Authors: Erin Nicholas
“’Kay.” He turned her toward the bar and nudged her, not so subtly, to fetch her own drink. She rolled her eyes but headed in that direction.
He looked around the room. There had to be one other woman in a crowd this size who would attract his attention. Someone else he could dance with. Maybe even take the edge off with. Because this building heat between him and Sabrina was going to get them into trouble.
There was no one who caught his eye on the way to the stage. There were plenty of beautiful women, several of whom gave him smiles as he passed, but none who stopped him in his tracks.
He was contemplating the fact that he was being way too damned picky and he should grab the first blonde he saw—no brunettes, no one who might remind him of Sabrina at inconvenient moments—when he got to the stage. There were three guys standing to the side, watching the band, but dressed alike in plain black T-shirts and black jeans who he assumed were part of the crew.
“Hey, I have an offer for you,” he said to the closest.
“Yeah?”
“Fifty bucks if the band lets my friend sing with them.”
The man chuckled. “Fifty?”
“One hundred. For you if you convince them. And a hundred for the band. Then if they don’t like her, another hundred.”
He looked less than impressed but he removed his earpiece and leaned in toward another of the crew. He repeated the info and the other guy looked Marc up and down.
“She any good? Seriously?”
“Amazing.”
“It’s her birthday or something?”
“No occasion. We’re passing through.”
“You tryin’ to get laid?”
He was trying to
not
want to get laid. “No.”
The guy shrugged. “I’ll run it past Jeff. No promises.”
“Got it.”
The band finished another song and then announced they were taking a break. Marc saw the two guys approach the lead singer. The guy, a young twenty-something with shaggy blond hair and a goatee, looked over at Marc. He said something to the guys, then approached Marc alone.
“If she sucks, I want two hundred bucks, not one,” was all he said.
Marc grinned. “Not a problem at all.”
“I’ll hunt you down and beat it out of you if you try to stiff me.”
Marc nodded and grinned wider. “Got it.”
The guy looked suspicious. “Does she play?”
Marc wasn’t sure what he was talking about. “What do—”
The guy held up the guitar he’d been carrying by the neck. “Does she play?”
“Yeah. She’s great.” He was pretty sure she played guitar. She fiddled apparently.
“Is she hot?”
Marc swallowed. That one was easy. “Definitely.”
“She can work the crowd?”
He hadn’t seen her on stage since college. But he nodded. “You bet.”
“She tryin’ to get discovered or something? ’Cuz that’s not happenin’ here.”
“Nah, it’s for fun,” Marc assured him. “To blow off steam, you know?”
The guy looked at him for a several seconds, then said, “If she’s any good, I’ll give you half your money back.”
Marc slapped him on the shoulder. “Keep it. But let her do two songs.”
They let her do five.
She was amazing. She took the stage without a moment’s hesitation, launched into the first song like she’d been singing it nightly to sold-out stadiums, played guitar and keyboard, and flirted and laughed with the entire band and the crowd.
She was a huge hit.
In fact, the band’s singer found Marc after her last song, handed him every dollar back and said, “Thanks, man. If you talk her into staying here and singing with us regularly,
I’ll
give
you
two hundred bucks.”
When she left the stage Marc tried to keep as many people between them as he could.
He was in worse trouble than when he’d started. She was sexy and talented and sexy and…there was something about her voice.
When she sang he felt it to his bones. His gut clenched—in a good way. And his skin tingled—in a good way. His chest felt tight—in a good way.
It was all really fucking bad.
He didn’t remember that from college. Or high school. He’d heard her sing. Dozens of times. She’d been singing to the radio in the car on the way to Laramie.
She was good. Good enough that even to the radio it was obvious.
But on stage—she was dangerous.
He now realized where Luke was coming from and he thought back to the story of Odysseus in high school. The sirens whose voices entranced sailors and lured them closer in their ships.
The ships were dashed on the rocks and everyone drowned.
Great story.
Better lesson.
He needed to stay away from her feeling like he was. He already knew a night in a motel room with her was a bad idea. If he’d had inklings of wanting her before, at this point he wasn’t sure he’d survive her smiling at him without taking her up against the wall.
She spotted him and started in his direction, but someone in the crowd stopped her and Marc took the opportunity to move.
He couldn’t face her right then. He was completely turned on and there was no way he was going to be able to hide it from her.
She extricated herself from the cowboys who had stopped her and stretched on tiptoe. He ducked behind, not surprisingly, another cowboy. The place was full of them.
She headed in the opposite direction and he let out a breath. He took a step back, keeping the top of her head in sight.
Marc thought his best course of action was to find a corner where his back was protected by a wall, where he wouldn’t interact with any other human beings and he could hide in the shadows. He moved in the direction of just such a corner. He skirted around another waitress and twisted away from a group of young guys trying to impress some girls with their dance moves.
He was almost safe when he felt a hand on his shoulder and he nearly jumped out of his skin. He was a mess. A complete and total mess. All because of a tiny brunette.
“Excuse me?”
He turned. It wasn’t Sabrina so he took a deep breath. “Yeah?” he choked out.
“Do you want to dance?” the girl asked. She was beautiful. Gorgeous actually. Long blonde hair spilled to her shoulder blades and her tight pink T-shirt encased generous breasts.
“Dance? Um, I…”
“Finally I found you.”
He did jump this time. Sabrina had snuck up on him as he was trying to answer the blonde. He’d never felt so wound up and it was all the fault of the females.
“What are you doing?” Sabrina asked, looking from the girl to Marc and back again.
“I wanted to dance with him,” the blonde said.
Sabrina looked up at him. “Maybe you should.”
She didn’t care? Marc frowned. He cared that she didn’t care?
Mushy brain. That was what he’d told Sabrina she did to guys. He was no exception.
Marc shrugged. “Maybe I should.”
“Go ahead,” Sabrina said.
“Maybe I will.”
“What’s stopping you?”
“Nothing.” Not her, that was for sure. Who he danced with had nothing to do with Sabrina. Nothing he did had anything to do with Sabrina. They’d danced together and it had been great. That didn’t mean that he shouldn’t, or couldn’t, dance with someone else. Or that he wouldn’t.
But he didn’t want to.
And that pissed him off.
He wanted to dance with Sabrina again. If he were honest he would admit that he wanted to get Sabrina up against him again.
That pissed him off more.
Luke was in huge trouble. Because Marc didn’t even like Sabrina and she was having an effect on him. Truly being in love with her would be nothing but a disaster.
“Are we dancing then?” the girl asked looking from Marc to Sabrina to Marc again.
“No.” He was disgusted with himself. He wanted to be turned on by her. He wanted to want to do the things he wanted to do with Sabrina with her.
But he wanted to kiss Sabrina.
Which meant it was time to get the hell out of the bar, away from the liquor, away from the possibility that she might get up on stage again, and get to sleep.
Unconsciousness was his only hope.
“Come on, Seattle. Time to go.”
Sabrina couldn’t describe exactly how she was feeling.
She always felt energized after performing, but tonight it was different. The hum in her veins didn’t dissipate once she was off stage. In fact, it seemed to grow stronger as she’d searched for and finally found Marc.
Maybe the problem was that she’d felt his eyes on her the entire time she was performing. Maybe it was that she’d seen him ask three different women, who were quite clearly wallflowers, to dance. He hadn’t gone for the flashy, flirty ones. He’d asked the ones who were sitting and hadn’t been dancing. They’d all said yes. With big smiles. Maybe it was that—how happy he made them, how sweet that was, how he’d smiled and held them and twirled them.
But he’d still kept his eyes on her throughout her performance. And she’d loved it. She almost never noticed specific people in the crowd, but it seemed that she couldn’t avoid watching Marc.
They hadn’t touched. She resisted the urge to touch his arm or even brush against him. It was like she wound so tight that one touch would release…something. She was too afraid to find out what it was.
Or was she?
She snuck a glance at him as he drove. He was chomping on a piece of gum and staring, almost angrily, out the windshield.
He was good-looking. That wasn’t exactly a revelation. She’d known Marc for years and it was an established fact that he was a good-looking guy. But she’d never been attracted.
Or had she?
These questions were driving her crazy. She’d never felt this chemistry, never thought about kissing him, never
wanted
to kiss him—or anything else.
And now that she was thinking about it, she couldn’t
stop
thinking about it.
“Knock it off,” he growled, not looking at her.
“What?”
“You’re staring at me.”
“I was thinking.”
He cleared his throat. “About what?”
“Why do you think there’s sexual tension between us now when there hasn’t been before?”
He looked at her quickly, then back to the road. “Just put that right out there why don’t you?”
She’d gotten used to being bold growing up. Being direct and specific about what she wanted and needed and was thinking was necessary to be sure her dad heard her. When she left home, she’d learned that being vague got vague results. Bold and fearless. That’s what got ahead in the world.
And he wasn’t denying the tension.
“Is there a reason we shouldn’t talk about it?”
“It’s awkward, don’t you think?” he asked, staring resolutely at the road in front of the car.
“It’s awkward whether we talk about it or not.”
“It’s easier to ignore when we don’t talk about it.”
He had a point. On the other hand, ignoring things rarely made them better. “Why ignore it?”
“How many reasons do you want?”
“Four.”
“One, Luke. Two, we don’t like each other. Three, you’re leaving in the morning never to return. Four, Luke.”
That had been pretty easy for him. She frowned. “One, sexual tension between us has nothing to do with Luke. Two, as you said earlier, you don’t have to like me to want to see me naked. Three is negotiable. Four, you don’t want me to be involved with Luke anyway so I would think my being attracted to someone else would be a good thing.”
He scowled at her. “One, sexual tension between us would upset Luke—to say the least. Two,
wanting
to see you naked and
seeing
you naked are different things. Three is not negotiable. Four, why can’t you be attracted to someone who lives in Dublin or something? Why me?”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Dublin? Ireland? Why there?”
“It’s far away.”
“Ah. And why you? Hell if I know. I’m as surprised as you are.”
He pulled into a motel parking lot. “It’s probably hero worship.”
She looked at him, waiting for the punch line. He parked the car and turned off the ignition then moved to open the door. “What’s probably hero worship?”
“How you’re feeling about me.”
She snorted. “There are two words wrong with that. Hero and worship. You’ve been anything but a hero to me for as long as I’ve known you and I think you need to look up the definition of worship if you think that’s how I feel.”
He turned in his seat to face her, pinning her with a direct stare. “I haven’t been a hero to you? You’re in Laramie, Wyoming rather than Soggy Swamp. Who did that?”
“You brought me here to put me on a plane.”
“I could have left you alongside the road.”
“You came to save Luke, not me.”
“I bought you dinner.”
“I’m paying you back.”
“You know, Seattle, you could be a little grateful.”
She sat looking at him. This was Marc Sterling. He thought she was selfish and self-centered. And she’d often wondered if he was right. Like she wondered if Luke and her father were right about the fact that she couldn’t make a good decision until she’d tried all the bad ones.
“You’re right,” she finally said softly. “I should be grateful. You came to get me when there was no one else.”
Obviously her acquiescence surprised him.
“That’s better.”
He started to move to open the door again, but she put her hand on his arm. He froze.
“No, really, Marc. Thank you. You saved me. If you hadn’t come I’d… Well, I don’t know what I would have done.” The reality of that hit her and she had to swallow past a thickness in her throat. “I was out of options.”
The muscles in his arm under her hand bunched.
“Luke or Kat would have come eventually if I hadn’t.”
“But you did.”
“I couldn’t have just left you there.”
“Because you’re a good guy. We haven’t always been the best of friends, but you still helped me out and I won’t forget that. Maybe we can…”
He was watching her closely. “We can what?”
For some reason it felt like the temperature in the car went up a few degrees. “Be friends?” she asked.
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. He seemed to be studying her for something. Then he drawled, “Being sweet and agreeable isn’t going to keep me from driving you to the airport tomorrow morning, Seattle.”