Lifeline Echoes (5 page)

Ryan kept ravenous eyes glued to the sexy
bartender-turned-singer when she got back on stage, to perform with
the band's lead singer. When they sang a slow duet about being
alone and needing someone, Ryan felt a tug at his heart. Before he
could figure out exactly why the song was having such an effect on
him, they moved into another high-energy number. This time instead
of working in the crowd, Chicory played off the band's lead singer
but she got the crowd involved with dancing and shining cell
phones. She finished amid the roar of good-natured hoots and
cheers, a couple of men near the stage gave her a hand down, and
Ryan found himself tempering unexpected jealousy.

But then she was on her way in his direction
again, chicory eyes holding him captive once more. Just watching
her walk was seducing him. Her face was flushed, probably with the
exertion of her performance, but he recognized the bold glint in
her eyes as purely sensual. The hungry flame, ignited on the road
in the mountains, kicked itself up several levels, and at the
moment, he could think of no reason to bank that particular
fire.

****

Chapter Three

He'd entered the bar with Sean McGee moments
before Ray had called her on stage, and Sandy had deliberately
punched up what was already a very sexy performance. She'd
approached him with more overt sensuality than she'd ever shown in
her life, intentionally sharking him, daring him to want her. And
his motor had been running for her. Of that, she was quite
certain.

Who knew, after years of having no real
interest in dating, one sexy performance directed at a stranger
would jump-start her own long-sleeping motor?

Now he was sitting at the bar she would be
working for the rest of the night and her body was reacting as
though it was very happy to see him. Wearing a western-style
striped shirt in shades of blue, and those rear end-grabbing tight
jeans, he looked even more tasty than he had in the black leather
jacket at the wheel of his vintage Corvette.

Having reclaimed her position behind the
bar, Sandy gave herself permission to check out the tantalizing
newcomer. He sat comfortably, half-turned outward on the stool, one
hand on a mug of beer. Her eyes made the journey up and down his
lean frame, openly assessing his sex appeal, which she suspected
went hand-in-hand with his potential for trouble. When she got to
his eyes, she was oddly pleased to notice he was observing her as
she checked him out.

Lazily, he returned the assessment,
heavy-lidded eyes lingering on her chest, traveling to her waist,
her hips, then moving back to brush her throat. His look singed her
skin wherever it touched. When his gaze caressed her lips, she
could almost feel the scorch of his kiss, and with that on her
mind, she cast a leisurely provocative smile in his direction.

He raised his mug in an apparent toast of
appreciation.

Next to her, Mel trilled
her tongue and poked Sandy in the small of the back. "I was
beginning to wonder if you
liked
men. Get on over there, girl."

Sandy stopped herself from racing to the end
of the bar. Barely. "We meet again."

"You two've met?" Sean's eyebrows
skyrocketed.

"Last evening." Sandy hardly spared Sean a
glance. "When he almost ran me and Domingo over with his car."

"You
were
standing in the middle of the
road." Ry ignored the obvious baiting.

"My horse and I
were
crossing
the
road," she corrected, laying elbows on the bar and leaning toward
him.

****

Ryan suspected the droop of the lavender top
to reveal the extra cleavage was no accident. But hey, he wasn't
complaining. His eyes followed the curve into the intriguing
shadows at the center of her chest.

"That explains a lot," Sean muttered under
his breath. "Sandy, allow me to introduce my brother, Ryan McGee.
He's mostly harmless—when he's not driving."

If he hadn't been watching her, Ryan would
have missed the nearly imperceptible widening of her eyes when Sean
introduced him. So, she hadn't been expecting that particular
connection.

"Oh, I'm sure he's anything but harmless,"
Sandy drawled. "But I'm willing to take my chances." With one
elegant hand, she took his hat off her head and parked it back on
his, setting it in place with a little tap.

He removed his hat again and set it between
them on the bar. "Buy you a drink?"

She shook her head with obvious regret. "I'm
working, sorry."

"Yeah, but you get a break, right?" He was
aware he sounded desperate but was long past caring. "I can talk to
your boss. See if you can take your break with me."

Sean opened his mouth but whatever he was
going to say, he swallowed the words when Sandy laid two
exquisitely manicured fingers on his wrist. The handful of shiny
gold bands dangling from her wrist tinkled with her movement..

"You won't get anywhere." Sandy looked
directly at Ryan. "The boss here's kind of a ball buster. But I'll
tell you what. Come by around eleven tomorrow and I'll buy you
lunch."

With what might have been a wink, she was
off to attend to other customers.

Well, it wasn't exactly a red light, more of
a yield sign. Ryan amused himself by watching her casual
flirtations with customers from one end of the bar to the
other.

She stopped long enough to park another
frosted mug of draft in front of him. "On the house. Welcome home."
Her smile lit her eyes and Ryan temporarily lost his ability to
speak. Then she was off again.

"Well, crap." Sean looked like he'd
swallowed a bug. "What's Bull MacKay doing here? He almost never
shows his face."

Ryan glanced over his shoulder in the
direction of Sean's gaze. The burly man just entering the bar was
as solid as he had been when he was a high school senior playing
quarterback during Ryan's sophomore year. His face was weathered
and his hair thinning, but the expression in his eyes was as sullen
as Ryan remembered.

"Must've heard the grapevine buzzing," said
Sean.

Ryan shrugged, unconcerned. "Bound to happen
sometime. Relax. I won't start anything if he doesn't."

Deliberately, Ryan looked away and took a
casual pull of his beer.

"I heard you had the bad sense to crawl back
home." The goading voice came from behind him.

Ryan turned around to meet the other man's
glaring black eyes. "Brody MacKay, the younger."

"Rumor was you'd got killed," Brody
sneered.

"Rumors are overrated." With a bit of
effort, Ryan kept his voice even, punctuating the sentence with a
swig of his beer.

"Still kidnapping little boys?" demanded
Brody.

"Your old man still looking for someone to
beat the crap out of?" countered Ryan in a soft tone that was in
direct contrast to the general annoyance he felt.

So focused was Ryan on his old adversary,
that Sandy caught him by surprise, materializing at his elbow and
inserting herself between him and Bull. She carried a tray holding
a mug of beer and she lifted this in Bull's direction. Ryan didn't
want her there, didn't want the ugliness to touch her.

But he was unable to stop her when she
simply turned her back on him and touched Bull on his arm. "Hey,
Bull, good to see you tonight. How are your mom and pop?"

A suggestion of intimacy between Sandy and
Bull registered, and Ryan white-knuckled his mug of beer. But as
much as he wanted to turn his back on the scene, he couldn't.

Bull shook off her hand and growled, "What
are you doin', Sandy, associating with this?"

Sandy's laughter was a little too loud, her
voice artificially bright. "Don't know what you're talking about,
Bull. He's just a customer." Though he'd obviously had more than
enough to drink, she lifted the tray with the mug of beer in his
direction. "How about one on the house?"

The big man wavered, slowly releasing the
fist at his side, finally snatching the mug and taking a long pull.
Malevolent eyes glared at Ryan over the mug as he wiped his mouth
with the back of his hand.

"Next time you see me, you won't have a
woman to hide behind," Bull snarled.

"The next time you see me, try walking in
the other direction," Ryan responded. "I'm not looking for trouble,
Bull."

"Then you shouldn't have come back." Bull
turned his back and swaggered off.

Ryan let his old adversary have the small
victory, and concentrated instead on suppressing the adrenaline
pulsing through his system. So much for thoughts of a mutually
pleasant seduction. Ryan knew his eyes had hardened but he glanced
at Sandy anyway, laying a hand on her forearm. "You seeing
him?"

Sandy frowned, obviously
not caring for the proprietary sound of the question. She jerked
her arm from Ryan's touch and shifted her body slightly away from
him. "First of all, I don't
see
married men," she replied in a voice gone cold.
"Second, if I
was
seeing him, I wouldn't have spent the evening thinking about
what it would be like to
see
you!"

With a toss of her head, she turned her
back. Ryan winced. How many ways could he screw up tonight? "Wait.
Please." Ryan felt the words being torn from him by a force he
didn't recognize. He only knew he wanted no burnt bridges between
him and the siren with the chicory-colored eyes.

Sandy turned around. The chill in her eyes
was nothing compared to the icy fingers working their way along his
nerves.

He drew a steadying breath and blew it out
slowly. "I'm sorry. I took my mood out on you. Look, the man's
dangerous. What's between us is . . . volatile." Ryan grimaced.
"You should stay out of it."

He picked up his beer with an unsteady hand,
unwilling to admit that watching her defuse the situation with
kindness had sparked a slow-burning fuse of his own with pure
jealousy at the core.

****

Slowly and deliberately,
Sandy set the empty tray on the bar, turned to face Ryan, then
stepped close enough to make her point without shouting over the
band. "Obviously, the two of you have some kind of history. But I
don't share that history. Bull and I have an understanding about
how he'll behave in here. I don't care if you two go find a dark
alley and pound the crap out of each other, but let me make one
thing clear." She jammed her right index finger into his chest. "It
isn't going to happen in my place.
Ever
." Stabbing her finger harder to
emphasize the last word, she used the motion to push herself
away.

Just as carefully, Ryan
set his mug of beer on the bar and folded his arms across his
chest. "First, there aren't any alleys, dark or otherwise, in
Orson's Folly. Second, what do you mean
your
place? What happened to Tom
Valentine?"

What was the matter with
her? She never put herself on display like this. Never. Yet as she
watched his green eyes flash with surprise, she realized she wanted
those green eyes on her again. Wanted the heat he felt to be for
her.
Only
for
her. Sandy stuffed her hands into her back pockets, knowing full
well the move would thrust her ladies front and center. His eyes
instantly left her mouth and settled on her chest. Her lips curled
into a lopsided smile. Much better.

"It's been
my place
since I bought
it from Tom going on six years ago," she said. "I put everything I
had into this venture and then some. So trust me, wherever you take
your argument with Bull, it had better be far,
far
away from here."

Ryan stared. His mouth opened, closed again.
Finally he managed one sentence. "You told me the boss was a ball
buster."

Although she was standing so close that,
even in four-inch heels, she had to tilt her head back to meet his
eyes, Sandy refused to take a step back. Instead, she leaned
closer. "I am," she whispered with soft seduction in his ear. "You
can trust me on that, too."

As she walked away, her hip brushed him in
passing. He shifted quickly out of her way but not before she got a
good feel. Since she doubted he was packing a gun . . . there, she
was fairly certain his attention was back where she wanted it. On
her.

****

Hours after the last patron had headed home
and the light in front of the bar had been turned off, Sandy
stretched out on her bed in the one-room efficiency apartment above
Valentine's but sleep remained elusive. Still feeling the residual
heat from her encounter with Ryan McGee, she wore only light
pajamas and hadn't bothered to pull down the covers on the bed.

So the returning bad boy was Sean McGee's
brother. She hadn’t seen that one coming. And Mel was definitely
going to hear about her omission of that little detail.

She considered Sean's older brother. Not one
mention in her earshot in the six years she'd made Orson's Folly
her home. What did it take for a town to obliterate someone's
existence from the circle of gossip? It must have been something
drastic for the hard feelings to be so enduring even after such a
long absence. She frowned. Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to
play up to him during her act. She already had a hard time fitting
in, even after six years of living in Orson's Folly. It might be
better to remain neutral in the apparent ongoing dispute between
Ryan McGee and Bull MacKay.

But there was something about Ryan that
intrigued her, something that compelled her to want to spend more
time with him. Emotions and physical sensations she hadn’t
experienced in years were demanding permission to come alive
again.