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Amanda smiled to herself as Colton stood, offered Leah his hand to help her from her barstool, and put a protective arm at her back as he led her off to the dance floor. Ah, nice guys with manners. Perhaps a perfect match for Leah, but Amanda’s tastes ran a bit on the darker side.
Finding herself alone, Amanda fiddled with her phone, wishing Jacob was offstag
e so they could text each other while she waited to see him again. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so giddy over a guy. Her last couple of boyfriends had been more like Colton—settled, considerate, not forbidden—and those men sure hadn’t made her heart thud, belly quiver, or her pussy ache the way it did for Jacob. She wasn’t sure if those feelings would last, but holy hell, she was definitely enjoying the ride. Even if it was making her a little crazy.
Amanda kept half of her attention on Leah in case Colton turned out to be one to bolt on and she needed to intervene. But heck, the guy hadn’t even pulled Leah up against him yet. Yawn. The other half of her attention was fixed on her cellphone as she waited for Jacob to get in touch with her again. He would be offstage soon. Would he call her? Should she call him? Should she chill the fuck out and try to have a good time tonight? Yeah, she should definitely do that.
She lowered her head to the table and took several deep breaths as her brain tried straightening out her heart.
This is just a fling. He’s really not that into you. Get off your bar stool and go flirt with someone. Anyone. Maybe Mr. Right was at this very bar at this very moment.
But even if he was, it didn’t matter. Mr. Wrong—aka Jacob “Shade” Silverton—had her complete devotion. Might as well not fight what she was feeling—it was no use anyway. She had more than the hots for her former brother-in-law—she liked him. Liked him in the way that an addict liked methamphetamine.
Someone took the seat across from her and she could tell by the very large set of feet attached to the person that it wasn’t her petite friend returning from the dance floor. “Hey, beautiful, why are you sitting here all alone?”
“How do you know I’m beautiful?” she asked, her forehead still pressed to the table. “Maybe I’m sitting alone because I’m ugly enough to melt the paint off a furnace.”
“With legs like those?”
Amanda rolled her eyes and lifted her head. “You’re wasting your time,” she told the handsome young man, who she normally would have found attractive. He had dark hair and startling green eyes and was filing out his plain white T-shirt in exactly the right way. If he’d hit on her just a week ago, she would have probably already given him her phone number. “I’m completely infatuated with Mr. Wrong at the moment.”
“Maybe I can help you get over your infatuation.”
She snorted and shook her head. “I’m not looking to get over him just yet,” she said. “But maybe after he breaks my heart, you could try again.”
“Do you come here often?” Green-eyes asked.
He lost points for unoriginal pick-up lines, but the green eyes made up for his lack of creativity. “Every Friday night.”
“Maybe I’ll see you again then.”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
Still not rising from his seat, he traced the bottom of Leah’s margarita glass with one finger. “How will I know when you’re ready to move on?” He blinked, and when his eyes reopened, his gaze had shifted from staring at his finger to boring into hers.
Jeez. Why did guys like this only hit on her when she was happily taken?
And she was happily taken. So she figured she’d best scare the guy away since he seemed the type to like a challenge.
“Depends.” She shrugged. “If you’re interested in a broken shell of a desperate woman—that will be obvious by the endless sobbing—I’ll be super easy to seduce, if that’s all you’re after.”
“It’s not,” he said evenly, never breaking eye contact.
Yeah, right, she thought. What a little player.
“Good, because in that state I’ll be absolutely no fun and the sex will be awkward and icky.”
“Not the way I do it.”
She snorted. “If you wait until just after I stop breaking into spontaneous bouts of tears, you’ll get my man-hating angry-bitch phase. Unless you like to be treated like shit—and some guys do—you’ll want to avoid me entirely during that stage. Very scary.”
“That has possibilities.” She noticed his hand was starting to move across the table toward hers. She lifted her eyebrows and it returned to tracing the bottom of Leah’s glass.
“If you’re interested in normal Amanda, you’ll have a long wait. This guy is likely to do a number on me and it’ll take me a while to recover my normal personality.”
“If you’re expecting it to end badly, why bother dating the guy in the first place?”
“Never in all the history of Mr. Wrongs has there ever been one more perfectly right.” And secretly she was hoping things would work out between them, even though she knew there was no way they could. Tina would find out about their relationship eventually, and nothing good would come of that. “So you’re probably best off hitting on someone else.”
“I can take a hint,” the guy said. That made one of them. “I’m Anthony.”
“You should probably take your hint elsewhere, Anthony,” she said.
“Am I really that offensive?” he asked.
Amanda shook her head. “No, but there is zero chance of you taking me home tonight.” She made a goose egg shape with her thumb and forefinger.
“Why don’t you relax and tell me about yourself?” he asked.
She tilted her head, wishing she had someone to exchange incredulous looks with. She didn’t mind Anthony’s company since she’d been left sitting by herself by Leah, who was now several inches closer to Colton as they continued to sway on the dance floor. But she wasn’t the kind of woman who led men on for sport, and Anthony just wasn’t getting it. Leah’s eyes met hers, and she apparently took Amanda’s stare as a plea for help. Leah said something to Colton before surging through the crowd to their table.
“I thought you were going to save my seat,” Leah said.
Anthony stood. “Sorry, I didn’t realize I was intruding. It was nice to meet you, Amanda.” He slipped into the crowd before Amanda could say likewise.
“You did want me to chase him off, didn’t you?” Leah asked.
Amanda shrugged. “I’d already told him I wasn’t interested. I’m not sure he believed me.” Amanda glanced around to make sure Colton was out of hearing range. He was at the bar trying to catch the bartender’s attention. “So what do you think of Colton?”
Leah flushed. “He’s very . . .” She bit her lip. “. . . polite.”
“Too polite?”
Leah shrugged. “I’m not sure. He doesn’t act like he wants to touch me.”
There could be a lot of reasons why he didn’t want to touch her. It might be good manners, or it might be something deeper. He had looked a bit lonely and lost at the bar when he’d first caught Leah’s eye.
The man in question set three drinks on the table. Leah might be too timid to pump the guy for information, but Amanda held no such qualms.
“So, Colton, why haven’t we seen you around here before?” Amanda asked, reaching for her margarita and thinking this had to be her last one or she wouldn’t be able to drive.
“It’s my first time in this bar,” he said. “I haven’t been in Austin long.”
“Where are you from?” Leah asked.
He smiled at her. “Miami.”
Leah’s eyebrows shot up. “Florida?”
He didn’t sound like he was from Florida. He had a hint of Texas twang.
“Naw. Up in the Texas panhandle. Not far from Amarillo.”
“Oh,” Leah leaned in closer to him. “So what brings you to Austin?”
“There’s not much of a music scene in Miami, Texas. Though I wasn’t expecting Austin to be so focused on rock. Maybe I should have tried Nashville.”
“So you’re into country, I take it?” Amanda asked.
He nodded.
“There are plenty of country musicians in Austin, Colton,” Leah said. “It just takes a while to find the right crowd.”
“Are you two in with the right crowd?” He looked so hopeful that Amanda almost didn’t have the heart to tell him he singing to the w
rong choir.
“Well, Amanda’s dating a rock star,” Leah said. “Maybe Shade can help.”
“He sings in a metal band,” Amanda reminded her.
“But he probably knows someone who knows someone. Or something.”
Amanda shrugged. She wasn’t going to volunteer Jacob to get this guy noticed. She didn’t even know if Colton was any good. Heck, she didn’t even know if he sang or played an instrument. He
