Running.
Well, he was free and over twenty-one. Running was fine, if that was what he chose to do.
Strange. Despite all that was enhanced about her physical appearance, inside, where it counted, Matty was the real deal. She cared.
He smiled. “Hey, who knows? We’ll see.”
“Look. Isn’t that the girl from the house?” Zach asked suddenly, and indicated the bandstand with his beer bottle.
Aidan glanced toward the stage. The bass player was announcing an original number; the guitarist—dressed in boots and a sweeping black cape à la every hot movie vampire—was leaning down, accepting a drink from Kendall Montgomery.
Aidan had just begun to settle down, maybe due to Matty’s warm welcome. Now every muscle in his body clenched all over again. With all the bars and the music available along the length of Bourbon Street, why had Kendall Montgomery ended up here tonight, too?
The guitarist grinned, accepting the plastic cup of whatever, then took a long swig and handed it back. Before he got ready to play again, he nudged the drummer, who looked at Kendall, and offered her a grin and a salute.
After that, she returned to the table where she’d apparently been sitting. She was with a tall, well-built bald man with thick black brows, who lifted his own beer bottle toward the stage, as if toasting to their success.
“What a pretty woman,” Matty announced, making Aidan like her all the more. She wasn’t the type who was always putting other women down.
“She’s got beautiful hair,” Zachary noted.
“Are you sure you’re only looking at her hair?” Jeremy asked lightly.
“I might be looking at the whole package,” Zachary replied, grinning at Matty. “She really is stunning—right? One beauty assessing another, of course.”
Matty laughed. “The compliment is both charming and appreciated. And, yes, that young woman is absolutely stunning. You know her?”
“We met her today. At the house,” Jeremy explained.
Aidan found himself studying Kendall more closely. She was indisputably stunning, but had her dignity and pride earlier today been for real? Or had she been a leech, using Amelia Flynn until the very end?
Truthfully, he didn’t think so. He had learned to read people fairly well over the years. He usually knew if someone was lying. There were little physical tics and twitches he’d learned to pick up on when someone was telling an outright lie or even coloring the truth. Lashes fluttered too quickly; pulses raced. People had a hard time looking you right in the eye when they were lying. Some liars were better than others, of course, and had learned to stare back—they were the seasoned liars. But even then…palms grew a little sweatier, and the veins in the throat were a giveaway. On top of that, just taking into consideration the way she dressed and the car she drove, she looked as if she were doing all right, but she wasn’t clad as if she was rolling in money. There were no diamonds dripping from her fingers, for instance. She just didn’t look as if she’d been milking Amelia to increase her own income.
She had only veered away from his direct approach once, and that had been regarding Amelia and the things she claimed went on at night. Even then, her anger with them—no, with him—over any implied insult to Amelia had been real.
She did have beautiful hair, he realized now, examining her more closely. It was long and rich and luxurious, a color like fire, even in the muted light of the bar. Her features were perfect: clear, large eyes, well-set; sculpted jawline; high cheekbones; perfectly formed, generous mouth; straight nose, not small, not large, just right for her face. She was like a poster child for symmetry. But the fact that she truly was stunning had even more to do with her demeanor than with her looks. She was tall, and she carried herself well. Elegantly. She moved gracefully, easily, her shoulders straight. She was the type of woman who could not only draw every eye in a room but keep it.
It interested him that he could make such observations so clinically—then he wondered if he was really so clinical after all. She seemed to be a large factor in his tension. Well, they could try all they wanted to be contemporary males, but nature didn’t change. The woman was perfectly built, and it was just about impossible not to look at her and think that she would be great to touch—hell, that she would be great in bed.