Several people talked at once.
“Emmett bought her a round.”
“She said something to him and he started hassling her.”
“That’s when Hayden stepped in.”
Emmett squirmed and Dylan pressed his bootheel into his spine until he quit moving. “Who?” He looked at his fingertips. He wasn’t bleeding, but he’d have a brilliant shiner in the morning.
Everyone in the bar pointed to a booth several feet away. “Her.” And there, standing on top of the table, frozen to the wall like a deer caught in a headlight, was Ms. Hope Spencer. Her eyes were huge, her top small, and there was beer spilled everywhere. She clutched a fistful of napkins to her chest.
“Get up, and I’ll hogtie you,” he told Emmett, stepping over him. He knew from past experience with Emmett that once he was down, the threat of getting his hands and feet shackled together usually subdued him.
Dylan walked toward Hope and held out his hand. “Why don’t you hop on down from there, ma’am?” She took three hesitant steps to the edge of the table and shoved the napkins into a fanny pack she had strapped around her hips. She placed her palms on his shoulders, and his hands reached up and curved around her bare waist. As he looked into her blue eyes glassy with fright, his thumbs just naturally brushed her soft skin and pressed into her flat stomach. He lifted her from the table and slowly set her on her feet before him.
“Are you all right?” he asked. His gaze lowered from her face to his hands resting on her waist. The heat of her bare skin warmed his palms, and he kept them there, right there against that soft, soft skin. She smelled of beer, and of the Buckhorn, and of flowers, too. Lust rolled through his belly and curled his fingers, and he finally dropped his hands to his sides.
“I thought he was going to hit me,” she said, tightening her grasp on his shoulders. “Last year I took self-defense classes, and I thought I could take care of myself. But I froze. I’m not the Terminator.” Her breathing was shallow, and with each little gasp, her breasts rose in that little top.
He looked into her face, absent of cosmetics and color, her normal cool facade gone. “You don’t look like the Terminator.”
She shook her head and it didn’t appear like she was going to get over her panic any time soon. “That was my nickname in class. I was very fierce.”
“Are you going to pass out?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and take a deep breath anyway?”
She did as he asked and he watched her suck in several even breaths. She probably wasn’t aware that she held onto him, but he was very aware of the weight of her touch. He felt it all over, warming him as if they were more than strangers. As if the most natural thing in the world would be for him to lower his mouth to hers and kiss her until he made her eyes a bit more glassy, her breathing a lot more choppy. Dylan reached for her hands and removed them.
“You feeling better?” he asked, figuring it had been way too long since he’d been with a woman if a touch on his shoulders got h
im hot.
She nodded.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
“I was just sitting there, minding my own business, and the shorter guy walked up and put another round on my table. I told him no thank you, but he sat down anyway.” A frown settled between her brows, but she didn’t offer further explanation.
“And?” Dylan prompted.
“And I tried to be nice, but he wouldn’t get the hint. So I figured I needed to make it really clear that I wasn’t in the mood for company. You know, so that there was no misunderstanding.”
Not that it mattered, but out of curiosity, Dylan asked, “What did you say to him?”
Her frown spread to the corners of her mouth. “I think I said, ‘Please remove your carcass from my booth.’ ”
“I guess he didn’t take that very well.”
“No. Then he got really mad when I suggested to him that he had a drinking problem and should enter rehab.”
“And?”