The Princess Finds Her Match (4 page)

She was a couple of seats away from him on the long end of the L-curved side bar. Nic was positioned on the short arm, affording him a nice view of her without him being in her direct vision or in the “line of the ball” in polo speak. She was wearing a ridiculous red wig, the kind of red that couldn’t possibly grow on any human head. She was taking big gulps of her drink and alternately biting with determination on an enormous burger. Nic thought she wasn’t enjoying herself much. She appeared to be alone. From the dim lighting, he couldn’t make out most of her facial features, only that she appeared young, was slender, and had full, rounded breasts showcased by her bustier dress. What he could make out though were full, plump lips glistening with grease from the burger and chips she was bent on finishing. Nic had a sudden vision of those lips around his cock and quickly tried to quell the image. He wasn’t into one-night stands anymore. Been there, done that.

As if sensing his discomfort, the woman looked up just as she was about to take another bite of her food. And just like in that sappy chick flick he had only seen once so he could bang the girl he had been dating at the time, their eyes met across the crowded bar. They both froze. Her mouth was still partly open, her tilted cat eyes startled at the encounter. Nic’s heart stopped beating for a second and then slammed right into his chest cage. He knew her. Or rather, he thought with out-of-character drama, his soul recognized her. In that brief instant when their gazes met, Nic felt it. A connection.

It was the same feeling he got whenever he encountered a horse for the first time. One look at its eyes and Nic knew whether the horse would allow itself to be mastered by him. Often people thought he was great at training polo ponies. It was only because Nic recognized and picked those ponies with whom he could be one in spirit that they answered to his touch and allowed him to train them.

Great, now he was reduced to comparing women with horses. He recovered his outward equanimity, but his heart was still racing. Did she feel it too? The recognition? Her eyes never left his, and he didn’t know how many minutes passed as they remained in a frozen tableau. She made a slight movement. Nic held his breath, wondering if she would come on to him now. Call him old-fashioned but when it came to the chase, Nic preferred to be the hunter.

But wait. What the bloody hell was she doing? Here he was having a fucking profound moment and in utter bewilderment, Nic saw her taking a bite of her burger. It was a whacking burger and her mouth opened wide to accommodate its size. Juices trickled from the side of her mouth, snaking its way down her wrist. She licked it off, but she never took her cat’s gaze away from his. Nic shifted, growing uncomfortably tight. He was getting bloody turned on by a woman in a fugly red wig eating a hamburger. He caught the gleam in her eyes and suddenly realized he was being played. The saucy witch! He flashed a grin, enjoying the foreplay. Because this was what it was. Nic refused to call it by any other name. He took a swig of his beer to cool himself down. But his little minx was not content to leave it at that. She had the audacity to continue her little game. Her tongue darted out to lick the ketchup off a single chip. Nic suppressed a groan. So she liked to lick, huh? He’d give her his dick later. He mentally reared in comical disgust at his own crassness. But by God, this woman was reducing him to nothing more than a randy teenager.

Nic decided to raise the stakes. He was about to move in for the kill when the lady in the red wig abruptly stood up from her stool and started walking away from the bar, leaving him stupidly staring after her retreating back, her shapely legs, and her pertly rounded bottom. What the −? Nic decided to follow her. She wasn’t allowed to start a raging forest fire and leave him alone to douse the flames.

“Watch it, man!” an aimlessly loitering punk yelled as he quickly jostled him out of his direct path, as if he was in a polo match and he was riding the opposing team off, his eyes locked in on the red wig like a moving target. Nic’s relief was palpable as he spotted her lining up for the ladies’ room. She wasn’t leaving yet. He slumped on the wall at the back of the room beside several television screens, not caring if he looked odd. Hell, this was Vegas. Odd was the norm.

She was about tenth in line. He could see her because he had walked over to the corner at the back end of the room with a good view of the queue. Unlike the other women who were fidgeting, playing with their hair, or laughing with their gal pals, the lady in the red wig held herself quite still. Her arms were crossed below her breasts, a purse or whatever women called it dangling from one hand. Her gaze was fixed on the stage but she made no unnecessary movements. A flash of light from the door of the loo opening illuminated the women and backlit them. Nic spied red wig lady’s fingers drumming on her arm in an irregular rhythm. A nervous tell.
Interesting
, Nic thought, his eyes never leaving his target.

“
L
isten up
, people. Let’s give our next performer, a first timer here at The Space Bar, a warm welcome.”

Lexie approached the stage nervously. Right foot step, left foot step. Easy. Now if she could only stop her knees from buckling.

“Let’s all hear it from Red from−,” DJ Twist frowned. He had forgotten to ask where she was from. He shoved the microphone in front of her face.

“I’m−uh, from, a principality,” Lexie blurted out nervously, “far, far away.” Idiot! She couldn’t believe she had just said that. There was snickering from the crowd. She licked her lips, which had suddenly become dry. Somebody wolf−whistled. She hoisted the edge of her bustier dress higher.

“Oh, a foreigner,” DJ Twist said glibly.

“Go kill ‘em, Lexie!” someone screamed. It was Blair somewhere by the far end of the room, judging by the way she was hollering, trying to be heard above the din.

“Good luck, sweetheart,” DJ Twist winked before removing himself from the stage. Lexie just barely stopped herself from clutching at his coat in terror. She felt all the blood pooling in her legs.

The familiar opening chord of the Britney Spears song started to play. Lexie felt faint. “Oh baby, baby,” she croaked, her frightened gaze glued to the monitor. The audience had gone strangely quiet. She cleared her throat. “Oh baby, baby,” she sang again, trying to look for Blair’s friendly face in the crowd, but it was too dark to make out the back end of the bar. Her eyes moved over the tables in front of the platform. Most of them appeared drunk, thank Zeus. Some were grinning at Lexie. A few were busy talking amongst themselves.

Where was Blair? Her eyes continued to pan the room while mouthing off the lyrics robotically, cringing. Her bravado had suddenly deserted her. Oh, please let this just all be a dream. She closed her eyes for an instant then opened them again. Nope, no dream. Just a foolish, embarrassing mistake.

Her eyes skittered to a stop at the right most side of the bar. In a corner stood the handsome, sexy stranger. He was clutching a beer bottle. Lexie, despite her performance anxiety or probably because of it, latched on to the fascinating detail of the cleft in his chin to keep her anchored and prevent herself from being carried away on a wave of massive embarrassment. As if sensing her stage fright, he smiled again and gave her a thumbs-up sign.

And at that instant, the alcohol must have kicked in because Lexie couldn’t explain why at that moment, her fears just melted away.

“Work it!” shrieked the still-missing but very supportive Blair.

She managed a smile. If she couldn’t sing, she would do the one other thing she knew she could do well. She glanced at the handsome stranger, grateful for his show of support, and then she worked it.

N
ic had never
in his entire life heard anyone singing as horribly out of tune as his lady in the red wig was now doing. He felt her pain. Clearly, she was not self-deluded, reading the embarrassment in her stiff posture, the reluctance in the way she opened her mouth to sing. Was it a dare? Because it appeared the last place she wanted to be was on that stage.

She was looking for someone amongst the crowd. Nic had thought she had gone in alone.
A boyfriend perhaps
, he thought, surprised at his jealousy. But then he heard a woman’s voice yelling from the crowd; “Go kill ‘em, Lexie.” The accent was American.

He saw Red or rather Lexie trying to place where the voice was coming from. Her eyes met his in her search. He smiled and flashed her the thumbs−up sign.
Good luck, rojita
, he thought because whatever it was she was trying to do, she obviously had to work up some courage to see it through. Nic didn’t know how he knew without having exchanged a single word with her. Just like with the horses, he knew.

“Work it, Lexie,” the same woman hollered.

He saw her force a smile and then suddenly he sensed a change in her demeanor. She was still singing, about somebody hitting her one more time.
Ridiculous song
, Nic scoffed mentally, but then his thought processes screeched to a grinding halt when she started moving. Her hips started swaying sinuously, undulating sexily in perfect synchrony to the beat of the music. One hand was running in sultry slowness across the top of her breasts. Nic’s mouth probably dropped open. Bloody hell. He was getting uncomfortably turned on by her dancing. And so was probably half of the audience.

Glancing at them, Nic saw the hungry, leering looks of some of the men.

“Take it off,” one of them shouted lewdly. He scanned the audience, trying to locate the dickwad. Nic was about to stalk off and pound some sense into the man when he realized the song was coming to an end.

As the final notes played, he saw Lexie with her back to the crowd. She tossed her fake hair over her shoulder, smacked her bottom, and unbelievably, with a side twist of her head, pouted at the audience. The room erupted into cheers. She bowed gracefully, one leg behind the other.

“Whew!” DJ Twist came back on stage and made a show of mopping his brow. “That was hot!”

Lexie came down the stage on the opposite side of where Nick was, almost tripping on the uneven flooring. The lewd man had managed to get to her before Nic did and he swore, making his way across the whole length of the stage. He saw Lexie by a corner trying to shrug off a pale, meaty hand digging into her arm.

“Bugger off, mate” Nic growled to the inebriated executive-looking type, glancing pointedly at his hand still manacled to Lexie. “The lady is with me.”

“I saw her first,” Executive Type growled back, eyeing Nic’s much taller and bigger frame warily but refusing to back down.

“I said she’s with me,” Nic thundered, nostrils flaring as he shoved the man backwards in an attempt to pry him off Lexie. The man was tenacious as a barnacle. Nic’s shoving caught him off balance and he started tipping backwards, bringing Lexie, who gave a small yelp of surprise, down with him.

Nic helped her up. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” she replied, a bit out of breath but still retaining her poise. “Yes. Thank you.”

Her cat eyes threatened to knock the wits out him. “Let’s get out of here,” he said and cupped her by the elbow.

But it seemed Executive Type had other ideas. Nic felt a tap on his shoulder and when he swung around, only his very fast reflexes saved him from getting jabbed in the face.

“Cabeza de pija!”
Nick cursed, dropping Lexie’s elbow and lunging at Executive Type, flattening him to the floor in the blink of an eye. Executive Type wasn’t giving up without a fight. Grappling on the floor, they managed to pull out some cables that were connected to the spotlight and plunged the stage into darkness.

“What the fuck?” Current wannabe singer on stage said over the microphone, stopping mid-song. Nic heard Lexie let out an unladylike shriek. He risked a quick glance and saw that she was walloping Executive Type with her bag whenever the prick managed to come out on top as they were rolling and tussling on the floor.

“Oww!” Executive Type yelled when she managed to land a solid one on his head.

The commotion drew the attention of the bouncers, who quickly separated the adversaries.

“Knock it off,” the massive bouncer told Executive Type, who was struggling to break free. The bouncer had him by the collar, but slippery as an eel, he broke off and quickly ran to a fire exit.

“Lexie!”A woman came running to the scene of the crime, trailed by a dorky looking young man. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Blair,” Lexie replied, tugging on her dress, which had ridden up higher on her shapely thighs. Her legs were bare.

“Goodness! You sure know how to make up for years of lost excitement.” He presumed the excitable new arrival Blair was the supportive, hollering woman from the crowd.

“Nothing to see. Nothing to see. Carry on.” The other bouncer, the smaller one, interrupted the reunion. “He says you’re with him, miss?” The muscle man turned to Lexie.

Nic paused in the act of wiping what he suspected was blood from the side of his mouth with a napkin. Their eyes locked.

“Yes, I’m with him,” she replied.

A rush of relief, staggering in its intensity, flooded Nic with her words. And then came the sense of rightness of it all. She was his.

“Uh-uh. Not so fast.”

Nic’s head swiveled to the one called Blair. He noticed the fake bob. What was with the atrocious hairpieces and these two? He decided to be charming to Lexie’s friend.

“Hello. I’m Nic.” He extended a bruised hand for Blair to shake. Nothing felt broken.
Gracias a Dios
. Rupert would lose it if he couldn’t play at the finals match.

“I’m her cousin, Bl−oh my fucking God.” Blair’s eyes widened as she got a good look at his face for the first time. “Um, Lexie,” she said, her fascinated stare never leaving him. “You do know who he is, right?”

Nic’s eyes flicked back to Lexie, who was now watching him with a puzzled frown, as if trying to place him. “He says he’s Nic. Do you two know each other?”

“Nooo,” Blair said slowly, her voice sounding strangled as she pulled her gaze away from him to swivel her neck and glance at her cousin.