“There’s a lesson to be learned there,” Rylann said.
“Never wear a denim miniskirt?”
Rylann laughed. “That, too.” And stay away from bad boys.
They moved on from the subject of Kyle Rhodes and joined their friends in the Fifth Amendment fracas. Before Rylann realized it, over an hour had passed, and she was surprised when she checked her watch and saw that it was after midnight. She caught herself glancing in the direction of the pool table—her treacherous eyes seemed to have a will of their own that night—and noticed that Kyle Rhodes and his friends were gone.
Which was just fine with her.
Really.
Two
THE BAR LIGHTS came on, a signal that it was time for everyone to clear out.
Rylann checked her watch impatiently, saw that it was a quarter past one in the morning, and wondered what could be taking Rae so long in the bathroom. She didn’t think her friend was sick—sure, they’d both had a few drinks that night, but they’d spread them out over several hours.
When another person, the third in the last five minutes, bumped into Rylann in the half stampede/half stumble of drunk patrons to the door, she figured she should check on what was keeping Rae. Moving against the herd, she waded deeper into the bar. Without warning, a guy slammed into her from the left, spilling his beer down the front of her black V-neck shirt.
Rylann cringed as the cold, sticky liquid trickled between her br**sts and down her stomach. She glared at the culprit, a guy wearing a Greek-lettered baseball cap low on his forehead. “That’s just great,” she said dryly.
He managed a lopsided grin. “Sorry.” He turned around and pushed his friend. “Look what you made me do, ass**le!”
As Asshole & Co. made their way out of the bar without another glance in her direction, Rylann shook her head. “Undergrads,” she muttered under her breath. No more campus bars, she decided. Sure, the drinks were cheap, but they clearly needed to find someplace with a more cerebral crowd.
“Now, now, counselor. Not so long ago, that could’ve been your pledge-dance date.”
Rylann recognized that teasing tone. She turned around and saw Smug Dimples, aka Kyle Rhodes, relaxing against the bar, his long legs stretched out in front of him.
She walked over, resolved to remain cool in the face of such undeniable attractiveness, and tried to decide how annoyed she was that his assessments of her were getting more accurate. She had been in a sorority and had, in fact, gone to pledge dances and several other functions with inebriated frat guys in baseball caps who inevitably ended up spilling beer on her at some point in the night. Good times.
She stopped alongside Kyle at the bar and pointed to the stack of cocktail napkins behind him. “Napkin, please.”
“You’re not going to tell me that I’m wrong about your pledge-dance date back there?”
“It was a lucky guess.” Rylann held out her hand and repeated her request. “Napkin.”
Kyle looked her over, then turned to the man standing behind the bar. “Think we could get a towel, Dan?”
“Sure, no problem, Kyle.” The bartender opened a cabinet underneath the bar and pulled out a fresh towel. He handed it to Kyle, who passed it over to Rylann.
“Thank you. They seem to know you around here, Kyle.” She pointedly repeated his first name so that she didn’t need to feign cluelessness if he offered it. For some reason, she didn’t want him to know that Rae had told her who he was.
“The manager is a friend of mine.” Kyle gestured to his two friends, who were playing pool in the corner of the bar. “He gives us free drinks. Can’t beat that deal.”
Rylann bit back a laugh. She wouldn’t have thought that a billionaire’s son would care about getting a deal on drinks. Then again, having never met a billionaire’s son before, she really didn’t know what they cared about.
She dabbed at her wet shirt with the towel, grateful that she’d worn black and didn’t have to worry about see-through issues. She half-expected Kyle to make some kind of smirky remark about the way the material clung to her chest, but he said nothing. And when she’d finished with the towel and set it on the bar, she looked up and found his eyes on hers, not zoned in on her boobs.
“So where are your friends?” he asked.
Shit! Rae. Rylann had completely forgotten about her after Frat Boy had dumped the beer down her shirt. “That’s a good question.” She looked around the bar and noticed that it was empty except for a few stragglers. Neither Rae nor her other law school friends were among them.
This was starting to get odd.
“She was supposed to meet me by the front door after she went to the bathroom, but she never came back…Excuse me for a moment.” Rylann left Kyle standing at the bar and strode into the ladies’ room. A quick check of the stalls revealed they were all empty.
After exiting the ladies’ room, she headed toward the wide wooden staircase that led to the second floor. A bouncer promptly cut her off at the pass.
“Bar’s closed,” he said. “You need to make your way to the door.”
“I’m looking for my friend who said she was going to the bathroom. There’s one upstairs, right?”
“Yes, but there’s no one in it. I just checked,” the bouncer said.
“Is there anyone still hanging out by the bar? Tall girl, light brown hair, wearing a red shirt?”
The bouncer shook his head. “Sorry. The whole floor’s empty.”