LITMIR.BIZ

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the last few weeks we’re open. I’m sure Tess and Laine would both have stuck around if they’d thought we were going to actually be having crowds, rather than our usual quartets.”

      Cat firmly believed that. She was still a bit upset with Laine for taking off on some daring, photographic wildfire adventure in California. Secretly, however, she had to concede she was glad Laine was there to help their Aunt Jen, whose house was being threatened by the fires engulfing the state. Besides, Laine had been talking for a long time about how much she wanted one of her photos on the cover of the magazine she worked for, Century. This might actually be her shot. So while she was peeved at her, Cat couldn’t be too upset.

      As for Tess, their other waitress…well, with her, you never knew what to expect. Like the way she’d stumbled into the job at Temptation a few years back. She’d started waitressing to work off a bar tab she couldn’t pay and had never left.

      Unpredictable. That described Tess. So her deciding to take off last Tuesday night to help distribute some old guy’s money was entirely understandable. Unlike Laine, at least Tess had asked Cat first if she minded, and had even offered her some of her newfound riches.

      Cat hadn’t accepted the money—it was too late for that. But she had minded her friend leaving. Not so much because she needed Tess’s help—or Laine’s, for that matter—but because she’d had this whole sappy image of the four of them crying in each other’s arms during the last few weeks the bar was open.

      She hadn’t told Tess or Laine that. In fact, she’d urged Tess to go. And Laine…well, after their argument, she hadn’t been surprised her sister had taken off.

      She’d missed them both ever since, much more than she’d ever have expected. Which was silly, really, since she’d always known everybody was destined to leave. Her grandparents, her father. Her remarried mother. Her brilliant sister.

      Cat ending up alone had been inevitable. But she’d always thought she’d at least have Temptation.

      Dinah clucked her tongue and shook her head, making her poufed platinum blond hair teeter a bit to one side. “I still can’t get over the two of them bailing out of here. You sure you don’t want me to tell your mama…”

      “Don’t even think about it,” Cat said, already grabbing two bottles of Bud for the guys waving to her from the end of the bar. “She’s upset enough about the pub closing. The last thing I need is to have her come down here to help out, because you know her helping out would mean me losing my mind.”

      Dinah, who’d been one of her mother’s closest friends since their high school years, chuckled. “It’s just because she worries.”

      “She worries, I snap. Without Laine here to referee, it’d be a nightmare.”

      “You think it’ll be like this all weekend?” Dinah asked. “Because if so, we might need to call in some backup. Tess did say she was going to be as close as Austin…”

      Cat shook her head. “It’s okay, I already took care of it. I called an old friend and tapped her to help out tomorrow night.”

      Dinah, a fifty-something native Texan whose heart was bigger than most people’s minivans, sighed in visible relief. “Thank the Lord. I don’t think my knees could take another night like this one.”

      Cat purposely looked at the beer mug she was holding under the tap and kept her voice casual as she asked, “How are Zeke’s knees holding up?”

      Silence. Then Dinah squawked, “You bad girl…as if I know. The man’s more skittish than a virgin in a frathouse.”

      Knowing Dinah had had her eye on Zeke for about two years, ever since Laine and Cat had hired the man to cook for their pub clientele, Cat frowned. “You’re running out of time, you know. If you’re going to make something happen, you’d better do it while you two are still working together every day.”

      Dinah rolled her eyes. “Sugar, I could bathe naked in that man’s deep fryer and he wouldn’t look.”

      “I dunno…warm oil, a hot kitchen, spicy smells. Sounds pretty sexy to me.”

      “Me, too,” a male voice said. The hair standing on end all over her body told her exactly which male voice.

      Crud. She’d gotten so distracted chatting with Dinah about the older woman’s romantic possibilities that she’d completely forgotten about her own.

      No. He’s not a possibility.

      She’d been telling herself that for two hours, every throaty, wickedly sexy song the band performed reminding her of just how dangerous getting involved with Spence would be. Even if he had made her almost melt into a puddle when he’d sung one song she hadn’t recognized, about making love in the moonlight on a windswept beach to a woman with fire in her eyes. Made her want to take a drive down to the Galveston coast. With him.

      But no. It’d never happen. He was a long-haired musician playing tiny bars in Nowhereville, Texas, for heaven’s sake. The man probably didn’t even own a car. Spence was definitely not the steady, reliable type she’d been telling herself she needed to find. Far, far from it!

      The flirting was over with. The guy was a hunk and a half, but so were a lot of other guys. And all of them were the type who walked away.

      She’d had enough of those, dammit. From here on out, she was going to be strictly business with this particular one. So she offered him an impersonal smile. “Hey, I was afraid the crowd was never going to let you guys take a break.”

      “Me, too,” he said.

      Without being asked, she opened a bottle of icy cold water and slid it to him. He picked it up, giving her a grateful nod, and lifted it to his lips.

      Lips. Don’t think of the lips. You never notice the lips of the guy at the bank or the post office.

      She looked down, her gaze falling on his throat. Her breaths deepened as she watched the way his pulse pounded in his neck and the muscles leading to his shoulders rippled with his every movement. All glisteny with a sheen of sweat. Probably tasted salty.

      She added more no-no words to her list. Neck. Shoulders. Muscles. Glisteny. Salty.

      “Thanks,” he said as he lowered the nearly empty bottle. “Those lights are pretty hot. I was half wishing I’d worn less clothes.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, lighter clothes. Shorts or something.”

      Less clothes? No pants? She might as well just give this up right now. Because no matter how hard she tried to keep her mind focused and professional, she kept sliding down this slippery slope of attraction to this man. She couldn’t possibly survive another round of sexual roulette with him.

      But at least this time, Spence was looking uncomfortable, as well. Funny, the way he’d stammered over the words he’d said, about wearing less clothes. As if he, too, had recognized the naughty implication and had been slightly embarrassed about it.

      It was cute, that sheepish look on his face. Not to mention completely unexpected. Embarrassment and this guy went together about as naturally as pork chops and a vegetarian.

      “It is awfully hot in here, don’t you think?” he finally said, filling the thick silence. How bizarre, this feeling of being in a silent bubble, when all around them voices chattered and glasses tinkled. But, like before, all of that seemed very far away.

      “Yeah, well, uh…I guess the crowd of naked bodies makes it feel even hotter,” Cat said.

      Then she bit her tongue. Bodies. Another definite no-no word when Spence was around. If this kept up, she was going to have the vocabulary of a ten-month-old.

      “Uh, Cat, did you say what I think you said?”

      Sure, she’d said the crowd of bodies…oh, God, she hadn’t said naked, had she? Tell me I didn’t say naked.

      “Because we’re pretty open to playing at unusual venues, but an entirely naked audience,

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