Between carrying a few extra pounds and early male-pattern baldness, Matt definitely looked the oldest of the four, even though he was six months younger.

AJ eyed the plastic basket of carrots and celery. “Your dick’s gonna fall off eating that. You should try some real man food.” Cousins as well as friends, AJ and Matt constantly gave one another a hard time.

Matt feigned surprise. “Damn. That’s what happened to you, man? Aunt Celeste fed you a carrot and your pecker dropped off? All these years we thought you’d just been shortchanged at birth.” He munched his carrot.

“Blow me.” AJ stabbed his chicken bone in Matt’s direction. “And I’m telling you, Nick’s addicted to chicks.”

Nick thunked his empty mug onto the scarred wood, thoroughly enjoying himself. “I’m not addicted to women.”

“Sure you are.” AJ smirked. “Name one time since junior high that you’ve gone longer than two weeks without a girlfriend.”

“There was…” Wait, that hadn’t been a week, but what about the time…“Yeah, when I had that emergency appendectomy and couldn’t take Melissa Frecht to the dance and she dumped me.”

“Sorry, loser. Remember the girl who started bringing your assignments over and doing them for you?”

Martha Crawford.

“Oh. Yeah. Okay. But that doesn’t prove anything.”

“Nicky wants proof.” AJ grinned and hoisted his beer at Matt and Tim with a smirk. “You and Trish have been quits for what, three days now?”

“Something like that.” Trish had wanted a ring, as in engagement ring, for her thirtieth birthday. Nick had been thinking more along the lines of a box of chocolates. She hadn’t liked his idea and he sure hadn’t gone for hers. Seeing Rourke and his sister-in-law together had actually left him discontented, wanting more than he had. But Trish wasn’t the woman he’d consider growing old beside.

“Five hundred bucks says you can’t go without a woman for thirty days,” AJ said. He bet on everything.

And Nick usually took him up on it. “Piece of cake,” Nick shrugged. He could do this and it went along with his new vow of being more responsible.

Matt whistled through his teeth. “Thirty days is a long time, Nick.”

“Especially for you.” Tim looked at Nick in apology.

“What?” Tim shifted like the wind. “You guys have no faith in me?” Obviously he needed to prove himself as the new and improved Nick to his buddies.

“You…thirty days…no women…” Matt looked at Tim, who grimaced. Matt glanced back at Nick and shook his head. “Sorry, dude.”

AJ smirked. “Money talks, bullshit walks.”

Nick leaned back in his chair. “We’ll see. Define going without. Are we talking no dates? Phone calls? Kisses? Nothing?”

AJ reached for another wing. “Second thoughts? This looking a little harder than you thought?”

“It’ll be a walk in the park.” Maybe an understatement, but he could do this. For his own self-respect he had to do this. It was proof of the new direction in his life. Plus, five hundred bucks would leave a big whole in his pocket.

“How many beers have you had?” Matt asked.

Two? Maybe three? “Not that many.” He looked across the table at AJ. “Now are you gonna lay out the rules or are you rethinking putting your money where your mouth is?”

AJ grinned and Nick didn’t bother to tell him he had a chunk of chicken stuck in his front teeth. “I’m putting my money on a sure thing. No dates. No kissing. No copping a feel. Absolutely no sex of any kind and, yeah, that includes phone sex, hand jobs and blow jobs.”

Matt winced. “That’s harsh, AJ.”

“You’re being pretty rough on him,” Tim said.

Nick swallowed. Obviously his three buds thought he’d cave before he even got in the game. “Not a problem.”

AJ laughed. “Right. This is gonna be the easiest five hundred bucks I ever made.”

He’d known AJ a long time, ever since the four of them had played Little League together. Nick had a few rules of his own to throw out, based on how well he knew AJ. “You can’t screw around with me and send women my way. That’s cheating.”

“Wrong. All’s fair in love and war, isn’t it, boys?” AJ glanced across the table at Matt and Tim.

“Man’s got a point,” Tim said. You couldn’t count on Tim to back you up in a tight spot.

Matt polished off the last carrot stick. “Sounds fair to me.”

“Majority rules.” AJ hoisted his beer in a mock toast. “A man on a deserted island can go without a beer, but put a pitcher in front of him and then you know what he’s made of.”

“WAIT TILL YOU GET a load of this, Riggs.” Brian Bennigan grinned and nodded toward the captain’s office as Serena Riggs made her way through the bullpen of Boston’s 151st precinct, located in the less-than-scenic heart of Boston’s most crime-ridden area.

Joe Pantoni tossed in his two-cents’ worth. “It’s right up your alley, Riggs. If you can’t catch Malone with this one, we’ll check and see if you can get on desk duty.”

“Last I heard, you had dibs on that spot, Panty-oni,” she said with her own smirk as she passed his desk. Being busted down from detective to desk clerk was a running department joke.

“Hey, Riggs, if you need to get in a little practice, Bennigan says he’s available. He’s got a little something in common with your perp,” Mike Harding piped up. Bennigan gave him the finger from across the room.

Steve Shea laughed with the rest of them, but withheld comment.

“Stuff it, boys,” Serena said good-naturedly, dropping her purse on her desk. They were a mouthy, but essentially harmless, group of guys. She, Bennigan, Pantoni and Harding had all been knocking around the 151st since their rookie days. Bit by bit, the men had insinuated themselves into the fabric of her life.

They and their families had had her on rotation for the past five years. Mike and Becca Harding commandeered her at Christmas. Pantoni’s wife, Francesca, always insisted Serena join their enormous and enormously loud extended family for Thanksgiving—although that would change this year. Francesca had decided she’d had enough of a cop’s lousy hours and the lousier pay, along with the gut-eating stress of being a cop’s wife. She and Joe were locked in mortal urban combat, commonly known as divorce. And Bennigan, the clichéd but oh-so-sweet third-generation Irish-American cop, dragged her along for St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday that ran a close third to Christmas and Thanksgiving in Boston.

She razzed them that they only had her over so she’d bring dessert—she could kick some pastry butt. Cannolis and tiramisu for the Pantonis, the Hardings were particularly fond of her éclairs and amaretto cheesecake, and she always baked several loaves of Irish soda bread and a chocolate mousse with Irish cream topping for the Bennigan clan. She liked to bake and it made her feel less of a charity case. Unlike her first several years in Boston, the past five had never found her alone on a family holiday, thanks to “the boys” and their families.

“PMS,” Pantoni surmised in a stage whisper.

“Definitely hormonal,” Bennigan agreed.

She gave them the finger behind her back as she eased into the captain’s office.