LITMIR.BIZ

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a smart-ass?”

      She looked past him, nodded at someone, then got busy making a couple of scotch and sodas. “Yeah. Can’t take things too seriously when perfect strangers are talking to you like they’re your best friend night after night. Telling you their troubles. It’d be too damned depressing, especially for someone like me.”

      He hadn’t thought of it that way. Then, curious, he asked, “Someone like you?”

      Cat shrugged, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “I mean, well, anyone who gets riled up a bit too easily, like I used to do.”

      Riled up easily? Oh, yeah, Cat Sheehan had had a reputation for that. He didn’t know if the Kendall High football team had ever gotten over being told they were a bunch of spiteful, fatheaded kindergartners with big egos and little dicks.

      She’d done it during a pep rally.

      Over a loudspeaker.

      In front of the whole school.

      Cat had gotten suspended. She’d also earned the never-ending devotion of all the freshmen who’d been used as walking punching bags by some of the bullying members of the football team.

      “So you still get riled up too easily?” he asked.

      She shook her head. “Not me. Miss Reasonable, Miss Calm, Cool and Collected, that’s me these days. I can handle anything.”

      She tried to meet his eye, tried to maintain a sincere expression, but didn’t quite manage it. Dylan couldn’t help it. He started to laugh.

      She shot him a dirty look, then dissolved into helpless laughter, too. “Okay, so maybe you are getting to know me. And the answer is yes, I probably do take things too personally and get myself in trouble on occasion. But I have handled things pretty well all on my own for a long time now. Despite what anyone in my family might say. And I’m determined to stay out of trouble, in spite of some of the things I’d really like to do.”

      He wanted to ask if she’d told off any dumb jocks lately but didn’t want to tip his hand too soon. “For instance?”

      Her smile faded, that tension returning to her slim body. “I fantasize about driving one of those bulldozers outside right onto the lawn of the courthouse and leaving a big Porta-John on the front steps. It’d have a big Welcome Home sign for the city officials who voted me out of business.”

      Cat’s words gave him the opening he’d been waiting for…a chance to try to find out why she appeared so tense. “So, are you really closing the bar?”

      Her mouth tightened. “End of the month. Demolition ball swings in July. Gotta make way for progress…how could we ever live without four lanes?”

      “That blows.”

      She nodded, blinking rapidly, and Dylan recognized her anguish. He now understood the slump in Cat’s shoulders, the unhappiness that had likely caused those dark circles under her beautiful eyes.

      Cat was hurting.

      Sure, she was playing tough girl—hadn’t she always? But the pain beneath the surface would be obvious to a blind man.

      “Is there anything I can do?” He figured there wasn’t, but needed to ask, anyway.

      “Just keep rocking the walls down this weekend so we can go out firmly in the black…and so I’ll have a little money to live on while I figure out what I want to be when I grow up.”

      “I can’t picture you being unsure of yourself for long, Cat Sheehan,” he murmured, hearing the intensity in his voice.

      She apparently heard it, too. Her eyes narrowed in skepticism. “You think you know me already, huh?”

      Oh, yeah. He knew her. He’d known her for years. He’d watched her with simple devotion when he’d been a young, geeky kid to whom she’d never have given a second look. And he’d seen her in his dreams in the years that had followed.

      “Yeah. I think I do know you.”

      But not as well as he planned to.

      LATE THAT NIGHT, as Dylan helped the rest of the guys load their equipment and instruments into Josh’s van, he tried to ignore Banks’s curious stares. Banks had been watching him, a knowing grin on his face, every time Dylan had wandered over to the bar to talk to Cat when they were on break. During their final set, he’d thought his friend was going to explode with curiosity. Only the fact that the crowd had been so responsive—not letting them wrap up the night until they’d played an hour longer than scheduled—had distracted the guy.

      But now they were alone. Josh and Jeremy had gone back inside for the last of Jeremy’s drums. Banks made full use of the opportunity. “So, what happened? You going back in there for a late-night rendezvous?”

      “Big words, Banks. Still working on being the smart one?”

      “I don’t think anyone’s going to figure out I’ve got a 130 IQ just because I know how to pronounce the word rendezvous.”

      “One-thirty, hmm? I’m so sorry.”

      It was an old bone of contention and a constant source of baiting. Because Dylan’s was just a smidge higher.

      His friend smirked. “Warning, warning, comparing IQs…your geek-o-meter is in the red zone.”

      “F. You.” But Dylan was smiling as he said it. He finished storing the microphones and amps, then helped Banks load up his keyboard.

      “So, seriously, man, what are you going to do about the Cat woman?”

      “Don’t call her that.”

      “Right, ’cause, uh, she was much younger when you went nuts over her? So, it’s Cat girl, huh?”

      “Do you ever shut up?”

      “You roomed with me in college, so you already know the answer to that question. Now stop stalling. Did she recognize you? Did she realize you were the same nerdy little nobody who used to practically wet your Dockers whenever she came around back in high school?”

      Banks. Couldn’t live with him. Couldn’t kill him and throw his body off the Chrysler Building.

      “She didn’t remember me.”

      Banks had the courtesy not to laugh. In fact, he frowned a bit. “Well, you can’t be too surprised, can you? I found your high school yearbook one time in college. You look nothing like you did back then.”

      High school. Seemed like a lifetime ago.

      He’d only attended public school for one year—his senior year—and he’d been only fifteen years old the day he’d started. A skinny kid who’d been accepted into a dozen colleges before he’d even started shaving.

      He’d wanted to be normal. Just…normal. Instead of the whiz kid who’d skipped a few grades in the exclusive private schools his parents insisted he attend. His one outlet—which had driven his parents nuts—was his nonstop devotion to his music. Even though his mom and dad had ranted about how he was burning his brain cells, betraying his intelligence and making a mockery of his brilliant musical gifts, he’d never stopped working out his teen angst with his stereo or his guitar.

      Until that year. When he’d finally gotten them to agree to let him finish out school with regular kids for a change, in a public high school.

      Their agreement had come at a cost. A high one.

      His music. For the entire school year.

      That’d been the price—he could spend his senior year at Kendall High if he agreed to let his father lock away his guitar and his entire CD collection.

      God, it’d been hard. Particularly when he’d started school and realized a fifteen-year-old senior wasn’t going to fit in very well anywhere. He’d missed his music terribly. So badly he thought

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