“Baby girl?”
He chuckled and pointed at her phone on the bar. “I think someone is talking to you on your speakerphone, ma’am.”
“Huh? Oh!” She nearly dropped the phone as she fumbled with it and tried to get it to her ear. It took a couple of tries before she got the speakerphone turned off and said, “Hello?”
“Baby girl, are you okay? I hear a lot of noise in the background. You all right?”
She slumped in her chair and heaved a sigh. Just the sound of your voice makes me warm and wobbly inside.
“It does?” Josh asked with a chuckle, and she realized she’d verbalized that thought.
“Yeah,” she said and sighed again, missing him and his luscious brother very much.
Josh chuckled again. “Hey, brother, Violet thinks you’re luscious. What else are you up to, baby girl? Where are you?”
“I needed a drink so I went to the Pony because the house was too quiet and there was no tequila.”
“No tequila, huh?” His tone was amused and affectionate, and then he quietly asked, “Bodie there with you?”
“Nope,” she said, the “p” sound making a loud pop as she emphasized it. “I leveled with him and sent him back home. I made him sad, but he needed to know the truth.” Gosh, that margarita tasted good, like heaven in a glass. Ethan was the god of margaritas.
“The truth?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, it’s really over because I’m in love.”
It got quiet on the other end of the line. “In love, huh?”
She loved listening to his voice, the way it worked its magic on her like his fingers worked magic on her skin. She told him all about it, no longer worried about holding back. Her margarita was half-empty by the time she finally paused to let him get in more than a “yeah” or an “is that so?” He seemed receptive to what she was saying, so much that he was relaying all of it to Lucas as she spoke, which she thought was super sweet because Lord knew she loved that sexy man just the same.
“Hey, beautiful,” a deep voice said as a man slipped into the vacant seat next to hers. “This seat taken?”
Keeping the phone to her ear, she smiled at him as she took another sip of the fresh margarita and said, “You can have it.”
“Is someone meeting you here tonight?” he asked as he waved at the bartender.
“Nuh-uh.” She shook her head and was dazzled by the way the lights in the nightclub went all swirly. “Whoa.”
Josh asked, “Baby girl, is someone bothering you? Are you there alone?”
“Yup,” she said in answer to his last question. “Me and Ethan have been talkin’, and I’ve been enjoying a margarita.”
“I see. You still taking off tomorrow?”
“No, I think I’m going to go in and get caught up. And I need to check on my pussy, too.”
That raised the eyebrows of the stranger sitting next to her, and she burst into laughter, and he quickly hid his smirk. He placed his drink order and indicated to the bartender that he wanted to buy her another margarita, and Ethan held up his hand while he was still involved in his phone conversation and shook his head. She’d had enough for one night. Knowing he looked after her like that gave her another case of the warm fuzzies.
When he was finally able to quit laughing, Josh said, “Baby girl? You still there? You got quiet.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We need to talk face to face, don’t we?”
“Uh-huh!” Violet replied, nodding. “’Cuz I love you, and I really shoulda told you face to face, huh?”
“That’s okay. I love hearing it no matter what, and we’ll get to say it face to face soon enough. I think I’ve been fantasizing about what it would be like to have you in my arms and tell you I love you, too, for a long time now. Lucas says he has, too.”
“You guys,” she said with a happy sigh. “You’re like a fantasy come to life. You know that?” She let out long, humming sigh. “Too bad we didn’t get to finish our fantasy weekend. I had at least one more in me, I think.”
“Wanna tell me about it?” he asked, his sexy voice rumbling and making her wet.
She glanced at the people around her, and they all seemed to be busy with other conversations. “Well, it involves you tying me up and having your wicked way with me.”
“Mmm, it just so happens I have some brand-new rope that would be perfect on your pretty skin. Tell me what you want us to do with it?”
She talked nonstop, describing in vivid detail what she wanted them to do, and after a bit, she noticed the conversations on either side of her had gone silent.