Blame It on the Bikini(10)

Mya wished Brad would go do his thinking elsewhere. She’d spent all night trying not to think about him, and here he was the minute she’d walked into work. She tried to retain coordination as she checked round the tables making sure all were clean and had the necessary seating arrangements, but she felt his eyes on her.

She’d gone overboard in her reaction to learning he’d cancelled one of her shifts, but the truth was she couldn’t afford to lose a night off work. As it was she worked the bar job and a café job in the daytime. But it wasn’t just a silver spoon that Brad had been born with; it was a whole canteen of cutlery. He might work, but it wasn’t because he needed the money. He had no idea what it was like for people on the wrong side of the poverty line. And he was so used to getting his own way she was now ridden with the urge to argue with every one of his suggestions.

She walked back to the bar. She’d gone uber-efficient when she’d seen him sitting there. It was a way of working off the insane amount of energy she seemed to be imbued with. It didn’t help that he was so gorgeous wearing dark jeans, a belt that drew every eye to his lean waist and a red tee so faded it was almost pink—only Brad could put on pink and make it masculine sexy. Pure ladybait.

Eyes locked with his, she reached for the knife to slice more lemons. Her skin sizzled as he openly looked her up and down.

‘You never used to dress so monochrome,’ he commented thoughtfully.

He remembered that? Mya had never worn normal in the past, but she didn’t have the time to make her crazy outfits any more.

‘Needs must,’ she said briefly. If she didn’t have the time to do something properly, she preferred not to do it at all, so all the fun she’d once had in creating something from nothing had been put away. Lauren had never worn the latest in fashion either—another thing that had brought them together back at school. She too turned her back on the consumerism of the day, and together they’d done it with style. Mya knew how to sew. She could turn a rag into something unexpected—deliberately setting out to make a statement with her clothing.

He glanced up and grinned at her. ‘Still touchy?’

‘I didn’t sleep well.’ She sliced quickly.

‘Nor did I. I kept looking at your picture on my phone.’

She paused, eyes glued to the knife. No way could she dare look at his expression this second. ‘I don’t want to know what you were doing with my picture.’

‘I never looked at you that way before.’

Oh, like that was meant to make her feel better?

‘I’m aware of that,’ she snapped. ‘It was not ‘til you saw the bikini.’

‘No, I was otherwise occupied. I’m sorry about that in a way. But to be honest it was a good thing. You weren’t ready for me then.’

‘I’m not now,’ she lied, snapping the knife down on the chopping board, ignoring the way the lemon juice stung her burn.

‘Oh, you hold your own,’ he said. ‘And you know it.’

Her phone vibrated against her leg. She frowned and pulled it out. But it wasn’t a text; it was a reminder from her calendar.

Oh, no.

‘Are you okay? You’ve changed colour.’ Brad raised his voice. ‘Mya?’ He asked more sharply. ‘Bad news?’

She tried to smile but couldn’t force the fear far enough off her face to manage it. How could she have made such a mistake? She had everything on file, had due dates highlighted and underlined, but she’d been too busy dreaming up exotic cocktails and daft names to christen them in the past twenty-four hours to check. In other words, she’d been having too much fun.

She’d been so distracted she’d said yes to the extra shift at the café when they’d called last minute, forgetting to check her diary just in case. She’d figured it was better to keep fully occupied and thus ward off dangerous, idle-moment thoughts. Brad-type thoughts and replays of an unexpected, crazy kiss. She’d been distracted by imaginary conversations with a guy. About a party?

As a result, the assignment due tomorrow for her summer course had slipped her mind. She’d not done it. She’d not even half done it. She hadn’t done nearly the amount of research and reading she should have. She was playing everything close to the wire at the moment, every minute screwed down to either work or study, and last-minute deadlines had become the norm in recent weeks—so long as she had the info she needed. Mya was good enough to wing it. But just winging it wasn’t good enough for her. She wanted to ace it. She wanted her perfect GPA back. She wanted her perfect control back. She didn’t want to be sleepless and thinking saucy thoughts at inappropriate hours of the day. She was such a fool to let herself be distracted. Especially by Brad Davenport. She drew a deep breath into her crushed lungs. No more distraction.

‘Nothing I can’t manage,’ she lied and brought the bottles back to the line-up of shot glasses to pour more cherry-cheesecake shots for the trio of babes at a nearby table who were wearing ‘so hot right now’ dresses and drinking in the vision of killer-in-casual Brad.

‘Really?’ He watched her with absolute focus, as if he had no idea that he’d caught the undying attention of every woman in the building. But he knew it already—it was normal for him.

She nodded and looked down to concentrate on pouring the vodka in the glasses, not trusting herself to speak again without snapping at him. Suddenly she was too stressed to be company for anyone, and his utterly innate gorgeousness irked her more than was reasonable.

He put both palms on the bar and leaned closer. ‘Mya?’

That underlying note of concern in his deep voice didn’t help her combat the melting effect his mere presence had on her bones. His observation of her made her butter-fingered—not good when she had to flip two glass bottles at once in performing-seal fashion. Smashing the spirits would see the dollars coming out of her pay packet. ‘I need to concentrate.’ She offered a vaguely apologetic smile. ‘We’ll have to talk about the party later.’

‘Sure.’ He eased back and flashed her a smile that would easily have coaxed her own out had she looked long enough.

But she resolutely kept her eyes on the glasses as she fixed the cranberry layer in them, because she was not allowing him to distract her any more. She put the shots onto a tray, lifted it and slowly walked out from behind the bar, to carry them to the divas. They were all looking over her shoulder, checking out Brad.

‘You know him?’ one of them asked in an overly loud whisper as Mya put the tray on the table between them. ‘He’s single?’

‘Permanently,’ Mya answered honestly. She glanced around and saw he hadn’t moved. Worse he had a smile on, not his usual full-strength-flirt one, but a small twist to the lips that somehow made him even more attractive. It was so unfair the way he could make hearts seize with a mere look. She turned back to the pretty women. ‘But he loves to play.’

And no doubt he’d adore three women at once. Maybe if she were to see him go off with the trio for some debauched night, then she’d blast away the resurgence of this stupid teen crush and be able to concentrate wholly on the wretched assignment she had ahead of her.

One of the girls stood and went over to talk to him. Mya went straight back behind the bar and tried not to pay attention to the high-pitched laughter. But she knew it was exactly two and a half minutes until he joined the women at their table. Mya decided to let Jonny serve them from then on.

She ignored the way the women leaned forward and chatted so animatedly. She ignored the laughter and smiles that Brad gave each of them. Most of all she ignored the way he tried to catch her eye when she walked past a couple of times. Peripheral vision let her know he looked up and over to her; she refused to look back. She had far more important things to think on. And then she was simply far too busy. People began pouring in as the sun went down but the night warmed up.

‘Jonny, if I don’t take my break now, I’m going to miss it altogether.’ She leaned across to beg him.

‘Go now.’ He nodded. ‘Pete and I can handle it.’

She grabbed the oversized ancient laptop she always lugged round in her satchel all day and took it out to the small balcony Brad had led her to the other night. She didn’t really know why she’d brought it with her—it wasn’t as if she’d somehow type on her feet as she worked her shifts at the café and then the bar.

Her heart sank as she scrolled to the relevant document. The cases were all cited, but she’d have to try to get copies of them to read them in full. What library was going to be open at midnight? She didn’t have the Internet in her small flat as she couldn’t afford the connection. She didn’t even have a landline. She’d have to go to a twenty-four-hour café with wireless access and try to do it from there. Downloading fifteen cases? Oh, she was screwed.

She’d hardly started the first paragraph when Drew came out and caught her hunched over at a corner table.