Her Last Temptation

“Dog,” she muttered, laughing even as she shook her head in admiration of how well he’d played her.

“Cat,” he replied.

“Yes. Cat Sheehan.”

He nodded. “I know.”

Interesting. He knew who she was. Which left her at a disadvantage. “And you are…?”

He paused, a frown pulling at his brow so briefly she almost missed it. Then he admitted, “Call me Spence.”

She’d rather call him guy-destined-to-be-naked-in-her-bed-by-midnight.

Not happening, she reminded herself. This is supposed to be the new you.

The new her might be trying to call the shots in the brain. But the old Cat—the hungry one whose entire body was sparking in reaction to this stranger named Spence—had control of everything from the neck down. Especially the, uh, softest parts.

Still, even the old, reckless Cat had never done the one-night stand thing. Despite what her sister might imagine, Cat wasn’t that danger-loving. With a man like this one, however, she was beginning to understand the illicit allure of a bar hookup.

“Hi, Spence. Welcome to Temptation,” she finally said.

“I like that.”

“What?”

“Temptation.”

Ooooh…definitely her kinda guy.

“I also liked the sign over your front door.”

She instantly knew which one he meant—the hand-painted sign inviting those outside to Enter Into Temptation. She’d thought up the logo three years ago when she and Laine had taken over the bar from their mother, changing the name from Sheehan’s Pub to Temptation. “Thanks. Seemed appropriate.”

“I just didn’t realize it was going to be quite so prophetic,” he added, his tone husky.

She got his meaning instantly. He was every bit as tempted as she was. A long, shuddery breath escaped her lips. Unable to do much more than breathe and stand still, she stared at him. Right into those fathomless eyes.

He stared right back, just as intently, neither of them laughing or flirting any longer. They said nothing, yet exchanged a wealth of information. In twenty seconds they covered the basics—yes, they were both interested, and, yes, they were both aware of each other’s interest. But it went deeper…they each knew that they could play games or do away with them right now. Because the palpable attraction made something happening between them inevitable.

They all but named the time and place.

Then his lips—God, those lips—parted, and he drew in a long, slow breath of air. His lids lowered slightly, half closing over his eyes, drawing her attention to his long, spiky black lashes. Visceral pleasure accompanied his inhalation, and she realized what he was doing.

Smelling her perfume. Inhaling it. Savoring it. Gaining sensual pleasure from the aroma of her skin.

Dangerous. Oh, he was dangerous. Because he was so damned appealing. A man who appreciated a woman’s scent would appreciate so many other delightful things, wouldn’t he? Tastes, touches, sensations.

Her pulse raced as the thick, heady silence dragged on, in spite of the cacophony all around them. At some point, she noted Julie pushing away and getting off her stool, until Cat and Spence were the only two people in this small corner of the bar.

Surrounded by others, but completely alone.

Cat hesitated as a sensation of déjà vu washed over her. How many times had she stood in this room, filled with chattering people—customers, family, friends—and felt that exact sensation of being alone, separated? It felt as if the world was moving all around her but she was frozen for one moment in time, looking at her life and wondering if she really was traveling the same path as everyone else. Because she so rarely felt in step with anyone.

Only now, in this timeless instant when she wondered just where she belonged and where she was going, she wasn’t completely by herself. This dark-haired stranger was right there with her.

“Cat?” he asked, obviously sensing her confusion.

She blinked rapidly and shook her head, shaking off not only the strange sensation, but also the intensity of the moment. Forcing herself to focus, she shifted her gaze away, toward a customer who’d just taken a seat at the far end of the bar. She stepped over to him, trying to convince herself she had to get back to work when, in truth, she needed a chance to regain her sanity.

“The usual?” she said to the guy in the brown sport coat, a Friday night regular who liked his women easy and his martinis dirty.

He nodded. “If you can…spare the time,” he said with a truly amused grin, probably having heard the quiver in her voice.

Behind her, she heard a long, low chuckle. As throaty and sensuous as every word Spence had spoken.

She deserved the reaction. She’d looked away first, losing their silent game of chicken, shocking even herself. Cat didn’t remember the last time that had happened to her.

Being disconcerted around a man was something she had seldom experienced. Cat Sheehan had been able to hold her own with men since the tenth grade when she’d started busing tables at the family bar. She’d sassed the old-timers, ducked away from grabby strangers and eventually chosen her first lover from among the Saturday night regulars.

Never before had a man taken the upper hand from her—unless she’d wanted him to. This guy with his jet-black hair and his badass grin and his big, hard guitar had done it with a stare.

Which was why, after she’d served Mr. Sport Coat his martini, she was having such a hard time thinking of a single thing to say to the still-staring musician. How could she even try to explain away that silence as something other than what they both knew damn well it had been?

An invitation. A challenge. A promise. None of which she had any business accepting.

But oh, how tempting it was to consider it.

Good Lord, no wonder she was having a hard time coming up with any kind of response—much less a sassy comeback. Cat felt completely at a loss for words. Continuing the flirtation would be reinforcing her implied acceptance of every wicked thing he’d suggested with his eyes.

Ending it might just kill her.

He finally spared her by steering the conversation into neutral territory. “I do have the right place, don’t I? You’re expecting the Four G’s?”

The Four G’s…she instantly remembered the band from Tremont—the next town over—which she’d hired for this weekend’s live entertainment. Of course he’s with the band, idiot. Isn’t he carrying a guitar case? She cleared her throat and nodded. “Uh, yes, definitely the right place. I’m…we’re…glad to have you here.”

Oh, yeah, she’d be glad to have him all right. Upstairs in her apartment. On the swing in the back garden.

Hell, on top of the bar might be nice.

Cat thrust the mental picture out of her head, promising herself she’d lay off the romance novels. And the occasional late-night blue movies on cable. And the erotic fantasies during her middle-of-the-night bubble baths. Because she had obviously become a sex-starved maniac.

She did have to give herself a little bit of a break. After all, it’d been a year since she’d had even bad sex. As for good sex? Whew, she wasn’t sure she could remember when that had last happened. Which had to explain why she wanted this guy like a woman on the South Beach Diet wanted a baked potato. With fries on the side.

“Thanks. We were glad to get the call.” Spence smiled, a cocky half smile that said he knew what she’d been doing—trying to act nonchalant and not quite succeeding. “Though it looks like a small audience.”

“What, are you kidding?” she asked, glancing around the room, where at least twenty people sat at the usually empty tables. “This is a crowd for us, lately. As close to wall-to-wall as we’ve seen since they tore up the nearest intersection, banned on-street parking, and set up a horrendous detour.”

Obviously hearing her disgust, he said, “You sound like you definitely need some entertainment this weekend.”

Oh, he had no idea how much she needed entertainment. Or maybe he did. His tiny grin told her they were flirting again. This time—maybe because he’d let her regain her equilibrium with small talk about the bar—Cat felt more able to handle it. “I’m a little particular in how I get my…entertainment.”

“Oh? Anything you’d care to share?”

Licking her lips, she did a classic blond hair toss—which she’d learned around the age of three—and reached for a martini shaker. She splashed a generous amount of vodka into it, dirtied it up with a splash of olive juice, then poured it for the guy at the end of the bar, knowing by the look in his eye that he was ready for another.

“I don’t think so,” she said when she returned her attention to Spence.

He shook his head. “Too bad. So I guess I’ll just have to do my stuff for everyone else in the room.”

“I somehow suspect the women in this place are going to like seeing you do your stuff,” she replied, her tone dry.

“I somehow suspect I won’t care what any other woman thinks.”

Cat nibbled her bottom lip, seeing an expression that somehow resembled tenderness cross his face. As if he were no longer flirting, but being entirely serious. Which was ridiculous, considering they’d known each other all of a half hour.

She shook off the feeling. “They’ll be a good audience, since you’re here at their request. I asked the loyal regulars who’ve been sticking it out through the road construction to vote on what they wanted for the last few weekends we’re open. Two of the three are strictly country and western, but this weekend Temptation is all about rock and roll, and you guys came highly recommended.”

“Lucky me.” Straightening, he lifted his guitar case off the floor and looked toward the door, where another guitar-carrying musician was entering. “Guess I’d better go.”

He was going to be across the room, but for some silly reason she almost missed him. Maybe it was because she knew in a few minutes he would be the property of every on-the-make woman in the place. “Want me to send over a drink to keep your pipes wet?”

He nodded. “Just water, if you don’t mind.”

He started to walk away, then paused and looked back. Nodding toward something on the wall behind her, he lowered his voice and said, “By the way…not me. And hopefully not you.”

She was still puzzling over the remark after he’d reached the stage. Then, finally, she realized what he’d been talking about. Swiveling on her heel, she looked up at the sign above the bar. It had been hand-painted by the same artist who’d done the one out front, as well as the murals in the back hallway.

Though Spence’s answer had brought up a number of complications, the sign posed a simple question.

Who can resist Temptation?

DYLAN SPENCER HAD FALLEN madly in love twice in his life.

The first time had been at age seven when he’d been introduced to his ultimate destiny: the greatest form of music ever created. He’d been visiting his grandparents’ house in New England for the holidays and one of his older cousins had gotten a Van Halen album for Christmas. It had been love at first riff.

The year had been 1985 and the record had been 1984 and Dylan had decided then and there that bass player Michael Anthony had been touched by God.

Dylan had been completely enthralled. His parents—who never listened to anything that didn’t feature fat Italian opera singers—had not been. Particularly when they’d caught Dylan entertaining all the neighborhood kids with a rousing, nearly R-rated rendition of “Hot For Teacher.”

Thinking they could steer his love for music, and encourage his rather amazing natural musical abilities, they’d signed him up for piano lessons.

He’d been kicked out when he’d broken into Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” during an end-of-the-year recital.

By ten he was air guitaring his way through life. By twelve, after five years of relentless begging, he had his own real bass guitar and it had been practically glued to his hands ever since.

Yeah. Rock and roll had been his first experience with instant obsession.

Cat Sheehan had been his second.

Throughout the evening, while he stayed perfectly in sync with his bandmates, putting his all into the music, he kept at least part of his attention on her. The woman who’d taken his breath away from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her.

Cat wasn’t hard to keep track of—she definitely stood out. From here, behind the glare of the small spotlights, her long golden hair looked almost silver. Occasionally, she’d smooth it back off her cheek with one graceful lift of her finger, so that it framed her perfect face.

He wasn’t close enough to focus on the deep, ocean-green of her eyes. But he definitely watched the graceful movements of her slim body, clad in tight-as-sin jeans and a sleeveless white tank top. Also tight. Also sinful.

Working the bar as if she’d been born behind it, Cat didn’t even have to look at the labels of the bottles from which she poured. Her hand never faltered as she made any drink ordered. She moved with a dancer’s grace, able to pull a draft of beer off the tap, circle around and set it down in front of a customer in one long, fluid movement a ballerina would envy.

Chatting easily with everyone, she smiled often—that dazzling smile taking his breath away from all the way across the room. At one point, he even thought he heard her throaty laugh over all the other noise in the place. The sound was distinct because of the reaction it caused in him—instant awareness. Instant hunger. Instant heat.

She affected him like the music affected him.

Deeply. Intimately. Physically.

But it wasn’t just that. He liked hearing the laugh and seeing the smile because they countered the weariness in her brow and the slight slump of her shoulders, which he’d noticed as soon as they’d started talking earlier. He didn’t know what was troubling Cat. But he planned to find out.

“This place is wild,” Josh Garrity yelled from the other side of the small stage. The crowd was roaring its approval at the end of their second set. If the walls weren’t still shaking from the Aerosmith song they’d just finished, they were from the applause. “You think they’ll let us take a real break this time, Spence?”

Dylan nodded as he carefully put his beloved Fender back into its case and turned off his Voodoo amp. Josh played guitar and sang lead most of the time; Dylan was on bass, doing some of the vocalizations, as well. But it seemed as if all the songs the crowd had been yelling for were Dylan’s and his throat was now almost raw. “If they don’t, neither one of us is going to have any voice left at all.”

Nodding, Josh waved at the audience, which had swelled in size over the past few hours until every table was taken. “Stay, drink, be patient. We’ll be back in twenty,” he shouted into the microphone, trying to be heard over the applause and whistles.

The audience cheered a bit more, but since the band members were already putting their instruments down, they gradually quieted. The typical mad race for the restrooms and fresh rounds quickly got underway. As did the pickup conversations going on between the hopeful single guys and their prospects.

“The place isn’t the only thing that’s wild,” their drummer Jeremy said as he lowered his drumsticks and rose from his stool. “The brunette in the jean miniskirt who was sitting at the table closest to the stage wasn’t wearing any underwear.” He shook his head. “It was like she wanted me to see…everything.”

Seeing the shock on Jeremy’s face, Dylan hid a jaded grin. Jeremy, Josh’s younger brother, was their newest member, a baby-faced nineteen-year-old. Jeremy hadn’t yet realized that rock-and-roll groupies didn’t always limit their adulation to the famous groups who were household names. Sometimes local bands—like theirs—had their own fan bases. The familiar faces in tonight’s crowd certainly bore that out.

That was one of the drawbacks to the business, as far as Dylan was concerned. He played for his own pleasure, his own release. He had never been interested in the fans or the lifestyle or any of the garbage that went along with it. He just liked to head-bang on occasion. Which was probably why he’d never gone any further with his music than to small places like this, in small Texas towns.

“So, you gonna go over and talk to her or just keep staring at her like some lovesick mutt?”

Dylan jerked his attention toward Billy Banks, the final member of their four-man group, who wailed like a madman on the keyboard. Banks was grinning that sardonic grin of his, brown eyes sparkling behind the wire-framed glasses he wore to give himself the appearance of an intellectual rock and roller. He liked to think of himself as the Lennon of their group.

The women seemed to like it, too. Between Banks’s brainy persona and deep-rooted mischievous streak, Jeremy’s fresh-faced innocence, Josh’s breezy surfer style and Dylan’s own long-haired rebel thing, they had a regular stream of females ready to keep them company whenever they desired it.

Dylan hadn’t desired it. Not in a long time.

But Banks sure had, which wasn’t surprising. Ever since they’d met at freshman orientation in college, where they’d been the two youngest people in the room, Billy Banks had proved himself to be two things: woman-crazy and the best, most loyal friend Dylan had ever had.

“Well? You going over? You’ve been eyeing her all night.”

“You’re seeing things,” Dylan mumbled, choosing to pretend he didn’t know what the guy was talking about.

“Oh, come on, man, I thought you were gonna short out the sound system because the mike was getting so wet with your drool every time you looked at that blond bartender.”

“Bite me.”

Banks smirked. “You oughtta save that line for her.”

Shooting Banks—who was as close to him as a brother—a look that threatened bodily injury, Dylan walked to the rear of the stage to amp everything down.

Banks soon crouched beside him to help. “She is totally hot,” he said, sounding contrite. Definitely out of character for Banks, who never regretted anything he did.

Dylan hesitated for one second, wondering how much to reveal. Finally, between clenched teeth, he admitted the truth. “She’s Cat Sheehan.”

Banks jerked so hard he almost fell on his ass. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped. When Dylan confirmed the truth of his words with a nod, Banks emitted a long, low whistle. “The Cat woman herself, huh?”

Dylan nodded again, knowing he didn’t have to say anything more. Banks knew all about Cat. He was probably the only one who knew the entire truth about Dylan’s relationship with the blonde.

The one-sided relationship that had been going on for several years now.

“Did you know she’d be here?”

He shook his head. “I recognized the building when I pulled up outside. Her family used to own the place. But the name’s changed. I figured she was long gone.”

Banks nodded. “Did she know who you were?”

No. She hadn’t. Which still slightly burned him. But he didn’t want Banks to know that. So he shrugged in disinterest. “We’ve barely spoken.”

Banks merely smirked, the sorry son of a bitch, knowing Dylan much too well to be fooled by that. Then he looked over Dylan’s shoulder, toward the other side of the bar, nodding as he sought out Cat. “So you finally have your shot,” he murmured. “Your dream girl has been looking at you all night like she needs a sugar fix and you’re a giant Tootsie Roll.”

Banks’s words brought some intense images to mind and he had to busy his hands winding cable to keep them from shaking. “You’re imagining things,” he said. “She’s barely paid attention to us at all.”

Banks let out a bark of laughter that caused several people standing nearby to glance over in curiosity. “Man, you are losing it if you didn’t see the way that girl kept her eyes glued to you. Except every time you looked in her direction—then she turned away right quick.”

Okay, it was possible. He and Cat had shared a sexy, flirtatious conversation before the rest of the band had shown up. There had been some definite spark, a genuine intensity between them.

A lazy smile widened his lips at the memory. He had never fallen into such instant sync with anyone before. And he’d certainly never been so completely affected by a woman before—at least, not in his adult life. Even now, nearly two hours later, he could still smell the warm, sultry aroma of her perfume and hear her throaty laugh.

“She’s yours for the taking,” Banks added. “You can finally have what you always wanted.”

Dylan was shaking his head even before Banks finished his ridiculous statement. His friend was wrong. Very, very wrong.

Cat might be interested now. Judging by the heat-filled moments they’d shared earlier, he’d say she probably was.

Didn’t matter. Because the minute she found out his true identity, the spark would fade, the intensity would disappear and his chances along with it. He knew it. Knew it like he knew his own guitar.

She was interested in Spence, the bass-playing rock and roller with a strut and a sneer and a cocky-as-hell attitude. Which was pretty funny, come to think of it, in a you-poor-sorry-sucker way. Because the man she was attracted to didn’t exist. He was a phantom. A facade. A fictional character.

In truth, Dylan Spencer was a complete and utter fraud.

2

IF TEMPTATION HAD HAD more nights like this, they might have had enough money to hire a better attorney for their fight to stay open. Cat couldn’t get over the people who’d squeezed in over the past couple of hours, all of them thirsty. And hungry, judging by the way Zeke, their cook, was whipping out everything on their limited menu just as fast as he could.

The Four G’s, music seemed to have had some kind of Pied Piper effect on the residents of Kendall, many of whom were former patrons who hadn’t wanted to deal with the hassles of road construction in recent months. Temptation hadn’t been this crowded since the spring, when an erroneous rumor had circulated that they were hosting a wet T-shirt contest.

If it would have saved the bar, Cat would have given it some serious consideration.

“I think I’m going to have to kill Tess when and if she ever comes back.”

Cat quickly swung two beers, a Sex on the Beach, and a mojito onto a serving tray and gave Dinah, their part-time waitress, a commiserating smile. “I don’t think any of us ever expected to have nights like these during the last few weeks we’re open. I’m sure Tess and Laine would both have stuck around if they’d thought we were going to actually be having crowds, rather than our usual quartets.”

Cat firmly believed that. She was still a bit upset with Laine for taking off on some daring, photographic wildfire adventure in California. Secretly, however, she had to concede she was glad Laine was there to help their Aunt Jen, whose house was being threatened by the fires engulfing the state. Besides, Laine had been talking for a long time about how much she wanted one of her photos on the cover of the magazine she worked for, Century. This might actually be her shot. So while she was peeved at her, Cat couldn’t be too upset.

As for Tess, their other waitress…well, with her, you never knew what to expect. Like the way she’d stumbled into the job at Temptation a few years back. She’d started waitressing to work off a bar tab she couldn’t pay and had never left.

Unpredictable. That described Tess. So her deciding to take off last Tuesday night to help distribute some old guy’s money was entirely understandable. Unlike Laine, at least Tess had asked Cat first if she minded, and had even offered her some of her newfound riches.

Cat hadn’t accepted the money—it was too late for that. But she had minded her friend leaving. Not so much because she needed Tess’s help—or Laine’s, for that matter—but because she’d had this whole sappy image of the four of them crying in each other’s arms during the last few weeks the bar was open.