he’d known all his life—which was clearly much too long. “Spill.”
“Now that I consider it,” Skye said, tapping her chin with a finger, “it’s his second big love. The first was the exchange student from Belgium who attended our high school junior year. He moped for months after she returned home to the land of waffles and chocolate. Then—”
“I had other girlfriends,” he declared over her, annoyed.
“But no one you really flipped for until Amethyst Lake came into your life.”
Polly hooted. “Amethyst Lake? That sounds like an anime character.”
“Her real name was Amy Lake,” Teague said stiffly. “Amethyst is her stage name. She’s the singer for The Jewels.”
His best-friend-who-was-a-girl continued to snicker. “When was this?”
“It was...five years ago?” Skye posited. “Right before you two met, Amethyst and her group left on tour, never to return.”
“Wow,” Gage said admiringly. “It’s the stuff of fantasy, dating the hot lead of an all-girl rock band.”
“Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?” Polly demanded of Skye, then turned to Teague. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
The back of his neck was burning. “Let’s talk about someone else. Surely I’m not the only person with a romance he or she would rather forget.”
Gage raised his eyebrows in the direction of his sister-in-law-to-be. “I heard that Jane dated the famous author Ian Stone.”
Griffin leaned forward, sending his brother a hard look. “We don’t speak of Ian Stone.”
“Jeez, okay,” he said, hands up. His gaze roamed the table. “Polly, you look like a girl with a torrid history.”
Teague nearly snorted. She looked like a girl who won the Girl Scout cookie prize and celebrated by sharing an ice-cream soda with the boy voted most likely to become a Jesuit priest. “Polly’s closemouthed about her past, but you gotta assume it’s so clean it squeaks.”
Skye elbowed her friend. Teague glanced over at the movement, caught her whisper. “Wait, doesn’t he know about—”
“Girl dance!” Polly called, her gaze avoiding Teague as she yanked Skye from the table by the hand. The beat of The Weather Girls’ “It’s Raining Men” was rocking through the speakers. “Jane, you come, too.”
And so, before he could completely assimilate the “doesn’t he know about,” the women were gone, deserting the men for the small parquet floor, where they shook their asses and shimmied their shoulders in ways you only saw in movies like Dirty Dancing or when females were partnered with each other. Teague stared. He didn’t know Polly had those moves in her.
“I used to think watching that was hot in junior high,” Gage commented. “It only gets better as I age.”
“Or as you get hornier,” his brother said. “Making any progress on the Gorge?”
Gage scowled at his twin. “Like Ian Stone, we won’t speak of it.”
“Oh, hell,” Griffin said, groaning. “That’s a bad sign. And I promised Jane I’d warn you again about getting involved with Skye. As in, don’t. Is that what’s going on?”
Skye? She was his friend, too. Teague looked between the twins.
“It’s none of your business,” Gage said.
“You don’t know—”
“I know much more than you do.” Gage tossed back the rest of his beer. “Don’t mess with me on this, Griff.”
The tense atmosphere was palpable. Teague glanced over his shoulder, compelled to check on the women, and happened to catch the segue from rock beat to the slow groove of blues. The women slowed, too, and a man sitting at a table behind Polly gave her the obvious one-two and rose from his chair.
Teague didn’t know what got into him, but he had his hands on her before the other guy could introduce himself. He immediately took her in his arms and sidestepped her away from her would-be partner, even as Polly’s clearly surprised face turned up to his. Yeah, he was a little flabbergasted himself.
By how good it felt to hold her like this.
Had they never danced together?
He tried to remember as they swayed to the sultry rhythm of “At Last” by Etta James, and supposed not. They’d hiked together, skied, taken road trips with bicycles. Pal stuff, and often as part of a larger group of friends.
“You’re small,” he said. He thought of her as athletic and energetic, but under his hands, he could feel her delicate bone structure. Her face was all female, of course, the clean lines of her features dressed up with the blond hair and blue eyes. But he’d never noticed how incredibly...feminine she was. He glanced down the space between their bodies. She wore some kind of filmy, hippy-style top with jeans. Strappy shoes,