Spring River Valley: The Spring Collection (Boxed Set) (14 page)

“He must be blind if he could walk away from you.”

Buck cornered Matt in the small alcove beside the kitchen. “Hey, Kelz, what’s up with the girl at the bar?”

Matt shrugged innocently. “Which one? There’re five girls at the bar.”

“The one you’re drooling over. Look, I don’t care if you schmooze, but don’t neglect the other customers. The ladies come here on the weekends to chat you up, and they’re not going to be happy if you’re mooning over one chick and ignoring everybody else.”

“I’m not mooning over her.” Well, he was … a little. Bailey was dazzling. He didn’t even know her last name yet, but he planned to before the night was over. He never picked up customers…at least not very often, but tonight he was going to break a couple of his hard and fast rules.

“Come on. If the bar wasn’t between you and her, you’d be humping her.”

“Buck. Seriously. Gross.”

The other man grinned. “I don’t care; just keep the other ladies happy. They tip nice when they think you’re into them, and they drink more.”

“Fine, whatever. Can you get someone to bus table two? I’ve got to get back to flirting.”

“Sure thing, as long as you spread it around. I don’t want any of those chicks leaving because they’re jealous.”

Matt waved Buck off and headed back to the bar. Knowing the manager was probably watching him, he made his rounds with a smile, stopping to schmooze each of his female customers—except those with dates of course. By the time he got back to Bailey, she was almost finished with her drink and looking a little bored. “Sorry I was gone so long. We’re slammed. The manager thinks I have ten hands.”

“You don’t have to entertain me. I should be going anyway.”

“Don’t leave yet. The band’s gonna start up at ten. They’re pretty good.”

“All right, maybe just one song.”

“And one dance?”

“There’s dancing too?”

“After the first set, people usually get up and dance. It’s a new thing.” He nodded to where his friend Owen’s band was just starting to set up in the far corner of the dining area. The trio, a keyboardist named Taylor, Owen on guitar, and Owen’s friend Claudia singing lead, were all talented amateurs. They’d auditioned last month, and Buck told them if customers liked their debut he’d pay them to do a couple of sets every weekend. “Come on, I’ll introduce you,” Matt offered, but Bailey was already sliding off her stool. She made her way across the room and threw herself into the arms of the keyboardist. “I guess you don’t need an introduction,” Matt said to no one and went back to the women who were actually interested in his flirting.

* * * *

For the first time all evening, Bailey didn’t feel completely out of place. She crossed the room to where Taylor Croft and his band mates were setting up their equipment on a raised platform that served as a makeshift stage.

“Hey, doc. Can you tell me where I can get some hair of the dog?” she asked nonchalantly.

The tall, charming veterinarian, who moonlighted as a keyboardist, turned around, and his face split in a big grin. “Hey, Bailey!” Taylor scooped her up in a bear hug. “What are you doing here?”

“I was on a date, but he had to leave, so I’m hanging out at the bar. I didn’t know you’d be here tonight. Evie never told me you guys won the battle of the bands.”

Taylor shrugged. “I guess you could say we won, though right now we only get paid in steak and French fries. It’s all just for fun. Hey, let me introduce you. Bailey Cole, this is Owen DeWitt, our lead singer.”

Bailey remembered the handsome guitarist from the night she’d come here with Evie to watch their band audition. Owen was about Taylor’s age, with wavy brown hair and deep blue eyes. He shifted his guitar aside and shook Bailey’s hand. “Hey.”

Next to him, a pretty brunette stood untangling a microphone cord. She looked up when Taylor introduced her and smiled at Bailey. “This is Claudia Galvin, our voice.”

“Hi, Claudia.” Bailey shook hands with the singer whose voice blended so beautifully with Owen’s. Up close she looked vaguely familiar. “Have we met somewhere?”

“Have you taken my class? I teach yoga at the Green Solutions Spa on Downing.”

“Oh! I haven’t yet…I’ve been meaning to. I think you might have taken my brother’s class. Aiden Cole, he teaches karate.”

“That’s right! I took his class last spring. I thought you looked familiar. Tell Aiden I said hi.”

“Of course.” Bailey caught a strange look from Owen when Claudia mentioned her brother, but it passed quickly enough. She wondered if the guitar player knew her brother too, or might have been a little jealous that his band mate remembered him so fondly. “It was nice meeting you all. I’m going to go back to the bar before someone takes my seat. I can’t wait to hear you play.”

Taylor dropped a quick kiss on Bailey’s forehead and nodded toward the bar. “Looks like you have an admirer. The bartender hasn’t taken his eyes off you since you came over here.”

Bailey chanced a quick look over her shoulder. Matt was busy at the moment, mixing a drink in front of a young woman who looked utterly entranced by his every move. “Oh, you think?”

“He caught me looking, and he looked away. Want me to kiss you again, get him fired up?”

“No!” Bailey pushed Taylor back a step, and he laughed. “I don’t need anyone fired up at the moment.”

“Too bad.” Taylor winked and took a seat at his keyboard. Bailey dismissed his good-natured flirting and headed back to her seat as Claudia switched on her microphone and addressed the crowd.

She slid onto her fortunately still-vacant stool just as Taylor played the first few bars of a popular ballad. Someone dimmed the lights in the dining room, and Claudia started to sing about unrequited love.

When Owen joined her on the chorus, Bailey’s skin tingled. The two singers looked into each other’s eyes and sang the romantic words with such passion that tears came to her eyes. They were either incredible actors or those two had some kind of a thing going.

Bailey tried not to take the sad song to heart. She didn’t want to dwell on her past with Dan and start to feel sorry for herself all over again.

“They’re good, aren’t they?” Matt’s voice jolted her out of her reverie. The fine hairs on her nape stood up when his breath caressed her ear. “Owen’s hot for her. Know how I can tell?”

Bailey shook her head, afraid her voice might crack if she spoke right now. “He always tries to stand between her and Taylor, like he’s trying to keep them apart.”

Bailey hadn’t really noticed, but now that Matt mentioned it, Owen had seemed to relax a bit when Taylor hugged her, but his expression had changed just slightly when she’d told Taylor she was here on a date. “You may be right.”

“So what’s with you and him? I hear he’s a vet.”

Speaking of subtle signals, Bailey had to wonder if she was imagining the change in timbre of Matt’s voice when he spoke about Taylor. “He is. My best friend Evie just started dating his brother, Tanner. We went on a couple of double dates with them, but he’s not my type.”

Matt laughed a little too loudly. “So tall, dark, and linebacker
isn’t
your type? Come on. There’s not a woman in here who isn’t trying to figure out how to slip him her phone number, and you just walked up to him and he kissed you. You know how much you’re hated right now?”

Bailey shrugged. “Taylor is a great guy, but he’s looking for a serious commitment. He wants to settle down and have kids with someone, and that’s not me…not right now anyway.”

Matt was silent for a moment. He stood behind her, with the bar between them, and Bailey couldn’t see his face, but she got the impression he was processing what she’d just said. “Wow. The ladies find that out, he’ll have to beat them off with a stick.”

“You’d think.”

“Not me.”

“He wouldn’t have to beat you off with a stick?” Bailey swiveled around in her chair and caught Matt’s shocked expression. She gulped. “Oh, God, that did not come out right.”

He guffawed. “It was priceless, and no, that’s not what I meant. I’m like you. I’m not ready to settle down. At least not until I finish my degree and get my own architecture firm up and running.”

Bailey raised a brow. “Architecture?”

“Yep. I’m working as an apprentice right now for a firm in Bakersfield three days a week, and I take classes the other two, work here on the weekends and in my spare time I do the occasional sketch for someone. Just small things right now, like decks and minor additions.”

“I’d say you know a thing or two about commitment. That all sounds like a lot of work.”

Matt shrugged. “You do what you have to do.”

The band struck up a chirpy dance number then, and Owen and Claudia’s voices melded into a sweet duet. Matt disappeared from behind the bar, and a second later he appeared in front of Bailey, his hand outstretched. “Come on, you promised me a dance.”

“I did?”

“At least one.” He tugged her off her stool and out into the small area the manager and some of the other wait staff had cleared in the center of the room. A few couples joined them immediately, and before she realized what was happening, Bailey found herself swept into Matt’s arms.

Matt hadn’t been on this kind of a roller-coaster ride in years. In the couple hours since he’d first laid eyes on Bailey Cole his heart hadn’t stopped racing. The momentary disappointment of thinking she might have been involved somehow with the guy from the band faded the second he took her in his arms and drew her close to him.

Buck would be pissed that he was dancing with only one girl, but he didn’t care. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her all night, and he wasn’t about to now. This was his shot to get close to her, and he wasn’t about to blow it.

They swayed to the music, finding a perfect rhythm of movement after only a few awkward steps. She let him lead, and he let her soft curves mold to his, careful to watch where his hands went so she didn’t think he was feeling her up.

She smelled like vanilla and rose, and the thin gold chain she wore around her neck picked up the dim lighting here and there and sparkled, keeping him mesmerized. She was just as graceful as he’d imagined, and her gorgeous smile broadened every time he twirled her around.

“You’re pretty good at this,” she half yelled into his ear when the next dance number began. It was an oldie…all the way from the Eighties, but no one seemed to care, and Owen and Claudia gave the song a contemporary beat.

“Buck made us practice.”

“Who’s Buck?”

“The manager. If we see someone sitting alone, he wants us to ask them to dance. It gets people thirsty and makes them feel more comfortable so they don’t leave.”

“Oh.”

Damn. Now she thought he was just dancing with her because the manager had told him to.

“I don’t do it.”

She tilted her head and looked down at their feet, toe to toe. “You’re doing it now.”

“No, I mean…not because I’m supposed to.”

“Are you saying you just wanted to dance with me?”

He replied with a half shrug and a knowing smile. She blushed and hid her face in his shoulder for a second. His knees went just a little bit weak. God, she was adorable. If he could have wished the whole world away at that moment and made it just the two of them dancing to the music, he would have. He bent his head and whispered in her ear. “Stay ’til closing, okay?”

She looked up, those beautiful green eyes of hers wide. “Then what?”

“Then we can talk while it’s quiet.”

She seemed a little uncertain, but she nodded. “Okay.”

His spirits soared. He’d have danced her right out the door if he could have, but they only had another two hours until closing, then he’d have her all to himself.

* * * *

Bailey needn’t have worried how she would pass the next couple of hours at Colette’s. The time flew by. Between listening to the rest of the set Taylor and his band played and talking to Matt, then to Claudia who took a break from singing while the guys played some instrumentals, the evening flew by. At one a.m. Buck announced last call, and by then most of the customers had left. The kitchen was closed, the band packed up their equipment and said their good-byes, and before long, only Bailey remained.

“She’s with me,” Matt told the manager when the older man gave them a questioning look. “As soon as I’m done cleaning up my station, we’re going.”

Bailey wondered just where they would be going at this hour. Clearly they wouldn’t be hanging around at the bar.

The hostess said goodnight, and the manager walked her out to her car, leaving Matt and Bailey alone for a few minutes in the now silent pub.

“It’s strange to see this place empty,” she said. “But my ears are ringing from the music and the talking. If I close my eyes I can imagine everyone still here.”

“You tune it out after a while. First couple of shifts I worked here, I ended up staying up all night because I couldn’t settle down enough to fall asleep. I almost quit, but Buck told me not to try to fall asleep right away, do something else first to unwind.”