Can't Stop the Feeling (Whispering Bay Romance 6)

Jenna turned to see Ben. He wore the same club shirt as the bouncer who’d let them in.

“What are you doing here?” she blurted.

“I was going to say the same exact thing to you.” His gaze quickly took in her outfit. “What the hell are you wearing?”

What the hell was she wearing?

That’s the first thing he was going to say to her after ignoring her calls and texts for almost a week now?

“It’s a free county,” Kate said, coming to her defense. “Jenna can go anywhere she wants.”

“Not with a fake ID, she can’t.” Ben locked eyes with the bouncer who’d let them in. “Paul? Did you let these girls get through?”

“Sure.” Paul smiled knowingly, but something in Ben’s expression made his smile disappear. “Uh, yeah, boss, their IDs looked okay.”

Boss?

“Then you didn’t look hard enough.”

Ben took Jenna by the elbow. “C’mon, I’ll get you a cab.”

“No!” She pulled her elbow from his grasp. “I want to dance!” Which was really the last thing she wanted, but she wasn’t about to let Ben Harrison tell her what she could and couldn’t do.

“How much have you had to drink?” he demanded.

“Who are you, my father?”

Ben scrubbed his hand down his face. His dark eyes looked weary, but that was probably just a trick of the dim lighting or too much liquor on her part. “Jenna, we’ll talk later.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re good at later. I want to talk now. What are you doing here anyway? You don’t work here!”

“Hey!” said a guy standing in line behind them. “Are we getting in or not?”

“You’ll get in when I say you get in,” Ben snarled. He placed his hand on the small of Jenna’s back and quickly hustled her out to the curb where he motioned to a nearby cab. “C’mon, girls, it’s time to go home.”

Like a bunch of sheep, the rest of her group automatically followed his lead.

“Wait! You’re not my boyfriend! You can’t tell me what to do.” The last part came out more like a whisper because her head throbbed so much.

“Jenna,” Kate said quietly. “Let’s go. He’s right. We all have fake IDs. We don’t want to make a scene.”

But something inside Jenna snapped. This whole week she’d been completely miserable, imagining all sorts of horrible things, and he’d been here all along “working” at a ritzy South Beach bar where he could have any pick of the hundreds of beautiful women who came through the door.

“You’re an asshole!” she shouted at him.

Everyone turned to stare at her.

“Jenna,” Kate said soothingly, putting an arm around her. “Hon, let’s get out of here.”

She waited for Ben to respond, but he didn’t say anything and somehow, that made it all worse. She’d show him. She’d make it so that he had to say something.

“You’re not just an asshole, you’re a fucking asshole,” she spat in Ben’s face.

“You’re rig

ht. I’m a fucking asshole,” he repeated tightly. “Now get in the car.”

Kate and her friends helped her into the cab, but not before she turned to shout at him again. “I don’t want to go to your stupid bar, anyway! I hate you! I hope you flunk calculus, you big jerk!”