a girl in my class to come with me tonight and she said she couldn’t. She said—” He paused for a second, working his way past the embarrassment. “She said her mother wouldn’t let her stay out that late.”
It was a plausible enough excuse, Jorge thought, although the girls he’d known at Ricky’s age had bent rules, ignored parental limitations and come shinning down trees growing next to their bedroom windows just to see him for a few stolen hours.
“How old are you again, Ricky?”
The boy unconsciously squared his rather thin shoulders before answering. “Fourteen.”
“Fourteen,” Jorge repeated thoughtfully. “Well, she was probably telling the truth, then.” He did his best to appear somber. “When my sisters were each fourteen, my father would have chained them in the stable to keep them from going out with a boy, much less staying out until midnight.”
That didn’t seem like a good enough excuse to assuage his ego. “But it’s New Year’s Eve. Besides, times have changed,” Ricky pointed out.
The boy had a lot to learn, Jorge thought. “Parents haven’t,” he assured the boy. “And, if you want some advice—”
Ricky’s eyes widened and all but gleamed. “Please,” he encouraged enthusiastically.
“First, you have to have confidence in yourself.” He saw the disappointed, skeptical look that entered the boy’s eyes. Expecting the secret of the ages, he was receiving an advice column platitude. “You can do it,” Jorge continued. “No girl is going to want to go out with you if you act like you don’t want to be around yourself. Understand?”
A little of Ricky’s disappointment abated. “I think so.”
Jorge nodded. Since no one was approaching the bar at the moment, he decided to be more generous with his advice. “And this next point is the most important thing you’ll ever learn about dealing with a woman.”
“What?” Ricky asked breathlessly, Ponce DeLeon about to uncover the fountain of youth.
Jorge lowered his voice. “When talking to a girl, always make her feel as if she’s the prettiest girl in the room.”
Ricky swallowed and glanced over at Lizzie Fortune, the girl who made the very air back up in his lungs. Lizzie was a distant Fortune cousin, just in town for the holidays. His heart had melted the moment he laid eyes on her this evening.
He didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell with someone who looked like that. And he doubted that Jorge’s magic formula would have any effect on Lizzie.
“What if she already is the prettiest girl in the room?” he wanted to know.
“Then it’s even easier,” Jorge told him. “You can handle any girl. Just have confidence in yourself, Ricky, and the rest will be a piece of cake.”
Ricky was still more than a little uncertain. Just breathing was enough for someone who looked like Jorge. But for someone like him, it wasn’t that simple. “And this always works?”
“Always,” Jorge said confidently.
But he could see that Ricky still had his doubts. The boy definitely needed a demonstration, Jorge decided. “Tell you what,” he proposed. “You pick any girl in this room and I’ll have her eating out of my hand in no time.”
Ricky’s eyes widened far enough to fall out. “Any girl?”
“Any girl,” Jorge agreed. “Just make sure she’s not married. We don’t want to start any fights here in my parents’ restaurant.”
Ricky was perfectly amendable to that. “Okay,” he agreed, bobbing his head up and down. He was already scanning the crowded room for a candidate.
Ricky stopped looking when his line of vision returned to the woman he’d spotted earlier, sitting by herself at a table. There was a frown on her face as she regarded her half-empty glass and she was very obviously alone. It was a table for two and there was no indication that anyone had recently vacated the other chair.
There was even a book on the table in front of her. Was she reading? Whether she was or not, there seemed to be an air of melancholy about her, visible even at this distance.
“Her,” Ricky announced, pointing to the woman. “I pick her.”
Chapter Two
Rising to the challenge, Jorge attempted to focus in the general direction that Ricky indicated.
The woman was clearly the stereotypical wallflower. She was sitting at the corner table all by herself, twirling a lock of long curly brown hair around her finger, the festive lights shimmering off her shiny green dress.
“Hey, man, I don’t want to get arrested just to prove a point,” Jorge protested. When Ricky looked at him quizzically, Jorge added, “She looks like a kid.”
Ricky shook his head. “She’s not. I heard her talking to someone earlier. She works for some kids’ literacy foundation, tutoring them and sometimes holding fund-raisers to buy extra books. I think it’s called Red Rock ReadingWorks,” Ricky volunteered. He looked at Jorge expectantly. “She’s gotta be at least twenty.”
Jorge grinned at the boy’s tone. He was thirty-eight himself, but he doubted Ricky knew that. “Then she’s ancient, huh?”
“Hey, I’m fourteen. Everybody’s ancient to me.” Feeling as if he’d just put one foot in his mouth, Ricky quickly added, “Except you, of course.”
Jorge’s grin widened. “Nice save,” he commented.
Ricky glanced back toward the girl at the table before looking up at his hero again. Jorge hadn’t made a move yet.
“Backing down?” he wanted to know.
Nothing he liked better than a challenge, although, given his experience, the young woman at the table didn’t look as if she’d put up much resistance.
“Not a chance,” Jorge told him. He looked around and then saw one of the restaurant’s employees at the far end of the bar. Perfect. “Hey, Angel,” he called over the din. The man looked in his direction and raised a brow. “Mind taking over for me for a few minutes? I haven’t had a break all night.”
Jorge was the owners’ son and what he wanted, he would have gotten without question even if he wasn’t so affable. Angel nodded and came around to the other side of the bar.
“No problem.”
Untying the half black apron secured around his slim waist, Jorge surrendered it to Angel. He felt invigorated. He was back in hunting mode.
Jane Gilliam had really hoped that coming to the party tonight would help her shake off the dark mood that had all but enshrouded her these last few days. Three days to be exact.
Three days since Eddie Gibbs had unceremoniously, and without prior warning, dumped her.
She probably wouldn’t have even known she was being dumped, at least not
