Page 82 of Just a Heartbeat Away

His eyes were right on hers, not bouncing around the way Evan’s always had. It was disconcerting almost, to have a man be so sure of himself. It wasn’t that he was confident in how she would react, exactly. It was more like he was holding his hand out to her and waiting patiently to see if she would take it.

“All right,” she answered, and to her dismay, heard a small tremor in her voice. Via watched him stride away toward the bar. He said something that made Christian the bartender laugh. And then she watched Seb forcibly jam cash into Christian’s hand. He came back, a beer in each hand, shaking his head.

“What was that all about?” she asked him, accepting the beer he was handing down.

“Son of a bitch does not want anyone but him buying you beers.” Seb glowered over at the bar, and Via watched as Christian shot a cocky smile in their direction, shrugging his shoulders.

“I was afraid of that,” Via muttered.

“Afraid? I thought the Golden Oldie over there was the man of your dreams.”

Via laughed, rolling her eyes. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

He shrugged, grinning into his beer.

“I never said thatthatguy—” she nodded her head dismissively in the direction of the bar. Was she really doing this? She was doing this. Fuck it, she was just going to say it “—was the man of my dreams. I just said that I’m attracted to older men.”

Seb shifted in his seat, his stance widening just a bit. He didn’t exactly lean toward her, but he might as well have. His eyes fell to the bottom half of her face, and it was strangely as if somebody had hit Mute on the music. There was a rising buzz in her ears that seemed to correspond with the tingle in her fingertips.

She waited, but he said nothing. Had she struck him speechless?

A whippy, charged feeling suddenly zipped through Via. Nothing about their circumstances had changed in the last ten seconds. But suddenly, Via didn’t feel significantly younger. She didn’t feel younger at all. Suddenly, she felt like there was a chance that she might, sort of, be in charge.

To test it, Via let her eyes drop to the condensation on the outside of her beer. She drew a little squiggle through the fog. She lifted her finger to the rim of the glass and touched every inch of it. When she looked up, Seb’s eyes shot to hers on a delayed reaction. He’d been watching her hand.

Keeping her eyes on his, she cocked her head to one side. She let that same hand inch forward and carefully, carefully, touch the cuff of his navy shirt, rolled to his elbow. “Is this a new shirt, Seb?”

He looked a little dazed, his eyes a little fuzzy, as he shifted his hips against the seat. Via swore she could see his heartbeat in his neck. “Ah, yeah, actually.”

He scraped a hand over the back of his neck and around to his stubble.

“When you mentioned my other shirt last week, it got me thinking that I hadn’t bought any clothes for myself in a long time. Maybe a couple years.”

Since his wife?

“It’s easy to just roll out of bed and slap on my dad uniform. And I guess I just wanted to...look a little nicer.”

For me?

“Well, you do look very nice. I like it. But I also like your dad uniform. It’s very lumberjack.”

He snorted, set his beer aside and wiped his chin with a napkin as he laughed. “Christ. That is not the look I’ve been going for.”

She laughed, too. “That’s my problem, too. I go for a certain look, and everyone thinks it’s something else completely.”

“What look do you go for with all this?” he asked, leaning away from her and squinting at her outfit, like he was trying to get the whole picture.

“I pretty much desperately try to wear anything that will make me look thirty.” They both laughed, but as soon as she’d said it, Via knew she’d said the wrong thing. Reminding him that she was still in her twenties right now was so stupid. They’d just stepped into this new, hot little rhythm. They’d been flirting. She was positive. And now his face was sobering, and he was thoughtfully looking into the golden effervescence of his beer with a look so sad she just wanted to nuzzle his neck like a puppy. Great. Just great.

Seb jolted a little and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He’d gotten a text.

“Sorry,” he muttered distractedly. She couldn’t help but notice he’d tipped the screen away from her a little. Was he texting someone he didn’t want her to know about? Another woman maybe?

Of course, he probably was, Via tersely reminded herself. She needed to stop acting like a lovesick kitten. This was a single, virile, incredibly attractive man who dated people. It was common knowledge. Dating often included texting. There was nothing wrong with him texting some other woman right now.

Seb chuckled and handed the phone over to her.

Oh. He was showing her whatever had been texted to him. It was a picture of Matty and Crabby leaping toward one another in the air. They were obviously in the middle of some sort of wrestlepalooza. They were on a dark green mat of some kind.

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