Free The Protector (Lone Wolf, Book 1) by Bridget Essex Page A

perfect—you’re great musicians and shouldn’t be so hard on yourselves.”
    “There you go again!   Liar, liar,” said Tracy, wagging her finger
in Layne’s face, her speech a little slurred.   “Everyone knows it’s impossible to hear individ…indi…each musician in an
orchestra separately ,” she sniffed and shook her head, slurring her
words a little more than she had a few minutes ago.   But then, she was knocking back the drinks pretty
fast.   “You’re just trying to be all
flirty, I know it,” she breathed in what she probably assumed was a sexy
manner but what only ended up making her look a little asthmatic.
    I coughed into my drink, but she
didn’t get the hint that, perhaps, she was being a little unsubtle.
    “Now see, that’s where you’re
wrong,” said Layne, her head to the side a little as she leaned forward,
placing her elbows on the table and crossing her arms on the tabletop, her muscles
rippling beneath her skin from where she’d rolled up the leather of her
jacket.   Her eyes flashed as she
murmured softly, the words rumbling in her throat:   “I have impeccable hearing, and I can tell you:   you two are good at what you do.”
    “Hah,” said Tracy, her nose
wrinkling like it does when she meets a challenge head on.   “ No one has that good of
hearing.   If you think it’s that impeccable, prove it!” she said, waving her hand that happened to be holding a beer in
it—some of the beer sloshed up and out of the neck, spattering onto the floor,
but not much.   “Tell me what someone in
this bar is saying, something you couldn’t possibly hear.   That guy.”  
    Layne glanced past Tracy’s shoulder
to the man she’d indicated with her sloshing drink.   He was about ten feet away, murmuring something into a smaller
man’s ear.   None of us could see his
mouth, because the smaller man’s head obscured it.   They were both wearing tight-fitting t-shirts and skinny jeans,
both had ultra-gelled hair, the color of which was hard to see in the dimly lit
bar.   The taller man had his hand on the
shorter man’s waist.
    I only glanced at the men for a
moment, though, because I had to turn back to look at Layne.   It was how she was tilting her head, her
eyes unfocused but flashing in the dark interior of the bar.   Her handsome face took on an intense look of
concentration, her full lips open just a little.   I stared at them, taking a deep breath and another sip of my
martini as warmth began to grow in my belly.
    After a heartbeat, Layne’s grin
returned, her eyes focused, and she tapped the tabletop with a short
fingernail.   “He’s telling his boyfriend
that they’ve had enough to drink, and they should head out to Doctor V’s,
because it has a better atmosphere for dancing.”
    Tracy snorted, shaking her
head.   “C’mon, you can’t fool us.   ‘Fess up:   you so just made that up.”
    But then, as we watched, the taller man hooked his
arm tighter around the shorter man’s waist, tossed a few bills on the bar top
for a tip, and ushered his boyfriend past us and right out the door.
    “That was just a lucky guess,”
sniffed Tracy, though her widened eyes told me she wasn’t quite sure about
that.   I glanced at Layne, my eyebrows
raised, and she shrugged a little, sitting smoothly back in her chair, one lazy
arm looped over the back of it, and her leather jacket open enough, and her red
t-shirt tight enough, that I followed the path of her chest, and…
    Oh, God, she’d caught me staring.
    The blood rushed to my cheeks, and
I ducked my head a little, taking a gulp of air.
    “What about you, Elizabeth?” Layne
murmured then.   She didn’t move—if at
all possible, she lounged even more comfortably in her chair, but there was
something about her face, about her single raised eyebrow and flashing eyes
that made me shift in my chair, made me lean toward her across the table, as if
she was magnetically tugging me in her direction.