Any Way You Want It (3 page)

“Just look at the way he’s watching you,” Erika said. “He’s into you.”

Maggie immediately broke her gaze from his, feeling heat burn her cheeks. She shook her head.

“You’re making too much of all this.”

She knew she was saying that for herself as much as for Erika. When she met that man’s eyes, she did feel like something brought her here. Which was crazy. Absolutely crazy.

Her friends were right, though. She had to have imagined what she heard. Without looking back to the stage, she turned on her barstool and focused on her beer, paying unusually close attention to peeling off the label. She needed to let this go. Picking up the beer, she took a sip, then grimaced.

She’d liked the wine with dinner better. There, she decided. Everything could be blamed on the wine. She’d been tipsy and just thought she heard that rare, haunting, beautiful music. That was the only reasonable explanation.

It had to be.

R en watched the bar from his vantage point on the small stage. People danced and drank and generally acted rowdy and often ridiculous. The usual.

Okay, scrap that, most people acted that way. Except one of them. His attention was focused on the curvy woman with tousled hair. Hair the shade of…what was that color called? Strawberry blond? Hell, he didn’t know, but it was a good color.

He watched and sang the lyrics of a Journey song, reciting the words with little thought. It wasn’t like he hadn’t sung the same song thousands of times. Hell, maybe millions. He’d been in New Orleans, working on Bourbon, longer than was probably safe. But then, this was a city of transients. People didn’t stay here long enough to notice that he hadn’t changed one bit in the last ten years. And the return visitors were usually too drunk and into their partying to really give his looks much thought.

This was a strange place, where he could be the center of attention and be invisible all at the same time.

He glanced over to a group of revelers on the dance floor. Five woman, scantily clad, flashing legs and cleavage, and working very hard to get him to notice them.

He smiled. Predictably, they giggled and whispered to each other and began dancing more determinedly. More leg. More cleavage. The usual.

And while that was good—Ren did enjoy women—the best part was that he could spend the night with one of them, maybe more than one of them, and then they went back to their lives. Ren would be nothing more than a vague memory—just as they were to him.

Bourbon Street was famous for the best time you didn’t remember. And that worked out well for him. The people were predictable, and he could easily get lost amongst them.

Plus the atmosphere here effervesced with energy, with life, which made it very easy from him to survive. He breathed in deeply, pulling the vitality in the air deep into his body, feeling it fill him.

Human life force, which fed him.

Women, sex, and human energy. This darkened, run-down bar provided all the necessities he required.

His gaze moved back to the woman at the bar. But what about that one? There was something very different about her. And not just her rather conservative clothes and lack of exposed skin.

He smiled. Although that was different.

No, what intrigued him was that when he’d been playing the keyboards, something he rarely did, he could have sworn she’d actually recognized the piece. He’d been fooling around while the rest of the band set up, and on impulse, began to play a sonata he’d written when he was only fourteen.

He’d played the piece publicly only once—for his father’s birthday gala. Not that anyone in attendance had known the smug, pompous bastard was his father. And that Ren was not just his father’s favorite discovery, a child prodigy, a performing monkey.

Ren had played the piece—honestly believing his father would be so impressed that he would announce to the ton that the gifted child seated before them performing his heart out was, in fact, his son. But dear Daddy hadn’t, and Ren had thrown the piece away—because while his father loved his music and his talent, he’d never had a moment’s love for his illegitimate son.

Ren frowned slightly, even though his voice remained positive as he sang, telling the audience that any way they wanted it, that’s the way they needed it.

He couldn’t even say what made him think of that song tonight—not the Journey song, which he sang every night he worked. That sonata. He hadn’t thought of the piece in decades. Longer than that.

Yet he’d impulsively played it, and when he’d looked up, the curvy strawberry blond had been standing right in front of the stage, staring up at him like she was seeing a ghost. Wide-eyed, shocked. And he could have sworn he saw recognition in her eyes, too.

Ren finished singing, offering a routine thank you to the crowd swarming the bar.

“Dude, what’s going on tonight?” his lead guitarist, Drake, leaned in to ask. Drake was a vampire, too, but Drake was a run-of-the-mill bloodsucker, while Ren had the dubious distinction of being a lampir, an energy sucker.

Ren frowned at his bandmate. Okay, with his goatee grown long, head shaved except for a long queue ponytailed on the back of his head, and a skull shirt, Drake was far from run-of-the-mill.

And he’d been a pirate in life.

“What do you mean?” Ren asked, not following Drake’s comment.

Drake frowned, which made him look almost sinister, except Ren knew he was harmless. Well, unless crossed. Okay, he was still a pirate, really.

“You sang the same lyric three times.”

Ren frowned. “No I didn’t.”

“You totally did,” Johnny said, appearing from behind his drums, heading down off the stage.

Johnny had been a gangster in his former life. Unlike Drake, he didn’t look the part at all now, in his tie-dyed T-shirt and ripped jeans.

Ren frowned at the drummer’s sudden desertion, but then decided that maybe he could use a little break as well. He announced the band would be back in ten. The sound guy, a really annoying human with far more attitude than he deserved to have, started the pounding beat of dj’ed dance-pop before Ren could even finish his announcement.

Normally that really pissed him off, but tonight Ren was too preoccupied with other thoughts to be bothered. Instead, he pretended to busy himself with some of the equipment—the best method to avoid the five busty, leggy women, who were already rushing the stage to talk.

But there was no need to worry. The other band members were more than happy to greet the women. And that gave Ren opportunity to cast more looks over at the one at the bar.

Most of the set, she’d sat with her back to the stage, sipping a beer. He’d deduced she was with two other women. Her friends had befriended a couple of men at the bar and were now chatting and dancing with them, while Miss Curvy sat alone.

He checked the bass levels on the amps, which were fine. Which he knew already. Were the men here tonight bloody blind? She was the most intriguing woman in the room.

Then he decided he was glad she wasn’t getting the usual regiment of drunks hitting on her. That idea bothered him more than he cared to consider. He checked the treble. Also fine—as he knew.

He straightened up from the equipment and looked her way again. She was wearing a black blouse with a pair of black, cuffed pants and black shoes. Nothing exciting about that. He cast a quick—a very quick, because it was never wise to make direct eye contact with horny women if you were trying to avoid them—look at the barely clad ladies. What they’d chosen to wear was tight, bright, and accompanied by high heels. All selected to attract attention.

He looked back to the other woman. She looked as if she wanted to fade into the shadows. She didn’t want any attention whatsoever.

And before he realized his intent, he was strolling down the steps of the stage, heading right in her direction.

Maggie took another sip of her beer, hoping the bitter liquid would make her a little more relaxed.

She wanted to get back to that warm, cheery feeling she’d had when she’d left the restaurant. But she was rapidly realizing she wasn’t a beer drinker, especially lukewarm beer.

She drew in a deep breath. At least the band had stopped playing, and she was no longer surrounded by that voice. She wasn’t a big Beyoncé fan, but at least the woman’s voice, which now surrounded her from the sound system, didn’t make her insides feel all funny.

She looked over at her friends, who conversed animatedly with two new men—sailors all decked out in their dress whites. She had no idea where the businessmen had disappeared to.

She shook her head, amused at the attention her friends were attracting. They were amazing. But instead of the usual twinge of envy, she only felt tired. She wanted to head back to the hotel. The events of the day had caught up with her, and she just felt drained.

But she knew if she told her friends she was going to go, they’d insist on walking back with her, even though—and sadly, it had taken her most of the night to realize this fact—they were actually in a bar right across the street from their hotel. Still she knew her friends would leave with her, and she didn’t want to ruin their fun.

Erika started dancing with one of the sailors, laughing at something he leaned in to say. Her laughter lit up her face, making her features stunningly lovely. There was a part of Maggie that wished she could be like that. A flirt. Comfortable with the opposite sex. She never had been though. Not until Peter—and well, that hadn’t worked out well, had it?

Maggie glanced toward the stage, telling herself she wasn’t looking for anyone in particular, even as she searched for long hair and intense eyes. She promptly assured herself that it wasn’t disappointment she felt when she couldn’t locate them.

Her gaze moved back to her friends. Jo and her new friend had joined Erika and her guy. They all danced and laughed.

Again Maggie smiled. Okay, maybe this time a touch of envy tightened her chest.

“Are you having fun?”

Maggie started, literally jerking in her seat at the voice so near her. Strange, that she could be so startled when the bar was already loud.

Then she saw who spoke to her. The musician. The one with the strange eyes. Now, close up, she could also add a great smile to his description. White teeth with the corners of his lips curled slightly, giving his grin a Cheshire-cat quality. And she’d been right, his speaking voice was indeed husky, like the rich, warm brush of heated velvet.

“Umm, yeah,” she managed to say, trying not to stare at his mouth. But when she moved her gaze, she was staring into his eyes, and that made her uncomfortable too. She opted to look at the button of his shirt. Except just above that button was a V of bare chest covered in faint whorls of dark chest hair.

She looked down at her hands.

“Can I get you a drink?”

She glanced up at him, half expecting that he was talking to someone else now, but his eyes were still locked on her. In the blue and red light cast by the neon beer signs behind the bar, the eyelashes of his left eye looked faintly purple. She blinked, sure she was seeing things. Either that or the wine from dinner hadn’t worn off as much as she’d thought.

“No, thank you,” she finally said, her gaze returning to the buttons of his shirt, the one below the top one, so she couldn’t see the chest.

“Stacy,” he called, gesturing to the bartender with the braids springing out of her head. Once he caught her attention, he nodded. She nodded back and bounced away. Apparently her braids really were antennae; he didn’t even have to speak to communicate with her.

“Are you visiting here?”

Maggie blinked up at him. Was he still talking to her? Surely her inability to speak had bored him by now.

“Yes. From Washington, D.C.”

He looked impressed. Then he tilted his head slightly as if he was studying her. The pose made his hair fall forward, framing his face.

Maggie had never been crazy about long-haired men. She never thought about it either way, really, but there was something breathtakingly beautiful about the contrast of his long, silky hair and the masculine line of his jaw. Her fingers twitched as the sudden urge to touch the shiny length jolted through her.

Oh yeah, the wine was still in her system. No doubt about it.

The bartender appeared with a bottle of something. “Here you go,” she said with a wide smile, then bounded away to take another patron’s order.

Ah, Maggie realized, he’d just been making small talk while he waited for his drink.

“It’s loud in here,” he said as he leaned forward, reaching past her to grab the bottle. She could feel him as if he’d brushed against her. His body seemed to fill the space between them—even though he didn’t come close to touching her.

She nodded, taking in a steadying breath. Why did this guy have her so shaken? He wasn’t flirting. He was just chatting. Why did she feel so flustered? Why couldn’t she play it cool like her friends did? After all, this guy was not feeling the same vibe she was. No way.

“Maybe you’d want to—”

The musician’s question was cut off as one of the other band members, a heavyset guy with very short hair and a black AC/DC T-shirt, came over and slapped him on the back. “Come on. Time to play, my friend.”

He nodded, then turned back to Maggie. “Are you going to hang around for the next set?”

She nodded, even as her lucid mind reminded her that she’d wanted to go back to the hotel minutes earlier. Somehow, her brain and body didn’t seem connected.

He smiled again. He did have a great smile.

“Good. I’ll talk to you after.”

Again she nodded automatically.

As soon as he headed back to the stage, Jo and Erika were at her side.

“What did he say to you?” Jo asked.

Maggie blinked, surprised they had even noticed the brief exchange. “He asked if we were staying for the next set.”

“Hell, yeah, we are,” Erika stated, glancing over her shoulder at him. Maggie did too. He was positioning himself in front of the microphone, long finger curling around the stand. He was looking at her.

Them. He must be looking at them. Probably realizing the cuties were her friends.