Scanning her beautiful skin, I counted five very normal freckles across the bridge of her perfect nose. “Stop. You still only have five freckles. Your freckles are freckles, and you’re beautiful.”
“And you,” she said turning to face me, “are actually putting make-up on your face. I know damn well it’s not for Fran. What gives?”
I stared at her blankly.
“Holy crap, you like Kade.”
“No. Yes. No.”
“You can’t fix him, Sam,” she whispered. “He’s not broken and bleeding. It’s something inside his mind, babe.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to fix him…”
Bree sucked in her cheeks. “Really? You’re standing in front of a mirror putting lip-gloss on and I can see in your head, I can see it…”
The slamming of the trailer door and hooting alerted us to Dylan and Fran’s arrival. Grabbing our coats, we followed their voices and found them lounging on one of the couches in a deep conversation about the healthy effects of drinking red wine as opposed to beer. Fran was going off on one of his tangents, stopped, looked me up and down, smiled and said, “You look nice tonight,” and continued his rant.
Nice. Isn’t that the adjective every woman wants to hear?
Fran’s rant took us all the way through the drive into town to a huge bar called Shenanigans, where a decent sized crowd sat drinking and listening to people horribly singing Karaoke. I pointed Dylan to the empty booth closest to the exit. “Let’s sit back here.”
Natalie waved to us from the bar and skipped over with a round of beer in her arms and winked, “First round is on me! And I ordered chips and dip; it’s so delicious here. So good.”
Fran attacked poor Natalie with another enthralling conversation, explaining what the rest of us had heard him drone on about for the entire car ride there, how healthier a glass of red wine is for your body. Dylan laughed and shook his head as Natalie sat listening closely to everything Fran hit her with.
After another round, I was bored out of my mind listening to Fran and Natalie telling me what I needed to do to live a healthier lifestyle, and Bree looked about ready to stick a fork in one of their eyes. In one large gulp, I drained my beer in front of the both of them and slammed my bottle down against the table hard. When the chips and dip arrived, it just got worse. As soon as Fran tasted the chips and dip, he would not shut up about it. Would. Not. Shut. Up. Maybe it was just me. Maybe I was losing my patience and easily irritated. I looked at Dylan and Bree who both wore the same expression as I did. No, it was all Fran.
“Lainey, you have to try this sauce,” he moaned, through a mouth full of chips.
It’s dip, not sauce. I took a chip because I was starving, but I didn’t feel like dipping into a huge bucket of dip where everybody was double dipping their saliva. Ugh.
“Lainey, just dip it in the sauce. This sauce is delicious. You have to try it. Dip it in the sauce. Just dip it in the sauce,” he pushed.
What the hell kind of sauce fetish owns this moron? “Jesus, Mary, and Jerome…I don’t want to just dip it in the sauce,” I said calmly. I wanted to slam my fist into the stupid bowl of chips to shut him up, but instead, I sat cool and composed, plotting how I was going to get him and Natalie together, so he would leave me the hell alone. I grabbed Dylan’s beer and downed the rest of his as he sat back beerless, and laughed at me.
When I looked up, my heart nearly surged out of my chest. Kade had arrived and was walking his way over from the door. While it was true that, everyone seemed to turn to look at him with some sort of fear, I just looked at him with awe, knowing how strong he must be to go against his comfort zone, and he was drop dead gorgeous. Dressed casually in a worn pair of jeans and a beaten to hell leather jacket, he looked the part of a dangerous, reckless, and completely out of control man. It made my cheeks flush, and it made my insides heat, knowing that he came here because I asked him to.
“Hey,” I said, sliding over in the booth to make room for him.
“Hey,” he mumbled back, smoky grey eyes blazing at me through thick dark lashes. Leaning in slowly towards me, he tentatively brushed his hand against my forearm. Bringing his face closer to mine, he whispered, “Stunning.”
Holding steady eye contact with him, my breath faltered, and what felt like a goddamn inferno surged through my body, slapping me in between my legs with such a forceful heat that I suddenly believed in self-combustion.
“Okay, ladies and gents. This next round is on me. What is everyone having?” Fran shouted out across the table. “Kade, my man. You have to try the sauce, it’s outstanding.”
Everyone ordered a beer, but Fran came back five minutes later with a beer for everyone and a glass of red wine for me, and a glass of red for him.
“Please tell me you did not just get me a wine on purpose,” I said.
Fran winked at me from across the table, “It’s a wonderful year. Have a sip.”
“Oh, my God, I’m about to lose it,” I muttered, and before I could say anything else, Fran interrupted me with more of his tactful conversation skills.
“So, Kade. It must be very gratifying to be such an accomplished and famous writer. You must have a plethora of women adoring you and throwing themselves at you. I bet you chew them up and spit them out, eh?” Fran asked, clearly trying to alert me to his presumptions about Kade’s promiscuity. I knew, because he smirked at me after his pointed asinine question.
“Not if they taste good,” Kade deadpanned, and then he slid his beer over to me, grabbed my glass of wine, and took a sip. “Most of them don’t taste very well, mind you, but, once in a while…Once in a while, you find someone that you taste and it changes the way the rest of them do, and no one seems as sweet or delicious.” His eyes locked on mine.
Fran was speechless, for once. And Kade? Kade was sitting next to me, stealing the air from my lungs with his closeness and his words, and I just burst out laughing. You know, one of those nervous, psychotic sounding laughs that end with a snort. Bree fell into a fit of giggles next, followed by some chuckles from Dylan and Kade.
Fran looked around at the people who seemed to be staring at us, and his cheeks reddened, “Lainey, try to control yourself. People are looking over here.”
“Oh, my God, Francis, stop.” I downed the rest of my beer. “That beer was delicious, Kade, thank you. I think I want a cup of coffee now,” I laughed.
“Lainey, we’re at a bar, stop with the coffee. You’ve probably had more than enough caffeine today. I’ll get you another glass of wine. No more caffeine; I watch your hands tremble enough. And you don’t even like beer. It’s like you don’t know what’s good for you.”
“Francis,” I threatened, “if you don’t stop this inappropriate compulsion with my eating and drinking habits, I believe I might cause you great bodily harm with some form of male testicular torture,” I said, laughing hard.