Page 7 of The Truth You Told

When she lifted the Four Roses in his direction, brows lifted in question, he hesitated, eyes flicking down to his empty glass and then to the door. He knew he shouldn’t stay.

But then his attention returned to her, and she could see the decision made behind his carefully controlled expression.

Shay had to admit she was glad he wasn’t leaving. It had been a while since a man had lit a fire in her belly. She could admit he did, even though he wasn’t her usual type. He was too polished, too professional looking. Not a hair out of place. But she couldn’t deny that this made her want to get her hands on him, to muss him up and see if there was anything beneath that perfect facade.

She sashayed on over to him even before he nodded, and she poured him a real double this time. He inhaled like he was about to sink beneath some waves.

Then he handed over two fifties. “Keep the change.”

Shay made the bills disappear. She didn’t really want to be dealing with money and him right now, not with how she was already thinking about just how long it would take to get him out of that nice suit. “You don’t think it was a Satan worshipper?”

His mouth tightened and he looked away. She knew immediately she’d misstepped. This time he stared at the door longer, as if he really might change his mind.

“Our Satanic Panic came, like, ten years after the rest of the country,” she said quickly. “Like everything else here, we’re late on the trends.”

He was still hesitating, toying with his glass instead of drinking the pretty liquor inside it.

“Yeah, it came about whenSabrina the Teenage Witchdebuted,” Shay continued. “The moms all held a rally to burn stuffed black cats. Like Salem, on the show.”

He laughed, then looked immediately surprised that he had.

Oh no.She could become addicted to that sound.

“Fictional teenage witches, not okay,” he said. “Promoting animal abuse is fine, though.”

He was joking, and she liked it.

“That’s what I said.” Shay grinned at him. “I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper and everything.”

“Did anything happen?”

“Someone threw holy water on my mama at church, and so she whooped my ass,” Shay said, still amused. But she must have revealed too much, because his face softened with sympathy. She didn’t want that—she wanted him thinking she was hot, not sad. “Don’t worry. I was a brat. I held a little memorial for all the lost cat souls. It made the school paper. I never quite shook the witch allegations.”

Someone a few stools over called, “Witch or b—”

“Oy,” she cut them off. It was Jimmy Thatcher, who grinned at her, pleased with his own joke. He was playful and kindhearted, so she just rolled her eyes and flipped him off.

What mattered more was that she’d successfully wiped the pity from Four Roses’s face. He was back to watching her with that careful expression that seemed to hide something fascinating beneath it.

He nursed that drink for the rest of her shift and was still sitting there as the last of her inebriated regulars staggered out.

“You don’t have to go home,” she said, as the other bartender, Harry, started closing down the place. He’d snark at her tomorrow about doing her share of the work, but for all his griping, he was a fairly solid wingman. She liked to think she’d returned the favor enough times that they were even.

“But I can’t stay here,” Four Roses said, and then nudged his long-empty tumbler in her direction. When she’d offered him a third pour earlier, he’d declined, but he hadn’t left.

His eyes slid to Harry, then back to hers. “Well, have a good night.”

Shay gaped at his retreating back, and stopped him only when he put a hand on the swinging door. “You put in all that time just to say good night?”

He turned back to her. “It beat an empty hotel room.”

“Yeah, but so do a lot of things,” Shay said, untying her apron strings. She glanced at Harry, who gave her a thumbs-up without even looking in her direction. “Like a not-empty hotel room.”

She would never call it her smoothest line, but Shay was attractive. She didn’t need to be smooth, she just needed to indicate that she was interested. The other party usually did the rest of the work. That was no different with Four Roses, who politely ushered her into a nice sedan that was more budget conscious than she’d been expecting.

“Rental,” he murmured, the tips of his ears pink. And, again, she thought,Oh no.It was easier to know he was passing through, though. No need to get anything but her body involved here. Her heart could take the bench for tonight.

His hotel room was standard fare, but again on the budget-friendly side. She wondered what had brought him to the suburbs of Houston. Work, of course, considering that both the car and hotel were probably the level they were because the trip was being paid for by a tightfisted CEO.

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