Jessa peered around the corner. “There you are, Alex. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” Alex said with a forced smile. “I’m great.”
She stepped into full view, cocking her head to one side and giving him a probing look that missed nothing. Alex couldn’t help but be amazed once again at the total transformation of the woman before him. Less than a year ago she’d been a timid mouse dressed to the nines in uncomfortable, country-club-approved designer clothes. Now she looked like a goddess on the prowl.
She gave him a dramatic eye roll. “Now what?”
“Just appreciating my best friend’s handiwork.”
“You are such a pig.”
Alex felt a measure of his charm returning at the familiar banter. “And yet you’re still hot for me. Hmm…”
“Oh, you wish!” She propped one hand on the soft flare of her hip.
“You know, Jessa”—Alex deliberately leered at her—“whenever you get bored with Connor, I’d be happy to pleasure you any way you want.”
“Connor doesn’t do boring, Alex.”
“So I hear. In fact, I hear that regularly from both of you.”
A pretty blush colored her cheeks.
“You’re especially loud on the topic, Jessa.”
“Cut it out. Embarrassing me doesn’t get beers for all those people waiting out at the bar.”
There was no way he was going to tell her why he’d felt the need to take a break. “So that’s why you came looking for me. And to think I assumed it was because you missed looking at my hot self.”
“You’re impossible,” she said over her shoulder as she turned and headed back out to the bar.
Alex sighed, knowing he had no choice but to follow. If he were lucky, Wade was done and Alex wouldn’t have to think about either of them anymore.
Business had picked up. Several people waited at the bar for drinks, and Jessa swooped in and out of the full tables on the floor. Even in all the activity, Alex couldn’t stop himself from looking for a pair of liquid brown eyes. Damn it to hell and back.
He sank into the haze of repetition, mixing and serving drinks without conscious thought. Instead, all his internal musings were reserved for round after round of self-recrimination. It wasn’t like him to fixate on something, especially not a woman.
Just as he was sure she must be gone, Emory climbed onto a stool at the far edge of the bar. “I think I need another drink.”
Damn. Where the hell did she come from and where has she been?
He reached for a shaker and layered sour apple schnapps, sweet and sour mix, and Stolichnaya inside. A few rattles and he poured the mixture into a martini glass. Alex stabbed a neon green plastic sword through an apple wedge with more violence than necessary and dumped it into the drink.
He slid the drink to her without ceremony. “One appletini.”
She didn’t even look up, reaching out tentatively to pull the glass toward her.
No matter how hard he tried, Alex couldn’t rip his eyes from the sight of her throat as she tipped her head back and took a long swallow of the sweet-and-sour concoction. He’d been bartending for nearly twelve years. He’d started in Great Britain during his stint in the army and then continued at Phoenix Rising after helping his longtime friend Connor open the bar. In all that time he’d learned that the drinks people ordered said a lot about them as individuals. Anything could be said via the medium of a cocktail choice. At that moment, Alex had a lot of thoughts and no words.
“It’s the best apple martini I’ve ever tasted,” Emory remarked. “But is that really what you think of me?”
The perceptive quality of her question startled him. Alex opened his mouth to offer a flippant, sarcastic answer, but something very different emerged instead. “Not at first.”
She lifted her gaze for the first time since coming back to the bar. Her eyes were rimmed in red. A jolt of adrenaline forced his hands into fists at his sides. Had Wade hurt her? So help him, if Wade had done something to the pixie, Alex was going to rip Wade apart with his bare hands.
“What kind of woman orders an appletini?” Her voice was hoarse with emotion.
Alex whisked a clean towel across the bar to give his hands something to do. Running Wade down without a good reason wasn’t the right choice at the moment. “A woman who’s uncomfortable in her own skin.”
With careful, deliberate motions, Emory set the martini glass aside and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “I’m trying to put that person behind me, you know.”
Done trading verbal innuendos that didn’t tell him what he wanted to know, Alex placed both hands on the bar and leaned forward. “Then who are you, and why are you here?”