“The answer’s still no.”
“Looking good,” she said, eyeing his freshly washed and slightly smaller Eye Candy T-shirt. She tried to keep an amused smile off her face, and failed. “Laundry tip. Use the low heat dryer setting for cotton.”
“Yeah, I got that.” He came around the corner of the bar, clearly intending to help, but she stopped him at the end of the bar.
“As much as I’d like the help, I can’t afford to pay you to come in a couple of hours early every night.”
“It’s three bucks an hour,” he said. “I work for tips.”
“Three dollars an hour times two hours a day times five days a week is really thirty bucks a week,” she replied.
“On the house,” he said as he came around the end of the bar.
“I’ll pay you for today,” she said, brushing past him to get upstairs before the office door opened. “Just show up when your shift starts from here on out.”
She hurried past him but he caught her wrist in one hand, halting her forward progress while he looked her over. Even across the distance of their outstretched arms, his gaze struck sparks as it flickered against her curves. She wore one of her favorite bar outfits, a pair of black leather short-shorts, and a white, sheer, fitted long-sleeved T-shirt over a black silk camisole. Heavy beaten silver discs dangled from her ears, with a matching bracelet around her wrist. Black heeled shoes with an ankle strap lengthened her legs. And if Natalie asked, she’d forgotten she wore the outfit just last week. It had nothing to do with Chad.
“I told you to take advantage of me,” he said, his deep voice a gravelly rumble in the silence of the bar.
She took a step back toward him, leaving only slowly heating air between their bodies, and decided to see if he’d keep his word. “You also told me we were taking things slow. If I can take advantage of you, the storeroom’s quiet and dark this time of day.”
One brief caress of his thumb across her wrist, then he let her go. In the silence that followed her heels sounded loud and sharp against the parquet dance floor. As she walked, she felt his gaze on her hips and the length of her legs.
“I bet guys walk into walls when you go out in that outfit,” he said. He hadn’t raised his voice but it still carried into the farthest corners of the echoing, empty room.
She’d always known it wasn’t the outside that mattered, but who you were inside. What you did. She smiled, because unlike most men who complimented her, Chad meant it without expecting anything in return, then scrolled through her iPod. “Do you have a preference for music?”
“No club music, no boy bands, no disco, no punk, nothing from the fifties.”
Amused, she raised an eyebrow at the decisive list. “Do you like anyone local?” she asked as she scrolled without much hope of a positive answer. Most people lapped up the pap distributed by nationally owned radio corporations.
“Yeah,” he said without batting an eye. “Maud Ward, The Parakeets, Doe-Eyed Girl.”
Three of her favorite bands. “Maud’s great. Did you see the feature in the paper last week? She’s going to be back in Lancaster this winter, recording her new album, which is great for us. When she’s working on new material she shows up around town and does impromptu concerts to try out the new stuff. I’ve been trying to get her to do a show here, but she’s been touring all summer,” she said and found her name in the Artists list and slid the iPod into the Bose SoundDock she had on the bar. A low, melodic voice tumbled out into the bar, backed only by a single guitar, the sound of chatter and laughter running under the music.
“She’s great,” Matt said, half-focused on the song, unfamiliar but definitely Maud. “What’s this?”
“I recorded it at the Rusty Nickel one Sunday night a couple of years ago, when she was working on material for her last album. This is an early version of ‘Take Me Away.’”
He swept lime wedges into a plastic tub, then looked at her. “The Rusty Nickel, a couple of years ago. April, right?”
“It was warm, but raining cats and dogs,” she said in agreement as she found a second knife. “Were you there?”
“I was there,” he said slowly. “How did you get in? I heard the cops had to turn away a couple hundred people.”
“I know Maud. Back when she was busking on corners in SoMa and selling CDs from her guitar case, I helped her get some gigs at smaller venues so she could get the word out. She usually gives me a heads up when she’s back in town.”
“You hang out with Maud Ward.”
“Not regularly or anything,” she started, but stopped when he cocked an eyebrow. “Okay, yes, I hang out with Maud Ward.”
“Her number’s in your cell phone.”
“Yes.”
“Is there anyone in this town you don’t know?”