She leaned close on the pretext of wiping the bar and murmured low, “Kurstin Olivet, you little slut. You got lucky tonight, didn’t you?”
Kurstin gave her a dreamy smile.
Hayley’s loneliness deepened and her gaze sought out Jon-Michael up on the stage. He stood with his head down and his shoulders rolled in, his lips locked around the sax's reed and cheeks bulged as he blew out the melody. His eyes were closed, but they slit open as he brought the instrument up, tilting his head back a little bit more with each spiraling note. His gaze slid across hers, then snagged, locking on her face.
Hayley felt its impact low in her stomach.
Jesus, she heard his hoarse whisper, I love you.
The voice might be in her head, but she could hear the wonder and surprise in his voice as if he were standing right next to her, speaking in her ear. I love you, Hayley.
He had not been loaded to the gills last night. And it had been she who had been caught up in the throes of the moment, not Jon-Michael. So why had he said it?
Staring at him now, she could almost believe for a moment he had meant it. As their gazes locked, she thought she heard him blow a note off-key, as if he, too, were experiencing whatever it was holding her in its grip. But she must have been mistaken for when she concentrated on the melody it was as seamless, as smooth, as ever.
Then a journalist down the bar demanded a refill on his drink and the spell was broken. For God’s sake, Hayley, what a fool you are. What a blind, pitiful fool.
Letting go of the gossamer spell, she tore her gaze away from the man up on the stage and went back to work.
What the hell was that all about? Jon-Michael's gaze followed Hayley's progress up and down the bar as she filled orders, wiped off the countertop, talked to his sister. His heart banged against the wall of his chest, sweat rolled down his temples, and while both could be attributed to the hot blue lights overhead or the normal every-night exertion he expended, he knew better. It was that look they’d exchanged.
His eyes had developed this habit lately of tracking her movements during the odd moments he surfaced from the lure of the music. Never, however, had he looked up to find her already watching him with eyes made big and needy by some suppressed emotion so potent it threatened to blow the top of his head off.
By rights, she ought to look ridiculous with her fly-away hair back-lit by the bar lights and that silly disguise he had given her perched on her nose. But she didn't. Instead, all he could see tonight were her big eyes behind those clear plastic lenses, burning with emotions that reached across the space separating them to grab him by the throat. Her gaze had locked on him and made him play a flat instead of a sharp, and it was a damn rare event that could distract him from the music. But there were secrets in those hazel green depths, secrets and maybe even a vagrant promise or two.
Well, she couldn't just give him a look like that, then expect him to politely back off. Maybe it meant nothing more than she was stressed from a hellaciously bad night. But maybe it meant something more.
Either way, he would get to the bottom of it if it was the last damn thing he did.
Kurstin left Ty’s townhouse in the wake of a call from her brother. When she didn’t return within forty-five minutes, he began pacing, too restless to stay in one spot for more than a minute at a time. She had been gone a good two hours now.
He peered out the window at the lighted greens of the golf course, strode over to the kitchen area and picked up the bottle of wine, then set it down without pouring himself a glass. He went over and snapped on the television, only to immediately turn it off again. Beneath every restless action, he cursed his self-imposed exile from Bluey’s.
He wanted to be where the action was, but the place was bound to be crawling with East Coast journalists tonight, at least a few of whom could be counted on to recognize his byline photo. That was all he needed at this point, to be identified as a reporter. If it became known, Kurstin would kick him to the curb so fast his head would swim. And he needed to be in her life.
His shoulders hitched uneasily, but he quickly squared them.
For the story. His restiveness had nothing to do with the thought of being cut off from the woman herself. He could find sex anywhere. Maybe not as sweet, maybe not as hot. But hell, when it came right down to it, one woman was basically the same as the next. Professionally, however, he needed an inside source if he hoped to get the jump on all the other yahoos pouring into this little backwater burg.
That was the only reason he was so unsettled as he waited for Kurstin to come back.
Tempers were growing short in Bluey's. Or may have been short all night, for all Hayley knew. The first she noticed it, however, was during the band's last break. There was always a rush for drinks when the live music stopped, and in the sudden crush at the bar she noticed that little arguments were breaking out all over the lounge like brush fires in an arid field. Everyone had an opinion they wanted to express. Emotions were riled.
"You don't report the news," she overheard a long-time patron accuse a journalist when she was called down the bar to refill a drink. "You create it."
"That's ludicrous!"
"The hell it is. Look at O.J. Simpson.”
“That was a hundred years ago, for God’s sake.”
“Maybe. But it was pretty much the turning point when celebrity media events became more news worthy than actual news. Simpson wasn't accused of anything that doesn't happen pretty much daily in a thousand similar cases. But because he was a known name, from day one the networks turned it into a goddamn circus."
"It was news!"
"Yeah, worth maybe a week's worth of thirty second sound bites. Hell, there was another case going on in Sacramento at the same time that was virtually ignored, and it involved a serial killer, for cri’sake. At least the print journalists got around to mentioning it, even if they gave it hardly any column space. That’s more than so-called television reporters managed to do."
"Capital punishment is wrong," she heard someone else say. The speaker banged her glass down on the bar for emphasis.
"The hell you say!" came a hot defense. "What is wrong is spending hundreds of thousands of the taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars to house, clothe, feed, and then try to rehabilitate one of these jokers, only to have the prisoner eventually released so he can immediately kill again. Hayley! I need another beer, please."
She silently filled the order and set it down in front of the man, collecting his money and putting it in the till.
"What do you think?" he asked her when she handed him his change. "What's your opinion on the death penalty issue?"
Every reporter within hearing distance immediately quieted and waited to hear her reply. Hayley simply looked at the man.
He grimaced. "Sorry. I guess you're not the best person to ask right now, are ya? You're probably a bit biased."
Oh, for pity’s sake. She walked away, but no matter which way she turned there were similar conversations going on.
"This night cannot end soon enough to suit me," she muttered to Kurstin at one point. But it dragged on endlessly until she felt as if she were caught up in one of those old Twilight Zone episodes they watched back in the day on Nickelodeon. "On second thought, I should probably be careful what I wish for."