Page 512 of Summer Heat
“C’mon,” he finally protested. “I was sixteen and one raging hormone, and so was she.”
Ty snorted. “I remember when I caught you guys in the barn.”
“And there was the time in the locker room at school,” Jake said, practically chortling.
“Excuse me, boys,” Lance said, standing. He made his way to the jukebox, hoping his brothers would have finished their parade of humiliating moments by the time he got back. Punching in numbers blindly, he remembered the craziness with a sense of bewilderment. It seemed like another life.
It was another life. He had, at times, honestly thought he was in love with Valerie. She was unbelievably beautiful, a cross between Selena Gomez and Mariah Carey, with that rockin’ body.
But mainly, it had been sex. Wild sex, crazy sex, the kind of drunken, rushing, dizzying sex only two hormonally crazed sixteen-year-olds could indulge.
When he’d come home at Christmas a few years ago, he’d been lonely and out of sorts, and had run into Valerie in a bar. The same thing had happened all over again—three weeks of pure, mindless, practically nonstop sex.
Hard to resist, but when her old tricks started, in little ways, Lance didn’t wait for her to trash his car. He left town and didn’t look back.
Lance pocketed the rest of his change and looked at Tamara. He guessed she might have reason to hold a grudge against him. He’d used Valerie. Maybe Tamara didn’t understand that Valerie had used him right back. It had always been a two-way street.
A man came into the bar and sat down on a barstool. Tamara gave him a sincere smile, laughing at some joke he made, and served up a Tecate with lime.
Lance walked over to the man and clapped him on the back. “Hey, Alonzo! Let me buy you that drink.” He shoved a five-dollar bill over the counter at Tamara.
Alonzo Chacon looked up with a grin. “Hey, boss.”
Alonzo was a Mexican national who’d immigrated to Colorado two years before. Lance had just hired him to lead and teach a crew to make adobe bricks. Alonzo made them the old way, by hand and individually. With adobe in such high demand for the homes going up in the area, Lance knew he had a gold mine.
Alonzo’s dark eyes crinkled in the wreath of lines wrought by fifty-plus years in the sun, and his thick black mustache shone in the low light. “Gracias.”
Tamara took the money and made change without saying a word. Lance found himself watching her hungrily, the long long legs, the smooth sway of her hips and the faint, alluring movement of her breasts below the loose blouse. The green fabric made her eyes look like jade—deep and rich and mysterious.
“Hi, Tamara,” he said. “How’s your car?”
“Fine, thanks,” she answered shortly, and turned away to wait on someone else.
He grinned ruefully at Alonzo, whose dark eyes glittered in amusement. “She not so nice to you,” he said with a wink. “But I see her watching you a minute ago. D’you make her mad?”
“Afraid so,” he admitted. “Trouble is, I can’t quite figure out what I did.” He gestured. “Come and join my brothers and me.”
Alonzo picked up his beer. “Lead the way.”
Lance peeled another five and left it on the bar as a tip, lifting one wicked brow at Alonzo, who nodded sagely.
* * *
Friday nights were always a zoo in the bar, which was why Tamara had to work them. No one had Friday nights off. Tonight, the restaurant next door was full of diners, and a flurry of waitresses moved in and out of the bar, calling out orders for margaritas and “Red Bulls,” the house drink, made of vodka, cranberry juice, lemonade, and sweet and sour.
The bar, too, was packed, and a steady stream of music poured from the jukebox, a mix of old rock and roll and country that so marked the mountain towns. Tamara liked most of it—the Eagles and Allman Brothers and old Jackson Browne tossed in the same set with Willie Nelson and a few, slow, dancing tunes.
Tonight, Tamara was thankful for the crowd. It kept her busy enough that she didn’t eye Lance Forrest more than once every five minutes or so, and she got busy enough that for a good twenty minutes she almost forgot he was there.
He danced. A lot, and she thought it was telling he didn’t seem to have to leave his table to do it. Women went to him, and he never turned any of them down.
Women approached Lance’s brothers, too, but Lance was usually their first choice. Jake scared women a little—he was almost too good-looking, with those Zac Efron blue eyes and the obvious scent of money that clung to the cut of his shirt and the watch on his wrist and the Scotch he drank.
And although Ty had a very sexy mountain man look, he didn’t get up once, just sat in the darkest corner and nursed a Guinness for two hours. He left after that, and Tamara felt a little sorry for him. Everyone knew he’d taken his wife’s death very hard.
Not long after Ty cleared out, Jake left with the out-of-town blonde. Lance and Alonzo chatted awhile lon
ger, obviously about something work related, because Alonzo came up and asked for paper and a pencil, which he took back to the table and used to sketch.
