sucked down the rest of the vodka in her glass. You could be gorgeous and built and have the world’s most powerful-looking hands and the warmest surprise of a laugh, but if you’d never had birthday cake...well.
That had to be fixed immediately, she decided with half-drunken logic.
Boarder Bartender—in his own immortal words—was “down with that.” Mere minutes after her whispered aside, a server came from the kitchen bearing a big hunk of chocolate cake topped with a lighted birthday candle. As the room erupted in song, Shay realized she didn’t know his first name.
“Jay,” he said over the loud singing. There was a bemused grin on his face. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
And maybe she was. Or maybe it was the vodka. Whatever the reason, she felt reckless and carefree as they both cozied up to the bar around the piece of multilayered cake. He tried to tell her he didn’t like sweets, which caused her to roll her eyes again, and him to let loose another round of that rough-warm laughter.
They dueled forks for the last bite of cake.
Jay ordered another round of quesadillas, so she had more to eat to counteract the effect of the martinis. The night wore on, the crowd around them drinking freely while Shay switched to sparkling water. From somewhere, the management dredged up a motley collection of games. It didn’t surprise Shay that the king of the jungle snagged the only deck of cards for the two of them.
It was useful to have a predator at her back.
“You would have been good on the Titanic,” she mused.
Lifting those golden eyes from the cards he was shuffling, he glanced around. “Is that what this feels like?”
Shay looked, too. In one corner, some men were playing dominoes with ruthless concentration. In another, a group of middle-aged women, with a bouquet of now empty wine bottles working as the centerpiece for their table, launched into a rendition of Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies.”
“Hmm, maybe Rick’s Café from Casablanca?” Shay suggested.
“I guess I’d rather be Bogie than the kid who turns into an ice cube.” Then Jay dropped his hand to her bare knee and gave it a brief squeeze. “So...what should we play?”
Shay stared down. The large palm and long fingers covered her skin like a warm and slightly raspy blanket. The calluses were a workingman’s, just as she’d guessed. Though she supposed she might still register fairly high on the tipsy scale, the alcohol hadn’t desensitized her flesh. It prickled in reaction to his touch, hot chills rushing from the point of contact northward. Involuntarily, her thighs pressed together, prolonging the small thrilling ache she felt between them.
“Birthday Girl?” he called again.
Her gaze moved up to his. His golden eyes studied her face. She felt it like another touch, a fingertip, maybe, following the arch of her eyebrows and the profile of her nose. He looked lower, and her lips started to tingle, her mouth going dry inside.
Her tongue snaked out to her lower lip.
Jay jerked, his attention jumping from her face to the cards. His hand moved from her and he began dealing them out.
The sexual hum in her body did nothing to help her brain. It only muddled her thinking, which meant while she should have been edging away from him or sliding off the stool altogether and making tracks for her room, instead she leaned closer, her shoulder bumping his.
She intended it in a friendly way, but the tap became kind of a rub, and when he glanced at her there was another charged moment of energy passing between them. An exchange.
A sexual exchange.
Wow, she thought again. He was the most beautiful, masculine man she’d ever met. Her sister’s fiancé, Ryan, was classic-cinema-star handsome—when you looked at him you thought you should have some popcorn on hand. Watching him breathe was pure entertainment.
With Jay, it was different. Shay wanted to watch him move. Or better yet, move things. Do things. He was a man made to operate a forklift or lay railroad ties or rig a suspension bridge.
He’d separated the cards into two piles, one of which he slid toward her. When she gathered them closer, their fingers touched. Again, Jay flinched.
The sexual spark stung her, too.
“What are we going to play?” she asked.
He gave her a grim look. “War.”
Shay sighed. She could have told him it wasn’t going to work. It was completely clear to her, even after chocolate cake, quesadillas and martinis.
There was no way to battle this pull between them.
And at this point, she didn’t want to.
With another forbidding glance, he slapped down the first card. A deuce.
Hers was a king.
Several minutes later, when the game was over and all the cards were piled in front of Shay, she began to stack them neatly.
“Round two?” he asked. There was a tense note to his voice.
Likely because he thought they’d have to sit here all night playing cards instead of having another kind of round two...around dawn.
In her room at the inn.
They could do that, though, couldn’t they?
Her heart started beating faster and she could feel her pulse thudding in her throat and at her wrists. She’d never propositioned a man before...but now she wanted to. Really wanted to, and hadn’t she promised Mel she’d have fun? Glancing at the clock on the wall, she noted it was after midnight.
It truly was her birthday now. “You know, there are rooms here...” she began.
His gaze was trained on her face. She had the impression he was counting each and every one of her eyelashes. “I was told there’s no vacancy,” he said.
Shay’s hand crept toward her purse, still hanging on the hook. From it, she pulled out the plastic key card, which she placed on the bar’s surface and then slid toward the man at her right. He was turned toward her on his stool, his elbow on the bar. “I reserved the last one,” she whispered.
Hesitating, she ran her gaze over his rugged shoulders, his wide chest, his powerful thighs. If she scooted closer, she’d be between his legs, surrounded by him. Closer to the clean scent that she’d been aware of for hours.
Shay cleared her throat and reminded herself she was due a present. “The bed’s big enough for two.”
JACE JENNINGS STARED down at the innocuous rectangle of plastic. Birthday Girl’s fingers touched one edge, the nails short and painted with clear polish. Transparent, the same as her face.
He’d been able to read every expression flitting across it all night long.
