He scanned the milling crowd for familiar faces. Surprisingly, he spotted a few, though they weren’t people he knew personally. Quite a few were young movers and shakers not yet in the upper ranks but on track to get there. People who didn’t blink at spending twenty bucks just to get into a club, not to mention whatever they’d stuff into the donation box or spend on drinks. As for himself, this was a fairly expensive evening.
Tables of nibbly-type food flanked the sides of the deck, and drinks were served at a cash bar by white-coated bartenders. The chatter and laughter was lively and animated, but acceptably modulated. This was not one of the clubs to which he and his associates in uniform were regularly summoned for disturbance calls.
He glanced automatically down at his clothes. He’d opted for khakis, a dark green polo shirt and brown slip-ons. He’d even had a haircut. Outwardly, he supposed he blended in fine with the other men in attendance, many of whom wore similar attire, but he still felt like the outsider for some reason. He had to admit he’d be more comfortable in a sharply pressed uniform with his sidearm at his hip.
“Hello.” A busty brunette in a fluttery top and tight miniskirt approached him, making him wonder how she could walk at all in heels so high they practically put her feet at a vertical angle. She looked good, he had to give her that, but his tastes ran toward a more subtle beauty. “I’m Sandy. Are you looking for someone in particular?”
He smiled. “Hi, Sandy, I’m Gavin. And I’m trying to find Jenny Baer or Stevie McLane. Do you know them?”
She ran a hand over her hair, a gesture perhaps intended to hide her disappointment with his answer. “As a matter of fact, I do. I just saw them by the railing looking over the river. Behind that big ficus tree with the little gold lights in it?”
“I’ll find them, thanks.”
“Catch you later, maybe?”
He nodded. “Sure.”
Threading through chatting guests, he made his way to the railing. Stevie had her back to him, but he recognized her immediately. Her bright blond curls gleamed in the yellow lights from the potted ficus. She stood next to a tall, lanky man. Despite the warmth of the evening, he wore a wrinkled, long-sleeve, black-and-green plaid shirt over a white tee, black pants turned into cuffs at the hems and scarred brown work boots. A misshapen gray porkpie hat with a plaid band and a stupid little feather sat on top of his floppy hair, and he’d finished the look with horn-rimmed glasses and sideburns that covered his jaws almost to his chin.
Gavin almost groaned. Seriously? This dated hipster poser was Stevie’s latest? She might have done better to have stuck with the grunge drummer from college.
The poser shifted his weight and someone else came into view. Gavin swallowed. Here was the reason he’d cut his hair, ironed his khakis, shelled out twenty bucks and risked embarrassment to come to this gathering that was so far from his comfort zone.
Jenny looked cool and lovely in a sleeveless white scoop-necked summer dress that hugged her bust and flared out from her hips to just above her knees. Her dark hair was loose in soft layers around her pretty face and fell just to her bare shoulders. He noticed a touch of glitter on her eyelids and peach gloss on her full lips. His gaze lingered on those lips that he’d tasted so recently and which he suddenly hungered to sample again.
You are such an idiot, Locke.
Would he really even think about putting himself through it all again, even if she were willing to try? He recalled everything they’d been through, all the obstacles that had stood between them back then and hadn’t really changed since, all the pain he’d endured, the ache of missing her that had tormented him for a long time after he’d walked away from her. Was there any chance in hell that anything would turn out differently if she’d be willing to dump Prince Charming to give it another shot?
And still he wanted her. Had never really stopped wanting her.
Idiot indeed.
She’d been talking to someone when he’d approached. Tess, he realized, dragging his gaze away only long enough to identify the other woman and then feeling his eyes drawn inexorably back to Jenny.
He’d tried to love other women in the years since they’d split. He’d made a concerted effort to move on, focusing on his training, his job, his friends and a procession of women as different from Jenny as possible. He’d even considered one relationship fairly serious. It had never gotten as far as an engagement, but they’d flirted with the idea, until they had decided by mutual agreement that, while they’d had fun, they weren’t meant to spend a lifetime together. The night he and Blair had called it quits, he’d sat alone in his darkened apartment until dawn, drinking and thinking not of Blair, but of Jenny. And that had been several years after he’d last seen her, leaving him to ask himself despairingly if he was destined to end up a grumpy old bachelor cop, haunted by memories of the one who’d got away.
And here she was again. Tying him in knots just like before. And no matter what happened from here, seeing her again had already put her firmly back into his...his mind, he substituted quickly, refusing to acknowledge the word that had almost formed in his thoughts.
She glanced his way, then froze momentarily. For one unguarded moment, he saw the reaction in her eyes. A flood of emotions he couldn’t quite decipher, but that he couldn’t mistake. And then she seemed to gather herself, hiding those feelings behind a placid expression and a polite smile. “Hello, Gavin.”
He returned the greeting and moved closer to her, nodding to the others as he did so.
Pivoting fast enough to make the fancy drink in her hand slosh against the sides of the glass, Stevie smiled brightly at him. “Gavin, I’m so glad you could come. Joe, this is Gavin Locke, the friend of Jenny’s I told you about. Gavin, this is Joe Couch, the bass player for Eleven Twenty-Five.”
Joe switched his beer mug to his left hand so he could stick out the right toward Gavin. “Hey.”
“Eleven Twenty-Five?” Gavin asked, briefly shaking the other man’s hand.
“My band. We’re about to start playing again.” Joe eyed Gavin somewhat warily through lenses Gavin cynically suspected to be clear glass. “So Stevie says you’re like a cop or something?”
“LRPD,” he confirmed.
“Uh. That’s cool, I guess.”
Gavin got the distinct impression that Joe was not a fan of police. Probably believed all the bad stories he heard and ignored the good ones. Gavin was all too familiar with the type. He had no intention of defending the integrity of law enforcement officers to this guy, though, so he merely turned back to Jenny. He nodded toward her empty hands, then glanced at Tess, whose hands were also free. “You two aren’t having anything to drink?”
“Tess and I just got here,” Jenny replied lightly. “I’ll probably have a glass of wine in a few.”