He looked like a poem, Lulu thought wistfully. A tragic sonnet of unrequited love written from the deepest recesses of the heart. He was just a gorgeous, gorgeous man, and totally not her type. Which was just as well since, in case she hadn’t mentioned it, the guy was totally sprung on Bree.
“Rufus!” Lulu called out, jumping up and down and waving her hand to get his attention.
Immediately, Bree spun on her and clamped a hand over her mouth. “Are you crazy?” she hissed. “The last thing I want when I’m looking for Cole Early is a guy like Rufus anywhere in my personal space.”
Lulu yanked Bree’s hand from her mouth. “Oh, who cares what you want?” she said. “I like Rufus. He’s a good guy. Rufus!” she called out again, doing the jumping and waving thing even more adamantly.
Amazingly, he heard her over the din of the bar, turning his head in her direction, smiling and lifting a hand in greeting when he saw her. Then, when he looked to her right and saw Bree with her, his eyes went brighter, his smile turned incandescent, and everything about the guy seemed to absolutely glow.
What the hell was the matter with Bree, that she couldn’t see Mr. Right-Under-Her-Nose?
As if wanting to make that painfully evident, Bree quickly turned her back on both Lulu and Rufus and started scanning the other side of the bar for whatever she thought it was she wanted. Rufus did a good job of pretending not to notice, but Lulu saw how his features dimmed a little at her friend’s behavior.
Nevertheless, he had perked up by the time he approached, beer bottle still in hand. “Hey, Lulu,” he greeted her warmly. As he always did, he leaned forward and brushed her cheek lightly with his lips, taking her hand and giving her fingers a gentle squeeze as he did. When he drew back, he looked at Bree—who still had her back to him—and said a little more coolly, “Bree. Good to see you, too.”
“Hey, Rufus,” she replied without turning around.
Lulu had known Rufus roughly eight hours less than Bree, who had worked her first shift with him two years ago at the Ambassador Bar before Lulu came in to meet her friend for drinks afterward. As she’d waited for Bree to finish up, Lulu had chatted with Rufus, and it had taken approximately three minutes for her to realize the guy was already hung up on Bree. It had taken her three-and-a-half minutes to realize Bree would never give him the time of day, because it took Rufus only thirty seconds to give Lulu an answer to her question about what he wanted to be when he grew up. That answer being a momentary blank stare followed by, “A bartender. I love this job.”
To Lulu, the answer told her everything she needed to know about Rufus—and made her like him even more than she already did. Job-loving was a major, major factor in essential human happiness. Anyone who loved his or her job, regardless of what it was, was someone to be admired, because it meant they went their own way, did their own thing, and didn’t care what society thought about them. Bree, however, equated Rufus’s professional contentment with a profound lack of ambition. Because there was no way his work would lead to reeking piles of filthy lucre, and how could you not want reeking piles of filthy lucre? So that was the end of any chance Rufus might have with Bree on the romantic front.
“What are you guys doing here?” he asked Lulu. But he was looking at Bree when he asked it—or, at least, at Bree’s back. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you out and about down here. Bad band at Deke’s tonight?”
“Great band at Deke’s tonight,” Lulu told him. “But—”
“But I’m here looking for someone,” Bree said, finally spinning around. “Someone, ah, special.”
Oh, sure, now she looked right at Rufus, Lulu thought. To hammer home that he wasn’t anything special. Funny, though, how she seemed to stumble a little over the words when she looked at Rufus. And her voice, too, seemed a little more shallow and a little less certain. Funny, too, how she didn’t seem able to hold his gaze for more than a second or two before it went skittering over his shoulder.
“Oh, yeah?” Rufus asked with seeming unconcern. “Who?”
“Just some guy,” Lulu said.
“Cole Early,” Bree said at the same time.
Rufus had started to lift his bottle for another sip, but halted it shy of his mouth and smiled. “Cole Early,” he repeated dispassionately.
Bree nodded, still looking over Rufus’s shoulder, but seemed about one-tenth as certain about that now as she had a few minutes ago.
“The trainer,” he said in that same flat tone.
Bree nodded again, a little more slowly this time, looking about one-one-hundredth as certain now. And it wasn’t just her gaze that ricocheted this time. She turned her whole head to avoid looking at him.
“The one with a horse in the Derby,” Rufus said.
Another nod, even slower. Another substantial drop on the ol’ confidence meter.
“The one whose picture is on the
