Foreplay: The Ivy Chronicles (4 page)

Chapter
5

T
here he
is.” Emerson shook her head. “I can’t believe I gave him to you. He’s so damn
hot.” She nudged me encouragingly and waggled one of her finely arched eyebrows.
“You better climb all over that or I’m going to punch you. No backing down.”

I stood several yards back from the bar, tucked
half behind Emerson as I scoped out the bartender undetected. Her words didn’t
faze me. “You know the small matter of his interest in me, or lack of interest,
might come into play.”

She looked back at me. “You’re kidding, right? You
look good tonight. Better than most of these overdone peahens prancing around in
here shaking their tail feathers his way. You’ve got something they don’t.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “Yes. You’ve got . . .” She
paused, searching for the word. “ . . . a freshness to you.”

I winced, feeling rather as if she’d just called me
a “nice girl.” I couldn’t seem to escape that moniker.

The bartender (I really needed to learn his name)
wore another Mulvaney’s T-shirt, this one a soft-looking gray cotton with blue
script across the chest. I had a flash of myself wearing that shirt and nothing
else, wrapped up in his scent. Wrapped up in him. Sucking in a breath, I shook
off the wicked image. Probably every girl who walked up to him entertained that
fantasy—along with a few choice others that I probably didn’t need to visualize.
That thought made me feel decidedly un-special. I had to somehow stand out from
the rest of them, and I wasn’t convinced my
freshness
would do the trick.

He looked as good as ever if my memory served.
Better. A body made for sin and a face that was too masculine to be beautiful,
but the sight of it did something to me. Made me feel boneless and trembly all
over.

“No backing down,” I echoed, my resolve still
there, burning hot inside me, keeping me from turning and running out of the
building.

It was just the two of us tonight. Georgia was off
with Harris.

“Okay,” Em announced. “I think we’ve reconned long
enough. Let’s move in.”

Her words sent a wave of panic washing through me.
“It’s crowded . . .”

“It’s crowded every night. Unless you want to come
stalk him on a Monday. Assuming he’s even working then.”

I shook my head. No. No more delays.

“Let’s go then. You should feel good. You look
great.”

I glanced down. The jeans I wore belonged to
Georgia. They were too tight, but Emerson said that was the whole point
. You’ve got the perfect curves. Show them off
. The
blouse was Georgia’s, too. Various shades of orange and yellow. Very bohemian in
style and flouncy. Emerson vowed that it went great with my hair. It was
wide-necked, and every time I pulled it up over one shoulder, it slipped down
the other one. Again, the whole point, according to Emerson.

As we inched toward the bar, Emerson shoved me in
front of her. There were only three people working the counter, and we made
certain to approach the side he was working.

I watched as he poured beer into a pitcher,
admiring the flex of his bicep. His gaze lifted and scanned the bar, the way I’d
noticed him do last night. Surveying, assessing the crowd. Maybe for trouble?
Those pale blue eyes passed over me for a split second before jerking back.

He smiled crookedly. “Hey, it’s Nice Girl. How’s it
going?”

“Nice girl?” Emerson hissed in my ear. “Okay,
clearly you did not tell me everything about last night if he’s already given
you a nickname!”

I elbowed her, unsure how to respond to his
greeting. I smiled. “Hi.”

He handed off the pitcher, collected the money, and
turned to me. “What can I get you?”

I ordered two longnecks. He glanced at Emerson.
“ID?”

I watched her as she dug in her purse and pulled
out her fake ID. When I looked back up it was to catch him looking at me. He
looked away, giving her ID a cursory scan before moving to fetch our drinks.

“So hot,” Emerson muttered near my ear as he bent
to grab them from the back chest. “And he was eyeing you. Did you see that?”

I shook my head, unconvinced, but my heart beat a
hard rhythm in my chest.

“Slip him your number.”

My gaze swung to her. “What? Just like that?”

“Well, you’ll know if he’s interested by his
reaction. Maybe he’ll call. Or he won’t. Either way, you can get this thing off
the ground or move on to someone more receptive.”

I bit my lip, contemplating. The only problem was
that I had decided it would be him. He would be my test subject. If he wasn’t
receptive I didn’t feel like moving on—I didn’t
want
to. And where did that leave me?

Sighing, Emerson dug around in her purse.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, looking in his
direction and confirming he was heading back our way.

Shaking her head, she pulled out an eyeliner pencil
and snatched a thin square napkin off the stack sitting on the bar. Lightning
fast, she scrawled my name and number.

I felt my eyes bulge. “Stop! No!” My hand dove for
her arm, but she angled herself away from me, standing on her tiptoes and
stretching out her arm.

“Here you go,” she called just as my fingers
clamped down on her wrist.

“Em, no!”

Too late. I watched as long, masculine fingers took
the napkin from her. My gaze followed that hand up to the bartender as he set
our drinks down single-handedly. Bile rose up my throat.

I heard Emerson’s voice beside me as though from
far away. “This is
her
number.”

Her
. Me. The girl with
the face as red as a tomato.

His gaze moved from the napkin to me. Those silvery
blue eyes fixed on me. He flicked the napkin in my direction. “You want me to
have this?”

He waited, his expression blank. The ball was in my
court. Without giving me the slightest indication of whether he even wanted my
number, he was asking me what I wanted.

I stammered out the words. “Uh, n-yes. Well, sure.
Whatever.”

Lame. I felt like a thirteen-year-old girl. My face
burned.

“She wants you to have it,” Emerson insisted from
beside me.

If possible my face grew hotter. He leaned forward,
setting his elbows on the bar, his gaze fastened on me with searing intensity.
“Are
you
giving me this?”

Apparently
whatever
wasn’t going to work for him.

The air ceased to flow in and out of my lungs. I
felt myself nod dumbly. Emerson elbowed me discreetly. “Yes,” finally spilled
from my lips.

He straightened. Without another word, he slipped
the napkin into his pocket, took the money that Emerson handed him for our
drinks, and turned away to another customer.

With one hand on my arm, Emerson dragged me away. I
risked another look back at the bar, searching for him among the multitude of
heads bobbing up to the front of the counter for their drink order. I spotted
him. He was pouring more beer, holding the lever down. But he wasn’t looking at
what he was doing. He was looking at me.

H
e so
wants you.”

I glared at Emerson as I took a pull from my
longneck, forgetting that I wasn’t a fan of the taste. I was too annoyed. “I
can’t believe you embarrassed me like that.” As the words spilled out of me, I
deliberately trained my eyes on her to keep myself from glancing at him across
the room again.

“We had to get things moving. Nothing was going to
happen if you just ordered, paid, and moved on.”

I frowned, leaning one hip against the pool table.
I refused to admit she had a point. Or that maybe he would call me now. He had
put my number in his pocket, after all. Or was that just simple politeness? To
spare my feelings. Maybe he’d thrown it away already.

“God.” I lifted my fingers and rubbed at the center
of my forehead where a dull ache was forming.

She patted my back. “I know. It’s hard being a girl
who actually emerges from her dorm room and talks to sexy boys.”

The guy beside Emerson nudged her, bumping her hip.
“Hey, hot stuff, your shot.”

Turning, she lined up her pool stick and prepared
her shot, earning a lot of stares when she bent over, thrusting her bottom up in
the air to the appreciative gazes of nearby guys, specifically the two that had
invited us to play pool with them.

The ball plunged into the pocket with a
whoosh.

“Nice!” Ryan—or Bryan?—high-fived her, clinging to
her fingers longer than necessary.

Emerson didn’t seem to mind. He was cute. I could
tell she thought so, too, by the way she arched her throat when she laughed.

Unfortunately, his friend seemed into me, and I
didn’t think he was cute. Or maybe he was. I just wasn’t into him. There was
only one guy here that caught my interest and I’d just humiliated myself in
front of him. I had actually muttered “
whatever
”
when he asked me whether I wanted him to have my number. Not exactly the
self-assured femme fatale I aspired to be. Really, I should just call it a night
and go home now.

“You sure you don’t want to play?” He offered me a
stick. I tried to view him with an open mind. After all, my phone number could
be wadded up in a trash can right now. Whether I liked it or not, I might have
to contemplate other alternatives in order to gain the experience I needed. A
foul taste coated my mouth. Easier said than done. For whatever reason, the
bartender was the only guy that I could consider kissing and touching without
feeling mildly revolted.

The guy in front of me wasn’t
bad
-looking. A little pudgy-soft in the middle. Probably too many
beers and late-night burritos. But youth was still on his side. He had nice
symmetrical features. I predicted he’d be sixty pounds overweight in ten years,
but right now he was okay.

“No, thanks. You guys already started anyway.”

He smiled, but looked disappointed.

For the next hour, I sat on a stool, watching as
Emerson and Ryan/Bryan grew friendlier, laughing, talking, touching at every
opportunity as they moved around the pool table. I made small talk with the
friend. He stayed close even as he played pool, chatting me up and drinking
steadily. Hopefully he wasn’t driving.

The crowd started to thin out around eleven.

“Bunch of big parties on frat row,” Scott—I had
since learned his name—explained when I wondered aloud where everyone had
disappeared to so early.

I nodded, but couldn’t help sneaking a glance down
the length of the room toward the bar. I couldn’t resist. With the crowd
dissipating, there was little to obstruct my view.

Only one bartender worked the counter, but it
wasn’t him. I didn’t see my bartender anywhere. Was he on a break? Or did he cut
out early? If he left early he could have talked to me. If he wanted to. Now I
was convinced the napkin with my number was balled up on the floor. Stupid tears
burned my eyes. I blinked them away furiously.

Taking a breath, I commanded myself to stop
obsessing. He wasn’t the end goal, after all. Hunter was. I could find someone
else to help give me the experience I was looking for.

“Can I get you another drink?” Scott asked,
following my gaze to the bar.

I snapped my attention back to the pool table.
Ryan/Bryan had Emerson in an intimate body lock, teaching her some move. I
rolled my eyes.

“No, I’m fine. Thanks.”

“How about we get out of here?” Ryan/Bryan
suggested, stepping back from the table and looking first at Emerson, then at me
and Scott. Then again at Emerson.

The four of us leaving together? I could already
see where this was headed. Emerson making out in some room with Ryan/Bryan and
me stuck alone with Scott. No thanks.

Emerson and I stared at each other, silently
communicating. She gave me the barest nod, understanding. I was ready to leave
but not with these guys. That was the good thing about Emerson. She might be in
sexual overdrive most of the time, but she never put our friendship on the back
burner.

I slid off my stool. “I gotta go to the
bathroom.”

Hopefully that would give her time to wrap things
up with her guy and swap numbers. Or not. You could never really tell with
Emerson. Sometimes I thought she was really into a guy and then she would drop
him for no apparent reason. She once dumped a guy after a third date because he
asked for a doggie bag at dinner. She claimed he was too comfortable with her if
he did that. I didn’t think she cared that this made sense only to her.
Personally, I thought she was scared to get too serious with a guy, but what did
I know? I’d only kissed one guy in my life.

I crossed the room to the narrow hall leading to
the bathrooms. They were single occupancy and there was usually a line, but not
tonight. Once inside, I dropped the little hook in place, locking the door.
Turning, I caught sight of my reflection and winced. As usual, my hair was out
of control. I tried to arrange the russet-colored waves. Maybe it was time for a
haircut. Layers or something.

Moments later, I finished washing my hands and
pushed open the thick oak door, immediately spotting Scott waiting outside. At
first I thought he was in line for the men’s room, but the way his gaze trained
on me I realized he was waiting for me.

“Hey.” He pushed off the wall.

“Hey,” I murmured, stepping out into the narrow
hall and wishing the light was better. The shadowy space made it feel too
intimate.

He moved into my path. “Why don’t you and Em come
back to our place?”

I shook my head. “I have to get up early.” I
didn’t, of course. My shift at the daycare didn’t start until eleven, but he
didn’t know that.

“Aw. C’mon.” He inched closer.

My back bumped the wall, rattling the picture
frames and license plates that decorated it. I held up my hands in front of me
as he encroached closer. “Uh, what are—”