The look on her face that rainy afternoon? Yeah, it was one I’d never forget.
Other than the night I’d purchased it, I hadn’t seen her in it. Even that night, the dress didn’t exactly stay in place for long. Tonight, though, seeing her in that dress, smiling, talking, and showing off her artwork, so obviously in her element . . . She stole whatever fraction of a piece of my heart I might have still possessed. Rowen Sterling had every last piece of me, and I didn’t want any of them back.
That magnetism jolted back to life in a staggering way. I couldn’t not go to her. I’d gone two steps in the hundred left to go when my journey came to an abrupt end.
A man who made the guy guarding the front door seem like a kitten stepped in front of me. “This room’s for V.I.P.s only.”
I might not pour milk over my steak for breakfast in the morning, but I wasn’t a weakling. When Big Boy rammed his chest into mine to stop me, I kid you not, I bounced back a good five feet. Okay, so manhandling hay bales, feed bags, and hundred-pound calves doesn’t hold a candle to benching small SUVs. Noted.
The dude might have been Goliath’s offspring, but Rowen was a mere dozen yards away. I wasn’t going down with one warning. I advanced again, trying to step around him. That time, he grabbed my shoulders and shoved me back.
“V.I.P.s” he said slowly, half looking like he was hoping I’d try to charge past him again. “Not V.U.I.P.s.”
I lifted an eyebrow. It seemed a lot of people didn’t speak the same language as me around there.
“Very un-important people,” King Kong clarified.
I let that insult roll off my back. I’d never cared about what strangers thought about me. Glancing over his shoulder, I caught another glimpse of Rowen. “My girlfriend’s in there. She’s the one whose art’s on display.”
Kong cracked his neck to one side, then the other. “Son”—I don’t know where he got off calling me son. He couldn’t have been more than a couple of years older than me—“even if that was your wife in there, your wife of twenty years who you’d just found out had been f**king your best friend in your own bed and you wanted to run in there and chew her a new one, you are not getting past me.”
I inhaled. I exhaled. Something fired to life inside of me, something I generally did a good job of repressing. That act-first-think-second instinct. I took another full breath, set my hands on my hips, and tried to keep my voice level. “Would you please just go tell her”—I pointed at Rowen with my eyes—“that Jesse is outside? I’m sure she’ll figure out a way to get me off of the V.U.I.P. list.”
The bouncer twisted to look at Rowen. His look stayed locked on her long enough that my hands started to curl into fists of their own accord. “That’s your girlfriend?” His eyes ran over Rowen in a way every guy could decipher. He was imagining her, right there, without her clothes on.
“Yes,” I managed through a clenched jaw. That fire inside of me grew, spreading to every nerve.
He made an mm-mm-MMM sound, and that’s when I felt it; that fire had just exploded past the point of my restraint. “Now that’s a woman who’s f**ked her fair share of men. I wouldn’t mind getting in that line.”
I saw red. I felt red. I was a ball of emotion. I was a ball of . . . rage. One part of my mind still worked just enough to know I wasn’t the type to swing first and ask questions later, but it was quickly and easily overpowered by the fury. “Wrong thing to say, big guy.” My arm reached back automatically. “Way wrong thing to say.”
It would have been a solid hit. The guy was still running his eyes all over Rowen like they were his hands—he didn’t have a clue he was about to have a meeting with the business end of my fist—but someone ducked out from behind the curtains and stepped between us so casually I doubted he knew fists were about to start swinging.
“How’s it going out here . . . ?” The new guy looked between the two of us, giving us both such condescending looks, he did little to unclench my fists. “I didn’t catch you boys in the middle of anything, did I?”
Since it sounded like more of a rhetorical question, I ignored it. “Could you go get Rowen Sterling for me, please?”
The new guy inspected me closer. From his expression, it didn’t look like he approved. “She’s kind of in the middle of an art show right now. Not really the best time.”
The guy had barely said three sentences to me, and everything about him grated on me. I generally wasn’t the kind of person who found other people “grating.” “I’m her boyfriend. Could you please just let her know I’m here?” I slid my phone out of my back pocket again to check it. Still no reception. Either we were so deep below the surface the cell towers didn’t reach that far, or jamming devices had been installed in the club. I hadn’t seen a single person with a phone to their ear or typing out a text.
“So. You’re the boyfriend with a girl name.”
I slid my phone back into my pocket and forced myself to bite back the fire begging to be released. After a moment, I felt mostly certain the words about to come out of my mouth wouldn’t be ones I’d regret. “Yep. That’s me. Jesse. Rowen’s boyfriend. The boyfriend with a girl’s name.” Each word extinguished a bit more of the fire. Each “self-deprecating” word brought me back to the person I knew. Unlike the quivering rage machine I’d morphed into moments ago. Talk about bringing the Hulk out of the cowboy.