15. Coyote Flame #3
A shadow blocks the green glow of the bar’s neon cactus sign. Two ladies in skin-tight jeans and truly treacherous heels dash toward us. “Rhys! We’re so sorry we’re late.” The blonde eyes me and then my empty margarita glass suspiciously. “I guess you’ve already found a friend...”
“Don’t mind me. I’m his sister.”
My lie appeases the Jennifer Coolidge look-alike.
“And I’m just about to go.” I turn to Rhys, now reverted to his original state: scared stiff. I motion to the dance floor. “Angie needs her drink...” Swiping Angie’s margarita, I slide out of the booth, but Rhys grabs my forearm.
“Please...” Desperate eyes plead with me to stay.
“You’ll be fine,” I whisper in his ear. “Just be nice and let them do the talking.”
“I’m not ready,” he says between gritted teeth. “I still need you.”
I tap him reassuringly on the hand and pry my arm away. “Teach a man how to fish, remember?”
He shakes his head. “I’m not ready to fish.”
“Yes, you are.” I wink at the ladies. “He’s all yours.”
Giving Rhys one last encouraging nod, I stumble away on my kill-me-now heels.
His petrified face is imprinted on my mind.
I feel terrible about leaving him to the cougars, but it’s not like I can hold his hand through every single date.
What if things heat up? Does he expect me to pull up a chair at the foot of the bed and coach him on how to satisfy women? Nope. I’m not touching that.
“Carina!” Angie hooks an arm around my waist and scoops the margarita from my hands. “Finally!”
“Don’t look now,” I shout in her ear, “Rhys has officially entered the cougar den.”
Angie glances at the booth. “Oh shit. That boy’s plunging headfirst into the deep end. Hope he can handle himself.”
“I hope he’ll be okay.” I glance at my phone, wondering if I should text him a list of do’s and don’t when it comes to hanging out with women. If the night sours, I’ll always be available to bail him out. He asked me to be his wingman after all.
I gnaw on my bottom lip, fighting off the urge to hover over him like a mama bird.
No. Don’t give in. The next thing I know, I’ll be chewing his food for him.
In fact, I need to stop acting so pathetically overprotective.
Angie and Rhys are having the time of their lives, and I’m devolving into the ultimate buzzkill.
“Hey,” I tap Angie on the shoulder. “I’m stepping out for a bit...”
Angie glances at my sweaty complexion. “You don’t look so good.”
“I don’t feel so good. I think I drank too much,” I say. “I just need some air.” Before she could protest, I’m stumbling across the dance floor, dodging and weaving past bodies in my singular mission for fresh air and quiet.
A blast of cold, gardenia-scented air hits me as I tumble out into the parking lot. Angie’s white SUV is only a few spots away. Knowing that she keeps a case of water in the trunk, I make a beeline for it, but my stomach has other ideas, and I bend over, tossing my cookies onto the blacktop.
“Urgh,” I grumble, blinking at the orange sludge I had left on the ground.
“Whoa there!” A hand descends on my back, rubbing calming circles between my shoulder blades. “That was pretty gnarly. Are you okay?”
That voice. It sounds so familiar. I’ve heard it in my ear during every virtual meeting. Is it him? It can’t be...
I straighten up. “Rylan?”
“I thought you looked familiar,” Sam Rylan, CEO, the boss of my boss, the e-signer of my paycheck, looms behind me.
Instead of a tailored suit, he’s in jeans and a black T-shirt.
It’s disorienting seeing Sam pulled from the context of a boardroom and divested of his Armani suits, like running into your teacher at the supermarket.
You know they have lives outside of their classrooms, or in Sam’s case, an ultra-modern boardroom.
It’s just weird, nonetheless. Plus, Sam is wearing a V-neck T-shirt. I hate V-necks.
“Carina!” He looks me up and down, checking out my skimpy dress. His eyes linger on my bare legs, a smirk spreading across his face. “Looks like you had the melon margarita.”
“How do you know about the melon margarita?” I eye him suspiciously. “What are you doing here?”
“My mother’s in town for the weekend and she really wanted to check this place out,” Sam says.
His mother?
I’m hanging out at the same bar as my boss’ mother? Can this night get any worse? If I wasn’t having a midlife crisis before, I was certainly having one now.
“I gave her a ride,” he says. “I’m not staying. It’s not my scene. The ladies can be a little grabby.”
Sam nods at the red neon sign of Coyote Flame. Without saying it, I can already hear his assumptions. “You don’t frequent this place, do you?”
“No! I’m humoring my friends. We just… we just came here to use the bathroom and stayed for a drink.” I strip off my godforsaken heels and breathe a sigh of relief as my bare feet touch the blacktop. “This place isn’t my vibe either. I can’t wait to leave.”
“Well then, this is your lucky night.” Sam cocks his head toward a black Porsche 911 and offers me his arm. “Why don’t we get out of here?”