“Oh, my God,” the dark-haired woman says with delight. “You’re Tenn, aren’t you?”
Now I’m all charm and I push past Hunter to stick my hand out to her with a smile. “Yes, I am. And you are?”
She shakes my hand exuberantly and says, “I’m Gabby. I’m her best friend. And of course, you just met her brother, Hunter, who happens to be my fiancé.”
“Casey’s told me all about you and Hunter, as well as the rest of the gang,” I say warmly, not offering my hand to Hunter. Truth is… she hasn’t told me much, but they don’t know that and I want to get information.
“What the fuck?” Hunter says in exasperation. “Casey doesn’t talk about us to men. At all. So seriously, dude… who are you?”
Gabby makes a backhanded slap against Hunter’s chest and rolls her eyes at him before turning her attention back to me. “Casey told me about you… the other day when we were hanging out at the beach. I think she was quite smitten with you.”
Yeah, I don’t think smitten is a word I would ever use to describe Casey, but I have to appreciate Gabby’s enthusiasm. I’m also filled with a jolt of happiness as I realize that Casey has mentioned me to her best friend. That surely has to mean something, right?
“Any idea where she is tonight?” I ask casually, and then place a ten-dollar bill on the wooden countertop as the bartender sets my beer down.
Hunter shakes his head no, but Gabby’s eyes dart to the floor and then back to Hunter nervously. I don’t like that… not at all.
“Did something happen to her?” I ask with no small measure of dread in my voice.
“No, no,” Gabby assures me with an apologetic smile. “She’s fine.”
“Then where is she?” I ask again, now starting to run out of patience. “We had plans to get together when I got back in to town.”
“She, um…” Gabby starts to say, but then Hunter intervenes.
“Stay out of it, Gabby,” he warns in a low voice.
This causes him to get another backhanded slap to his chest as she gives him an icy look. “I will not stay out of it. Casey’s my bestie and she likes Tenn, and I think she may be making a really stupid mistake right about now.”
Now my blood pressure starts to skyrocket and heat creeps up the back of my neck. “Where is she?” I grit out.
“She went out on a date with some guy she met the other day on the beach,” she blurts out as Hunter throws his hands up in the air in defeat and plops back down on his barstool. “They’re at dinner right now.”
Motherfucker.
My hands clench tightly and I war with myself between the need to walk away and leave Casey and her fucked-up head behind, and the need to potentially rescue her from a life I know she’s not destined to lead.
“Tell me where the restaurant is,” I say to Gabby, wondering if I’m about to make a mistake by going after her.
Of course, Casey would be on a date at a restaurant that looks like you can’t get out of it without at least a two-hundred dollar bill. It’s a French restaurant in the downtown area of Nags Head and because it’s apparently very popular, it takes me forever to find a parking spot. I finally give up and ease my bike into the back alley behind the restaurant, not keen to leave it here, but my anxiety in reaching Casey outweighs my concern for my Harley.
When I walk into the restaurant, I’m immediately stopped at the door by a tuxedoed maître’d who looks me up and down with distaste. “Can I help you, sir?”
“I’m looking for someone,” I say, leaning right around the man to look into the restaurant. It’s all dark with candles on each table, romantic music in the background, and the smell of foie gras penetrating my nose.
It doesn’t take me two seconds to spot Casey’s golden hair, and I’m flooded with desire over how beautiful she is and white-hot anger that she’s sitting at a table having a romantic dinner with another man. Her hair is long and draped over her shoulders, but doesn’t do a damn thing to conceal the deep cleavage from the low-cut black dress she’s wearing.
She’s facing me with her elbows on the table and her chin resting on her clasped hands. It’s the posture of someone that is paying rapt attention to whatever her dinner partner is saying. The posture of someone who is immensely enjoying the conversation.
But upon closer inspection of just her face, I see something different and it heartens me.
Absolute boredom.
Complete indifference.
Maybe even a bit of regret.
This boosts my resolve over what I had originally planned to do… which was fucking drag her out of this restaurant.
I step by the maître’d, but he attempts to halt me with a hand on my forearm. “Sir… you can’t go into the dining room without a coat and tie.”
I don’t want to make a scene, so I dip my head down and speak in a low voice. “Get your hand off me before I fucking break it.”
The little tuxedoed man jumps backward as if I’d scalded him with boiling water. Just to alleviate his anxiety a bit, I add on, “I’ll just be a minute and then I’m out of here.”
“Of course, sir,” he says with a quavering voice.
I spin on my heel and enter the dining room, winding my way through cozily placed tables and sidestepping some dude playing a violin. I come up behind Casey’s date and watch as Casey finally lifts her eyes and sees me approaching.
I wish I could put into adequate words the expressions that cross her face, but they all happen so briefly, I’m not quite sure what I’m looking at. Happiness, desire, joy, sadness, regret, and shame.
Fuck… that’s a lot of damn feeling for one woman to have.
Walking up to her chair, I vaguely hear her date say something like, “And then, I quadrupled my portfolio and reinvested in Chinese agribusiness.”
Eesh. Fucking boring.
Casey’s eyes remain pinned on me. I reach out, take her gently by her upper arm, and pull her from the chair. “Come on. We’re going.”
I don’t spare a glance at her date… not at first, but then the dude makes the mistake of standing up and stepping into my path. “What’s going on here?”
“Casey’s leaving… with me,” I tell him simply.
He looks past my shoulder to Casey and says, “Casey? Shall I have security escort this man out?”
I lower my face to account for about the five-inch difference in our mutual heights and tell him quietly, “How about I escort you out of here and kick your ass up and down Main Street?”
The man starts stuttering, but then he’s forgotten. I turn to Casey and ask her, “Do you want to stay here?”
Her eyes are wide, a tiny bit fearful, but also sparkling with a vague bit of relief. She shakes her head at me.
“Then let’s go,” I say and start pulling her out of the restaurant.
I’m immensely relieved and gratified she’s leaving with me, but every step I take through the restaurant, my anger starts building again. Anger at her for even considering that douchebag sitting in there. Fury over the possibility that she may have already fucked him. Rage over the fact that she continues to seek out things that are not good for her.
By the time I make it out onto the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, my strides are so long and fueled by my acidic thoughts that Casey is practically running in her heels to keep up with me. It doesn’t slow me down though, and I steer her down the block and into the back alleyway where my bike is parked.
It’s dark and the air is humid, the alleyway lit by a single yellow bulb beside the back door to the restaurant. It casts a sulfurous tinge to the immediate vicinity, but the rest of the area is layered in heavy shadows.
We walk past the door and just before we reach my bike, I spin Casey and back her up into the brick wall. I step in toward her, bringing my body up against hers and holding her captive against the wall with my pelvis. She lets out a startled gasp, and I can barely make out the blue in her eyes from the thick darkness blanketing us.