It was late. The group was dwindling away but she had stuck around. I watched her head to the bar, seething and sizzling in equal measure. Her dark curls were tied up but slipping from their knot, brushing her long neck. Fuck.
Nope. I couldn’t just sit there. I slipped from my stool and followed her with my empty glass, planting it on the bar beside her and leaning my elbows on the surface. I’d long-since removed my sports jacket and my shirt sleeves were rolled to the elbows. The bar was sticky beneath my forearms, but I ignored the sensation. Finally I was at her side.
She glanced sideways at me and quickly returned her gaze to the shelves of bottles behind the bar.
“Still here?” I didn’t have game. I’d never had it. And now I was proving it. I cringed at myself.
“Yep. Still here, Champion. I have events to report on. It’s my job.” She still didn’t look at me. The young, male bar tender approached us with an expectant expression. “Whisky, neat. Please.”
The bar tender nodded and looked to me as if we were together.
“Vodka, also neat, thank you.”
He turned away to fetch our drinks and we were alone again. Alone in a busy bar. Our peers sitting just a few feet away, potentially watching us, maybe even gossiping about us. I wasn’t naive enough to think that her probing wasn’t well-known up and down the paddock.
I moved a touch closer, my forearm gently touching hers. She glanced at my reflection in the mirror and our eyes met, lingered, then moved away.
“You can stop calling me that.”
“What?”
“Champion,” I said, grimacing.
“But you are one. Whether on merit or not is debatable.”
“Fuck,” I hissed under my breath. “Just stop it, will you?”
“Never.”
Silence hung in the air between us. Seething, I shifted my weight and broke the contact between our arms.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“What for?”
“The spotlight.”
“Oh.” My insides squirmed. She regretted it.
The bar tender placed our drinks in front of us and before she could hold out her credit card, I passed mine to him. “I’ll get these.”
“Thanks.” Our eyes met in the mirror again.
“You shouldn’t apologise for that.” I lifted my glass and stared into the clear liquid. “I won’t.” I knocked back the drinkand slammed the glass back on the bar. I turned and stalked back to the table. I grabbed my jacket without looking back.
“You calling it a night?” Oliver asked, looking from me to Elena.
“It’s time.”
Elena arrived at the table with her drink, her face pale.
“See you later,” Oliver said and he offered me his hand. I wrapped mine around it and pulled him into a brotherly embrace.
“Later, Aleks,” called Jax. I nodded his way and left, not wanting to drag out my goodbyes. I stepped into the street and stared up at the sky. It glowed orange and smelled like imminent rain.
Dammit. I wanted her to follow me. I wanted to take her back to my hotel room. I wanted to kiss her again and all the rest. But how could she possibly know that?
The bar door opened behind me and I spun around with a hopeful heart. But it was fucking Kavanagh and another journalist.
