COLE STEELE WAS BACK AGAIN. The bar was jammed, bodies welded together as they moved to the rhythmic beat of the music Maia Armstrong provided on the drums. The band was hot tonight, she could feel the music pounding inside of her exactly the way it needed to be to keep the house rocking. She tried not to see him, tried not to notice his body stretched out in a chair in a sexy, lazy sprawl. The music was usually all that mattered, all she thought about when she played. She could lose herself in the primal beats, the familiar feel of her hands on the sticks, whirling them in her fingers and finding that perfect pocket of sound.
Music took her far away from the terrible things she saw every day. The things that kept her on the move, town after town, knowing she could never really settle anywhere. Music was her solace. Cole Steele changed all that. What was he doing there? Had he already gone through all the women in the more upscale bars in town?
He was stinking rich and so sinfully sensual he should be locked up. He wasn’t just the local bad boy; he was a hard, dangerous man, one that wielded absolute power. He knew it too. It was in the arrogance stamped into his very bones. He sat there watching her through hooded eyes, intent, focused, his hand absently stroking the long neck of his beer bottle. He looked so sexual to her. It wasn’t a charade, he was really that way, his body hard and hot and . . . Maia groaned inwardly. She was not falling for a bad boy. She had too much sense and too much self-respect. And he had far too much money and drama for her even to consider such a folly.
She wasn’t going to look at him, wasn’t going to let him get to her. A man like Cole Steele left fingerprints on a woman, took away her soul, and never returned it to her. Once he left burn marks—and he would—they would never fade. She refused to allow her gaze to stray his way, although she could feel the weight of his heavy, brooding stare. Instead, she picked a table near the front and flashed a high-wattage smile at the nearest man, wanting to focus anywhere but on the dark devil watching her.
Cole shifted his legs into a more comfortable position in an attempt to ease the relentless ache in his body. His fingers tightened around the neck of the beer bottle, nearly crushing it. Maia didn’t need to be smiling at any other man in the room, not when she should be smiling at him. She didn’t want the others, wasn’t interested in them, but he could see her heightened awareness of him. She wasn’t adept at hiding it.
Cole knew he was going to have to change his strategy completely. He might even have to eat his words and actually learn to smile at a woman. He’d wasted nine nights coming down to the El Dorado Saloon after hearing that Maia Armstrong, the traveling veterinarian, often sat in jamming on the drums in the evening. He was either losing his touch or his mind. There were a dozen women who’d made it plain they were willing to go to bed with him, so why was he so damned fixated on the one who refused to give in to him? With a series of storms coming, most likely bringing severe blizzard conditions, this was going to be his last chance to persuade her for a long while.
She’d noticed him all right. He’d made it abundantly clear he was interested. He’d managed half a dozen conversations with her. She was always polite, but she kept a distance firmly between them. He tapped his finger on the small round table as he watched her. Why was he so fascinated by her? Her smile could light up the entire room, and her laugh was contagious. He shouldn’t have noticed, but it was nearly impossible not to. Especially when she was turning that smile on another man.
He dreamt of her. Ever since he’d seen her in the diner the nightmares that always plagued him during the Christmas season had been replaced with highly erotic dreams of her. Even Jase was beginning to tease him about her, knowing Cole only left the ranch in the evenings to see her. Cole absently stroked the neck of the beer bottle, wishing it were her skin beneath his fingers. He’d made up his mind he was going to have to be aggressive with her tonight. Subtle wasn’t working at all. He’d had plenty of time to study her. It was his business to read people. Maia Armstrong was no pushover with men, but she detested public scenes. She wouldn’t fight it if he didn’t push beyond her limit.
A woman leaned close, blocking his vision, deliberately bending over him to give him a better view of her ample cleavage. He stared up at her with hard eyes and a distinct scowl. “You’re blocking the view.”