He threw his head back and laughed. “Well, who said we didn’t have entertainment?”
I licked my lips and he followed the motion, his gaze lingering on my mouth. “So I’m off in an hour. You planning on hanging around?”
“I just might be.” I flashed him another smile. He was cute. Not overwhelmingly gorgeous, but my track record with those types was not good. I swallowed as I remembered not too many days before when I’d had a heart-stoppingly gorgeous man all over me.
I flicked another gaze across the bar at him. He was chatting with the women at his table, but his eyes were on me. When our gazes met, his eyes visibly narrowed. What was he, my babysitter?
I pressed the drink to my lips again, this time clasping the glass so that my middle finger was visible to him, obviously positioned that way on purpose. When he saw, his eyebrows rose. With a wide grin, I put the drink down and shot the bartender another flirty smile.
“Be right back…where’s the ladies’ room?”
He pointed. “Don’t lose your way back to me, lovely April.”
Ugh. That was cheesy. But my grin remained pasted to my face as I slipped away from the bar and weaved between crowded tables toward the back of the room and down a dark hallway.
I twisted the knob on the scuffed-up bathroom door, finding it locked. Damn it. I didn’t frequent this place at all, but if it was like other bars, there were probably people fucking in there. I didn’t have to go to the bathroom that badly. It had been an excuse to get away, maybe spend fifteen minutes sitting in a stall reading on my phone. This whole night was proving deeply annoying, between Cari’s “plot” to go after Adam—and somehow, vaguely involve me in it—and Jordan’s unexpected appearance and subsequent social butterfly routine. Personally, I would never have pegged him for a place like this. I would have thought he did his woman-trawling at private parties for the rich and famous and incredibly hot model and actress hopefuls.
With a sigh of frustration, I stepped away from the bathroom door and pressed my back up to the fake wood paneling on the wall in the narrow hallway. Well, the good news was that, wherever I was—whenever I didn’t want to be there—as long as I had my phone, I had an e-book I could read. And I was currently in the middle of the steamiest, most lurid romance novel ever, complete with a rotten-to-the-core motorcycle gang biker dude chasing after the virginal preacher’s daughter.
I slid back along the wall when I heard someone coming toward me and flattened to make room for the person to move past. But the person stopped right beside me, and I had the sensation he or she was reading my phone over my shoulder. I looked up into Jordan’s face.
“What the hell are you reading?” he asked.
I clicked the phone off, shoving it into my shoulder bag. “None of your business. What are you doing here?” I spun, facing him. Now that I was seeing him up close, I couldn’t help but notice he looked particularly fetching tonight. He was wearing black jeans that hugged his slim hips and a dark green button-down shirt, open at the collar to reveal his strong neck. I swallowed and looked away.
“I was thirsty,” he said with a mocking gleam in his eyes. He glanced around the narrow hallway then his eyes fixed on the back door. “What are you doing back here?”
“Waiting for the bathroom. It’s locked.”
“There’s probably somebody fucking in there.”
I turned and pressed my shoulder against the wall, folding my arms. “So how’s the hitting on the old ladies going? Get any of them to take out their dentures for you?”
His eyes flashed dangerously. “The older ones know what they’re doing. Sometimes better than the young ones.”
His comment knocked the breath right out of me. That same old hurt from Gunnar and my mom. My mouth fell open and then I snapped it closed again, turning around because he blocked my way back into the bar. And I really didn’t want to go back in there anyway, because tears were now prickling my eyes. So I turned and grabbed the back doorknob, gave it a twist and ended up in the alley behind the bar. I slammed the door behind me, but two seconds later Jordan pushed his way through.
It was dark and quiet back here. The only lighting came from a distant street lamp. Tiny puddles of gross water collected in dips of asphalt. And naturally, there was a distinct stench coming from the direction of a big green dumpster.
Jordan glanced around and then looked at me, eyes wide. “What the hell was that about?”
I turned my head away from him, quickly brushing tears away with the back of my hand. “That was about getting the hell away from you. Too bad you can’t take a hint.”