got out of the car, imagining that, unless he opened his mouth, he’d fit right in. The soft, button-fly jeans hailed from his Oxford days, as did the worn denim shirt, the sleeves rolled to just below his elbows. Of course, his two-week-old custom-made boots—when in Rome and all that—did creak a bit as he crossed the dirt lot, nodding in silent response to assorted “howdys” and “heys” along the way. His self-consciousness vanished, however, the instant he stepped inside the dimly lit bar choked with noise and body heat, his nostrils flaring at the tangled smells of hops, barbecue sauce, cheap perfume.
He scrubbed a palm across a jaw hazed with three-day-old stubble, then grinned, the despair retreating just a bit further into the shadows.
Cigarette smoke ghosting around the stage lights, the microphone squawked as the sultry-voiced singer asked for requests. A slightly slurred voice shouted out something rude: The dubious-aged, big-haired blonde, a blur of sequins and six-inch-long satin fringe, laughed and lobbed a zinger of a rebuttal in the heckler’s direction, just as a piercing whistle sliced through the din.
“Alek! Over here!”
Alek squinted through the haze and bodies, then chuckled at the sight of Jeff Henderson standing atop one of the tables, madly waving his arms and grinning with youthful exuberance.
“Sit, sit,” Jeff ordered after Alek threaded his way through the crush, then dropped into his own chair, edging back the brim of a ball cap with his thumb. “Beer?” Jeff asked. “Or something stronger?”
“Beer’s fine.” The singer launched forth into her next number. Jeff nodded, signaling to the pretty, dark-haired waitress a few tables away. “And food,” Alek added, snatching the laminated menu from the metal stand in front of him.
Jeff grabbed the menu from his hand, plopped it back into the stand. “Menus are for wimps. You come to Ed’s, you eat the barbecued ribs. Period. Side of slaw, side of beans. Biscuits to sop it all up with. Hey, sugar—” With another of those ingenuous grins, he reached up, playfully tugged at the hem of the waitress’s apron. “What took you so long?”
A quick laugh met Jeff’s remark—along with a good-natured smack on the hand with her order pad. A bit of a thing in a white sleeveless blouse and jeans, her nearly black hair waves framing classic features, the young woman was one of those rare creatures who, while undoubtedly pretty enough without makeup, could knock a man’s socks off with it. Smoky shadow and carefully applied eyeliner only served to accentuate huge, ice-blue eyes, while she had the kind of mouth just made for red lipstick. And Alek knew more than one European model who would kill for that flawless complexion.
“It’s about all these other customers, Jeffrey Eugene?” she said in an accent thick as treacle, then turned that bright, sweet smile on Alek, and he was startled to feel his blood stir in a way it hadn’t for a long, long time. Flirting with waitresses wasn’t Alek’s thing. Nor was he flirting now. Exactly. But that smile certainly snagged his attention. Not to mention a libido he’d been sorely neglecting of late.
“Luanne Evans, Alek Hastings.” Jeff took a swig of his beer, then another tug of her apron. “Be nice to him,” he said in a stage whisper. “He’s from out of town.”
“Oh, yeah?” Her voice was breathy and weightless, like a child’s. She picked up Jeff’s sweating bottle, then wiped off the already-clean table, which made her breasts move in a way Alek found more than a little distracting. “From whereabouts?”
His eyes jerked to her face. “Carpathia.”
“No foolin’?”
Alek leaned back in his chair, a smile tickling his lips. “You’ve heard of it?”
“Some of us,” she said, obviously for Jeff’s benefit, “actually paid attention in geography class.” Then she rattled off not only the location of the tiny principality nestled in central Europe, but the square mileage, Carpathia’s capital and the fact that their monarchy—now constitutional—had gone unchallenged for more than four hundred years. And while Alek sat there, at once flummoxed and extraordinarily impressed, she stared at him for a long moment, ignoring repeated entreaties from the next table. Then she crossed her arms underneath that pair of truly lovely breasts. “One thing bothers me, though.”
“And what might that be?”
“What in tarnation are you doin’ here?”
Alex smiled. Slowly. Now he was flirting, no holds barred. Her directness, her intelligence, her spirit—and, all right, her physical attributes—positively inflamed him, body and soul. “I thought I knew, up until a few minutes ago.” The smile broadened as he leaned forward, let their gazes tangle. “But now I wonder if perhaps I’ve been led here…for reasons I’ve yet to discover.”
Although she kept her smile in place, not even the darkness could disguise her blush. Alek felt duly—and justifiably—chastised. But before he could apologize, he caught the look on Jeff’s face, one that clearly said I want that as he gave Luanne their orders, then snatched her pencil out of her hand. Playful, still. And respectful—Alek, took note—despite an attraction that Alek surmised had more substance than his friend was letting on.
“So, darlin’—when you gonna put me out of my misery and marry me?”
Ah.
But, apparently recovered from Alek’s gaffe, Luanne only laughed. Carefully arranged tendrils grazed her cheeks when she shook her head. “Now, you know as well as I do that marrying you would be like marrying my own brother.” She recovered her pencil, then popped him lightly on the head with it. “Wouldn’t be natural.” Then she sashayed off, giving them both an enticing view of the way her jeans cupped that extremely nice, perfectly rounded bottom, how her hair water-falled nearly to her waist.
On a sigh, Jeff lifted his bottle of beer, peered at it with one eye closed. “Kinda makes incest look a lot more attractive, don’t it?”
Alek chuckled, counting his blessings the young man had apparently missed Alek’s lame, and ill-considered, attempt at a pick-up line. “You’ve got a thing for her, I take it?”
Squinting, Jeff tipped back his chair. “Oh, we tease a lot, Lulabelle and me—shoot, we’ve known each other since we were in grade school—but I don’t suppose it would seem natural, like she said. But I’m here to tell you—” he nodded his beer bottle in Alek’s direction before he took a pull “—I’d do anything for that gal, I really would. No matter what my dang-fool family thinks.”
Alek frowned at the edge to Jeff’s voice. “Meaning?”
The chair thunked back to the floor as Jeff leaned forward again. “Meaning, some folks seem to think where you live or what you do for a living is more important than you who are. Never mind that Luanne was the smartest girl in school—fact, if it weren’t for her, I never would have gotten my sorry butt through algebra—or that, after her mama got sick, she supported the two of them for three years without askin’ for a lick of help from nobody.” Jeff shook his head, disgust pulling his mouth taut. “Galls the life out of me, sometimes, the way people judge other people, y’know? Well, damn it, I know what she’s worth. If anything, she’s far too good for the likes of ninety percent of the men around here, and that’s a fact.”
Although Alek had to smile at the young man’s pup-protecting-his-mistress loyalty, something—a vague disingenuousness, perhaps?—kicked up the odd hackle or two. Nothing he could define, just an odd feeling that a smart person
