Responsibilities
By Layne
Chapter 1
Other than the quiet clink of clean glasses being put away and the muffled sound of a radio turned to a low volume, Crowe’s Tavern was fairly quiet. Richie Roberts took note of that as he came down the stairs two at a time from his rooms on the upper floors.
The noise level would pick up within a few hours. It was only a little before noon on Friday. Most of the weekend ladies-lurkers, as they were called-didn’t arrive until mid-afternoon.
Weekends were Richie’s favorite time at Crowe’s Point. Women of all different shapes, sizes, ages, hair and eye colorings… A regular buffet from which to choose-and since arriving here, Richie had made it his mission in life to sample as many as possible. Next to the law, women were his greatest obsession.
He glanced around the room. He liked to start sizing up all the possibilities early-get a head start on the competition. The competition being his brothers-all the other movie characters created and brought to life by one Russell Crowe. Crowe’s Point was where they all came to reside, once the movie in which they appeared was finished.
Or, at least, Richie amended to himself, most of his brothers might be considered competition. Some--like John Biebe, Jack Aubrey, Cort, and some of the others--had women with whom they shared long-standing relationships. John with his wife, Tina; Jack with Beej; Cort with Chloe--and there were others as well.
These women came to the Point with connections to the men, whom they’d seen in the movies. It all made no sense to Richie, whose marriage had ended in divorce and his giving up custody of his son, Michael, to his ex-wife during the course of his movie, American Gangster. But the men were adamant that these connections existed and who was he to doubt them. After all, he had been here less than a year. He just thanked his lucky stars that he didn’t have any connections. He was free to sleep with any unattached woman here that he wanted, and that was exactly the way Richie Roberts liked it.
His major competition for women at the Point these days was Sid and Ben Wade. Richie couldn’t get why any woman would want anything to do with Sid, but he supposed, given the great and wonderful variety of women in the world, that there just had to be a certain number who were intrigued by the idea of sex with a guy who wasn’t human. Of course, he grinned to himself, there were at least a few women who claimed that he couldn’t possibly be human, after a night in the sack with him.
Then there was Ben Wade, the outlaw from 3:10 To Yuma. Women were attracted to bad men like moths to a flame, and there were plenty of women around here who couldn’t resist Wade. And hadn’t.
But things had changed with Ben recently. Even the outlaw had a good woman who’d come to the Point with a connection to him. And even though Wade was fighting it with every fiber of his being, Richie knew that something existed between Wade and Rebekah Logan.
He and Ben had become drinking and card-playing buddies almost from the moment Richie had arrived at the Point. They weren’t exactly best friends, but Richie was slowly learning about the man, and Wade had actually opened up enough to talk to him occasionally. Ben’s involvement with Rebekah left him an unknown quantity from one weekend to the next, as far as women were concerned.
Richie thought about all this as he got himself a soda and surveyed Crowe’s Tavern. There were a coupla good-looking ladies sitting at the bar that he’d seen here plenty of times.
“Angie. Lila.” He raised his glass to them and smiled. “How’re you ladies doin’ today?” He winked at them, knowingly.
Yep, he’d seen them here plenty of times and, a few months ago, he’d gotten up close and personal with both of them in his suite--at the same time. It’d been a fun evening and, for a few days, his back had reminded him of just how much fun it had been. But he thought he’d keep things a little calmer and easier this weekend.
Richie looked toward the booths along the wall and what he saw there almost made him chuckle. Now, there was a sight he’d never seen in Crowe’s Tavern before, let alone on a weekend. A young lady sat in one of the booths, the table in front of her littered with books, papers, and a laptop computer.
From where he stood at the bar, he could see that she wore glasses and her brow was screwed up in concentration. She had that kind of reddish-gold hair that looked like it was trying to decide whether to be red or blonde. It fell a little past her shoulders. She kept pushing it back out of the way, and it kept falling right back down around her face as she bent over a book.
She reminded him of himself, when he had been studying for the New Jersey bar exam. Studying to the point of oblivion to anything else around him. She looked as though she should be in the library instead of the tavern, but then he saw that she was sipping a glass of something that looked like iced tea.
He wondered what John Nash would have to say about anything like that being in his precious library. Nash and his schizophrenia confused Richie even more than Sid. But Nash was an okay guy on his good days, and he’d been more than a little helpful with getting any books on law, the legal system, and anything else Richie had asked him to order.
He hadn’t removed his eyes from the young woman in the booth, and he saw her elbow knock several papers to the floor when she unthinkingly propped it on the table as she was reading. There’s your cue, Roberts, he thought to himself, and hurried over to help her out and have a good excuse to introduce himself.
She was on the floor gathering her papers together when he crouched down beside her. “Need a little help?” he asked her with his slightly nervous grin.
************************************************************************
Breanna Lawson sighed with frustration and got down on her hands and knees to pick up the stack of papers which were now littered haphazardly around the floor of Crowe’s Tavern. Dammit, she thought to herself for the umpteenth time. I’ve got to start being a little more organized.
“Need a little help?” asked a voice, with an accent like she’d never heard before. She raised her eyes from the mess on the floor to find herself face-to-face with a man who was attempting to help her with it.
“Thanks,” she said, in an exasperated tone. “I can’t believe I did this. Now, I’ve got to go back and put all this in order again!”
“Big job?” he asked, handing her a handful of pages as they stood.
He was at least a half-foot taller than her five feet four inches, she noted absently, looking up to meet his eyes. Nice, blue-green eyes that held amusement and- Was that flirtation? Was he actually flirting with her? He also had beautiful, thick, wavy brown hair. Breanna pulled herself out of her mental assessment of him.
“Not so much big as just aggravating,” she told him, sitting back down and stacking the pages neatly before slipping them into a folder.
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Richie chuckled. “My first case as a prosecutor- I was sittin’ in court, waitin’ to begin my opening statement. I’ve got this stack of really carefully researched and written notes. When the judge asked if I was ready- Man! I was so nervous, I stood up too fast and papers went everywhere. Good thing I hadn’t written my closing argument yet, or I mighta started with that!”
She laughed and he used the opportunity to introduce himself.
“Name’s Richie Roberts. Mind if I sit down?” He nodded toward the opposite side of the booth.
She gave a slight frown, and looked a little surprised and flustered. Was this guy trying to pick her up or something?
“Uh- Sure. Help yourself.” She wasn’t really certain how to act. She hadn’t been in a situation like this in a long time-with a strange guy coming up and asking to sit with her. Actually, she couldn’t ever remember it happening before. Especially not with a guy like this. She took in his boots, Levis, and the obviously well-worn and loved blue paisley shirt he was wearing. He definitely wasn’t some frat boy asking her to a keg party or anything like that.
“So, I’m guessing you’re a lawyer, Richie Roberts?” She said the first thing that came into her startled mind.
“That’s what the state of New Jersey tells me.” He grinned broadly. “I sure hope they’re right, or a lotta convictions are gonna be overturned!”
The first thing he’d noticed, when he got a clear view of her face, was that she actually had the usual redhead’s sprinkling of freckles across her nose. He found it cute, but a little surprising. A lot of women hid them with makeup. And these days, he’d found out, there were procedures-like bleaching or chemical peels or some shit like that-which could actually get rid of them.
Other than the freckles, her skin was very fair, which was the case with most redheads. He’d noticed that over his long and varied career in observing women. Her eyes were a pale, clear blue.
He’d also noticed (from his careful observation of her rear as she’d bent over picking up papers) that she was, like him, wearing Levis. She wore a plain, white t-shirt tucked into them, which was okay, because it was a ladies’ shirt that showed off some curves.
He moved two books from their places directly in front of him on the table, reading the titles aloud as he did. “Statistical Analysis in Social Research. Ethics in Modern Social Issues. Whew! Sounds heavy.”
“Well, the books are heavy,” she replied, laughing. “The subjects? They sound a little weightier than they are. I think the publishers do that on purpose. Like maybe if the subject sounds really serious, it justifies the ridiculous prices they charge for the textbooks. That’s my theory anyway.”
She reached for her glass and drained it. Richie paid close attention to the smooth, pale skin of her throat rippling as she swallowed.
“What you drinkin’, Breanna? I’ll get you another.” Richie picked up her glass and his own.
“Iced tea. And please call me Anna. Everybody does. I never really liked Breanna all that much. Sounds kind of fancy and pretentious.”
“Okay, Anna.” He grinned at her. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere, now.” Taking their glasses to the bar, he asked for refills. Andy was handling bar duties for the time being.
“Know anything about her?” Richie asked him, nodding toward Breanna’s booth, as Andy took care of their glasses.
“Just that she’s cute,” Andy told him.
“Yeah. Cute.” Richie echoed him, looking his younger brother in the eye. Or was it his older brother? Since Andy’s movie had been made quite a while before his own, and he’d been at the Point quite a bit longer? Richie wasn’t really clear just yet on how everything here worked. But he figured women worked the same way no matter what time and place you were in.
“Know anything else?”
“Nope.” Andy grinned at him. “But if you want to take over for me here, mate, I’ll be more than happy to go sit with her and chat!”
“Gee, thanks,” Richie told him drily. “You’re a helluva brother, kid.” He liked Andy. He was a good kid. This “brother” thing was a little tough to get his mind wrapped around, though. Especially when so many of them looked and sounded just a little bit different.
He’d begun getting used to all the Australian accents. Then there was Max Skinner and his British-sounding voice. And John Biebe, the Alaskan, whose accent was unlike anything Richie had ever heard before. At times, he really missed Jersey, where his own accent wasn’t even noticeable ‘cause everybody talked like him.
He shrugged off his confusion for the moment. Picking up the refilled drinks, he headed back to the booth, where Breanna Lawson sat. Anna, he reminded himself.
She was busily packing up her laptop computer and stacking books and papers. Her reading glasses made her eyes look bigger. She looked like the brainy, bookworm type. Which had never been his type before, but then maybe that was the thing.
Most of the weekend women who hung out here at the tavern and around the rest of the Point weren’t that type. She was something different. A new challenge.
And a girl like this might actually be a challenge. He could tell that she wasn’t the kind who hung out in bars waiting to be picked up, or waiting to pick someone up herself. She wasn’t a thing like Angie or Lila, both of whom were still sitting at one end of the bar, talking to each other and casting an occasional glance his way. A guy had to do things a little differently to get a girl like this into his bed.
All this ran through his mind between the bar and the table. Smiling at her, he set down their glasses and slid casually into the booth.
“So, you’re studyin’ to be a sociologist or somethin’, Anna?” Richie rested his forearms on the table and leaned forward, hoping she’d notice the close attention he was paying her.
“A social worker,” she replied, after a sip of tea. “Actually, I’m already a social worker. I’ve got a master’s degree. I’m working on a PhD now.” Anna had noticed that he was paying a lot of attention to her. It was a little disconcerting, but it was also flattering. She was always either working or had her nose in a book. Guys didn’t exactly flock to girls like that, she told herself ruefully.
It finally dawned on Richie, from the way she looked at him and the way she talked, that Anna had no idea who he was. That was definitely different. Richie Roberts wasn’t conceited but, since he’d arrived at Crowe’s Point, he had become used to the fact that the women who came here usually knew almost all the brothers. They generally knew the guys’ names and had seen their movies. But Anna didn’t seem to know him at all.
To Be Continued…