She darted around the corner of the open archway leading to a row of mirrors and chairs. A chair. Oh, yes. Sabrina sank into the faux-leather seat, her knees wobbling.
“You okay, sweetie?” a tall woman in a sparkly T-shirt and tight-fitting jeans asked her, sounding far more motherly than her appearance suggested. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost…or an ex-boyfriend.”
Sabrina tried to smile. “Just a guy with a bad two-step, right onto my feet. Hiding. Hoping he goes away.”
The woman chuckled and waved a hand. “Good strategy. Hope it works.” She headed for the door, sashaying away, swinging her hips wildly.
One woman after another whisked in and out of the restroom, and Sabrina realized that she couldn’t stay here forever. Jennifer would come looking for her. No. She needed to sneak out of the bar and call Jennifer from the car. Make her escape.
Sabrina pushed to her feet and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She barely recognized herself, and it wasn’t because her business suit had been traded for black jeans and a black V-neck tank that morning.
She was not her father’s daughter here, she realized. And she liked that. Sure, race-car driving didn’t excite her. Politics didn’t excite her. But the American dream did. People did. Heroes of the people. A soldier who’d once committed to protecting the innocent, but who’d become a bank robber. What caused that? How could it have been prevented? Those were her type of stories. But dang, she thought, straightening, she’d use this feature on Marco to open doors, to find her stories of the heart. She liked that she had her own life. And no one, not even a hot cowboy who’d turned her down when she’d taken a risk with him, was going to stop her.
Sabrina headed to the door. She wasn’t sneaking away. She wasn’t running. And, never mind that Ryan Walker, she was going to use his dance lessons with everyone but him to prove to him she was resilient. To prove to herself she was truly in control of her own destiny. And no one was going to take that away from her.
12
PULLING BACK HER SHOULDERS, Sabrina marched toward the restroom exit, through the door and barely managed to draw to a halt before barreling into the tall, hard man leaning in an oh-so-casual stance against the wall.
Sabrina silently gulped, refusing to back away despite the too-close-for-comfort proximity. Calling on years of socializing, she enlisted her own oh-so-casual coolness. “Ryan,” she said. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“Liar,” he said, reaching for her and bringing her so close they were knee to knee. His hand was big, warm. Her arms tingled to the shoulder. “You ran when you saw me.”
“It was my turn,” she said, deciding not to hide the truth. “You ran last time.” The music saved her from saying more. Like how she’d dared to think he was the guy she could let go with, only to find out he only wanted her when she fitted some ideal he was fantasizing about.
“Yet here we are,” he said. “Things happen for a reason, right? It must be a sign.”
Sabrina could feel him in every inch of her body, could smell him and even taste him on her tongue. Damn him. She sidestepped him. “It’s a sign I need a drink.”
He shackled her arm gently, held her by his side, but said nothing, the shadows hiding his eyes, but not their impact. And when she thought he would speak, he simply released her. Sabrina released the breath she’d been unconsciously holding and all but ran back to the table.
***
HE SAT ACROSS FROM HER, like the hot sun on a Texas day—inescapable, scorching. It was an hour after their restroom-door encounter, and Sabrina—a one-drink kind of girl—was on her third margarita, feeling a buzz in a big way. But she didn’t care. She was tired of limits, the kind of limits Ryan swore he helped people push past, yet with her, he’d pulled her back. He’d given her limits like everyone else in her life. She hated him for that. But she still wanted him, infuriatingly so. He sat directly across from her, Caleb by his side, Jennifer and Bobby to her left—the three Aces chatting it up about their training camp at the Hotzone this week. Every time Ryan’s eyes found hers, a touch without a touch, invisible sparks crackled in the air so fiercely she thought them impossible to hide. If anyone noticed they didn’t comment, but Sabrina thought she caught a knowing glance from Jennifer a few times. No doubt, tomorrow would come with questions.
And no matter how Sabrina tried to absorb herself in chatter of her own with Jennifer, the Aces and Ryan entwined themselves in the conversation.
“That Kris Wilks kid I told you about,” Bobby said, grinning, talking mostly to Jennifer. “Ryan scared the holy crap out of him today.”