Like he was… mad at me?
Wait. What?
“Holland, the check?”
I blinked as Lana’s tart question broke through my daze. She had her hand held out, and judging from the what’s your problem tone of her voice, she’d already asked me more than once.
“Oh! I’m sorry,” I blurted as I grabbed the check off my tray. But my fingers were clumsy and my pulse was hammering out of control because holy hell, was this really happening?
The last time I saw Iain Thorn, he was twenty-seven, and I was seventeen. Still painfully shy. Still Mommy’s little angel. For the love of God, the last time I saw him, I was trying to sneak a sip of his beer as he and Adam fixed my parents’ deck, and I still remembered that peering side-eye and irresistible smirk on his gorgeous face when he caught me. I remembered the way he ambled over to me, wiping the sweat off his brow before dropping his gaze to my mouth and gently twisting the bottle out from my lips with a clean, wet pop.
“Nice try, kid. Come back when you’re legal,” he had laughed before ruffling my hair.
And now five years later, here I was.
Legal in every way. A cocktail waitress in Manhattan.
And on the other side of the table, there he was—at the very bar where I worked, sitting directly in front of me, pinning his hot stare on me.
But saying nothing to me.
What the hell? Am I dreaming? Is this real?
A million questions ricocheted through my brain as I simply stared back at Iain, so breathless and disoriented that I hardly registered Lana reaching over to snatch the check out of my hands.
“Thank you,” she ground out impatiently before returning her flirty attention to the table. “Here you are, Mr. Thorn. Can I get you anything else?” she lilted, back to her baby voice as she leaned over the table to hand Iain the check.
And in the two seconds it took for him to take it, I hastily drank him all in.
Mother of God, I cursed to myself, the wind freshly knocked from my lungs, because if he was hot back then, he was fucking lethal now.
Once buzzed close to his skull, his dark hair was longer now, impeccably groomed. His chiseled jaw sported the perfect amount of facial hair, and his body… God. I could see that his athletic frame was broader now, even more built than the last time I saw him. On top of that, he was all clean lines and shiny cuff links in that crisp, tailored suit, and I actually had to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth as I stared, because while he’d always been super strong, now he looked powerful. Important.
Every bit the very big deal I knew he’d become since he moved to this city.
“Gentlemen,” Lana simpered. “You’ll have to excuse Holland’s staring.”
I blinked.
Crap.
Yanked back to Earth, I snatched my gaze up from Iain’s chest, and my breath hitched in my throat when I found his piercing gaze locked once again on mine—wolfish yet nonchalant. Almost matter-of-fact. As if he had every right to just sit there, leaning back in his seat, slowly thumbing the side of his rocks glass.
Casually stealing all the air from my lungs.
So… no hi? How are you? It’s been awhile?
We’re just going to pretend like we don’t know each other?
Lana giggled.
“Yeah, Holland’s brand new here, so she’s still getting used to keeping it cool around our high-profile clientele,” she smirked, her bold red lip curling as she peered over at me. “Poor girl still needs a ton of experience.”
“Well, shit, you could’ve fooled me.”
The deep twang pierced through my haze and made my eyes flutter to my right, and only then did I notice the hulking blond guy sitting right next to Iain.
He was huge—a giant mass of man with a short ponytail, ruddy skin and hooded eyes that wandered up, down and all around the front of my body, shamelessly devouring my cleavage like the rules of basic social etiquette didn’t apply to him.