by Lori Wilde
He wasn’t thinking of himself. He’d been in worse fights than this. Red was on his mind.
Where was she? He had to make sure she was safe.
He swiveled his head, but didn’t see her. Good, maybe she got out of the building unscathed.
Someone grabbed him around the neck, locked him in a choke hold. Someone with deeply muscled arms. Someone very strong.
The bouncer?
The grip around his neck tightened. Where the hell was Cal? Some partner he’d turned out to be.
Shane couldn’t catch his breath and his head throbbed. In his worry over the redhead he’d made a classic mistake. He’d forgotten to protect his flank.
“Let him go, you jackass!” Shane heard a woman holler.
Was it her? Was it Red?
He tried to turn his head to look for her, but between the pressure on his carotid and the smoke in the air, it was pretty nigh impossible to see anything more than the guy in the Chuck Mangione hat coming at him.
The trumpet player punched him in the breadbasket while the bouncer squeezed his neck so hard Shane feared his head was coming off. He gasped. Soon he was going to pass out.
Shit, where was Red?
That was the last thing he remembered until he came to a few minutes later. He was propped up beside the Dumpster in the back alley behind the nightclub. His lungs burned and his brain felt as if he’d had nails hammered through it.
Way to go, Tremont. No more undercover at Louie’s for you.
His boss was going to be steamed and Cal was going to get his promotion. All over a woman he’d never even met. He drew in an aching breath trying to rouse the energy to get to his feet. Then he heard the crisp snap-snap of stiletto heels clicking on asphalt. Gingerly, he raised his head and looked around.
There was Red.
Standing in front of him, her gorgeous legs positioned shoulder-width apart. The skirt she wore was extremely short, revealing a mile of coltish legs and creamy thighs. The stretchy material molded tight against her generous hips.
He was overwhelmed by the sight.
She met his stare openly, took his measure even as he took hers. No shrinking violet, this one.
Looking at her, he felt a sappy sloppy feeling light up his heart for no fathomable reason at all.
“Hey, there,” she said and squatted beside him in the alley. She smelled like a spice shop, hot and zesty. She made him think of a brownie he’d once had that was made with smoked jalapeño peppers. Tasty, but fiery.
“Hey there yourself,” he surprised himself by answering. By nature, he was not a flirtatious man, but something about her spurred changes in him. He was getting his first real eyeful of her up close and personal and definitely enjoying the experience.
“You make a habit out of this Sir Galahad thing?” That voice, vivacious and sultry as a tropical night, was as flat-out erotic as the rest of her.
Shane tried to shrug and ended up just wincing. So much for macho cool. “I hate to see women get pushed around by drunken jerk offs.”
“I could have handled the situation, but thank you anyway. It was sweet.”
Sweet. Hmph. He didn’t want her to think of him as sweet. He wanted her to see him as her own personal Hercules.
Hercules. Right.
“I’m afraid,” she said and tenderly ran a fingernail down his cheek, “you got the worst end of the deal.”
He nodded. “Forgive the line, but what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
“Who says I’m nice?” She winked.
“You’re out here with me. If you weren’t nice, you would have ditched me.”
“And leave Sir Galahad all alone? Not even a naughty girl is that cruel.”
“So you’re naughty? Is that the reason you come down to Louie’s and dance by yourself?”
She touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip. “Usually it’s a safe place to come blow off steam.”
“Safe’s not exactly the word that leaps to mind.” He jacked himself up higher against the Dumpster and held a hand over an aching rib, praying it was bruised and not broken. He flicked an apple peel from the cuff of his pants.
“The bald guy was new. A roadie for the band. Normally no one bothers me.”
“Ah. That explains it.”
“Lucky for you, Louie is my ex-stepfather.”
“Ex-stepfather?”
“My mother’s second husband.”
“How many husbands has she had?”
Red shrugged. “I lost count after three. Anyway, I convinced Louie not to call the cops.”
“Kind of you,” he mumbled.
She laughed and the sound of it lit him up inside. He was not a particularly humorous guy, but he had a sudden urge to spend the rest of his life trying to make her laugh.
“One small detail,” she said. “I promised Louie you’d pay for the damages.”
“Didja now?”
“It was that or the cops.”
“Smart call.”
“I thought it a fair exchange.”
His cheek was cut and one eye was swelled shut, but he felt like the king of the universe because she was safe and here with him and her long red hair was trailing across his bare arm as she leaned forward. And kissed him.
Gently, on the forehead, but it was still the most erotic kiss he’d ever had. Then she held out her hand and tugged him to his feet. She led him to her car. Took him to her apartment. Tended his wounds.
She let him sleep in her bed with the condition that he promised to keep his hands to himself. Even with bruised knuckles Shane had found it a challenge to honor that promise, because no woman had ever turned him on the way she did.
All night he lay awake, watching her sleep. By morning, he had decided she was the woman he was going to marry.
And he didn’t even know her name.
Chapter 9
What’ll you have?” The smooth voice of the woman behind the bar at Louie’s jerked Shane out of the past and back to the present. He blinked, reorienting himself to place and time.
“Club soda,” he said.
“Heavy drinker,” she commented dryly.
“Okay, add a splash of cranberry juice.”
She laughed and turned to get his drink.
Shane pivoted on his barstool. The place hadn’t changed much in three years. On a Monday night, without a band and this close to last call, the bar was empty except for hard-core drinkers. The bartender passed him the club soda and cranberry juice. Shane took a sip.
A hand clamped down on his shoulder. “Well, hell, look what the cat dragged in.”
Shane turned his head to see Louie Browning grinning at him. They shook hands. “Hey, you old sonofabitch, you haven’t aged a bit.”
Louie plunked down on the stool beside him and waved a hand at their surroundings. “This place keeps me young. How you been?”
“Good, good.”
Louie’s gaze dropped to Shane’s damaged hand. “Looks like things could be better. On-the-job injury?”
Shane resisted the urge to tuck his hand out of sight. He hadn’t expected Louie to be here this late. A strained awkwardness quickly replaced his delight at seeing a familiar face. Louie was Tish’s ally. Shane was on her turf. Why had he come here? What was he searching for?
“You talked to Tish.”
“No.” Louie shook his head. “Not lately. I just took a wild guess about the hand.”
He hoped Louie wouldn’t ask him any more questions. He didn’t want to explain about this injury, about his job, about his engagement to Elysee, about what had happened between him and Tish. He drained his club soda and cranberry juice, put a ten-dollar bill on the bar, and got to his feet.
“You leaving already? What? I forget the deodorant or something?” Louie pantomimed sniffing his armpits.
Crap. How was he going to get out of having this conversation? “I just gotta go.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the men’s restroom.
&nbs
p; Louie nodded.
Shane hightailed it to the restroom. The place was empty. He sank his shoulder against the wall and took a deep breath. Briefly, he closed his eyes and thought again of the first time he’d come into this bar. The first time he’d laid eyes on Tish.
Coming to Louie’s had been a bad idea. Why had he come here? He had to get out. He spun on his heel, pushed through the door, and stepped back into the bar.
Just in time to see Tish come skipping down the stairs, calling out, “Louie, I’ve come to pay back the two hundred dollars I owe you.”
Shane blinked, froze in mid-stride, unable to believe what he was seeing.
No, no, she couldn’t be here.
Tish stopped in the dead center of the bar as her gaze landed on him. “Shane,” she whispered on an exhaled breath.
“Tish.” He fisted his good hand.
Louie’s Blues Bar on Second Street filled with loss and pain and Tish. Shane felt as if he was fighting for his very soul. Three years ago, on this same spot, they’d first met and started their inevitable dance toward destruction. Why had wretched fate drawn them together again? Both back to this place, on the same night, at the same time.
He looked at her and she looked at him and time shifted under their feet, the past and present morphing together in keen weirdness.
“Are you really here?” she asked.
“I’m here.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know.”
Tish gave him a long searching look. A dozen different emotions flitted across her face like a slideshow from the past. For one brief second, he could have sworn he saw a tear in her eye, but no, it had to be a trick of the lighting. “Why aren’t you at the ranch?” she asked.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Me either. Unless I fell asleep and I’m dreaming this. Am I dreaming you?”
“Maybe.” He shrugged as if he wasn’t unnerved. “You always were uncanny.”
“Maybe we’re both dreaming.”
“Just a dream,” he murmured.
Shane sensed rather than saw Louie, the sly old fox, as he slipped around behind them and dropped two quarters in the jukebox. A couple of seconds later, Beyoncé began to sing “Crazy in Love.”
Their song.
Was he just dreaming? Only one way to tell.
He stalked the short distance between them, reached out to her with his good hand. “Dance?”
Her eyes rounded, but she didn’t take his hand.
“For old time’s sake?”
“For old time’s sake,” she echoed and sank her palm into his.
He guided her toward the dance floor, knowing this was insanity, but once in motion, he was unable to stop.
One last spin around the dance floor. That’s all it is.
But once he had her there, he didn’t know how to proceed with his damaged hand. He slipped his good arm around her waist, but felt off balance with his right arm cradled against his side.
Why had he started this?
She read him, obviously sensed his anxiety. Gently, Tish took his right hand in her left, interlaced their fingers and raised their joined arms.
Her eyes met his. The mood between them burned intensely.
“It’s our last dance,” she said.
“Yes.”
“So we should enjoy it.” Her eyes were like daggers, sharp and glistening, stabbing him deep.
“Yeah.” His throat was so tight he could barely force the word out.
They swayed to the beat, gazes welded. She sighed and the sound of her sigh, sweet and forlorn, seeped through him, unhinging coherent thought. And then she did something that unraveled him completely. Tish laid her head on his shoulder, buried her face against his neck.
His heart thumped. He tightened his grip around her waist. In that moment, she had him. He felt it. The deep pulse of sexual energy they’d always shared. The music hummed, vibrating the air, vibrating their bodies moving in faultless harmony.
“Shane,” she whispered, her lips touching the bare skin over his collarbone.
Her vulnerable voice cut him to the quick. Chill bumps slipped down his spine. He dipped his chin, pressed his nose against the top of her head, breathed deeply of her distinctive fragrance.
They swayed past a revolving beer sign. It cast blue fingers of neon over them, bathing the moment in pathos. Her hot body was pressed against him. He could feel every line, every curve, causing him to think things he should not be thinking. Her cheek lay pressed against his chest, inciting in him an old desire that should best be ignored.
“Tish.” Her name rolled from his tongue on a groan.
She pulled back and stared at him, studying his face, seeking answers to unspoken questions.
He met her gaze. He was sorry he had no answers to give.
She had eyes that were at once both sultry and mystical, eyes that held no slight amount of sorrow, tucked behind her brave smile. Her thick cascade of curly auburn hair tumbled down her shoulders like an angel’s mane. The look she gave him shot straight through his heart and made it hard to breathe.
He blinked, dazed, even as a small part of him buzzed with the magic of holding her in his arms again. He stared into her eyes and she stared into his, and Shane just felt lost.
Around them in the almost empty nightclub stretched rows of tables, and the staff turned chairs upside down in a higgledy-piggledy thrust of legs. The yeasty smell of spilled beer rode the air. On his tongue, in his mouth, was the taste of everything he’d lost.
Tish splayed her palm over his chest. Her eyes went wide as his heart rate quickened. It shook him up.
The song ended. The jukebox fell silent. The bartender announced last call.
And just like that, the dream was over.
The next morning, Tish was out running errands, struggling not to think about what had happened at Louie’s the night before or the significance of she and Shane both showing up at the bar at the same time, when her cell phone rang.
She pulled it out of her purse and flipped it open. “Capture the Moment Videos.”
“Tish, it’s Elysee.”
Guilt, immediate and ruthless, squeezed her stomach. “Um… hi.”
“Hi,” Elysee bubbled. “There’s a WorldFem luncheon today and I want to go. Shane’s rattling around the house all by himself. I think he’s a little down in the dumps because his physical therapy sessions aren’t going well. If you’re not otherwise engaged, I think this might be a prime time to start putting together the Our Love Story video for the wedding reception. You could get a head start on it and Shane wouldn’t have to be by himself when he’s feeling so low. But don’t tell him that I told you he’s bummed out. You know how proud he is.”
That she did. “You want me to go to the ranch right now?”
“Please.”
Aw, hell, she still hadn’t sorted out her feelings from last night. The last thing she wanted right now was to come face-to-face with Shane. “Um, I’m in line at the drive-through at the bank.”
“Well, after you finish that, of course.”
“Okay,” Tish agreed, because she didn’t know what else to say. This check had to go into the bank today or she was screwed in a hundred different ways. She had no real choice. But once the check was cashed, there was no turning back.
The car in front of her moved on and she drove up to the teller window.
“Great,” Elysee said. “Oh and by the way, we want you to come to DC next weekend to film our engagement party. Are you available?”
“Washington DC?”
“The one and only.”
Tish Gallagher in Washington DC, filming the first daughter’s engagement party? It was simultaneously a dream come true and a living nightmare.
Be careful what you wish for, Tish remembered Claire Kelley telling Delaney when she’d bought the veil. Or you just might get it.
“Um…”
“We’ll pay to fly you there, of course. Put you up at the Ritz
-Carlton.”
Tish Gallagher from South Houston living it up at the Ritz in Washington DC? Just yesterday she’d been eating Ramen noodles and dodging bill collectors.
“And we’re granting you exclusive video rights. Yours will be the only movie camera allowed into the party.”
“Really? An exclusive of the first daughter’s engagement? I don’t know what to say, Elysee.”
“Say yes. The party’s on Saturday. Please don’t tell me you have another wedding scheduled for next Saturday.”
“No.”
“Great, so you can do it?”
“Yes.”
She thought of having to spend the afternoon at the Benedict ranch with Shane, looking through old photo albums, and felt sick to her stomach. This is how Julia Roberts’s character must have felt in My Best Friend’s Wedding. Trapped into being nice to a woman she wanted to despise, but couldn’t because she was just so darned nice.
She stared at the phone, stared at the check, stared at the teller who was raising her eyebrow, waiting for Tish to make a move.
Taking a deep breath, she rolled down the window and did the irreversible. She handed the teller her deposit slip and the check.
It was official. Like it or not, she was committed to seeing this thing through.
“You’re out of your mind, you know that,” Elysee’s secretary, Lola, told her as they entered the WorldFem meeting, Secret Service escorts leading the way. “Leaving your man alone with his ex-wife. It’s insanity.”
“They won’t be alone. The ranch is crawling with people.”
“Yes, but you won’t be there to put a stop to any hanky-panky.”
“There’s not going to be any hanky-panky. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you?”
Elysee wasn’t going to let Lola’s opinion rattle her. She trusted Shane implicitly and odd as it might sound to someone else, she also trusted Tish. Whatever her faults, whatever the reason she and Shane had broken up, Elysee couldn’t help feeling Tish had integrity.
“They need time alone to heal the old wounds without me peeking over their shoulders.”
