Her full red lips spread into a seductive smile. I was pretty sure she didn’t know a different one. “I leave for five minutes and this guy is already slacking off? Get back to work, old man.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He cocked his head her direction, eyes on me, and mouthed, “Slave driver.”
Laughing, I situated the last of the drinks Charlie had poured onto my tray. “Now Tamar is the real reason this bar is still afloat. You’re lucky she headed east when she did.”
“Now don’t go fillin’ this one’s head any fuller than it already is. She already thinks she owns the place.”
Tamar maneuvered to set the base of all the bottles on the far countertop, arms wrapped around them like she was hugging them. Glasses clanked as they settled, and she straightened up to her full five-foot-one stature. Her five-inch heels still didn’t bring her close to Charlie’s chin. She tossed her hair off her shoulder. “What do you mean, think?”
Charlie laughed and tossed a balled-up towel at her, which she snatched out of the air.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of thinking anything, sugar. Now help me fill these orders. This old man is falling behind.”
Somehow that smile turned soft and she went to work.
Without a doubt, it was Charlie who owned all of us.
Both Tamar and I loved him for it.
With my tray balanced, I moved back through the expanding crowd, smiling my most welcoming smile, and saying excuse me and sorry so I could shoulder through. Music blared from the speakers, all thanks to our sound guy Derrick. A local band was setting up on the stage. They played here often, always a big draw for Saturday nights, both for our regulars and the tourists looking for a good time after they’d spent a lazy day on the beach.
I dodged a few grabby hands from a group of college guys who’d clearly had too much to drink and were in danger of skating from nice guy zone straight into asshole territory, but I’d worked here long enough to know how to deal with them. I just grinned and let it slide right off my bare back.
I stopped at a couple of tables and dropped off drinks, grabbed the order from a group of younger women who had pulled two tables together to accommodate their party, and let my gaze wander to see if I’d missed anyone who needed attention in my section. It got stuck on the lone figure hidden away in the farthest corner booth who hadn’t been sitting there the last time I made my rounds.
Weaving through the crowd, I edged toward him. Somehow my footsteps grew slower the closer I got. He wore a black beanie, his head down and his attention trained on his phone lit up in the backdrop of darkness. My eyes were drawn to his hands that held the expensive device, all big and strong, seeming to be just as powerful as this guy’s presence. He wore a long-sleeved button-up shirt, the cuffs rolled up his forearms in a careless fashion, revealing intricate ink scrolled along his skin.
A knot of intrigue formed somewhere in my chest.
I was suddenly wishing to be closer, just so I could make out the design.
Even though people came here from all walks of life, young and old, country and rocker, bikers and businessmen, he still seemed to stick out, too vibrant to belong within the confines of these walls. And I hadn’t even seen his face.
Inwardly, I rolled my eyes at myself. Get a grip, Shea.
Sucking in a breath, I pulled myself together and inched closer to the edge of the horse-shoe booth he was tucked behind. In a voice loud enough to cut through the music and jumble of voices, I gave him my standard greeting. “Hey there, welcome to Charlie’s.”
His hands gripped tighter on the phone when my words hit him, and it seemed to take him an eternity to lift his head, as if he were contemplating whether he really wanted to reveal himself.
And when he did, I kind of wished he hadn’t.
For one rapturous second, time stood still as I got lost in a face that had to be the most beautiful I’d ever seen. It wasn’t perfect, and maybe that was the problem. His full, full lips were a little crooked on one side, his cheekbones high and defined, his jaw severe—sharp angles—and coated in what had to be three days of scruff. A scar split through his right eyebrow, making it appear lower on that side, and there was a trace of another at the bottom of his chin.
But it was the hardness burning from his strange grey eyes that knocked the breath from my lungs.
No, not perfect.
Just beautiful and dark and a little bit frightening.
My heart thudded and I couldn’t stop from taking a startled step back as a slow slide of attraction trickled beneath the surface of my skin—like feathers touching me everywhere—before it gathered to flutter low in my belly. Maybe it’d been far too long since I’d allowed a man to touch me, because all at once I felt the grip slipping on my own little reality. The reality where men didn’t cause a reaction like this in me, because I knew better than to go looking for that kind of heartbreak.
No, I didn’t have a bunch of priorities or concerns.
I had one.
I couldn’t afford to flirt or play—not like normal women my age—couldn’t risk the trouble a boy like this would most assuredly bring.
As if he’d want me after he knew, anyway.
The beautiful stranger’s frown only deepened, and I felt like a total idiot standing there with my mouth hanging open, tongue-tied.
Blinking away the stupor, I swallowed hard and painted a smile on my face, knowing it probably appeared just as fake as it felt, but this guy had left me staggered, confused, and affected in a way I didn’t necessarily like.
“What can I get for you?” I finally managed to say.
Those burning grey eyes narrowed in speculation, and not exactly in a friendly way. Waiting. As if he were waiting on me when I was the one who’d asked the question.
My own head tilted, searching him in the shadows in return, wondering what he was thinking, because he was looking at me as if he were expecting me to call him by name. Suddenly all of those years of self-consciousness came bounding in, and discomfort shifted my feet as I went cold with dread.
Did he recognize me?
It was rare, because I’d grown from a girl to a woman, and my once short, straight blonde hair was now long with wavy curls, woven with streaks of light browns and blondes.
Just when I was about to bolt and send over a different server, he leaned forward and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Uh…yeah…sorry. Gran Patron Platinum or Suprema. Neat.”
That voice chased away all my worry. Eclipsing it in song. A rich, velvety sound filling up my ears and tickling my senses.
“Please,” he said a little harder than the last, jarring me from the faraway place my mind had just gone. A smirk ticked up at the corner of his pretty, pretty mouth, like he knew precisely where my head had been.
God, this guy was dangerous. And had very expensive taste in tequila.
With one harsh shake of my head, I regained my composure, that feigned smile back in full force. “Sure thing. I’ll be right back.”
He only nodded, but his eyes softened a fraction.
Just like quicksand.
I wondered what it’d be like if I jumped in.
Tearing myself away before my mind had a chance to entertain any more ridiculous thoughts, I spun around and put some much-needed space between us. I stopped to check on a few other tables on the way back to the bar, all the while pretending I couldn’t feel the heat of his stare penetrating me, or my spine tingling in awareness where his gaze traced along the skin exposed from the draping, backless fabric of my blouse.