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“Look at the audience, Cord.” Her head stays tilted away, obscuring her face. But she’s close enough that I can smell her. Lavender and something with a citrus tang, but not quite…
“You know who I am.” I smile, trying to catch her eye, but she doesn’t make eye contact. I knew she looked familiar, though.
Her mouth firms, and an edge of steel laces her beautiful voice. “Yeah. You guys play hockey. Big shots. I get it. But you have to get them out of here. This might be fun for you guys, hanging with the locals, but the locals aren’t amused.”
My temper flares. We have as much right to be here as anyone else. But then my gaze strays to the people standing on the dance floor. They don’t look happy. They came to hear her sing, not listen to my guys warble off-key.
Worse, some of them look downright pissed.
We’re headed for the playoffs. The last thing my team needs—I need—is bad publicity right now, and nothing would be worse than a brawl at a dive bar.
She’s right. It’s time to go. I pull my phone from my pocket and hit up the Uber app, cursing myself for not bringing my own car. With a few taps, Ralph with his Prius and Tamika with her Corolla are on their way to get my crew.
I hold up my hands to Hannah, showing her that we’re ten minutes out, and she nods. She picks up her tablet and flicks her finger over it. Lifting the microphone to that luscious mouth, she says, “I think you all know this one too.”
The next song on the speakers is the karaoke sing-along magic for a boy from the South like me, “Two Pina Coladas” by Garth Brooks.
She starts and encourages everyone to join in. It doesn’t take much to get the whole place, including my guys, to get into it. She leads them all along, dancing and singing with them, allowing the momentum to take the crowd. She stays a safe distance away from me, too, I notice.
I lean against the wall on the opposite side of the stage from her, giving her some space and acting like her distance doesn’t bother me at all as the rest of my guys goof off between us.
The last strains of the song ring through the speakers, and the whole place erupts. I set my empty beer bottle on the ground against the wall and spread my arms, stepping between my drunk-hugging, high-fiving teammates and the people in front of us. “Time to go, boys,” I call. “I ordered the cars. Drinks at my place when we get back.”
The suggestion that we can keep going strikes a chord with them, and they hoot and holler. I smother a grin. So predictable. That sounds good now, but after a twenty-minute ride home, it might be a different story.
“We can listen to the last songs from the back,” I say, herding them off stage. I take a quick glance at Hannah and see relief on her features. It softens that mouth…well, it changes her face into something extraordinary.
I wait, watching her longer than appropriate. She catches me staring, and I meet her eyes. Brown. Pretty. Sharp. I wink. Quickly, she glances away. I immediately miss the contact.
Everything in me wants to stay, to smooth things over, to talk with her. But there’s no way to do that now. I need to make sure Mikey gets home okay, and she’s in the middle of singing. So I do the only thing I can and follow my guys off the back stairs.
As we sweep through the side exit and I hear the beginning strains of Maren Morris’s “Bones,” I feel like I do when I miss a big goal on the hockey rink.
Disappointed.
