glass were soaking through her jeans and the pile of napkins on the floor, she reached for the cosmopolitan again, even though her head was already swimming.
She didn’t dare make too much of his observation about her being here tonight. Sooner or later, everyone came through Colbys. It was a mainstay in Weaver. Just because he happened to notice something about her didn’t mean diddly.
He studied her for a moment. Then he swallowed another one of her French fries, wiped his salty fingers on his jeans and reached across the table, his hand extended. “Seth Banyon.”
She automatically shook his hand. “I know.” The admission escaped and her face turned hotter than ever. She pulled her hand quickly away from his and managed not to rub her palm on her own jeans even though the temptation was strong. “Hayley Templeton,” she said abruptly.
Why was it that she only felt truly confident with strangers when they were her patients? If she were her patient, she’d assign herself some homework about that. Small steps designed to increase her comfort in an area always outside her comfort zone.
“I know. Dr. Hayley Templeton.” He wrapped his long fingers around his beer bottle and tilted it to his lips. “The shrink,” he added when he set the bottle down again.
“The psychologist,” she corrected.
If anything, he looked even more amused, a faint dimple appearing in his lean cheek, though he managed not to smile outright. “Heard Jane was off visitin’ someone for the holidays, but where’s your other friend? The blonde without a lick o’ Christmas spirit who gave me a ticket the other day?”
Despite her woozy head, she instantly knew who he was talking about. “Sam has plenty of Christmas spirit,” she countered defensively.
“Well, Sam still wrote me a speeding ticket on Christmas Eve. Probably gonna cost me a couple hundred bucks.”
“Probably because you shouldn’t have been speeding.”
His lips twitched slightly. If he was concerned over the ticket or the ensuing cost, he didn’t particularly look it.
He knew Hayley’s name but not Sam’s? Being the only female deputy sheriff around, she stood out even more than Hayley, the psychologist.
She pushed aside the thought and picked up her sandwich, only to set it back down again. She plucked a French fry from the pile and nibbled on the end instead. They were crispy. Salty. Still hot and exactly the way she liked them. But her stomach still didn’t seem thrilled at the prospect of food. She forced down the rest of the fry anyway and wiped her fingers on a fresh napkin. It was the last one in the dispenser. The rest were on the floor performing sop-up duty.
When a burst of laughter came from one of the nearby tables, she made herself meet Seth’s eyes because she was a grown woman and no longer a socially awkward teen. “What are you doing in here alone?” Unfortunately, the question came out more blunt than flirtatious, and she wished the floor would just swallow her whole.
He didn’t answer. Merely lifted his beer bottle and finished off the contents. Then he set the bottle back down alongside her cosmo, and his knuckles grazed hers. She went hot in spots that didn’t show from the outside and was glad for that. He reached for his wallet, pulled out a few dollars and left them on the table and filched several more French fries, which he ate in one gulp as he stood.
Maybe if she’d spent more time developing a social life instead of her career, she wouldn’t get all hot and bothered by the briefest, most unintentional contact imaginable.
“You have someone to drive you home?” he asked in his deep voice. Drive sounded more like drahve. He was looking at her cocktail glass.
She managed, somehow, to loosen her tight fingers from around the stem and blood reentered her fingertips. “I’m walking.” She lifted the sandwich again, but her roiling stomach kept her from taking the charade of hunger any further.
“It’s snowin’ outside.”
“It often does around here this time of year,” she said with such blitheness she was actually impressed with herself.
“I’ll drive you.” He lifted the sandwich out of her suddenly lax fingers and set it on the plate. Before she could gather her wits, he’d grabbed the towel from her lap and cupped his hand around her elbow. “Come on.”
She stood, because, well, what else could she do considering the way he was tugging her off the barstool? “I don’t want to go home,” she blurted, the fake blitheness beyond her reach again. Her grandmother, Vivian, was staying with her. And facing her would mean admitting what a disaster Hayley’s latest attempt to visit her parents had been. Avoiding that embarrassment was the very reason why Hayley had been warming the barstool in Colbys in the first place.
Seth dropped the towel on the table. “Then we’ll go to my place.”
She stared at him. She couldn’t help it. “And do what?”
His gaze drifted over her face. “I think we can find something to entertain us. Don’t you?”
Her belly lurched. There was no mistaking his meaning.
His lips twitched slightly as he looked pointedly at the table. “You going to pay your check? Or does your friend let you eat and drink for free?”
Truth be told, Jane never wanted Hayley to pay for anything in Colbys, but Hayley always insisted. Flushing darker than ever, she snatched her purse from the back of the barstool and left a wad of cash on the table to cover her tab plus a tip.
“All right, then.” His faint smile widened a bit as he held out her coat for her.
Swallowing hard, Hayley slid her arms into the sleeves. Seth’s hands lingered on her shoulders for a moment. Something was going wrong with her breathing. “My jeans are wet,” she said stupidly.
His smile widened. His teeth were white and very straight, except for the faintest gap between his two front teeth.
“I think we can do something about that, too,” he said leaning forward near her ear.
Then he spread his palm across the small of her back and nudged her gently toward the door.
Head spinning, not knowing what else to do and not wanting to do anything else anyway, Hayley mindlessly put one foot in front of the other and walked out of the bar with him.
Three months later
His jaw going so tight that it actually ached, Seth stared at the other man. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Tristan Clay’s calm expression didn’t change; his light blue eyes looked glacial. “Do I look like I’m joking?”
Seth clenched his teeth to keep from spitting out an oath. There was a time and a place for that, and here in his boss’s home while Tristan and his wife hosted a joint wedding shower for their nephew and his fiancée was definitely not it.
Fortunately,
