The Best Man's Plan
A busty brunette greeted him with a flirty smile. “Well, hello. I haven’t seen you here before.”
Bryan gave her one of the smiles that rarely failed to achieve the results he wanted. “I haven’t been here before. Looks like a fun place.”
Raising her voice over the sound of the band, she replied, “It can be, when things really get going. You want a table or are you going to sit at the bar?”
“Actually I’m looking for someone. Grace Pennington. Do you know her?”
The woman frowned a bit and shook her head. “I don’t think so. Maybe she isn’t here yet?”
According to the employee who had called him, Grace had entered this establishment just over half an hour ago. Bryan shook his head. “I’ll just look around for her, if you don’t mind.”
The woman shrugged. “Help yourself. You can order at the bar, and if you decide you want a table, just give me a sign. There’s pool and pinball in the back room if you’re in the mood for a game.”
“Thanks. I’ll check it out.”
She nodded and moved away in response to a summons from a table crowded with three thirty-something couples who looked ready to place their orders. Not wanting to look more conspicuous than he already did in his pressed khakis and neat polo shirt, Bryan moved to the bar, where he ordered a beer from an almost stereotypically jolly bartender and perched on a stool to survey the crowded room. He didn’t usually drink domestic beer, but that seemed to be the beverage of choice here. Had he been warned what the place was like, he’d have changed into jeans and boots before coming.
He didn’t spot Grace among the diners or the few dancers crowding a postage-stamp-sized dance floor. He couldn’t see into the other room from this angle; was it possible that Grace hustled pool in her spare time? At this point, nothing would surprise him.
Carrying his barely touched beer, he made his way across the room to the archway, exchanging a few polite nods on the way. A few women blatantly checked him out, sending him inviting smiles that he pretended not to see. Some of them were old enough to be his mother, others damn near young enough to be his daughter.
Where the hell was Grace?
He spotted her the minute he paused in the game room doorway. She was bent over a pool table, her short skirt just this side of decent as she expertly lined up a difficult shot with her pool cue. Half a dozen men stood around watching her—no surprise, he thought with a scowl. She seemed to be pitting her skills against a man who was roughly the size of a redwood tree—he was even dressed in a foliage-print shirt.
With a sharp crack, her cue ball hit its target, and her audience cheered, sloshing beer and slapping each other on the backs.
“Damn,” her oversized opponent growled, shaking his head. And then he grinned and pulled Grace into an enthusiastic one-armed hug that must surely have left a few bruises on her tender skin. “You are one hell of a pool player, Sassy.”
Sassy? Wasn’t that the name her father had called her when she’d rebelled as a child? Bryan stared at her as she grinned up at the big man who held her. “Thanks, Stump,” she said. “But then, you taught me nearly everything I know.”
“That I did, kid,” he agreed, planting a smacking kiss on her nose before he set her back on her feet.
A man in a black-and-red Western shirt, so thin he almost rattled when he moved, stepped out of the group of watchers. “Play me next, Sassy. I’m tired of getting beat by Stump. It’d be nice to be beat by someone prettier this time.”
“Give me a minute to finish my beer, Paul,” she replied, reaching for a half-filled mug sitting on a convenient ledge behind her. “Playing Stump always makes me thirsty, for some reason.”
Bryan moved swiftly, the mug in his free hand before her fingers closed around it. She turned in question, and her face went pale as her eyes widened almost comically.
“I believe this is yours?” he asked silkily, holding her mug out to her.
“What are you—how did you—you followed me here, didn’t you?” she sputtered, her face suddenly flooding with vivid color.
“Well, to be accurate, I had you followed. Interesting place. Come here often?”
“Go away,” she ordered him, more desperation than anger in her voice now.
The huge man who’d hugged her moved close behind her, looking mean enough to intimidate a tank. “Is this the guy, Sassy? The one who broke your heart?”
Bryan figured there was a very good chance that he was about to die. But he found some solace in the other man’s words. “She told you I broke her heart?”
“What makes you think I was talking about you?” Grace asked, with a toss of her curled hair.
He smiled. “Darling, I know you were.”
Stump moved another step closer, and Bryan could have almost sworn he felt the floor tremble just a little beneath his feet. “Me and the guys here don’t like it when people hurt our friends, do we, boys?”
“No, we don’t.” Skinny Paul stood with his feet spread and his arms akimbo on his nonexistent hips, trying to look as fearsome as his large buddy. “What did he do to you, Sassy?”