Down & Dirty (Lightning 1)

“I’m not going to go talk to him.”

“You should totally go talk to him. Right, Skye?” she asks, raising her voice to enlist the help of tonight’s bride-to-be.

“Absolutely,” Skye says without even asking what Autumn is talking about.

“See?” she says, turning back to me. “Skye agrees and so does everyone else. Right, everyone?”

“Right,” choruses one of Skye’s friends, whose name I don’t even know.

“They have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Sure, we do!” Skye says, and she’s so happily drunk that she’s bouncing up and down in her seat. “You need another drink.”

“I don’t—”

“You do!” she interrupts, raising her hand to signal our waitress. When she doesn’t get immediate attention, she pushes at her own drink, sliding it down the table to me. “Here, drink this one.”

I stare at the bright blue concoction distrustfully. “No, thanks—”

“Come on,” she says, whining a little in the way only happy drunk people can. “Drink it.”

“I’m not really interested—”

“Drink it!” she squawks, loudly enough to have not just the people at our table staring at me, but everyone around us, too.

“Okay, okay.” I accept the thing to avoid causing any more of a scene than we already have, then take a cautious sip. Despite its electric color, it’s actually quite smooth and I take a second sip, then a third.

I don’t finish it because I know my limits, but I can feel my muscles relaxing a little. Feel my normal inhibitions growing just a little less rigid. And that’s when Autumn moves in for the kill.

“He’s still looking at you,” she hisses with a less than subtle chin jerk at Mr. Tall, Dark and So Fucking Hot I Get Burned

Just Looking at Him (who will henceforth be called Mr. Tall Dark and So Fucking Hot because the rest is a mouthful even in my own head). He’s still kicked back on the barstool, his long well-muscled legs spread out in front of him as he chats casually with the man next to him. A man who is also sexy as hell, I realize, when I finally manage to pull my gaze away from Mr. Tall Dark and So Fucking Hot’s broad shoulders and tight abs.

“Maybe he’s looking at you,” I answer, doing my best to ignore the flutter way down deep inside of me.

“Yeah, right,” she says with a snort. “If that was the case, married woman or not, I’d already be sitting on his very delectable lap. But he is one hundred percent looking at you. If you don’t do something about it, I am never going to let you live it down.”

“I guess I’m just going to have to live with that, because—”

“Live with what?” Skye interjects loudly. Suddenly, everyone at the table is looking at me.

“Live with the fact that that very hot guy over there obviously wants to get to know her,” Autumn answers in a stage whisper so loud I’m afraid it can be heard in the entire bar, despite the eighties music emanating from the upscale jukebox in the corner.

“What guy?” Skye asks, her voice going even louder as she starts looking over the bar. “Where is—oh. There he is.” Her eyes go wide.

“He sure is,” echoes Dawn, the woman sitting across from her. “Wowza.”

Wowza? Seriously? I feel like I’ve slipped into an alternate universe or a bad porn movie, especially when the entire table—all ten women—turn around to stare at him. Because that’s not obvious at all.

Our gazes lock again, and this time he’s wearing a full-blown smirk, one that says he knows very well we’ve been talking about him—and that he’s totally okay with that fact. My cheeks start to heat, along with the rest of me, and I don’t know whether I’m going to die of embarrassment or spontaneously combust from unrealized desire right here in the middle of the bar. And when he raises his beer in a silent toast that’s obviously meant for me, I almost swallow my tongue.

As does every other woman at my table.

“Do something!” Autumn hisses out of the corner of her hugely smiling mouth.

“Do what?” I demand just as Skye kicks me.

“Strip naked. Dance on the table. Who cares?” chimes in Karen, the receptionist at the yoga studio. “Because if you don’t, I definitely will!”