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“You know that I do, but dancing with Blaze is asking a bit much of me,” she grumbled. “We broke up three months ago and one dance at your wedding won’t change any of it.”
“Right, so what will it hurt to just dance with him? Please don’t make a scene at my wedding. He’s coming over now. Just tell him, yes, Blair, please,” Brenda begged. She wasn’t sure what to say. A part of her wanted to run away because that’s what her panic was whispering to her to do, but she’d definitely cause a scene then, and she didn’t want to do that to her friend.
“Fine,” she spat, “just one dance though,” she whispered under her breath.
“Thank you,” Brenda said, “I’m going to find my husband.” She giggled and smiled back at Blair. “It’s still weird to hear myself say that,” she said. Brenda waved at her, and Blair couldn’t help but shake her head at her crazy friend.
“Hey,” Blaze almost whispered. “Um, would you like to dance?”
She looked him over, noting that he seemed a little nervous—a quality that she had always found endearing. “Sure,” she agreed, taking his offered hand. Blair was going to lie and tell him that she’d love to dance with him, but she didn’t want to oversell her performance.
“Thank you,” he said. Blaze wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close, causing her breath to hitch. “You look beautiful, Blair.” She wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she kept things short and polite.
“Thanks, Blaze,” she breathed, “you look handsome yourself.”
“Thank you,” he whispered into her ear. She couldn’t help but lean into his body—God he smelled so good. No—the last thing she should be doing was smelling her ex. This was just a dance. She was doing this for her friend to keep the peace. But what if she was doing this for herself? What if she wanted to dance with Blaze more than she wanted her next breath—because she did? She still wanted him, God help her, and the one thing she knew for sure was that wouldn’t end well for either of them.
* * *
“I didn’t know that you were going to be here, Blair,” he said. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have shown up here. I didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.”
“You haven’t made me feel uncomfortable, Blaze,” Blair insisted. Sure, she was totally lying, but he didn’t need to know that. “We were together for six months and we’re bound to run into each other. We run in the same circles.” She was leaving out the critical bit of information that they were going to be running into each other a lot more in the very near future.
After she helped to plan Brenda and Jordan’s honeymoon, she found out that the travel agency that she worked for was letting her go. She had to be able to keep up with her rent and well, she needed a job. When she saw that the Smokey Bandits were hiring a new bartender for their bar, she jumped on the phone and begged Ryker for the job. It didn’t take much begging, and even after she admitted to him that she and Blaze were no longer together, he still seemed good with hiring her. Ryker told her that it was up to her to tell Blaze, but she was supposed to report to work first thing Monday afternoon. A part of her worried that if Blaze didn’t agree to her working at the bar, Ryker would rescind his job offer. That gave her the weekend to work up the nerve to tell her ex that she was going to be invading his world more frequently.
“I guess we do,” he breathed. It wasn’t easy to think, let alone talk, with him holding her the way that he was. And the way that he kept whispering in her ear was damn near driving her crazy.
“You guess we do, what?” she asked, trying to keep up.
He chuckled, “I guess we do run in the same circles,” he said. “Is that a bad thing?”
“Depends on what your definition of bad is,” she said. For her, it was a very bad thing. She knew that getting back together with Blaze, no matter how much she wanted to, wasn’t something that she could do. Blair had made a promise to herself that she was going to find a way to get back on her feet and learn to be on her own. It was the only way that she’d fulfill her promise to not end up like her mother. She didn’t want to be dependent on anyone but herself and this was the first step.
“I don’t know,” he said, “this doesn’t feel so bad to me.” Blaze tightened his arms around her, and she took a deep breath. It was now or never.
“I have something that I need to tell you,” Blair said.
“Shoot,” Blaze whispered.
“I lost my job at the travel agency.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Blaze said. “Is there anything that I can do?”
“Um, actually, there is,” she said, “you can be all right with me bartending at the Smokey Bandits.”
Blaze stopped swaying to the music and stared her down. “Did you only accept my offer to dance because you wanted me to agree to you being the Smokey Bandit’s new bartender?”
Blair pulled free from Blaze’s body and looked up at him. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to punch him or tell him off. Maybe a bit of both was in order. “Of course not,” she said, “I danced with you because Brenda asked me to, as a favor to her. She told me that she coerced you to agree to ask me.”
“She did not coerce me to do anything,” Blaze insisted.
“Okay, maybe that was a bad choice of words,” she said, “but, I danced with you because Brenda asked me to.”
“Great, now I’m just a favor that you did for your friend. Jesus, Blair, did I ever mean anything to you?” She wanted to take away the hurt that she caused in his eyes, but it was too late for that.
“Of course, you meant something to me, Blaze. You still do,” she said. That part was the only truth she had given him tonight. She still had feelings for him. Blair wanted him at every turn, but she couldn’t give in to her feelings on this one. “I hope that we can be friends.”
“I don’t want to be friends, Blair,” Blaze growled. “I want you back. I was hoping that you were dancing with me because you felt the same way on some level. I guess I was just playing the fool again, but what’s new?” This was the Blaze she could deal with. He was pissed and that was so much better than hurt.
