It's in His Kiss

by Caitie Quinn

  I kept expecting the dumbstruck look to go away.

  “Are you ordering another drink?”

  The look stayed as he turned toward the new voice.

  “I’m not a waitress,” I explained to the petite woman who appeared at my side.

  “Sorry. Are you a friend from work? I’m Jamie, Mike’s girlfriend.”

  “Oh.” I could feel the heat creeping toward my cheeks, starting at the edge of my waitress-wannabe-white shirt, past my neck and up to my ears. “Girlfriend. I’m so sorry. I wasn’t hitting on him. I’m just doing research for a book.”

  “Wow, a book. What do you write?” Jamie asked.

  “Young adult. I write about a teenage girl name Chloe.”

  Jamie pulled her stool out to sit as she asked, “What kind of research are you doing here?”

  “Ok. I think we have to go.” Mike jumped off his stool. “It was very, ah. . .nice, to meet you. We have a reservation. I’m sure we don’t want to miss our table.”

  He had Jamie by the arm and was pulling her away under protest. “But our reservation isn’t for forty minutes.”

  By the time Mike responded, the couple was safely at the door. He glanced over his shoulder, still slightly dumbstruck, as he pushed his girlfriend out into the street. She, sweet girlfriend girl, gave me a little half-shrug and waved as the door swung shut.

  Men were supposed to be easy. They weren’t supposed to get embarrassed by a woman wanting to kiss them.

  NOTE: Although prone to stating embarrassing things in public, men seem to be easily embarrassed by forward-thinking women.

  EXAMPLE: Mike at the bar, who was too embarrassed to tell his girlfriend about being asked for a kiss.. This statement would not have reflected poorly on him, so why be embarrassed?

  I set my notebook on the bar and contemplated the fact I might not be the type of girl to pick up a guy in a bar – or even to not-really-pick him up. Also, the fact we were in a bar was probably irrelevant.

  Beyond the chair Mike had sat in, a pair of broad shoulders hunched over the bar and pulled at my awareness. It wasn’t the broadness of said shoulders that demanded attention, but their shaking. Dark hair with threads of auburn flopped over his forehead. He hid his face in his hands, elbows propped up on the bar.

  Poor thing. To be weeping so openly in public. Some girl must have really ripped his heart out and carted it out the door with her. Pushing Mike’s chair out of the way, I slid over to the stranger. I laid a hand on his arm and softened my voice so no one else would hear.

  “It’s okay. I’m sure whatever she said to you couldn’t be half as bad as it sounded.”

  The shoulders shook harder and then slowly – so slowly – the dark head rose. Pink rimmed from crying, his chocolate eyes studied me a moment before the sound burst forth from his mouth.

  The jerk! He wasn’t crying. He was laughing. At me.

  THREE

  Rejected and ridiculed, I pivoted to leave the heckler alone at the bar where I’d found him. Where he deserved to be. In typical Jenna form, my sleeve caught on the arm of the empty stool, tipping it over and tripping me up. An annoyingly strong arm caught me around the waist and lifted me away from the wreckage before I joined it on the beer-soaked floor.

  “Whoa there,” a voice rumbled behind me, his chest reverberating against my back as he held in the laughter.

  He was taller than he looked slumped over the bar. My head brushed under his chin as he lifted me over the stool and set me down. His hands slid around to rest on my hips as if he were afraid I’d spontaneously fall over if he let go.

  I probably would have.

  “Now,” the voice re-rumbled. “Why don’t you explain to me what you and your little notebook are doing in this bar.”

  The hands fell away and I turned, my nose almost brushing his crisp, button-down shirt.

  It was truly unfortunate. If Lisbeth had said, describe your dream man, I would have – without a doubt – described Mocking Guy, without having ever seen him before.

  Tall enough to wear heels with. Dark hair flopping over wire rimmed glasses. White button-down sleeves rolled and tucked into jeans tight enough to look good and loose enough to, well, look good.

  I glanced at the barstool lying on the floor and considered picking it up, but bending over in a bar seemed like a bad idea unless I was looking to get my butt smacked.

  “Okay. Well, thanks.” I stepped over the stool, making sure each foot cleared by at least a clean inch, when a warm hand clamped around my wrist.

  “I don’t think so, Sunshine.” Mocking Guy pulled my notebook from my hand and settled back onto his stool. “This is the closest thing to fun I’ve had since my friend dragged me in here.”

  I gaped at him. I mean, I’d written that description before. Teenagers seem to gape a lot, but now, doing it, I felt just plain stupid. Where were all my snappy comebacks? Obviously I needed someone to follow me and do instant re-writes on my personal scenes.

  In horror, I watched him flip the notebook open and page through to tonight.

  “NOTE: Although prone to stating embarrassing things in public, men seem to be easily embarrassed by forward-thinking women.” Mocking Guy cocked an eyebrow at me. “Forward-thinking women? Is that what you are?”

  Rounding the stool, I came at him from the other side and snatched at my notebook. “Yes. You probably wouldn’t understand the concept, but not all women believe they need to do exactly what’s expected.”

  “And yet, I have a feeling that you always do.” He smirked and leaned back, crossing his arms over a chest that matched the aforementioned broad shoulders.

  “Please give that back.” I was horrified at the squeak my voice made and hoped he couldn’t hear it over the man warming up with his tin whistle.

  “Just a minute.” Mocking Guy reached over the bar and snagged a pen. Flipping to the next blank page, he began scribbling, his left hand held out to keep me at bay. Then, with a nod to himself, he flipped the book closed and said. “Okay.”

  “Okay what? Okay you’ve violated my privacy enough? Okay you wrote something sufficiently mocking? Okay I can chalk this experience up to ‘what not to do in public’?”

  “So.” His hand wrapped around my wrist and pulled me toward the bar. “Can I buy you that drink now?”

  A good-looking guy wanted to buy me a drink at a popular nightspot. There were so many things wrong with that statement I couldn’t keep track of them all.

  Glancing across the bar, I signaled Lisbeth to rescue me. I expected her to sweep down in all her gorgeousness, distract the arrogant man and allow me to regain my notebook. Instead, the traitor shook her head and motioned for me to do something – probably flirt – with him.

  “Listen,” he said, forcing my attention back to him. “One drink and you can have your little scratchpad back.”

  Before I could reach for it, he stood, shoved it in his back pocket and sat back down. How was I ever supposed to write in it again now that it had been rubbing against those jeans I had admired a few minutes ago?

  “Listen,” I tried to mimic his tone. “Give it back to me and I’ll introduce you to Lisbeth. All you had to do was ask nice.”

  His whole face went all smirky-smirky and he glanced across the bar where Lisbeth was surrounded by a bevy of male model wannabes and a couple of geeky but successful-looking CEO types.

  “So, if I asked nice, you’d cut me through that herd of followers to introduce me to your friend just to get this notebook back?”

  “In a heartbeat.” That heartbeat stopped. He was going to ask me to introduce him to Lisbeth. The only guy who’d looked twice at me in six years, even if it was to laugh at me, and he was going to ask what every other guy did.

  He eased his back against the bar, his hand still warm around my wrist, and leaned in to whisper over the growing noise of the crowd. “Not a chance, Sunshine.”

  FOUR

  “Stop calling me that.” Dear God, the man took control of
everything, starting with my humiliation and continuing with my name. “I am not your sunshine.”

  This is the thing I hated most about being Lisbeth’s friend. It wasn’t the horde that surrounded her.

  It was that one-in-a-billion man who got my attention and, even if he was arrogant and overbearing, held it when I knew all he’d want was to walk that beautiful Levi’s-covered butt over to see if she’d give him the time of day.

  He glanced across the bar, his perusal slow. I could see him take in Lisbeth and knew what he saw. His eyes scanned the crowd around her, the men bantering for her attention, the women shooting her envious looks, the bartender keeping her well-liquefied.

  Once, just once, it would have been nice to be the object of that type of study. The kind that takes in everything, weighs the odds and then ignores them to pursue regardless.

  “I don’t want to deal with dolts vying for attention when I’m wooing a woman.” The left side of his mouth quirked up in a lopsided smirk. “It isn’t the competition. I just don’t like to share.”

  “So, what exactly do I need to do to get my notebook back?” I eyed his bottom, wondering if I could just reach in his pocket and retrieve it. He really did have a nice butt. Maybe that’s what distracted me from grabbing my notebook and gave him time to swing around, that lopsided smirked aimed at me again.

  “Here’s what I’m thinking.” He leaned in as if to tell me the best kept secret outside Julia Robert’s anti-wrinkle treatment. “I’ll grab my friend. You grab your friend. We’ll get out of here before she starts a riot and he starts a bar fight over someone else’s girlfriend.”

  I turned to look at the guy he’d jerked his head toward. If I thought Mocking Guy was hot, his friend was Adonis. Attitude and all.

  “And?” It was a good excuse as excuses went to end this public torture. I had to leave the bar to get back the notebook I needed in order to write my story. Even Lisbeth couldn’t argue with that.

  The right side of his mouth quirked up to join the left in a full-ray smile.

  “And then we go have some fun.” Mocking Guy stood up, patted me on the bottom and said, “Go get your girl. We’ll meet you out front.”

  My rear tingled. Seriously, like shimmery little tingles. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had dared to touch any part of me that wasn’t a polite handshake. Not that it mattered since he was just warming up his moves for Lisbeth.

  Mr. Guy (we should be on first name basis after that bottom-pat, but I liked to keep clear boundaries) cut his way through the crowd, beelining for Adonis.

  I watched him go. Couldn’t help myself. I also watched the girls he passed watch him go. One reached for him as he squeezed between her and a table, her hand resting on his arm as if to test its withheld-power. Mr. Guy bent toward her, his hair flopping forward over his glasses. She, tiny little annoying-perfect thing that she was, went up on tiptoes to whisper in his ear. Mr. Guy threw back his head and laughed.

  Must be nice to make him laugh with you, not directly at you.

  Mr. Guy shook his head and kept moving, inching closer toward Adonis through the crowd. The faery girl turned and scanned the crowd, her gazing landing on me, hardening before she shrugged in a disgusted kind of way.

  Yeah. I knew that look. It said “As if.” And I knew the answer too: Never. Of course, she sighted me, not Lisbeth. If she knew his real target, she’d back down, claws retracted, without another glance. Instead, I got the death-ray vision look.

  Didn’t she know sidekicks were benign?

  FIVE

  Swallowing a sigh, I tripped my way back around to Lisbeth, pushing through the circle of men to the epicenter of beauty.

  I reached between the remainder of hovering males between me and the bar. “Lis. We’re leaving.”

  Grabbing my hand, she brought me through the crowd to her side. “Gentlemen, this is my friend, Jenna. She’s a world famous writer.”

  The men all made the polite-humor-the-friend noises, their eyes never straying from Lisbeth.

  I leaned in, desperate to get out of there and trade her for my notebook. Mocking Guy was hot, funny (at my expense) and intelligent. She wouldn’t mind meeting him. I mean, who would?

  “Lisbeth, seriously. We have to go. That guy took my notebook and he’ll give it back if we go hang out with him and his friend.” I struggled not to roll my eyes. “He wants to meet you. He committed theft to do it.”

  Lisbeth had a serious bad boy addiction and the idea of someone stealing to meet her had her eyes lighting up like a night game at Fenway. My stomach turned over. She was going to like him. She’d seen me talking to him and was already running her flirt-calculations behind those lit-up eyes.

  Lisbeth nudged bald-bouncer guy on the way out and we slipped past the line.

  “So?” She pulled out a tiny mirror and did a quadrant-by-quadrant check of her hair and make-up.

  “So what?” I watched the door to make sure he hadn’t convinced me to leave and then left me trapped outside without my notebook. I glanced at Lisbeth.

  He’d show.

  “So, this guy. He’s obviously hot.” Lisbeth grinned. “I noticed him sliding glances over the bar at me. Hopefully he’s worth more than just getting your notebook back. I’d hate for you to go home without your security blanket.”

  Sometimes I hated her. It was bad enough she got the guy without even talking to him, but referring to the handy-dandy as a security blanket – well, that was about the end of the night for me.

  Sucking in a breath, I did the dance. The one we did every time we went anywhere. Only, I didn’t typically feel nauseous as I did it.

  “Well, you can see he’s hot. He seems smart. He has a sense of humor if you count laughing at me.” I ran through our conversation. “Strong. He picked me up with one arm around my waist. Arrogant. He kept thinking if he said something, it must be so. Like buying me a drink and calling me Sunshine as if I’m five or something.”

  “What does he do?” she asked, shrugging her shoulders so the sackcloth-dress casually fell off one. Dear God, how did she do that?

  “For work?” Or for fun? Because that would apparently be torture me. “I don’t know.”

  “Does he live in town?”

  Had we discussed that? “I’m not sure where he lives.”

  “Well, what’s his name at least?”

  My gaze flashed back to the door, hoping he’d just walk out and answer the questions for himself. “Mocking Guy. But you can call him Mock.”

  Lisbeth raised her eyes and studied me. Her words came out slowly, as if she were talking to a very small child. “You don’t know his name? You dragged me out here to meet a guy and you don’t know all the important stuff?”

  “I told you, he’s smart, funny and relatively nice.”

  “Jenna,” she sighed my name. “You know better than that. You’ve never let a guy through without checking his stats for me before.”

  And there it was, laid out in vivid HD. The basis of our friendship. I was her gatekeeper. If Mr. Guy hadn’t had my notebook, I would have walked away right then.

  Lucky for me, Mocking Guy and Adonis chose that moment to exit the bar or I may have said something to kill my chance for handy-dandy retrieval. Even with them nearing I was weighing the odds of being able to re-create the plot points I’d outlined in the notebook.

  Mr. Guy’s gaze flowed over Lisbeth. I imagined him taking in every inch of well-honed girliness only emphasized by my plain waitress-looking self. His gaze turned my direction. His lips did that side-quirky smirk thing and my stomach dropped like coming over the top of a roller coaster.

  This guy was too hot, too interested in Lisbeth and too likely to laugh at me, but here I was blushing and on the verge of drooling. I was even stupider than I thought.

  So, I’d do the introductions, get them all hooked up, get my notebook and take off. If I ignored Lisbeth’s calls for three, maybe four, days she’d have moved on to the next post-Jeremy guy and I�
��d be rethinking my life, my friends and the universe.

  Mr. Guy’s smirk morphed into that full-ray smile as he turned back to Lisbeth and stuck his hand out.

  “Ladies.” Mr. Guy nodded one of those if this were two-hundred years ago it would have been a bow nods. “I’m Ben. This,” he tipped his head to signify Adonis. “Is Dane.”

  Dane took my hand, shaking it lightly in an offhanded way. “And you are?”

  The man was gorgeous. Like blindingly, stunningly, overwhelmingly gorgeous. The entire group was in the majors and I was in however many As signified ‘can’t catch the ball.’ I’d forever be proud that I somehow managed to stutter out, “J-Jenna.”

  Lisbeth held her hand out in that half-turned way that left a person wondering if she expected him to shake it or kiss it. Ben went one better. He took her hand, sparking that smile again, and tucked it in the crook of his elbow.

  Lisbeth looked from Ben – the guy who stole to meet her – to Dane – the guy who made George Clooney look dowdy. Before Dane could move away, she wrapped her other hand around his polo-clad bicep. Nudging each away from the club, not to mention me, she asked oh-so-innocently, “So, where’s this fun place we’re going?”

  Ben’s head angled toward her, his profile lit by the neon bar lights behind us. His expression wasn’t quite as innocent. “You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”

  With a tug, he pulled the little party down the street in front of me, my notebook sticking out of his pocket. Glancing over his shoulder, he had the annoying-hot-guy audacity to wink at me.

  I could seriously learn to hate this man.

  “Don’t worry,” Ben tossed over his shoulder. “I’m not that bad.”

  I slapped a hand over my mouth, surprised and yet not that I’d let slip my thoughts aloud.

  The Beauty Brigade continued down the sidewalk in front of me, comfortable enough in their place in the world to – rudely – walk three across.

  Two blocks from the bar, Ben stopped and slid Lisbeth’s reluctant hand off his arm. Leaning around her, he jerked his head at Dane, indicating the CVS we’d stopped in front of.