straightened up and Denise, suddenly so warm she could hardly breathe, took a step away from him.
“Hey Mike,” one of the men called over the pounding, pulsing beat of the music, “losin’ your touch?”
“Doesn’t look like it to me,” a woman in the crowd answered for him. More laughter and Denise was grateful for the smokiness of the room. Hopefully, it was enough to hide the flush she felt staining her cheeks.
The other man in the game, someone called Stoner, took his shot and missed.
“Our turn,” Mike said over the music and waved her back to the table.
“I think I’ll just watch for a while,” she said with a shake of her head. “You finish the game.”
“Sure?”
She nodded, knowing damn well the only reason she was quitting was because she didn’t know if she could take being that close to him again.
Denise held her pool cue and watched Mike pick up another stick and work his way around the green felt table. He paused every other step or so to exchange some comment with one of his friends and each time he smiled, the knot in her stomach tightened.
She swayed a bit unsteadily and tightened her grip on the stick in her hands, using it more for balance than anything else. Apparently, the beer she’d had with her pizza—the best pizza she’d ever tasted—had gone right to her head. Fog nestled in her brain and Denise struggled to clear it. Of course, the loud rock music blasting over the speakers, the crowded press of bodies in the place and the heavy cloud of blue-gray cigarette smoke wasn’t helping things any.
A huge man with tattooed forearms the size of ham shanks slapped Mike on the back in a friendly gesture that would have sent any other man sprawling to the sawdust-covered floor.
Not Mike.
The black T-shirt he wore hugged his shoulders and upper arms, defining muscles that seemed to have a life of their own. They rippled and shifted whenever he took a shot and Denise caught herself holding her breath to watch the show in admiration.
Foggy brain or not, she knew enough to realize that she was in deep trouble.
A moment later, the pool game ended when Mike sank the eight ball in a corner pocket. Cheers erupted and a dark-haired woman in jeans tight enough to cut off her circulation wrapped herself around Mike like a child’s grubby fist around a Popsicle stick.
Except that there was nothing childlike about the voluptuous brunette.
When the woman grabbed Mike’s face between her palms and planted her lips on his in a long, lusty kiss, Denise gritted her teeth and fought down the roiling in her stomach. She told herself that she had no claim on him. That it didn’t matter who he kissed. Or when. Logically, she knew that this wasn’t even a real date.
But logic had nothing to do with what she was feeling.
Mike pulled his head back, patted Celeste’s shoulder and peeled her off him. He shot a quick look at Denise’s tight features and felt...guilty, for God’s sake. Stupid. He didn’t owe her anything. He wasn’t her boyfriend—or God forbid, her husband. And the knowledge that he had no intention of getting involved didn’t do anything to quiet the storm inside him.
While he gave Celeste a gentle push toward her date for the night and walked toward his own, he told himself that Denise had no claim on him. He was as free as old Herman, up on the roof.
The fact that Herman was not real and permanently attached to the wooden building was beside the point.
When he reached Denise’s side, he took the pool cue from her and passed it off to another player.
“I don’t want to interrupt your fun,” she said loudly, to be heard over the music.
Sure you do, he thought. The look in her eye would have sliced Celeste to ribbons if the other woman had been aware of it. But he didn’t say that. Instead, as he heard the music change, he grabbed her hand and headed for the postcard-size dance floor.
She dragged behind him as he wended his way through the Friday night crowd. Once, she even tried to slip away, but he tightened his hold on her and kept walking. When he reached the small area where two other couples were already swaying in time to the music, he stopped and turned around to face her.
Her expression was mutinous, but he didn’t give a damn. He’d put up with the other men in the place ogling her all night and now, he wanted the chance to put his arms around her and hold her close. He wanted to show the rest of them that Denise was his.
At least for tonight.
He tugged her closer and she moved slowly, reluctantly.
“Dance with me,” he said into her ear and inhaled the delicate, flowery scent of her perfume.
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