Then, she’d grown up and discovered the real world. That had happened three years ago, when she’d been up in Seattle visiting her grandmother and aunt. Her aunt had fallen in love with a man, one who had run out on her, left her pregnant and alone.
It was the next thing that had solidified how wrong Betty’s dreams had been.
She’d met a man. A man who proved how easy a woman can become besotted and how fast a man can disappear.
That thought was enough to anger her all over again, and she wasn’t here to be angry. She was here to have fun and dance.
Dance the night away.
She scanned the room again, and as it had before, her gaze landed on a man sitting alone, at a table in the far corner behind the piano. He’d been there since she’d arrived, and she’d wondered if she’d seen him before, here or at one of the other speakeasies she and her sisters visited regularly. There was something about him that was familiar, but she couldn’t say what.
He looked like an average Joe, as did most of the other men in the room. The Rooster’s Nest attracted those types, working men. Day laborers and dockworkers. Men who had their sleeves rolled up and their boot strings double knotted. Those were the type of men who wouldn’t know her father.
There was something about that guy in the corner that made him stand out to her. She wasn’t sure what, except that his flat, newsboy-type hat partially hid his face, making her even more curious.
He’d watched her earlier, when she’d danced, and she’d expected him to approach her, ask her to dance.
But he hadn’t.
A slow smile built on her lips as she rose to her feet.
She’d just have to ask him.
That was part of the fun about being a flapper. They embraced life with gusto. They weren’t shy, nor did they worry about what others thought. They tossed the conventional standards of female behavior out the window and embraced life with newfound freedom.
The same freedom she and her sisters embraced during their nights out on the town. They had all come to love the liberty their nightlife gave them. It was the exact opposite from the stifling life they lived during the day. Every day.
Skirting around the line of people waiting to have numbers pinned on their backs, she saw him stand up. Her heart thudded, and she wasn’t exactly sure why, until he turned, as if he was going to walk away from his table before she arrived.
She cut through another line of people between him and her and stepped in front of him, stopping his escape, if that was what he’d had in mind.
“You aren’t thinking about taking a hike, are you?” she asked while batting her mascara-covered lashes at him. That was a trick Jane had read about in one of the magazines she’d snuck into the house, and it always made men smile.
He didn’t smile. Instead, he tugged the brim of his flat brown leather hat up a touch. “I was.”
She peered up at him harder, and the moment she caught sight of the eyes his hat had been shadowing, her heart stopped. Right then and there. At the exact same time her entire body started to tremble. “It’s you!” she gasped. The very man who’d—who’d—who was the reason she’d set down another rule for her and her sisters. No kissing. Absolutely none!
“And it’s you,” he said. “Imagine that.”
Imagine! She didn’t have to imagine! She knew! Those blue eyes were too unique to forget. Pale blue, like the sky first thing in the morning, and darkly rimmed with black lashes. She’d never seen another set like them and knew she never would, either.
Her heart started to pound and she was nearly gasping for air. It was him. The man who’d kissed her on the beach, right where anyone could have seen, and then walked away as if nothing had happened.
Anger, a level she’d never hit before, struck hard. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”
“Right here!” someone shouted. “We have the final couple! Lacy and her Reuben!”
Betty recognized Jane’s voice and twisted as her sister grasped the back of her dress to pin a number to her back. “We aren’t entering the dance-off.”
“Yes, you are!” Jane said.
Betty twisted, trying to keep Jane from pinning on the number. “No, we—”
“Yes, we are,” the blue-eyed man said, grabbing her hand.
“You two are number three,” Jane said, moving to pin a piece of paper on his back.
“I’m not dancing with you,” Betty said, trying to pull away.
“Yes. You. Are.” His voice was deep, low, and under his breath.
Betty’s insides quivered at the seriousness of his tone.
“Clear the floor!” someone shouted. “Give the dancers room!”
Jane slapped his back. “Hit the floor, Reuben!”
“Come on, Lacy.” He drew her toward the dance floor.
“My name’s not Lacy,” she said, gritting her teeth.
“And mine’s not Reuben.”
Of course his name wasn’t Reuben, that was just slang for a stranger in town. His plain blue shirt, black suspenders, and tan pants made him look like he wasn’t a man-about-town. She and her sisters never used their real names while on the town. They used whatever name took their fancy. Jane had called her Lacy because of her lace-trimmed dress.
They stepped onto the dance floor and he spun around, facing her. With a grin that revealed he had nice and straight, white teeth, which made him even more handsome, he planted his free hand on the small of her back.
She tried to move, get away, but between his hold and the people crowding the dance floor around them, she had nowhere to go.
“Dig any clams lately?” he asked.
She pinched her lips together, refusing to answer. Too bad she couldn’t refuse the memories from flooding forward.
While in Seattle
