He flicked his eyes from Britt to J. T., where they remained.
J. T. leveled his head up and locked eyes with him.
If they’d been dogs, he’d have been over in an instant, fur on end, for a bout of mutual, stiff-legged butt-sniffing.
Before they attempted to tear each other to pieces.
“Anything between you and Jughead?” he asked Britt idly, returning his eyes to her, where they infinitely preferred to be. It was absolutely none of his business, but that had seldom stopped him asking anything. And he was more than prepared to vanquish Jughead, if necessary.
“Oh, Truck Donegal?” she said, casually enough. She’d glanced briefly at him, offered a polite smile. Truck was clearly torn between watching the girl onstage, who was still tuning her guitar, and his new fascination with J. T. and Britt. “He seems to have given up asking me out after the third ‘no thank you.’”
There was absolutely no need to ask why the guy was called “Truck.”
“Three times, huh? Polite of you to add the thank-you.”
“Oh, yeah. Etiquette is the glue that holds society together,” she said dryly.
“Can’t say”—he leaned back in the chair, as if relaxing into the sheer luxury of looking at her—“I fault him for trying so hard. Because if I got three no’s from you it might just about end me.”
She appraised him with a slow crooked smile that he felt like warm honey poured down his back.
The implication was that he’d give her another chance to issue one.
But he was going to leave her in suspense until then.
“I told you to sit down, Marvin!” came over the P.A.
“She any good?” He gestured with his chin toward the girl on the stage, whose dark head was down as she tuned her guitar. Which seemed to be taking forever.
“Yeah. I don’t think she realizes how good.”
He arched a brow skeptically. “I’d be willing to bet that girl is fully aware of and uses every one of her assets.”
Britt laughed. Which he loved, given that after that sentence a lot of women would bristle or immediately begin mentally inventorying their own assets.
“BRITT!” Truck had a big arm up in the air and was waving it at her. “Gettin’ thirsty over here.”
“Look at her hands,” she said, leaning toward him, as she slipped off toward the beckoning behemoth. She arrived and gave Truck one of her smiles. Mollified, Truck basked in it.
J. T. couldn’t very well tug her back. But she’d come around again. He knew that for certain.
And he somehow knew for certain he wouldn’t be leaving without her.
So he closed his hand around his beer and looked at Glory Greenleaf’s hands.
Sure enough, she fumbled a little as she turned the pegs.
He could have, in fact, sworn that they were shaking.
Huh. So the wild, cocky thing was nervous.
He wondered if anyone here besides Britt noticed.
Or would bother to notice.
Glory Greenleaf sure threw out the kind of sparks that would camouflage it.
The advantages of getting the ficus burners—hot women who were easy to get but hard to handle at best and got your insurance rates raised at worst—out of his system early in his career were that now, in contrast, he could appreciate a ficus whisperer.
