My eyes search again for help, but the bartender is still occupied with the same guys at the end. The larger, broad-shouldered guy with the dark hair and his back to me, and the smaller guy with glasses.
“Look,” I snap, turning back to the guy leaning against the bar next to me, the last of the social niceties my mother would approve of dropping like a curtain.
“I’m not looking for conversation, okay? Please leave me alone.”
“Aww, c’mon gorgeous, why don’t you let me buy you a-”
“I said no, alright?” My voice raises a notch.
“Oh like you weren’t looking for a free drink wearing that hot little number,” he says with a smirk, his eyes dropping languidly to the front of my dress, making me sorely regret my decision to even come here.
I should’ve worn sweatpants.
Hell, I should have had room service bring me martinis to my room all night until I couldn’t operate the phone anymore.
“Look, I don’t think you’re hearing what I’m saying-”
“Oh I heard what you said, honey.” His arm suddenly slides across the bar in front of me as he gets right in my face, making me shrink into my barstool. “But I think you should give me a shot.”
I cringe, swallowing the lump in my throat and my body going tense as his other hand slides across my bare shoulder. And I’m trying to find my voice, when suddenly his hand is wrenched away from me.
“Is there a problem here?”
The Texas-twanged voice behind me is deep and honeyed, like leather and polished wood. I quickly turn at the sound of it, and as my eyes travel up the broad chest to the mouth those words came out of, I feel my pulse skip a beat.
Holy crap.
Those very perfect, very gorgeous lips above a squared and chiseled jaw covered in a faint stubble. The man is gorgeous, in a ruggedly boyish way. His hazel eyes pierce right into me as the faintest hint of a smile - something just this side of arrogant - teases those perfect lips.
He’s wearing dark jeans and a white t-shirt, pulled tight across his thick chest and broad shoulders, and even if part of me - the part that channels my mother - wants to raise a brow at how casually he’s dressed for a place like this, I bite my tongue. He’s effortlessly handsome - an easy sort of cool like a young Brando or Paul Newman.
My eyes drop to the inked lines of tattoos swirling down his powerful looking arms. The sleeve-tattoo crowd of LA tend to be scrawny hipster types, while the buff, arrogant types are usually all clean cut.
And here he is not conforming to either one.
“I-”
“Hey pal,” the scummy guy butts forward, boldly shoving a finger at the much bigger guy’s chest. “Move the fuck along.”
Texas’s eyes pull from mine momentarily, and his face darkens as he narrows them at the smaller man. “I asked if there was a problem here.”
The smaller guy snorts. “Not ’til you got here and tried to run your lame game on-”
“On my wife?”
The guy stops, and I jerk my eyes back to the Texan.
What?
“Huh?” The drunk guy’s face scrunches up as he frowns up into my savior’s face, who smiles thinly at him.
“My wife.”
Yeah, wait, what?
The smaller, drunk guy swallows quickly, his eyes dropping to the muscled arm slung across my shoulders as if suddenly actually noticing the size difference between himself and “my husband”.
“Uh, look, pal, I didn’t-” He suddenly peers closer at the man standing besides me. “Hang on, aren’t you-”
“Going to let you walk away if you do it right the fuck now?” The man’s voice is somehow both easy and hard - like he’s smiling with a knife in his hand.
The smaller man swallows quickly. “Shit, Taylor, man. I didn’t know-”
“Walk away.”
The other man nods quickly. “Yeah- yeah of course man.” He flashes a quick smile, that piece of food still stuck between his teeth as he gives a final, awkward nod and scurries away.
“Hey!” He turns a few steps away, raising his drink in the air as if the guy that just sent him packing is an old buddy. “Hey, lookin’ forward to an awesome year, dude!”
I am thoroughly, thoroughly confused, and I’m still blinking at the man with his muscled, tattooed arm draped languidly across my shoulders when he turns back to me. He grins at me, and I can instantly feel every drop of booze slamming through my system on overdrive, my head spinning as those perfect lips pull into a grin, and those perfect eyes twinkle at me.
“You okay?”
I blink, refocusing on him instead of drowning in those eyes like I just was. “Uh, yeah, yeah, I’m-”