On the Steamy Side (21 page)

“What do you want me to say?” He ran his fingers through the ring of condensation his glass had left on the table. “You’re a big girl, Lolly, and you’re going to do whatever you’re going to do. I can’t protect you, and maybe you’re right, maybe I shouldn’t even try.” Lilah relaxed, even though excitement continued to fizz through her veins. They were okay. “After all, it’s better to take a chance and see what comes of it, right?” Grant rested his head on one slender hand, his mouth curved in the saddest smile Lilah had ever seen.

“If you say so. I hope you don’t regret what you have to do to get your chance. Go on, at least one of us oughta get lucky tonight.”

Back home, a comment like that might have made her blush, but here, tonight, Lilah felt a strangely exhilarating freedom. She laughed and bent her head to give Grant a smacking kiss on the mouth.

Framing his so-familiar, beloved face between her palms, she looked him in the eye and said, “Don’t think you’re getting away with holding out on me forever. Like I said, one night to wallow. Tomorrow, you and me? We’re gonna work through this together.”

Grant made a kissy face at her. “Oh, I think we’ll stick to your secrets, Lolls. You’ll have much more interesting things to share than I will, I’m sure.”

“Let’s hope so.” She winked and ruffled his hair up, quick-stepping out of reach to avoid his outraged swipe.

Waving bye over her shoulder, Lilah ducked back into the crowd and started muscling her way to the bar.

Lilah Jane Tunkle was in the mood to make a bad decision.

The beat of the music pounded out of the drums, into the cheap, tacked-together floor of the makeshift stage, and up through the worn soles of Frankie’s gray checked Vans. He felt the beat, breathed it, and matched it with his fingers flying up and down the neck of his bass guitar.

Squeezing his eyes shut against the stinging sweat that wanted to drip from his tangled black hair, Frankie fought to lose himself in the music.

It was good stuff Dreck was playing tonight, and the rest of the band was on top of their game, pouring energy and life into every bleeding note, but even though Frankie’s fingers followed the beat automatically, pounding the frets and strumming the licks that kept everything moving and throbbing, he couldn’t seem to let go.

Usually, playing bass was like drowning, everything muffled except for the rhythm and the interplay between the instruments. In practice sessions—not that Dreck practiced overmuch, no one in the band was too concerned with skill level—the drowning was almost peaceful, but in front of a live audience, Frankie loved to thrash against the waves that wanted to pull him under.

The eyes on him, the bodies throwing themselves around, flashing skin and heat and leather in what could only loosely be characterized as dancing—those things usually sent Frankie into ecstatic dervish mode, at once immersed in the music and in tune with the crowd.

Tonight the music eluded him. The crowd, rowdy as ever, didn’t thrill him. Frankie’s attention was well and truly snared. Snagged and caught on one little table a short distance from the stage, where Jess Wake sat, so very un-alone.

Frankie fumbled a chord. Noelle tossed a glare over her shoulder, toxic orange dreads swinging and banging into the microphone. Frankie acknowledged the singer with a two-fingered salute and a breakout bass riff that sent the crowd mad. Over at the Table of Doom, Jess whooped and shot out of his seat, leaving Wes fucking Murphy with his mouth hanging open in the middle of some no-doubt hilarious anecdote.

Right. That called for a bit of the old sex appeal. Frankie caught Jess’s bright eyes and smoldered. Gave him a hint of the tongue between the teeth and a slow, subtle hip grind, too.

Might as well go all out.

The results were heartening: Jess swayed toward the stage like a mouse hypnotized by a snake, the man at his table forgotten. Frankie smirked. There was nothing quite like staking a claim in front of a bar full of sweaty mashers. Jess stared up at him, pretty blue eyes glazed over with want, and all of a sudden, Frankie was done with the gig.

He rushed the rest of the set, knowing he’d catch hell from Noelle and the others later, but just not giving a tinker’s damn about it.

When it was finally, finally over, Frankie barely took the time to lift the strap of his bass over his head and lay the instrument down where he’d been standing before he bounded off the stage and over to Jess. Who’d sat down at some point, but leapt to his feet and tackled Frankie the minute he was close enough.

“You rocked tonight! I even liked the New York Dolls cover.”

“Infidel,” Frankie said. It was easy to be indulgent with his arms full of Jess. “Personality Crisis is a classic.”

“It has a good bass line, anyway.” Jess was determined not to like the Dol s, which Frankie couldn’t understand. Luckily, the young squirt made up for it by loving the Ramones with a passion nearly as unnatural and fervent as Frankie’s. Not to mention Patti Smith.

Thinking of the high priestess of punk made Frankie remember the night Jess had first talked to him, asking about the image of Patti tattooed on Frankie’s arm. The idiot boy hadn’t even known who she was, but he’d been drawn to her like he’d been drawn to Frankie—and Frankie had taken full advantage of that fatal attraction.

Eager to sample the delights of that attraction again, Frankie boa-constrictored Jess and whispered in his ear, “Let’s head home, eh? Got some new pillows at the flea market; I’ll let you toss ’em wherever you like.”

The Garret was furnished with rugs, carpets, throws, pillows, and discarded sofa cushions. Frankie was on a perpetual hunt for pillows in exotic colors and fabrics.

Jess squirmed back far enough to see Frankie’s face. “Ooh, new pillows. What are they like?”

“Lime green,” Frankie told him. “Largish. Material’s like nothing so much as shag carpeting.” He arched a brow. “Appropriately enough.”

Jess blushed—and God, how Frankie did love the fact that he could still make his boy blush—but pulled away.

“Soon,” Jess said, a promise in his eyes. “But I can’t leave Wes sitting here all by himself after I practically forced him to come out. Can we stay a little while?” Bloody hel . Exactly what he’d hoped to avoid. Frankie could see the bloke over Jess’s shoulder, young and beautiful in that confident, catalogue way Frankie could never manage in a million years.

Wes tipped his chair back and waved at Frankie, a smug expression on his supercilious face, as if he knew exactly what Frankie and Jess were talking about.

Probably wanted Frankie to throw a wobbly and insist on going home, so Wes could play on Jess’s soft, squishy side and come out of it smelling like the good, supportive mate. Too bad for him that Frankie was smarter than that. He gritted his teeth and smiled.

“Right, then. Lead the way.”

There were times in a man’s life when he wanted a beer: kicking back, relaxing after a hard day, maybe with the game on in the background. And there were other times when he could enjoy a glass of wine over a fine meal, like the perfect pairing of Pinot noir with a seared duck breast. There were even times when a cocktail could be fun, and in Devon’s experience, no one on earth mixed up a meaner drink than Christian Colby.

Despite Chris’s presence behind the bar, however, Devon wasn’t drinking cocktails. He wasn’t having wine or beer, either. No. After the day he’d had?

Bourbon on the rocks. Nothing else would do.

Devon swirled the melting ice cubes in his third glass—or was it his fourth?—and lost himself in the rich, golden-brown color of the smoky-sweet liquid.

“Isn’t that your girl?” Christian, idling at Devon’s end of the bar with a ceaselessly wiping cloth and a sympathetic expression, nodded toward a new arrival.

Squinting through the gloom—and seriously, didn’t off-duty cops come in here? Why they didn’t write the place up for breaking the smoking laws, Devon would never understand—Devon could barely make out the curvy form of his own personal Mary Poppins framed hesitantly in the doorway.

“Lilah Jane,” he said, feeling instantly better. She must be magic, he mused. Maybe it was a nanny thing. In books, they always seemed to have special powers of care and comfort. He watched her blearily for a moment, feeling comforted and cared for. Even the sartorial atrocity she called a shirt, overlarge and patterned with unlovely flowers, couldn’t detract from the glow she brought to the dingy bar.

But then, just as he was about to stagger to his feet and wave her over, her face lit up and she began weaving her way to a table on the other side of the room.

Hooking one heel over the bottom rung of the barstool, Devon hoisted himself up high enough to confirm his suspicions. Yep, there she was, chattering away with Grant Holloway.

Devon settled on the stool and turned his back on them. “Hit me again, Chris.”

“Come on, man, I think you’ve had enough.”

Devon sneered. “I don’t pay you to think.”

“You don’t pay me at all,” Christian reminded him amiably. “Your accumulated tab would bankrupt Bloomberg.”

Devon didn’t dignify that with a response beyond tapping his empty glass imperiously on the bar.

Christian sighed but poured another round, so Devon decided to forgive him. For the moment.

He couldn’t really afford to alienate anyone else right now.

After the way both services today had gone, Devon was half-surprised he hadn’t been lynched by an angry mob of drunken chefs yet. Maybe they were too tired from pulling a double shift. He’d have to watch out for tomorrow when they were rested up.

It was bad. Beyond bad, well into the realm of farce. If it were happening to someone else, it would’ve been funny.

Devon Sparks, self-proclaimed world’s greatest chef and proprietor of five huge Michelin-starred restaurants across the country, couldn’t manage to get cleanly through a single weekend of service at a 110-cover restaurant.

He’d lost the old magic, he thought mournfully. Hmm, maybe Lilah would rub off on him.

Hoo, down, boy, Devon thought, shifting a little on the stool. The image that danced gleefully into his brain was too delicious to dismiss entirely, even if fulfilling it was starting to look unlikely in the extreme.

Maybe he’d check on Lilah one more time. Righteous, somewhat inebriated, indignation coursed through him. She was supposed to be here meeting Devon, her boss! Not some high school sweetheart who was still panting after her.

Devon teetered a bit and elected not to try climbing his stool again. Instead, he planted both feet on the solid bar floor and stretched to see over the heads of the aggravating people who were in his way.

He got a good angle just in time to see Lilah take Grant’s face in her hands and kiss him.

Devon sat back down with a bump.

She kissed him.

Lilah kissed Grant. On the mouth. On purpose.

He lurched to his feet intending to march over to that table and break up the lovebirds, but somehow he miscalculated the distance between his feet and the floor, and wound up leaning a bit further than he intended.

“Whoa, there!” A slender shoulder pushed up under Devon’s arm, righting him. Glossy dark curls brushed his chin, and he breathed in the smell of lemon and thyme, clean and bracing after the squalor of the bar and the heady perfume of the bourbon.

“Lilah Jane,” he said, her magic stealing over him again. What had he been so mad about a second ago?

“Are you okay?” Without waiting for Devon to formulate a reply, which, granted, was taking longer than it should’ve as his tongue kept wanting to curl into her ear instead of make words, Lilah appealed to Christian. “Is he okay? Oh, my stars and stripes, what did you give him to drink?”

“Bourbon,” Devon said, smiling at the memory. “Hey, you want one?”

“No!”

“Suit yourself.” He shrugged, and they were still pressed so tightly against one another, his body moved against hers in interesting ways.

“Hey,” he remembered. “Weren’t we going to talk?”

Lilah grinned, her dimple winking out at him. “I can’t believe I was worried about how you’d deal with the rough service tonight,” she said, gesturing at the empty shot glasses ranged on the bar. “Four shots of bourbon! What could be a healthier coping mechanism?”

“It was five,” Christian put in.

Devon gave him the evil eye. “Your forgiveness is revoked,” Devon told him. “I don’t care if you’re my only ally, there are some lines that must never be crossed.”

“I shouldn’t have ratted you out,” Christian agreed. “But I thought the paramedics might ask when Lilah has to call them later to pump your stomach.”

Lilah gasped audibly, her pretty face going chalk white.

“Oh, my word, please tell me that’s a joke.”

“It is! Sorry, Lilah, I’m just ragging on him, Dev’s fine,” Christian soothed. “I shouldn’t tease like that, but he so rarely shows his liquor, I couldn’t resist.”

“Too little, too late,” Devon said darkly. “I break with thee, I break with thee, I break with thee.” Lilah and Christian exchanged a look they obviously thought Devon was too drunk to notice.

“All righty, then,” Lilah said. “Let’s get you home, boss man.” A thrill coursed through Devon when Lilah said “home” in that warm voice all rich with amusement.

It was comforting and intimate and somehow sexy as hell.

The goosebumps it raised, plus the feel of her curvy little body pressed against his side, brought the world into sharp focus.

He stared down into her sparkling mossy eyes and after three deep inhalations of the honeyed herbal scent of her, tonight’s kitchen debacle faded into the background of Devon’s mind.

Lilah shifted, pulling his arm more firmly across her shoulders, which also happened to push her soft, round breasts more firmly into his chest. Devon felt all the blood in his body drain south so fast it made his head spin. He hardened in a dizzying rush.

So. Turned out he wasn’t that drunk after all.

“Some air would be good,” Devon agreed, aware that his voice had gone raspy and deep. “Let’s go home.”

Frankie jiggled the ancient key in the rusted lock, long fingers twiddling the metal back and forth. He didn’t bother swearing at the delay, even though he was aching to be upstairs in his Garret, alone with Jess for the first time in what felt like a donkey’s age.