Jamie grabbed Cara’s arm and practically yanked her off the dance floor. Cara nearly stumbled in her heels from the surprise attack her friend had launched on her elbow.
“Hey! I like that arm. I want to keep it,” she said as they made their way to the bar.
“It is indeed a very nice arm. Shapely and toned,” Jamie said, patting Cara’s bare flesh as they reached the chrome and steel bar at Edge, a nightclub owned by one of Travis’s friends.
“So you can see why I’m attached to it,” she said, and then her eyes widened as the soon-to-be-bride gestured to a tray with shot glasses and a gorgeous crystal martini glass with a purple concoction.
Cara pointed to the fancy cocktail. “Purple Snow Globe?”
Jamie nodded. “Pick your poison. I ordered a bunch of drinks.”
There was no question in her mind. She’d gladly take the sweet, sugary, award-winning cocktail over the burn of a tequila shot anytime. She picked up the drink and clinked glasses with Jamie. “To your wedding.”
“I will happily drink to the end of my single days,” Jamie said, quickly downing the amber liquid. “Speaking of single days, what are we going to do about you and Travis and the way you two were staring at each other on the dance floor?”
Cara’s jaw dropped. “What?”
Holy shit. Had everyone noticed? She thought she’d done a bang-up job sealing away her desire in a Ziploc bag and stuffing it in the back of the freezer. Evidently, she had not. She slapped on her best cool-and-composed look, took a leisurely swallow of her drink, then said, “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, come on,” Jamie said, rolling her pretty brown eyes. “The two of you are still checking each other out like you did in high school.”
God, it had been so long, and even though she and Travis had flickered back into each other’s lives once or twice since, they were never in the same place at the same time for long enough to matter. That hadn’t stopped her from wanting him, though.
“Well, that was then. This is now,” Cara said, as if she could so easily squash the long-simmering desire she felt for him. She’d try any remedy to get him out of her head. But he was right there, twenty feet away, casually leaning against the side of the table, knocking back a longneck as he chatted with Smith, looking all relaxed and sexy casual.
She did her best to avert her gaze from him, and his dark brown hair, and his piercing blue eyes, and his broad shoulders that were strong enough to carry you, because they were supposed to carry you. Just her luck that the already- gorgeous-at-the-time high school football star would turn into one of the hottest firemen in the whole damn world. He’d been branded on her brain and on her body, and the mere handful of men—she could count them on one hand; half a hand technically—she’d been with since then had paled in comparison.
Sigh. What was a woman to do?
“And now is the time to finally do something about it. I see how you’re always looking at him at my bar. And God only knows, I practically have to sweep his jaw up from the floor, the way he gawks at you,” Jamie said, parking her hands on her hips and staring pointedly. Cara’s lips twitched in a faint smile at the confirmation that this attraction wasn’t one-sided.
Wait. Why did it matter? She wasn’t going to do a damn thing about it. She wasn’t into casual hook-ups, and Travis wasn’t into serious relationships. Enough said.
“Be that as it may, I’m going to be working with him the next few weeks, training his new dog. Even if I were to do something about it, it would be foolish,” she said, and she didn’t intend to let her latent lust rule the day. Besides, she’d managed to resist jumping him since she’d moved back to Hidden Oaks after spending most of her twenties in San Francisco. She could work with the man and his dog, no problem.
Too bad the task was harder tonight, since he’d been giving her what distinctly felt like a good old-fashioned eye- fucking when she’d been dancing a few minutes ago.
“Well, you know what they say about fools,” Jamie said, as she flashed a big, bright smile.