“Thanks for asking about my shift.”
“So are we friends again?” Layla’s smile grew cocky.
“You still owe me rent. But I’ll give you a pass on that for a while. Until I have to pay the taxes.” Giving a wry smile, Luke reached out, touching Layla’s fingertips. An electric current ripped through her along with a wash of heat, making her catch her breath. “I’m sorry your date ditched you last night,” Luke murmured, lifting his lovely green eyes to hers. “Really. He doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
Startled by Luke’s admission, Layla blew out a breath. Normally, Luke would have taken care of her after a bad night drinking, then berated her severely for it the next day. They’d not been tender in well over a year, and it seemed strange now. Layla suddenly had a vision of the Moroccan cuff, the red coral shining like a blazing drop of blood in her mind. She shivered, feeling a sensation of ants blister through her skin, along with a throbbing heat wash up through her body.
A wash of heat that was not entirely unpleasant.
Luke drew his fingers back as if he’d felt that heat, a strange confusion in his eyes. Looking down, he touched her hand, tuning it over to look at her inner wrist. “Damn, that allergic reaction’s flaring again. I thought I felt some heat. Did you wear that wrist-cuff this morning?”
“No.” Glancing down, Layla saw the imprint of the hamsa-ward standing out in stark outline on her inner wrist again.
“Strange. Maybe it’s your coffee – coffee can be overheating for skin reactions. I’ll get some salve.” Luke rose, heading up the stout stairs and soon returning from Layla’s room with the tin of salve. Taking up her wrist, he spread the cooling calendula balm on her skin and Layla breathed easier, the burn seeping away. As she watched, the red lines began to dissipate from the hamsa.
But the heat in Layla’s body wasn’t gone.
“Better?” Luke murmured, watching her with a curious intensity.
“Better.” Layla reclaimed her hand and Luke let her go.
Though something remained in his eyes as she pulled away; a kind of simmering intensity that she’d not gotten from him in a very long time.
CHAPTER 5 – BREAK
“Hey babe! Babe! Need one more over here!”
Stifling a growl and slapping on her most accommodating bartending face, her red lips pursed in a beamingfuck yousmile, Layla moved back over to the asshat in the blue blazer and his cronies. The Liberty Bar was packed tonight, more than a regular Saturday night, but it was summer and the busy craft cocktail and sushi bar on Capitol Hill was not so secret after glowing reviews in a number of Seattle publications. Layla sashayed over in her back-up bar dress, a slinky crimson number with a plunging V-neck that fit her curves and made the most of her pale jade eyes. Already shaking up his next martini, she poured it, adding four olives like the asshat had ordered before.
They were all asshats, these urban playboys that thought themselves cool for crashing a craft cocktail bar. Coked-up douche-nozzles, they played at high finance with daddy’s money and drove Ferraris and six women on the side. Expensive blazers, brush-cut blonde hair with blue eyes, they brayed laughter, schmoozing women who walked by. Their group were like clones. Layla didn’t stop at the martini but mixed up another round of the group’s drinks, even though they still had some left. Manhattans, martinis, margaritas – there wasn’t a unique drink among them except for one Tom Collins, a skinny, tall guy with shaggy black hair and pretty hazel eyes. Saluting her with his drink, he gave an apologetic smile as if he was the accountant of the group and his reckoning of his co-worker’s bad behavior didn’t add up well.
Layla saluted him back with a glass of water and a matching wry smile.
Not all of them were asshats.
But one of themreallywas. Before she could turn to another group hailing her down the busy bar, Blue Blazer leaned over and tucked a hundred dollar bill right down her cleavage, stroking her breast with one finger as he did so. “Thanks, babe! Maybe I could hire that sweet ass of yours for the night? To pour us drinks, you know – exclusively.”
Layla gaped.What in the actual fuck?Her first reaction was astonishment; then rage. A roar of heat went simmering through her body as her demon of a temper rose, ready to rip him a new one.
Along with her searing rage came a bitch of an idea, suddenly. Giving her sultriest smile, Layla picked the hundred dollar bill out of her cleavage, then beckoned Blue Blazer with one finger. Grinning, he leaned across the bar, his comrades hooting like a pack of monkeys – all except Tom Collins, who watched Layla with a curious glint in his eyes. Blue Blazer’s loosened tie draped across the polished mahogany bar and Layla took it up in her fingers, reeling him in. When he was nice and close, grinning like a fool and thinking he was getting a kiss, she wadded up that hundred dollars, yanked hard on his tie to wrangle him, and stuffed that sleazy money right in his astonished open mouth.
“Choke on it, asshole,” she growled, before shoving him – violently – back to his barstool.
His comrades went wild as he spat out the money and spluttered, “What the fuck, bitch?!” Tom Collins was puce from trying to not laugh, his hazel eyes shining with mirth as he saluted her again with his drink. Layla gave him a special grin, but then Blue Blazer was yelling for a manager.
Dammit.
Theresa DeVere, Layla’s manager, shot in from around the bar as if her thick, squat frame moved on strings in her snappy grey pantsuit. Making soothing gestures and speaking platitudes, she gave Layla a vicious eyeball as she tried to calm Blue Blazer, offering a free round of drinks. Theresa beckoned for Henry, the other bartender working tonight, who hastily moved over in his pinstripe vest and canary tie to get another round started.
Theresa, finished placating with the asshat who was still scowling though his comrades laughed, ducked behind the bar and beckoned ferociously for Layla. Layla followed, feeling no remorse. She had a temper, but tonight it had been warranted. Douchebags like that had to learn they couldn’t just put their hands wherever they goddamn liked, not even if a girl was paid to serve them drinks and wearing a slinky red dress. But back in the server’s area with all the napkins, cutlery, and sundry, petite Theresa rounded upon Layla – and from the searing wrath in her brown eyes, Layla knew her manager didn’t feel the same way.
“What’s with the scene, Layla?” Theresa growled, her brown eyes caustic, hands on her hips.
“He shoved a tip down my tits and had himself a stroke!” Layla shot back, fury vibrating her every sinew, even more than usual. Her rage felt like a flood tonight, far more than it had ever been before, and she was not about to back down on this. She and Theresa had had their differences over customers before, but this was a whole other level.
“So?” Theresa rolled her eyes and threw up her hands, scoffing.
“So?!” Fury ripped through Layla, heating every limb and roaring through her like a desert wind. Her skin itched violently, especially the skin of her inner left wrist, and Layla fought an urge to scratch her fingers over it. “He treated me like a hooker, Tess! So I shoved it right back in his face. Serves him right.”
