“Then get me two bottled waters.”
Under the pretense of grabbing a book of matches, Trish sat in the chair next to Caleb. “What are you watching?” she asked, looking up at the TV. Baseball, of course. It was September.
He didn’t look at her. “The game.”
“Who’s winning?” She squinted through the dim light at the TV, seeing little men standing idly around a baseball diamond. In baseball, it always looked to her like the players were waiting for something good to happen, and that given the choice, they’d rather be eating barbeque.
There was silence. Trish discreetly shifted her bra strap under her black clingy dress and marveled at how huge this guy next to her was. Joe was big in a fleshy sort of way. But this guy was massive, his T-shirt straining against rippling muscle-and he towered over her, even sitting down. It was fascinating for a woman who spent all her time with professional men, who tended to be a little pale and thin, though with impeccable suits. She’d never dated a man who could snap her in half with his bare hands. Maybe that had been a mistake.
His rudeness didn’t bother her. She wasn’t even sure he’d heard her. He seemed to be floating in an alcohol haze, and when Joe put the waters in front of her, she gestured for him to clear away the empty beer bottles.
“Get me another one, Joe.” The giant tilted the bottle in his hand and drained it.
Joe nodded. “Sure, Caleb.”
Trish glared at Joe. Hadn’t he been the one to say this guy needed to go easy on the beer? Watching Caleb, she had to agree, and apparently it was up to her to be his salvation, savior, Saint Trish. That was her. Sure thing. Not.
But she did feel significantly less sorry for herself than she had when she’d walked in the door, and she owed it to Joe’s friend to save him from himself. Especially if he had truly loved his wife, the prospect of which she found strangely compelling. For some weird reason, she wanted to believe a man could love a woman enough to be upset when she got remarried, and Trish didn’t want this guy to cheapen that by having a one-night stand, his judgment impaired by alcohol.
Nor did she want to see his name come across her desk as the defendant in a crime of passion. Those were always such a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Leaning over the counter, she grabbed the beer out of Joe’s hand when he returned with it. Using her best courtroom voice, she pushed it out of Caleb’s reach. “Take this back and don’t bring any more. I’ve cut him off.”
Caleb Vancouver had a good little beer buzz going, but he wasn’t drunk yet. Not the way he wanted to be, at any rate. Snapped out of his stupor by a stubborn woman’s voice, he glanced over at her.
“What?” he said, taking her in with one swift glance.
Woman wearing a scowl, looking at him like he was a pathetic lush, that’s what he saw. Caleb wondered if she was right. He was feeling pretty damn pathetic.
She was very attractive. But definitely not his type. Not what he was looking for. He had come to the bar to find a woman, true, but the smiling, laughing, big-hair kind who thought nothing of going home with a guy she’d just met, and didn’t expect or want a phone call after the fact.
So far he hadn’t seen any likely candidates, which was starting to piss him off. A guy goes two whole friggin’ years without sex and then he can’t even find one chick to sleep with? It didn’t seem right. Not that he was looking all that hard, if he were totally honest. Somehow his plan to celebrate April’s wedding with a drunken night of sexual revelry had disintegrated into him sucking down beers by himself in a sulk.
And he suspected, despite the physical urges and the emotional need to stick another woman in his bed, if only for one night, that he wouldn’t actually go through with picking anyone up. Hell, he’d been there for three hours already and hadn’t spoken to anyone besides Joe.
He’d never had a one-night stand in his life. Of course, maybe that was because he’d married April right out of high school. But regardless, he wasn’t a sex-with-a- stranger kind of guy. He liked to know a woman, liked to learn how to please her, share an intimacy in bed and out, before and after.
“I said you can’t have any more beer,” came the persistent voice.
Caleb shifted on his stool and took another gander at the bossy broad next to him. Who the hell did she think she was?
If he wanted a beer, he’d have a beer, and some woman with nice shoulders and a scowl couldn’t stop him. No one could stop him, especially not when he was determined to drink enough beer to forget how annoyed he was, and he wasn’t nearly there yet. It was going to take a lot of beer to get over his confusion that his ex-wife was marrying a guy old enough to be her grandfather. And was so happy she was beaming. Glowing. She’d never glowed with Caleb, and it bothered him.
“Get me another beer,” he told Joe.
“No,” the woman next to him said quite clearly.
Was this the morality committee? Annoyed, he turned to her. “I don’t mean to be rude, but would you mind your own damn business?”
He blinked hard, trying to focus a little better. Damn room was dark and the cigarette smoke hanging like a factory cloud always made his eyes water.
She switched tactics. Her hand rested on his arm. Her tone became conciliatory. “Just take a break,” she said. “I hate to be the only one not drinking.”
But Caleb wasn’t fooled. She looked and sounded too wily and calculating to be genuine. Women with short hair were like that. They existed in a world of hair products, where everything could be sculpted and molded and tamed to their liking, and he thought she probably viewed him as an unruly cowlick.
Unsure what to say, and wanting to ask why she was in a bar if she didn’t want to be around drinkers, he gave a grunt that could be interpreted any way she liked and turned back to the TV.
“Can you pass me a nut?”
She smiled at him, her hand held out expectantly. Caleb felt prickly annoyance as he passed the bowl of peanuts to her. Was she bored or was she flirting with him?
His brain was a little addled from the beer, so he decided if he were uninteresting, she’d move on to someone else. Because she really wasn’t what he had in mind.
Oh, she was pretty enough if you were into perfection. Long cheekbones, artful makeup, stylish dark-brown hair with lighter highlights. Great shoulders, tanned and toned, making him wonder just briefly if the rest of her would be the same before he stopped himself. Only the message didn’t quite reach his bottom half in time and he felt a hard-on rising in his jeans.
Thanks, pal, he told his unruly appendage.
Despite his body’s reaction, he knew he wouldn’t know quite what to do with a woman like this. Self-assured, bossy, clipped and manicured, wearing a sleeveless dress that screamed classy businesswoman, she was from a different world. One of cappuccinos, Audis, and business trips to New York-nothing like his life managing his small construction business, and living in a dingy little duplex.
“You know, I’ve never met a huge man who grunts before,” she said, popping a nut into her mouth and pouching it in her cheek. “I mean, I’ve seen guys like you on TV and checking purses at the airport, but I’ve never actually talked to anyone like you. Are you a cop, a welder, or a mechanic?”
He gave her a hard stare, hoping to scare her into leaving. He did not want to be her blue-collar novelty of the night.
Instead she shivered and gave him a smile. “Oh, do that again. And growl this time.”
She was making fun of him. Caleb frowned deeper.
“Here.” She took a peanut and shoved it between his lips. “I think the alcohol is dulling your reflexes. You’re just staring at me.”
With good reason. The woman was friggin’ crazy. But he couldn’t protest, not when her warm finger was still resting on his lips, the salty, fleshy taste of the tip still lingering on his tongue. If he sucked, he could draw her into his mouth.
It was nothing, a little gesture that meant nothing, but his long-neglected body stood up and took notice.Hey, it said.I remember this. This is foreplay.
It could be, but it wasn’t.
He hated to disappoint his gonads, but this woman was only amusing herself. At his expense.
“Chew the nut,” she said. “Food will help absorb the alcohol before it hits your bloodstream.”
“One peanut?” he asked.
“Good point.” She grabbed a whole handful and started toward him.
Caleb clamped his mouth shut and shook his head.
She grinned. “No? Well, Joe can get a sandwich for you. They make club sandwiches and really greasy fries here.”
“I’ll have one if you do. I don’t like to eat alone.” He smiled smugly, throwing her words back at her.
A snort of laughter flew out of her mouth, and she covered it with a soft, golden hand, her short, rounded fingernails painted white at the ends.
Diamonds flashed in her ears, and dark, intelligent eyes gave him another once-over. “I might as well, I guess, since I missed out on dinner when my date stood me up.”
Caleb figured his brain was firing a little slow, but he couldn’t believe this woman had been stood up. Personally, he would have been scared to. She was intimidating as hell.
“Some idiot stood you up?”
“Sad, but true.” She popped a nut into her own mouth, then offered him another one by hovering her hand over his.
He opened his fist and let her drop the peanut into his palm. “So you came here instead?”
She nodded. “Even more sad, isn’t it? That when lonely and pissed off, I came to a bar.”
If it was sad, then he was doubly so. “I can understand that.” More than he even wanted to admit to himself.
Gesturing for Joe to come back over, he chewed the nut. And looked down at the woman beside him, all straight-backed and confident, one leg crossed over the other, a hint of cleavage popping out of her little black dress. “What’s your name?”
“Trish,” she said, and stuck her hand out like they were in a business meeting. “Trish Jones.”
He took her hand, small and soft in his, but possessing a firm, bold grip. “I’m Caleb Vancouver.”
She pumped his hand up and down twice, then let go, a mischievous smile on her perfectly painted, caramel-brown-lipstick lips.
Those lips were very distracting. Very luscious, very arousing. Caleb had a sudden image of what exactly she could do with those perfectly pretty lips on what part of him. He shifted on the stool.
And when Joe came over to see what he wanted, Caleb completely forgot to order another beer.
