carol away from yanking the jukebox plug out of the wall. Some idiot had just played three versions of the same song. If another one flipped, he was going to knock a few heads and then take off.
His brother was now—he checked his watch—ten minutes late. The way Dylan figured, it would serve Jamie right if he bailed. He hadn’t wanted to meet at the bar in the first place, and he certainly wasn’t in any mood to sit here by himself listening to a bad version of a song he’d never liked much in the first place.
On this, the evening of Black Friday, the Liz was hopping. A popular local band was supposed to be playing, but from the buzz he’d heard around the bar, apparently the bass player and the lead singer—married to each other—had shared a bad Thanksgiving tofurkey the day before and were too busy yakking it up to entertain the masses.
Those masses were now growing restless. He no longer liked crowds under the best of circumstances, and a bar filled with holiday-edgy, disappointed music fans with liberal access to alcohol struck him as an unpleasant combination.
Somebody jostled him from behind and he could tell without turning around it was a woman. The curves pressing into his shoulder were a good giveaway, along with a delectable scent of cinnamon and vanilla that made him think of crisp, rich cookies.
His mouth watered. He’d been a hell of a long time without...cookies.
“Pat, where’s my mojito? Come on. I’ve been waiting forever.”
The woman with the husky voice squeezed past him to lean against the bar, and from the side, he caught only an equally sexy sleek fall of blond hair. She was wearing a white sweater that was about half an inch too short, and when she leaned over, just a strip of pale skin showed above the waistline of a pair of jeans that highlighted a shapely ass.
The longtime Lizard bartender frowned, his wind-chapped face wrinkling around the mouth. “It’s coming. I’m shorthanded. Stupid me, I figured when the band canceled, nobody would show up. Give me a sec. Have some pretzels or something.”
“I don’t want pretzels. I want another mojito.”
She had obviously already had a mojito or three, judging by the careful precision of her words. The peremptory tone struck a chord. He looked closer and suddenly recognized the alluring handful: Genevieve Beaumont, spoiled and precious daughter of the Hope’s Crossing mayor.
She was quite a bit younger than he was, maybe six years or so. He didn’t know her well, only by reputation, which wasn’t great. He had always figured her for a prissy little society belle—the kind of vapid, boring woman who wasted her life on a solemn quest for the perfect manicure.
She didn’t look it now. Instead, she looked a little tousled, slightly buzzed and oddly delicious.
“If somebody plays another damn Christmas carol, I swear, I am going to scream. This is a freaking bar, not Sunday school.”
“Hear, hear,” he murmured, unable to hold back his wholehearted agreement.
She finally deigned to pay attention to anything but herself. She shifted her gaze and in her heavily lashed blue eyes he saw a quick, familiar reaction—a mangle of pity and something akin to fascinated repugnance.
Yeah, he hated crowds.
To her credit, she quickly hid her response and instead offered a stiff smile. “Dylan Caine. I didn’t see you there.”
He gave her a polite smile in return. Completely out of unwarranted malevolence, he lifted what remained of his left arm in a caricature of a wave. “Most of me, anyway.”
She swallowed and blinked but didn’t lose that stiff smile. If anything, it seemed to beam unnaturally, like a blinking string of Christmas lights. “Er, nice to see you again,” she said.
He couldn’t remember ever having a conversation with the woman in his life. If he had, he certainly would have recalled that husky voice that thrummed through him, as rich and heady as his Johnnie Walker.
“Same,” he said, which wasn’t completely a lie. He did enjoy that little strip of bare skin and a pair of tight jeans.
“Are you visiting your family for the holidays?” she asked, polite conversation apparently drilled into her along with proper posture and perfect accessory coordination, even when she was slightly drunk.
“Nope.” He took a sip of his whiskey. “I moved back in the spring. I’ve got a place up Snowflake Canyon.”
“Oh. I hadn’t heard.” She focused on a point somewhere just above his right ear, though he noticed her gaze flicking briefly, almost against her will, to the eye patch that concealed a web of scar tissue before she jerked it away.
He fought the urge to check his watch again—or, to hell with Jamie, toss a bill on the bar for his tab and take off.
Though they certainly weren’t society-conscious people like the Beaumonts, Dermot and Margaret Caine had drilled proper manners in him, too. Every once in a while he even used them. “Don’t think I’ve seen you around town since I’ve been back. Where are you living these days?”
Her mouth tightened, and he noticed her lipstick had smeared ever so slightly on her lower lip. “Until three days ago, I was living in a beautiful fifth-floor flat in Le Marais in Paris.”
Ooh là là. Le Marais. Like that was supposed to mean anything to him.
“Somebody should really do something about that music,” she complained to Pat before Dylan could answer. “Why would you put so many freaking versions of the same song on the jukebox?”
The bartender looked frazzled as he pulled another beer from the tap. “I had to spring for that stupid digital jukebox. Worst business decision of my life. It’s completely ruined the place. It’s like karaoke every night. Here’s a little secret you might not know. We have a crapload of people in Hope’s Crossing with lousy taste in music.”
“You could always take it out,” Dylan suggested.
“Believe me, I’m tempted every night. But I paid a fortune for the thing. Usually I just end up forking over some of my tips and picking my own damn songs.”
He finally set a pink mojito in front of Genevieve. She picked it up and took a healthy sip.
“Thank you,” she said, her sexy voice incongruously prim, then gave Dylan that polite, empty smile. “Excuse me.”
He watched her head in the direction of the gleaming jukebox, wondering what sort of music she would pick. Probably something artsy and annoying. It better not be anything with an accordion.
He checked his watch, which he really hated wearing on his right arm after a lifetime of it on the left. Jamie was now fifteen minutes late. That was about his limit.
Just as he was reaching into his pocket for his wallet, his phone buzzed with an incoming text.
As he expected, it was from Jamie, crisp and succinct:
Sorry. Got held up. On my way. Stay there!
His just-older brother knew him well. Jamie must have guessed that after all these months of solitude, the jostling crowd and discordant voices at The Speckled Lizard would be driving him crazy.
He typed a quick response with one thumb—a pain in the ass but not as bad as finger-pecking an email.
You’ve got five.
He meant it. If Jamie wasn’t here by then, his brother could drive up to Snowflake Canyon to share a beer for his last night in town before returning to his base.
The digital jukebox Pat hated switched to “Jingle Bell Rock,” a song he disliked even more than “The Little Drummer Boy.”
“Sorry,” the bartender said as he passed by on his way to hand a couple of fruity-looking drinks to a tourist pair a few stools down.
Dylan