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y smiled at each other while their voices combined and lifted, rising over the hum of the crowd. The melody filled his head, and his fingers tensed around his plastic bottle.
Dammit, he knew that face. The defiant chin, those upturned lips, that curve of cheek partially hidden by a wild tangle of dark hair. Freed from its loose ponytail, her curls would almost reach her waist. Hair he’d never imagined driving his hands through until this very second.
Her fingers wrapped around her microphone while she closed her eyes and let her body sway into the movement of the sensuous lover’s song. It told of missing someone and not knowing where they were. Caring even when it was clear you shouldn’t.
Her vocals rang out over the crowd. They had stopped cheering and now held up lighters and catcalled their approval when she hit the high notes. Right now, they were all high notes. Her voice resonated inside him, buffing out the irritation he hadn’t been able to shake. Relaxing him more than the beer he no longer allowed himself to have could’ve ever done.
Neil shouted something to him about taking the door, so Chase pushed through the undulating bodies to get closer to the stage. He couldn’t take long to ascertain his hunch was right, not when he had a mass of eager fans behind him all waiting to take a piece out of the pretty young thing. There was a cluster of guys near the stage where she sat strumming away, happily oblivious to the way they were leering and gesturing.
Fuck, it was Mark and his crew. Chase hadn’t seen them come in the front, so they’d obviously found another way in.
One of Mark’s friends called out to her in a lull of the song, something crude about wanting to fill the empty spaces she’d mentioned in her lyrics. She turned toward their group and flushed. Actually flushed as if she wasn’t up on stage in front of five hundred or more of her closest lecherous friends.
Mark pushed his buddy out of the way and slapped a slip of paper on the stage at her feet. Probably his phone number. As if she’d call that loser. She smiled, her too-full lips parting around the words she seemed to croon to Mark. His buddies shoved him, laughing uproariously. Completely clueless fuckers, as Chase had thought.
Chase took a step forward, intending to get everyone back from the stage. At the same moment Mark decided to get grabby and wrapped his fingers around her ankle. Though she didn’t falter, her already huge eyes widened long enough for Chase to realize he’d been correct.
It was Summer, his baby sister Cassidy’s best friend. The woman he’d kissed a few months ago during a rare trip home before he’d sobered up and realized she was the little girl he’d lived next door to for a few months between high school and college.
She wasn’t so little now.
“Don’t fucking touch her,” Chase said, hauling Mark back by the arm. Mark swung at Chase with his beer hand, sending the glass flying and sloshing his beer onto the polished hardwood under Summer’s feet. She stared at the spreading liquid like it was an apparition and kept right on singing.
Yeah, this putz was already three sheets to the wind. Maybe four.
“Get your hands off me,” Mark bellowed. “I’ll sue, you bastard.”
Right. He’d worry about that…oh, never. Chase locked Mark’s arms behind his back without trouble and only raised an eyebrow at the assorted misfits behind the douche who hurried to his defense. “That’s enough.” Chase motioned to Ted, one of the other security guys, his eyes never leaving Mark’s friends. “You’re not even supposed to be in here, remember?”
Mark spat over his shoulder at him and missed. The woman he hit a few feet away wasn’t too impressed. “Yeah, and who the hell’s gonna stop me? You and your gimp arm, has-been?”
Rage descended, obscuring Chase’s vision and swarming spots where Mark’s sneering face had been. Not because the jerk had tried to get a rise of him—hecklers were part of the game, and he was used to ignoring them—but now one of Mark’s friends was getting too close to Summer. Though Ted had gotten snagged by a scuffle that had broken out, more security guys were coming forward. Not fast enough.
No one was going to freaking paw Summer right in front of him.
Chase shoved Mark aside, sending him flying into the crowd amidst screams and squeals, and reached for Mark’s friend, hauling him back into a classic hold position. Chase stared up at the stage, meeting Summer’s eyes while she called out to her lover in the song, her volume rising with her unease. She was the consummate professional and didn’t falter, but he knew she was scared from the slight quaver in her voice.
Her frantic expression seared into his brain, accompanied by the same recognition he’d felt moments earlier. Then he was the one being pulled back by his hair, and all he could think was thank God. He’d finally get to pound the shit out of someone, this time for all the right reasons.
Bring it, assholes.
In the middle of her first semi-major gig, an epic fight had to break out. Of course.
Summer set aside her guitar and grabbed the arm of her startled accompanist, Kyle. They’d met at church and this kind of thing rarely happened during weekly services. Or at most civilized gatherings.
It took no time for the melee in front of the stage to turn into a giant mess. Shouting, chairs being shoved aside, bodies flying. Chase Dixon in the center of it, getting his gorgeous face whaled on by the same jerk who’d tried to grope her leg.
She didn’t think, just leaped off the stage. She bit her lip and bounced back and forth on her toes, waiting for that one second of opportunity. When it came, she charged forward and dragged back the arm of the guy hassling Chase, twisting his little finger hard enough to earn his screech of distress.
A triumphant grin crossed her face at the punk’s outraged expression after he’d turned to see his assailant. Can’t take care of myself? Guess again.
Brutal fingers ripped down Summer’s scalp, streaking pain across her skull. Her breath left her on a panicked scream. Somehow the sound reached Chase in the center of his two-on-one old-fashioned brawl, and he tossed the guys aside like they were no more than garbage. He launched himself at her and her unseen attacker, separating them long enough for her to see she’d been nailed by a girl who brandished a few strands of Summer’s hair like a trophy.
A girl. Oh, heck no.
“You’re done, slugger,” Chase said in Summer’s ear, pulling her aside so fast that she didn’t have a hope of slipping free of his iron-clad grip. She glimpsed Kyle gathering their instruments into their cases on stage before Chase lifted Summer over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and carted her out of the club, seemingly oblivious to her shouts and flailing arms and legs. That she faced down toward his hot cross buns was a particularly cruel blow.
“Put me down, you Neanderthal,” she shouted. Realizing she hoped to appear there again—hopefully with less disastrous results—she lowered her voice. Slightly. “I’m an adult, you jerk.”
