Charmed at First Sight

by Sharla Lovelace

  “Unlike someone else’s drink at this table,” Carmen said, leaning over to bump Lanie’s shoulder with her own.

  “You’re determined, aren’t you?” Lanie said, chuckling.

  “Actually,” Carmen said, with a fake little grimace as she nodded to someone in the distance, “I have a little something for the table.”

  I turned to see a beautiful tall vase of cut lilies being brought to the table, followed by a second person with multiple bowls of something to place around it. It smelled amazing. Hot and steamy. Cinnamon. Apples.

  Lanie clapped a hand over her mouth, blinking back tears as Carmen hugged her, and everyone seemed to be in on whatever made this presentation special. Crap. Maybe I could just put up a curtain.

  “Aunt Ruby would be so over the moon right now, my friend,” Carmen said, swaying with her. “We need a little of her here, tonight.”

  “Excuse me,” said a man’s voice at the mike. I swiveled around to see Nick up there.

  “Oh, shit,” Lanie said, looking at the empty chair her husband had vacated. “How did he do that?” She looked at Carmen then with wet eyes and rolled them, laughing. “Aunt Ruby.”

  Shit. Nick would see Leo from there, easy. But then again, he appeared to only have eyes for his wife as he grinned at her. I was hit with an enormous wave of envy for a love like that, and it was the most foreign feeling. I’d never in my life felt like I was missing anything or that I needed that, but watching them was like some kind of gut check.

  “Sing a song!” someone yelled from the back, but Nick just laughed.

  “Believe me, you don’t want that,” he said, bringing a round of laughs. “I just need about fifteen seconds of your time, so I can announce that my wife Lanie is going to be really, really sober for the next several months.”

  My jaw dropped, squeals went to beyond ear-piercing, and Lanie went red-faced with laughter and love as Nick smiled at her like she was the only person in the room. She put her hands around one of the bowls of baked apples and closed her eyes. I had to think there was something interesting there. Something intrinsically private.

  “Baby, since you picked me up in a diner parking lot and brought me here, it’s been a hell of a roller-coaster ride,” he said, an adorable grin on his face. The crowd went crazy with hoots and hollers. “I can’t imagine my life going any other way. I love you, and I can’t wait to meet our son or daughter. You’ve made me the happiest dad in the world.”

  Lanie blew him a tear-filled kiss. Instinctively, I turned in my seat to find Leo, and I did. Standing with a bottle in his hand, staring at his brother with a mixture of swelling pride and enormous regret.

  “You walked away from being my brother.”

  I turned back around. It wasn’t my business. But just as I did, it became Nick’s. He had left the microphone and was walking straight to the bar with singular focus.

  “Shit,” I muttered.

  “What?” Gabi asked.

  “Leo is bartending,” I said, pushing my chair back.

  Bash and Sully were on their feet in seconds, ready to back their buddy I’m sure, or pull him off of someone.

  I didn’t really know these people. I couldn’t very well tell them what to do, and a very irritated part of my brain was asking me why I cared, but I felt like someone needed to be Leo’s buddy in this scenario.

  Women parted for Nick like he was a hot knife through butter, moving aside and looking up at him adoringly as he approached the bar, probably wishing they were having his babies right then.

  I pushed my way through, since no one was wanting to have mine.

  “I’m working, Nick,” Leo said before Nick even opened his mouth.

  “Well, I was working yesterday and that didn’t stop you,” Nick said.

  “My bad,” Leo said, pouring a cocktail. “Won’t happen again.”

  “None of this is going to happen again,” Nick said, his hands going to fists. Noise and chaos erupted around us as someone started singing “I Will Always Love You.” Thank God for that. “I don’t know what your plan is, showing up here, disrupting my life, but—”

  “Nick, grow up,” Leo said, meeting his eyes.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s not all about you, little brother,” Leo said. “I have my own life and you have yours. I’ve made mistakes in mine, but I’ve learned how to make amends and move on. If you aren’t mature enough for that, that’s not my problem. But I can live wherever I damn well please, so like I said, I’m working. Congrats on the good news. Order a drink or move on.”

  His voice was soft and yet carried over the din, and I swear he never blinked. Which must have been a family trait, because from where I stood off to the side, Nick didn’t either. Time seemed suspended as they stared each other down, until Nick turned, walking away, back to the table where Sully and Bash stood like bodyguards in waiting.

  Leo visibly aged five years. His whole expression sagged as he watched his brother stride away in anger. He closed his eyes as if he were counting, then opened them, scanning the room for what had to be the eighty-fifth time.

  “You know, you could show a little more of that reaction?” I said, stepping in front of what would have been the next customer.

  “Hey!” whined a girl behind me with purple lipstick.

  He did a double-take on me, ignoring her.

  “Have you been there the whole time?” he asked.

  “Wow, that’s flattering,” I said, laughing, resting an elbow on the bar. “So, like I said, you could try a little more emotional connection and a little less tough love.”

  “Seriously.”

  “I mean, he’s already mad at you,” I said. “If you’re wanting to make good with him again, pissing him off more doesn’t seem like a good plan.”

  Leo leaned over that bar so close to me I could smell the mint in his mouth.

  “My story is not your business, either,” he said. He stood up, effectively dismissing me. “Next.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Men.

  They had the power to completely fuck up a fun night with nothing but words and some arrogance. Ugh.

  What had started as a celebration of all the good news, petered out into a cooler mood at the table with major people-watching and Nick doing his damnedest not to sulk but failing every ten minutes. Bash and Allie called it an early night way too early, which made Gabi and me look like we were crashing a double date.

  “You picked him up in a parking lot?” I asked Lanie, for the sheer sake of lightening the mood.

  She laughed. “I did. There was this condition in my aunt’s will that I had to be married in order to inherit her house—my house.”

  “Except that it was all a big lie,” Carmen added.

  “My Aunt Ruby was a character,” Lanie said. “And she concocted a big mess, but I didn’t know it was a mess—”

  “You forgot to mention that you’d lied to her that you were already married,” Nick said.

  “And living in California,” Carmen said. “Which was another lie since you were really in Louisiana.”

  “Yeah, that,” Lanie said, her eyes sparkling with remembered mischief. “Okay, so maybe I inherited some of Aunt Ruby’s stretching of the truth.”

  “She offered to pay me to come pretend to be her husband for a weekend,” Nick said.

  “Which turned into months,” Carmen said.

  “So, you aren’t from here?” I asked Nick, noticing he glanced back at the bar.

  “No, I was living about four hours from here at the time,” he said. “But I’m originally from farther south, near Corpus.”

  “So was my ex,” I said.

  “Blankenship, right?” Nick asked, and I nodded. “I used to work construction for B&B, and I think one of the owners was a Blankenship.”

  “Oh, small world,
” I said.

  The crowd got thicker and drunker. Louder. Especially in the middle. The far back edges held the people who didn’t know if they really wanted to stay. We ordered food from the restaurant side, scarfed down chips and hot sauce to absorb the alcohol, but the room had a definite tilt going on. Almost enough to make that microphone action look like something I might want to do. Just as I formed that thought, Gabi was suddenly up there.

  “Heyyyyyyy!” she squealed, doing a little shimmy.

  “Oh…” I said, waving at her. “This can’t be good.”

  “We need to go get her,” Lanie said.

  “Or go join her,” I said, pushing my chair back. “Come on, let’s do a ladies’ version of ‘Ride a Cowboy.’”

  “I’m entirely too sober for this,” Lanie said, getting to her feet.

  “I’m entirely too everything,” I said, glancing back at Leo for the hundredth time. He wasn’t looking at me. He wasn’t even looking our way anymore. It was as if he’d figured out how to block our table from his room-scanning spidey vision.

  Carmen, Lanie, and I made our way up to the stage to wrap our arms around each other and a giggling, nearly-crying-with-alcohol-induced-emotion Gabi.

  “Y’all,” she kept repeating. “I love y’all so much. Y’all are my tribe, you know that?”

  We just barely got the song going when I saw movement to my left. Which meant nothing, really. It was like a friggin’ ant mound in there, people everywhere. Then something went lopsided as Gabi went up.

  Up. In the air, as someone assigning himself the job picked her up to straddle him as we sang about saving a horse and riding a cowboy. Gabi, a few reactions too late, whooped a couple of times before realizing she was being dry-humped with strange hands on her ass.

  “Hey,” I said, frowning. I let go of Lanie and pawed at the man’s hands groping Gabi. “Hey, that’s not cool. She’s drunk, man.”

  “So am I,” he laughed, leering at her before burying his face between her breasts.

  “Stop!” I yelled, pushing at his head.

  “Put—me down,” she said weakly as he jostled her again, her face going pale.

  “Dude—”

  Up she went again as Sully was there, lifting her effortlessly off cowboy-man and down from the stage just in time for her to grab someone’s empty beer bucket off a table and hork for all she was worth.

  “She should have puked on y—” I began, my words cut off by cowboy-man’s putrid mouth on mine and the sound of Lanie yelping and struggling next to me. Boos from the crowd replaced the cheering. I shoved at him, screaming in his mouth, but his hand held my head by my hat.

  “Get the fuck off—” Lanie yelled, right as he left my mouth and landed on hers.

  Use what you have. Everything slowed down, and I took inventory. I didn’t have much. I didn’t have the weapon heels or the ring, but I stomped down on his foot as hard as I could with my wedges, and as soon as he lifted his face and let go of us I swung. My left fist landed square into his nose.

  The cracking noise was nasty and the blood was even nastier, but the howling was worth it. Out of nowhere two Leos appeared. Or since it was in slow motion, I realized it was a Leo and a Nick, one yanking the guy into a full twist with his hands bent painfully behind him, and one grabbing Lanie protectively with one hand over her stomach.

  “You’re out of here,” Leo growled, shoving the guy into the back wall.

  “She hit me!” he cried.

  “You’re disgusting!” I yelled, wiping my mouth as I grabbed my hat from his still-fisted hand and looked it over. No blood. I shoved it back onto my head.

  “Are you okay?” Leo asked Lanie, concern for her heavy on his face as he twisted the guy’s arms tighter.

  She was already wrapped up in Nick, but she nodded. “I’m fine,” she said with a body shiver. “I need twenty showers, but yes, thank you.” She gave her husband a pointed look until he nodded reluctantly at Leo.

  Leo shook his head and turned to me as a security guy took the asshole off his hands.

  “I’ll sue you!” the guy yelled. “I’ll sue this whole place.”

  “Please do,” Carmen said. “I can’t wait.”

  “Are you okay?” Leo asked me as if no one else had said anything. He grabbed my hand, which was swelling around the knuckles, leading me off the stage without another word.

  “I’m—I’m fine,” I said, following behind him like a puppy. I saw the scraped-up knuckles and the bruising, but it didn’t really hurt much. Liquor and adrenaline.

  I’d just punched a man in the nose.

  Me.

  I couldn’t wait to tell Thatcher. He’d shake his head and roll his eyes but secretly be proud. Jackson would whistle into the phone.

  Jeremy would be mortified.

  “Oh, my God, I wish Jeremy could have seen that,” I blurted as we went behind the bar. Leo grabbed a towel and filled it with ice.

  He looked up from his task. “Because?”

  “Shit, I said that out loud?” I said, wincing when he pressed his work against my knuckles. “Ow.”

  I felt it now.

  “Keep that on there as long as you can tonight,” he said. “It’ll be better in the long run.”

  “Punched a lot of people?” I asked.

  He narrowed his eyes, letting his focus move over my body. “One or two. Are you okay, otherwise? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  I grimaced. “He kissed me.”

  Leo curled his lip, and my toes tingled.

  “I saw.”

  “With his tongue.”

  “You should have bitten it off,” said the girl with purple lipstick, back and waiting for a drink from the other bartender. The one who had had to take over when Leo went all superhero. “That’s nasty.” She then looked Leo up and down. “But him vaulting over this bar to take that guy down was the hottest thing I’ve seen in years.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him. “You vaulted?”

  He smirked. “I don’t really remember.” Looking around in that way of his again, I felt cool, detached Leo coming back. His gaze landed on Nick and Lanie at our table, grabbing their stuff to leave, and a furrow deepened over his nose. “Shit.”

  “What?” I asked. “Lanie’s okay.”

  “That just had to happen with me here,” he said under his breath. “He’ll find a way to make it my fault. Say trouble follows me or something.”

  “Does it?”

  It was a simple question, but the myriad things that passed over his face were anything but simple.

  “In Nick’s mind it does,” he said after a pause. Shaking his head as if his own mouth had betrayed him. “It doesn’t matter—”

  “Hey,” I said, grabbing his arm. His skin was hot and I temporarily forgot what I was going to say. His dark eyes traveled from my hand up to my eyes. “You—you did good over there. You helped his wife. You helped me.”

  A hint of a smile touched his lips, and it had to be the whiskey but dear God I went weak in the knees.

  “You handled things pretty well yourself, Roman-off,” he said. “Used what you had.” He lifted the towel and gingerly touched my finger. “Would have done a lot more damage with that rock you had.” His eyes met mine with the silent question. An answer I wasn’t ready to voice. “Wouldn’t have figured you for a southpaw,” he said instead.

  “Like you.”

  He tilted his head slightly. “How’d you know that?”

  “You’re not the only observant one,” I said. He gave a silent chuckle and nodded to the increasingly impatient cobartender who kept doing a neck jerk to indicate I needed to get on the other side of the bar. “Do I need to vault, too? Because I don’t think I can do it as gracefully or hot as you evidently did.”

  He looked down at my bare legs in the mini dress. “Pretty su
re it would be hot, but—”

  “I’d land on my face,” I said.

  “And no one wants that,” he said, not missing a beat. He pointed where to go. “Better to leave how you came. But you never answered me.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Why do you wish Jeremy would have seen you do that?”

  I needed to start carrying duct tape for my mouth.

  “Shock value, I guess,” I said. “Because he would have despised it.” I saw Leo’s look. “No, he didn’t do a number on me or anything to me. I’m just—”

  “Telling me it’s none of my business?” Leo asked.

  I pointed at him and stifled a grin. “That.”

  He reached out and adjusted my hat, and I was struck with the familiarity—the intimacy of the gesture. Which zinged me back in time to yesterday’s ice-cream-thumb-to-lip escapade. Which made my tongue dart out to run along my lip before I could think better of it. Which made his gaze drop to watch. Which made me grip the counter closest to me before I swayed or swooned into him.

  Holy fucking hell, I needed to get out of there.

  “I’m gonna—” I said, pointing toward where my new friends for the day were leaving.

  “You two aren’t driving,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Around the corner?” I laughed. “No. We parked at her shop and walked in anticipation of this. She can crash in my bed tonight. I’ll take the couch.”

  “Don’t walk alone either,” he said. “Nick,” he called out with a wince, as if that was the last thing he wanted to do.

  “Hey, don’t,” I said, grabbing his arm again. I didn’t need a babysitter, or a rescuer. Again. “I can take care of—”

  “Sully,” he called out as well, making both of them turn. “Can one of you make sure these two get to the florist shop okay?”

  Carmen was arm in arm with Gabi, who managed to grin while still looking a sickly shade of green.

  “No problem, we got this,” Sully said.

  Nick stopped walking and looked at Leo. Looked hard. As if everything he wanted to say could just be shoved out there that way. I wasn’t sure if it was Thank you for rescuing my wife, or Fuck you for thinking I would let two inebriated women wander off in the dark alone. Lanie moved in front of her silent husband, smiling up at Leo.