He was still staring at her expectantly and she couldn’t help but notice the faint white lines radiating from the corners of his eyes. Clearly he spent a lot of time outdoors squinting into the sun. They could be laugh lines, she supposed, but he didn’t look like the type who succumbed to hilarity on a habitual basis.
A question, she remembered now, as he continued staring. He’d asked a question. “Um...” Clever or charming was really beyond her at this point, whether it was due to the martinis or his rampant masculinity. “I really don’t like my birthday,” she confessed.
“That’s too bad. No good memories about it whatsoever? Not one?”
Shay’s brow furrowed as she thought back. “I had a pony party when I was eight. We went out on a trail ride and at the end my dad barbecued and my mom served a cake in the shape of a horseshoe.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“It was.” She smiled a little. “When I was thirteen I had a pajama party. My older sisters treated me and my friends to facials, manicures and cosmetic makeovers. That year, the cake was shaped like a tiara.” Also fun.
“So, when did the day go from tiaras to tragedy?”
The very next year, when she was fourteen. It was the year her father died and at her birthday party one of the guests had whispered loudly to another that Shay was a bastard and her mother a whore. Though that mean girl had been summarily sent home, in that moment Shay had become very self-conscious of who she was and who she wasn’t.
Not that she would tell the stranger all that. So she shrugged instead and turned the tables on him. “What about your birthdays? Pizza and laser tag? Cakes shaped like footballs or Super Mario?”
“We didn’t celebrate birthdays in my house.”
Shay’s eyes rounded. “What?”
“My mom was gone early...I don’t remember her. My father, a former Marine, was a hard man. At my house, the showers were cold, Christmas was just another day and the date of your birth was only something to put on a medical form or a job application.” He said it all matter-of-factly, no shred of self-pity in his tone.
Shay stared at him a moment. Then she swiped up her martini glass and swiveled forward in her seat, unsure how to respond.
“I’m sorry.” He sounded genuinely apologetic, not to mention a trifle embarrassed. “Too much information, right?”
His discomfort eased hers. She threw him a little pretend glare as she took another sip of vodka. The look was ruined by the hiccup that bounced up her throat. As she swallowed it back down, she caught sight of the corner of his mouth kicking up in that small, amused and very attractive smile of his.
She tossed another brief glare in his direction.
“Okay, Birthday Girl, what’s wrong now?”
“What’s wrong, he asks?” she said, shifting to face him while rolling her eyes. “I was into my four-martini, poor-me birthday routine, though still sharing my appetizer, you’ll recall, when you released the air from my gloom balloon by telling me about cold showers, no Christmas and a complete lack of birthday cake.”
“Gloom balloon?” He started laughing, husky and low, showing a wealth of even white teeth. The sound of it rolled over her like honey.
She was so over being intimidated by his good looks, she told herself as she 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