First Date - [Bridesmaid's Chronicles 01]

by Karen Kendall

  After looking at the menu, she asked in dry tones, "What, exactly, is chicken-fried steak?"

  "You've never had chicken-fried steak? You've gotta be kiddin' me. Great stuff: comes with a beak and tail feathers on the side." He laughed at her expression. "It's country-fried steak, Jersey. Served with their famous white cream gravy."

  He ordered a T-bone himself, while she decided to risk the artery-clogging white gravy and the fictitious beak. Alex also insisted that she try some Texas Torpedoes: deep-fried jalapeno peppers stuffed with cream cheese. The Cavalli jeans were definitely going to pop off her, revealing her panty-free state to the entire patio grove below. Sydney wondered if she could loosen the leather lacing before she had to dance in them.

  Once the waitress had taken their order, Alex raised his margarita glass to her. "To our first date."

  And no doubt our last . But she clinked her mug against his and drank.

  "Which is not, by the way, a mercy date. You're a beautiful woman, Sydney. But more important, you're a fascinating one."

  "Hey, don't forget about my cute knees, you professional flirt."

  Alex leaned back and folded his arms. Dark hair emerged from the rolled cuffs of his shirt, and she wondered if he had much more on that broad Texas chest of his. "Jersey, I'm beginning to think you have a very low opinion of me."

  "Whatever gave you that idea?"

  "That sweet mouth of yours. The one that just won't quit." He stared at it, bringing heat to her cheeks again. "You're all about autumn, honey. Looks like God rolled you in warm milk and dipped you in cinnamon."

  "You sure it wasn't cayenne?"

  "Shhhhh." He actually reached across the table and put his finger gently on her lips. The gesture was bold and possessive and should have annoyed her. Instead it switched on a glow deep inside her.

  Alex didn't seem self-conscious about it at all. He trailed the finger down so it rested only on her bottom lip. "I have a challenge for you, Sydney. You have to listen to five compliments in a row without saying a word or deflecting them in any way."

  "And what happens if I meet the challenge?" she said against his finger.

  A slow smile spread across his face, rode like a bandito through all the five o'clock shadow. "Why, you get a reward." His voice was sex-drenched.

  A tremor ran through her. "And if I don't?"

  "Then we start all over again until you do." He trailed his finger from her lip to her chin, tracing the contours there before dropping underneath, making the lightest of figure eights against the sensitive skin of her throat. Then he was in the hollow, at her clavicles, and back up to her chin, which he took in his hand.

  Her breathing had quickened, and every centimeter of skin he'd touched felt awakened, bathed in strong spirits. This guy was no mere professional flirt. He was a master manipulator. But she couldn't make herself care.

  He withdrew his hand as the waitress approached with a platter of Texas Torpedoes, effectively separating them. She blinked at the jalapenos and wondered how to get out of eating one, but she didn't have a chance. Alex plucked one and, after making sure it wasn't going to burn her, held it to her lips.

  She grimaced and looked down at it dubiously.

  "Jersey, you still look cute cross-eyed, but if you're not careful they'll stick like that."

  Her eyes flew to his amused ones as he rubbed her lips with the hot pepper. Slowly she opened her mouth to take it in, then bit down. His pupils widened and darkened as she licked her lips, savoring the spiciness against the creamy filling. It tasted surprisingly good, and not as hot as she'd feared. But there was enough heat to make her reach for her margarita in short order, and she drained a third of it. Tequila and triple sec began to hum through her veins.

  She looked around at the casual, boisterous crowd and felt herself relaxing, amused that even in jeans and cowboy boots, she was one of the dressier women there. The Pucci silk halter and dangling earrings set her apart, but nobody seemed to notice or care. She stopped obsessing about the fact that she wore not a stitch of underwear.

  After signaling for two more margaritas, Alex bit the tip of one of the jalapenos and eyed her lazily. "Are you ready to meet the challenge?"

  "I can't. You know I'm going to talk back." Sydney blushed and twisted her ring.

  "You'll talk back to your own damn pallbearers, Spinelli. 'Hey, you on the front left corner! Higher, please. And you in the middle, pick up the pace you're jolting me, damn it.' "

  "I will not!"

  "Bet me. It's one of the things about you I find irresistible."

  "You're calling me a nag and irresistible in the same sentence?"

  "I never said you were a nag. That's a demerit, Jersey. No extrapolating insults out of my compliments. See, we've got to start over."

  Sydney rolled her eyes and finished off her 'rita. The waitress appeared conveniently, whisked away their empties and supplied them with new drinks.

  "Your coloring and your brisk personality," Alex said, "remind me of October. Pumpkin pie with vanilla ice cream. French toast with butter and maple syrup. Red orange foliage, just touched by frost in the early morning. And good brandy in a crystal snifter, warmed by the palm of my hand."

  His voice low and mesmerizing, he managed to say all of these things without being cheesyhow, she didn't quite know. She was still stuck on that last phrase: warmed by the palm of his hand. She could think of several parts of her that would greatly enjoy being warmed by his palms. She squirmed and reached for more tequila.

  "What, no smart-ass comment? Are you falling asleep on me?" She shook her head. "Okay, then that was a good start. But those weren't actually complimentsthey were just images to establish the right atmosphere."

  "Lull me into compliance?"

  "Yeah, pretty much. So here we go. You, Sydney Spinelli, have the most gorgeous, thick, red bronze hair I've ever seen, and I want to feel it on my bare chest."

  Her eyes widened, and her tongue stuck to the roof of-her mouth.

  "Your eyes are full of warmth and wit, and they reveal more than you know. I particularly love seeing them go cloudy when you're turned on."

  Syd dove for more margarita.

  "Your nose is one of my very favorite things about younope, be quietbecause it's one of the keys to your personality. It begins with a high, proud bridge and it's long on character. It culminates in a very sensitive tip and small, private nostrils. You have a strong nose, Jersey, but it's pretty and vulnerable just where you'd least expect.

  "We've talked about your mouth, darlin', but not about the two little arrows that form in your cheeks when you smile. They point upward to the sunshine. And then there's that dauntingly stubborn chin of yours, which you brandish out in front like a bazooka. Let's call it a charming chin."

  Sydney wanted him to stop, yet she didn't want him to stop. She couldn't recall anyone ever seeing her this closely, much less sharing his thoughts out loud. These weren't your typical manufactured sweet nothings. Certainly nobody had ever told her that her chin was charming.

  Her natural cynicism told her that he spouted a lot of bull. But an insidiously female aspect of her purred and stretched and twitched, curling around his words.

  Alex wasn't done with her charming chin yet. "Your chin, sweetheart, is so stubborn that it refuses to dimple, even though it's got a clear indentation right there in the middle where the damn thing should go. Like you had a dimplectomy or something."

  She couldn't help but grin at that one.

  "Yeah, see? Your eyes crinkle at the corners, your cheeks open up, the little arrows jump out and you glow. But no blasted dimple. Like your chin is too studious to join in the fun."

  She ducked her head, blushing. "Stop!"

  "Hush, or we start all over again, remember?"

  "That was five!" she protested.

  "Nuh-uh. You've got to let me finish five. I wasn't done with your chin."

  "What else could you possibly have to say about it?"

  "I don't know,
but you interrupted my train of thought. This verbal stuff is tough for me. I'm a numbers guy, just like you. I see the world in columns and figures, not prose." He took a large swallow of margarita and settled back in his chair. "Now, where was I?"

  After something about her shoulders, the crazy man, he started up about how she was generous and sweet and a bunch of other crap. Thank God their entrees arrived and made him stop.

  But Sydney sat up a little taller, unconsciously debating whether or not straightening her "fabulous" shoulders was worth the inevitable thrust of her breasts against the silk halter. What if he commented on those? She wouldn't put it past him.

  Suddenly she realized that, though it was nice to hear the compliments, they didn't really matter all that much. She liked the fact that he found her attractive, but what seemed to engage Alex was her sense of humor and her intelligence, and the fact that she'd helped him with his mother. Alex liked her for herself. She didn't need to be a beauty queen. She didn't need to be a Kiki or a Julia.

  She was touched that he was trying so hard to make her feel beautiful, though. More than his specific words, it was the caring gesture: He felt she needed to hear them. It made her warm inside.

  With the posture of an empress, she sliced into the vast portion of chicken-fried steak before her to find it tender and mouthwateringly good. If she ate the entire thing, she'd no longer have shoulders, because she'd be the shape of a beach ball. Syd decided she didn't care. The cream gravy was nectar of the gods, and if the Roberto Cavallis blew off her thighs, she'd just shake her naked caboose and keep on eating.

  "I do like a voracious woman," Alex commented.

  She entertained embarrassment briefly, then decided it would ruin the taste of the food. If her plate had arrived with a beak or tail feathers on it, she would have used them to sop up more gravy.

  "Would you like me to get you the recipe for that?"

  " No . I'd have to be clothed by a tentmaker."

  "Stick with me, kid. I don't care if you're clothed at all." Alex shot her another sex-drenched grin, and her blood heated and thickened to the consistency of Gristmill gravy. If the man continued to look at her like that, and make comments like that, she couldn't be held responsible for her actions, could she?

  * * *

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sydney almost cried over the fact that she had not a square millimeter of room for something called H.D.'s Chocolate Supreme. It consisted of fudge pie, two scoops of vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup, whipped cream, pecans and a cherry. The dessert looked better than sexwell, maybe not sex with Alex, but sex with the average human male.

  Sex with Alex was something that she really should not be thinking about, which meant that she couldn't not think about it.

  She entertained him greatly by reading the bill upside down and instantly informing him what the tip would be at 18 percent, 19 percent and 20 percent. Testing her margarita-driven math skills, he asked for 18.5 percent and then 19.3 percent, and she impressed him by supplying each figure within ten seconds.

  "I might just have to hire you, Jersey," he said.

  "No, Kimball, I think I'll hire you ."

  "I wouldn't make such a great lackey."

  "Oh, and with this chin, I would?"

  They started for the exit and she preceded him down the wooden stairs. When she didn't hear his boot-steps following, Syd glanced behind her, only to find him at the top of the flight, mouth slightly open and eyes half lidded. "Alex? Are you coming?"

  "It's a distinct possibility," he muttered, almost too low for her to hear.

  Oh, God. The Cavallis and her commando state. She'd forgotten. But at this point, she'd had far too much tequila to blush. Instead she cocked a hip and placed a hand on it, arching her brows. This was fun.

  She searched Alex's face as he made progress down the stairs, and noted that his eyes were a little glazed. She experienced a small surge of wicked female power, and liked it too much.

  She marveled at the effect a simple pair of jeans had on poor Kimball.

  Don't be silly, Sydney. With all the worries over his mother and marketing bizarre emu products, the guy just hasn't been laid for a week or two. It's just a simple seven-digit phone number that separates Tessa from his fly.

  But as they walked the very short, moonlit distance to Gruene Hall from the Gristmill and Alex actually took her hand in his, she found it easy to forget that.

  Historic Gruene Hall, too, could have been on the set of a spaghetti Western. As Alex explained it, just about anyone who was anyone in country or blues had performed in the place. Willie Nelson, Aaron Neville, Hank Williams III, Jerry Jeff Walker, George Thorogood, Joe Ely and Little Feat had all played Gruene Hall fairly recently.

  Tonight, though, they would apparently see a band called Two Tons of Steel, and Alex was friends with the lead guitarist, Dennis Fallon.

  Gruene Hall, Texas' oldest dance venue, was all about rough wood, neon beer signs, cheering fans and boot scootin'. Two Tons personified good-natured rockabilly with an infectious beat, and Sydney understood that she'd finally stepped into the heart of Texas.

  Alex bellied up to the bar, dragging her by the hand behind him, so that she bumped hips and nuzzled ears with total strangers. They couldn't have been more affable, moving aside as best they could in the crowd.

  The front room of the place was full of wobbly wooden tables, littered with pitchers of beer and bare elbows. Syd averted her eyes from a few more animal heads on the wall, but fell in love with the old iron pipe stove that must heat the room on cold nights not that she could imagine a cold Texas night at the moment.

  Gruene Hall stayed true to the times in which it was built and did not feature modern improvements like air-conditioningjust a few overworked, struggling ceiling fans. The noise level was impressive. Several hundred pairs of boots swaggered, clomped, two-stepped and tapped on the creaking nineteenth-century floors, punctuating the roar of conversation, shouts of laughter and lazy insults.

  Two Tons of Steel played in the actual hall behind the front bar, accompanied by enthusiastic whoops, hollers and whistles. I-can't-dance Sydney felt her hips swinging of their own accord, and Kiki's boots forced her toes to tap.

  "Hey, Red, let go o' that loser and come dance with me," said a rangy blond guy with a small hoop through his ear.

  Sydney grinned, and one of Alex's hands tightened on hers as he swung around with two Shiner Bocks in the other. "You ditchin' me already, Jersey?"

  She shook her head and shouted to the other guy, "Sorryhe's got beer!"

  "Shallow wench," Alex said into her ear as she took a long draught of the beverage she'd once despised and found this flavor good, too. "C'mon."

  They somehow threaded their way into the hall, where Two Tons presided over the party, looking like they couldn't believe they got paid to have this much fun.

  Kevin Geil, vocalist, wore a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his biceps, a pair of ancient jeans over his swinging hips and a straw cowboy hat. He had a voice like liquid mesquite and he poured it liberally over the crowd.

  Dennis Fallon's fingers shot lightning over the neck of his electric guitar, his infectious smile brighter than a West Texas moon. In shades and an old-fashioned fedora, he could have been a youthful 1930s mobster who'd lost his suit and gained a sense of humor.

  The other members of the band exuded Lone Star energy and talent: Chris Dodds on drums, Ric Ramirez, upright bass and harmony vocals/lead vocals, and Denny Mathis on steel guitar. Two Tons' music was energetic, light on its feet, fast, full of life and just plain fun.

  "We'd like to do a little song for you now. It's about a Cadillac," said Kevin.

  The band broke into their signature song and the crowd yelled. A few of the dancers even went for the tabletops. "That's us in about half an hour," Alex shouted.

  "Oh, no, I don't think so." Sydney had never danced on a table in her life, and didn't plan to start on a night when she had on no underwear.

&
nbsp; "Well, I got a babyshe's so doggone sweet," Kevin sang.

  " I love to slip inside and caress her seat I slip behind the wheel, ooh what a thrill, 1 got a baby made of two tons of steel! Shake it, baby "

  The hall became a blur of swinging backsides, dipping torsos, big hair and wide grins. Sydney protested as Alex hauled her into his arms and began to sway, boot scoot and rock with her. All she knew how to do was shift her weight from one foot to the other and occasionally cock a hip. But that seemed to suit him just fine for now.

  Being next to Alex or under his arm in the truck had quickened her pulse. Being flat up against his chest and pelvis completely undid her. That sandal-wood aftershave, the breezy scent of detergent on his soft shirt, the leather of his beltthey all intoxicated her. And when he unexpectedly slid his hands from her waist and took one of her own, when he spun her out into the crowd and then reeled her in again, she was all his.

  She forgot about embarrassment and ego and followed his lead, their fingers clasping them into one sinuous, graceful muscle. She felt her hair fly out around her, and tipped back her head and laughed as he dipped her. All that stood between her and the floor was his strong grip and one of Kiki's boot heels. Then she flew upward and he spun her into the crowd again.

  Kevin sang about a pretty little rockin', rollin' redheaded girl and Sydney flushed with pleasure. Alex lip-synced along with him, looking straight into her eyes, and heat stole through her.

  She felt that the next song was hers: "I'd Do Any thing." I'd do anything to keep you next to me but she wouldn't let her lips form the words. They were too needy, too revealing.

  During "Sweet Elena," Alex brought her close against his body again, holding her tenderly and sliding a hand down to the small of her back. His other hand gripped hers and he rocked her into the simplest of rhythms. Step, back, step, turn. Step, back, step, turn. She did it unconsciously, laying her cheek against his chest. She felt his jaw settle over the top of her head, and nothing had ever felt so right.