She nodded and moved away, reaching for a glass and then pulling on the tap to fill it with draft beer. He watched her move, recognizing the natural grace of an athlete. She was tall, though he couldn’t see if she was wearing heels. Some of the girls Rupper hired wore heels to wait on tables, and Duncan never got how they could do that. The Sin Bin had a reputation as having the hottest servers in town, guys and girls, which might have accounted for some of the restaurant’s popularity. Although the food was good too.
This girl was okay-looking—long, dark blond hair pulled back from a center part into a low ponytail, high cheekbones, brown eyes, and full lips. Her eyebrows were thicker than he cared for. Her black dress was modest and plain, unlike the skin-revealing, body-hugging dresses some of the other waitresses wore, and she didn’t use much makeup.
She set the draft in front of him.
“Thanks.”
“Do you want to run a tab?”
He tipped his head. Usually the waitresses knew him and his teammates and didn’t have to ask that. “Uh. Yeah.”
She nodded and gave him a courteous smile.
“You’re new here,” he said as she went to move away.
She paused, still smiling in a polite way. “Yes. I just started this week. You must be a regular.”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
Eh. She didn’t know who he was. He wasn’t going to tell her. He was tired of the puck bunnies, and he was especially tired of chicks who were interested in him only because of his fame and his money.
“I’m Amber,” she said. “Would you like a food menu?”
“No thanks.”
She grabbed a tray and moved from behind the bar to go look after a table of four, picking up empties and taking their order. He turned a little on the stool to watch. Nope, no heels, just black ballet flats and long legs. Killer legs, actually.
He shouldn’t be looking at her legs. He was done with women.
He leaned on the bar and sipped his beer. Damn. He liked women. He just wasn’t very good with them. In high school when other guys were getting laid, he’d been at hockey practices or playing games. The other hockey players had girls hanging all over them, but not him. He’d been focused on his goal—making the NHL.
Now lots of his teammates were married and having babies. He’d always figured he’d have that one day. Yeah, he was only twenty-seven years old, not that old in the real world, but in pro hockey, it was getting up there. He felt like he’d been an adult for a long time, thinking about how long he’d been on his own and focusing so much on his hockey career.
His best buddy, Marc “Super Duper” Dupuis, was now “in a relationship.” With Duncan’s little sister, for Chrissake. Duncan rolled his eyes at that. He’d been pretty pissed to discover they’d been screwing around with each other behind his back—in his condo, no less—but it seemed things were actually pretty serious between them. Lovey was a bit of a flake, but he was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt that she had her life on track. He sighed.
“That was a heartfelt sigh.”
He looked up at Amber behind the bar again. “Uh. Sorry.”
“Hey, don’t apologize. You okay?”
“Oh yeah. Fine. Great.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “Want to talk about it?”
“About what a loser I am?”
She burst out laughing. “Right.”
He shook his head, lips twisted into a smile that probably didn’t look real happy.
“Girl trouble,” Amber said. “Am I right?”
“How’d you know?”
She pushed out her bottom lip and nodded. “Lucky guess.” She tipped her head to one side. “Get dumped?”
“No. I was the dumper.” He drained his glass and held it up.
With a wry smile, she took the empty glass, set it on a counter, and grabbed a clean one. Seconds later he had a full glass in front of him. He nodded approvingly. “That kind of service’ll get you a good tip.”
She smiled back. “So you broke up with your girlfriend and want to get drunk.”
It felt like a good night to get trashed. No game until Sunday night. Hell yeah. His smile went crooked. “That’s right.”
“Are you celebrating or drowning your sorrows?”
He considered that. “Well, seeing as I’m the dumper, not the dumpee, I should be celebrating.”
She nodded. “Yup. But I have the feeling you’re not.”
“It sucks.” He sighed. “She wasn’t happy.”
Her brown eyes softened. “You’re a nice guy.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“A jerk wouldn’t feel bad because he hurt someone’s feelings.”
“Well.” He pursed his lips briefly. “I don’t know how much I hurt her. Kinda feel she was more pissed than heartbroken.”
“Ah.” She set a glass on a shelf, easily reaching it with her height. “Still. Breaking up is hard to do. According to Neil Sedaka.”
“What? Who?”
She grinned. “Neil Sedaka. Come on. Never heard of him?”
He wrinkled his nose. “Uh, no.” He was pretty sure he wasn’t a country singer.
She shook her head.
“Thought maybe you were speaking from experience.” He eyed her as he lifted his drink to his mouth.
“Well, that too,” she said lightly. “Everyone’s been through it, right?”
“I guess. I actually don’t have much experience doing the dumping. I’m usually the dumpee.”
Her eyes widened briefly. “That’s hard to believe.”