On the swing in the back garden.
Hell, on top of the bar might be nice.
Cat thrust the mental picture out of her head, promising herself she’d lay off the romance novels. And the occasional late-night blue movies on cable. And the erotic fantasies during her middle-of-the-night bubble baths. Because she had obviously become a sex-starved maniac.
She did have to give herself a little bit of a break. After all, it’d been a year since she’d had even bad sex. As for good sex? Whew, she wasn’t sure she could remember when that had last happened. Which had to explain why she wanted this guy like a woman on the South Beach Diet wanted a baked potato. With fries on the side.
“Thanks. We were glad to get the call.” Spence smiled, a cocky half smile that said he knew what she’d been doing—trying to act nonchalant and not quite succeeding. “Though it looks like a small audience.”
“What, are you kidding?” she asked, glancing around the room, where at least twenty people sat at the usually empty tables. “This is a crowd for us, lately. As close to wall-to-wall as we’ve seen since they tore up the nearest intersection, banned on-street parking, and set up a horrendous detour.”
Obviously hearing her disgust, he said, “You sound like you definitely need some entertainment this weekend.”
Oh, he had no idea how much she needed entertainment. Or maybe he did. His tiny grin told her they were flirting again. This time—maybe because he’d let her regain her equilibrium with small talk about the bar—Cat felt more able to handle it. “I’m a little particular in how I get my…entertainment.”
“Oh? Anything you’d care to share?”
Licking her lips, she did a classic blond hair toss—which she’d learned around the age of three—and reached for a martini shaker. She splashed a generous amount of vodka into it, dirtied it up with a splash of olive juice, then poured it for the guy at the end of the bar, knowing by the look in his eye that he was ready for another.
“I don’t think so,” she said when she returned her attention to Spence.
He shook his head. “Too bad. So I guess I’ll just have to do my stuff for everyone else in the room.”
“I somehow suspect the women in this place are going to like seeing you do your stuff,” she replied, her tone dry.
“I somehow suspect I won’t care what any other woman thinks.”
Cat nibbled her bottom lip, seeing an expression that somehow resembled tenderness cross his face. As if he were no longer flirting, but being entirely serious. Which was ridiculous, considering they’d known each other all of a half hour.
She shook off the feeling. “They’ll be a good audience, since you’re here at their request. I asked the loyal regulars who’ve been sticking it out through the road construction to vote on what they wanted for the last few weekends we’re open. Two of the three are strictly country and western, but this weekend Temptation is all about rock and roll, and you guys came highly recommended.”
“Lucky me.” Straightening, he lifted his guitar case off the floor and looked toward the door, where another guitar-carrying musician was entering. “Guess I’d better go.”
He was going to be across the room, but for some silly reason she almost missed him. Maybe it was because she knew in a few minutes he would be the property of every on-the-make woman in the place. “Want me to send over a drink to keep your pipes wet?”
He nodded. “Just water, if you don’t mind.”
He started to walk away, then paused and looked back. Nodding toward something on the wall behind her, he lowered his voice and said, “By the way…not me. And hopefully not you.”
She was still puzzling over the remark after he’d reached the stage. Then, finally, she realized what he’d been talking about. Swiveling on her heel, she looked up at the sign above the bar. It had been hand-painted by the same artist who’d done the one out front, as well as the murals in the back hallway.
Though Spence’s answer had brought up a number of complications, the sign posed a simple question.
Who can resist Temptation?
DYLAN SPENCER HAD FALLEN madly in love twice in his life.
The first time had been at age seven when he’d been introduced to his ultimate destiny: the greatest form of music ever created. He’d been visiting his grandparents’ house in New England for the holidays and one of his older cousins had gotten a Van Halen album for Christmas. It had been love at first riff.
The year had been 1985 and the record had been 1984 and Dylan had decided then and there that bass player Michael Anthony had been touched by God.
Dylan had been completely enthralled. His parents—who never listened to anything that didn’t feature fat Italian opera singers—had not been. Particularly when they’d caught Dylan entertaining all the neighborhood kids with a rousing, nearly R-rated rendition of “Hot For Teacher.”
Thinking they could steer his love for music, and encourage his rather amazing natural musical abilities, they’d signed him up for piano lessons.
He’d been kicked out when he’d broken into Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” during an end-of-the-year recital.
By ten he was air guitaring his way through life. By twelve, after five years of relentless begging, he had his own real bass guitar and it had been practically glued to his hands ever since.
Yeah. Rock and roll had been his first experience with instant obsession.
Cat Sheehan had been his second.
Throughout the evening, while he stayed perfectly in sync with his bandmates, putting his all into the music, he kept at least part of his attention on her. The woman who’d taken his breath away from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her.
Cat wasn’t hard to keep track of—she definitely stood out. From here, behind the glare of the small spotlights, her long golden hair looked almost silver. Occasionally, she’d smooth it back off her cheek with one graceful lift of her finger, so that it framed her perfect face.
He wasn’t close enough to focus on the deep, ocean-green of her eyes. But he definitely watched the graceful movements of her slim body, clad in tight-as-sin jeans and a sleeveless white tank top. Also tight. Also sinful.
Working the bar as if she’d been born behind it, Cat didn’t even have to look at the labels of the bottles from which she poured. Her hand never faltered as she made any drink ordered. She moved with a dancer’s grace, able to pull a draft of beer off the tap, circle around and set it down in front of a customer in one long, fluid movement a ballerina would envy.
Chatting easily with everyone, she smiled often—that dazzling smile taking his breath away from all the way across the room. At one point, he even thought he heard her throaty laugh over all the other noise in the place. The sound was distinct because of the reaction it caused in him—instant awareness. Instant hunger. Instant heat.
She affected him like the music affected him.
Deeply. Intimately. Physically.
But it wasn’t just that. He liked hearing the laugh and seeing the smile because they countered the weariness in her brow and the slight slump of her shoulders, which he’d noticed as soon as they’d started talking earlier. He didn’t know what was troubling Cat. But he planned to find out.
“This place is wild,” Josh Garrity yelled from the other side of the small stage. The crowd was roaring its approval at the end of their second set. If the walls weren’t still shaking from the Aerosmith song they’d just finished, they were from the applause. “You think they’ll let us take a real break this time, Spence?”
Dylan nodded as he carefully put his beloved Fender back into its case and turned off his Voodoo amp. Josh played guitar and sang lead