that her close friend, Isabella Mendoza, had invited her to.
Eddie had listened to her impatiently and then he’d turned her down. She hadn’t been prepared for that and when she’d asked him why, Eddie had bluntly told her that he would be spending New Year’s Eve with someone else.
With his new girlfriend.
Jane could feel the sting of tears starting again and she passed her hand over her eyes, wiping them away. Up until that point, she’d thought that she was Eddie’s girlfriend. But somewhere along the line in the last month, a month in which Eddie had been making himself increasingly scarce, he had decided that he “could do better”—his very words, each tipped in heart-piercing titanium—and found himself someone else.
The only trouble with that was that he’d forgotten to tell her.
Jane let out a long, shaky breath. She supposed she should have seen it coming. After all, it wasn’t as if she was a knockout. And cute guys like Eddie Gibbs didn’t stay with mousy girls like her, at least not for long.
Women, Jane silently corrected herself. Women. She was twenty-five years old. At twenty-five, you weren’t a girl anymore; you were a woman.
A very lonely woman, Jane thought glumly, looking into the bottom of her glass. The drink had long since become watered down, the ice cubes melting into what had once been a fruity piña colada. It had turned the liquid into an exceedingly pale shade of yellow.
She needed to get out of here, she told herself. At this point, she didn’t know what she could have been thinking, agreeing to come here with Isabella. Seeing all these couples, whispering into each other’s ear, clearly enjoying themselves, was just making her feel more hopeless.
More alone.
Besides, it was getting pretty close to midnight, when the New Year was ushered in with heartfelt, soulful, passionate kisses. Seeing all these couples wrapped in each other’s arms, kissing in the New Year was much more than she was going to be able to stand.
Up until three days ago, she thought she’d be kissing Eddie at the stroke of midnight. Now, she thought dejectedly, she’d probably be the only one here who had no one to turn to as the glittering silver ball on the wide-screen, flat-panel television reached the bottom of the pole and sent off an array of wild, blinding sparklers to greet the incoming year.
She didn’t need to see that.
Didn’t need to feel like a loser.
Again.
Jane glanced at her watch. Less than ten minutes left before midnight. That didn’t give her much time to make her escape.
As if anyone would notice her leaving, she thought mockingly. She’d come here with Isabella, but there had to be a taxicab out there somewhere, didn’t there? This was a big night for inebriated people. Cab drivers made their money on nights like New Year’s Eve.
“Freshen that up for you?” asked a deep, melodic voice directly above her.
Jane realized that the voice—and the question—belonged to one of the waiters. He was obviously asking about the drink she’d been pretending to nurse for the last two hours. She’d already set the glass aside. The colorful little umbrella was drooping badly, mirroring the way she felt inside.
“No,” she replied politely, “I was just…”
The rest of her thought vanished, as did, just for a moment, her entire thinking process. All because she’d made the mistake of looking up at the owner of the low, rumbling, sexy voice.
The man who had asked the question was, in a word, beautiful. Not just handsome—although he was quite possibly the handsomest man, up close or on the movie screen, that she had ever seen in her life—but actually teeth-jarringly heart-stoppingly beautiful.
He had soulful brown eyes that she could have gotten lost in for at least the next ten years, and straight black hair that was just a little on the long side. Tall, lean, muscular, with jeans that emphasized his slender hips—and every move he made—whoever this man was, he made her think of a young lion.
On the other hand, his smile made her think of nothing at all, because just seeing it effectively turned her very intelligent and active brain to the consistency of last week’s mush.
Struggling to collect herself and retrieve whatever might still be left of her composure, Jane did her best not to sound as if she was currently understudying the part of the head idiot of a very large village.
“Excuse me?”
“Your drink,” Jorge prodded, nodding at the glass next to her elbow on the table. “May I freshen it up for you?” Lifting it to his nose, he took a sniff. “Piña colada, right?” he guessed. And then, when she said nothing at all, he smiled again, completing the transformation of the organ that was in her chest from a functioning heart to a puddle of red liquid. “My parents have me tending the bar,” he explained, “and making sure that lovely ladies like you don’t have to wait too long to have their requests granted.”
Lovely ladies. How could someone so beautiful be so blind? she wondered. She wasn’t lovely, she was plain and she knew it.
The ball on the TV panel on the back wall looked as if it was going to begin its descent at any moment.
Get out of here, her survival streak ordered urgently.
Coming to, Jane shook her head. “No, that’s all right,” she told him as he reached for her glass. “I was just about to leave anyway.”
He looked at her in surprise. “Leave? Before midnight?” He made it sound as if she were doing something revolutionary.
Jane lifted her shoulders in a vague shrug. The left strap of her dress slipped off, sliding down her upper arm.
Jorge, his eyes on hers, reached out and very slowly slid the strap back into place.
Jane felt as if her skin had just caught on fire. She was rather surprised that she didn’t actually spontaneously combust. The puddle in the middle of her chest became a heart again and instantly went into triple time, hammering so hard she was having trouble just catching her breath.
“Doesn’t seem to be much point in staying,” she heard herself saying, although she wasn’t conscious of forming the words.
“And why is that?” he asked gently.
Just the sound of his voice made her feel warm all over. It took her a moment to realize that he’d asked her a question and another moment to focus on the words, making sense out of them.
“People always kiss someone at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve…”
Not sure how to end this sentence without sounding like a loser, Jane just let her voice trail off, hoping he’d silently fill in the rest of it himself. And have the decency to leave.
“And you have no one to kiss?” Jorge asked incredulously. His eyes swept over her. She could almost feel them. “A pretty lady like you?”
Jane could feel heat traveling up her cheeks and down her throat until all of her felt as
