“I don’t—”
“Ugh, denial is so boring,” Lindsey said, grabbing two more pint glasses and starting the intricate pour and wait system for Guinness. “Get into my back pocket.”
Ryan reached into the tight pocket of Lindsey’s shorts, pulled out two sticks of gum, a twenty-dollar bill, and a condom.
“Go,” Lindsey said. “Stock my garnishes and then take Sad Ken Doll someplace and cheer him up.”
It had been a long time since Ryan had gone home with a guy. Picking up at a bar was for other women, younger women. Women who hadn’t been burned quite as effectively as she had.
There was also the small matter of losing her job if management found out.
But like every job, there were ways around management, if a woman wanted it bad enough.
She glanced back at Harry and caught him staring at her.
His eyes flared and the bar fell away again, the whole world disappeared. He had some kind of magical power when he really looked at her, a way of making her feel like the only woman on the planet. And hundreds of lesser men had tried and never even came close to doing that. Of engaging the rusted and old machine of her desire.
This man did it in a look.
A sudden breathlessness seized her, and the fifteen minutes she had left on her shift was too much. The time it would take her to get up to his room was too much. The fact that he—serious and well-meaning—might not take her up on what she was going to offer, was a reality she had no interest in.
She wanted him, his scruffy face, the burning anger in his eyes, the beautiful symmetry of his body, the delicious humanity of his grief.
Without a second thought she slipped the condom in her pocket.
“Thanks Linds,” she said.
“No problem.” She wiggled her butt while Ryan tucked the twenty back in her pocket.
An asshole at the bar whistled.
“Oh, you wish, buddy,” Lindsey said.
“Hey,” the guy said, leaning across the bar toward Ryan. “You look really familiar to me.”
“Because you were in here last week.”
“No … my friend,” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder, vaguely referencing one of the other guys in suits with manicured hands behind him. “He says you were the Lips Girl like fifteen years ago. Is that true? Can you do the thing? The slogan—”
“Your friend is wrong,” she lied and dismissed the guy by turning her back on him. There were bigger things on her horizon than trying to put a shine on ancient history.
Ryan walked over to Harry and picked up his plate of half-eaten dinner.
“No wife?” she asked. “No girlfriend? No woman waiting at home for you? Don’t bother lying, I’ll be able to tell.”
He shook his head.
“Are you gay?”
That made him smile and again she felt that little spike of pleasure. Of a job well done. “I’m not gay and no one is waiting for me, Ryan.”
“Are you staying at the hotel?” she asked.
His burning blue eyes met hers, and there was no confusion, he knew what she was asking.
“I am.”
“I’m getting off in about fifteen minutes.”
Harry stood, a new urgency in his movement. He tossed several bills on the bar, but she pushed them back at him.
“It’s on me,” she said. “The Sister in Trouble special.”
By the shocked and blank look on his face it was obvious no one ever joked with him and she wondered if he had any friends. Why a man like him in what seemed to be the worst three days of his life showed up alone at her bar.
But when he did laugh it was a good one. Full-throated and deep, the kind of laugh that made other people smile. But not Manager Gary, who walked by giving Ryan a serious warning glare.
She took Harry’s plate and stepped away.
“Room 534,” he said.
She nodded once, the number tucked away.
“Ryan?” He said.
“Yes?”
“Hurry.”
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Between the Sheets Page 32