Free A Love Least Expected by C. W. Nightly Page A

chocolate and gold I corrected myself, before shaking my head. Was I actually checking out my best friend?
    “Bathroom break guys.” I stood from my stool and the floor shifted on me. Shit, I knew I had already had too much. I stepped back from the bar and I could feel Cade’s stare boring into my back. I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other when this wall of a man stepped in my path.
    “Hey, sweetheart you want to dance?”
    I didn’t bother looking up at him, and just muttered the standard rejection. “No thanks… maybe another time.” I went to move around him when his hand closed on my elbow. Panic began to rush to the surface as I pulled against his iron grip and not gaining an inch.
    “What’s the rush baby, we’re just talking.”
    “I think she said no thank you buddy.”
    Cade’s deep voice boomed from behind me and the grip on my elbow disappeared. The heat of another body brushing against me from behind and the solidness of familiar hands on my shoulders eased the tension from me.
    “I don’t want any trouble. It’s just a misunderstanding.” The new guy stammered.
    “Then I suggest you get moving,” Cade replied with no hint of understanding.
    The guy turned and disappeared into the throng of surrounding bodies. The hands on my shoulders urged me forward in the direction of the bathrooms. I apparently had earned myself an escort.
    There was no denying that I enjoyed his hands on me. His strong fingers held me at the base of my neck where the shirt, I had chosen for tonight, fell away leaving bare skin. His thumb made small, endorphin inducing circles, just beneath my hair at the back of my neck sending electric impulses shooting through me. This wasn’t right. Not Cade, there is no way I am going to risk messing up things with Cade.
    His impressive body shifted and my muddled brain sensed him leaning in even closer. We were almost to the bathrooms. He turned me down the darkened hallway that promised the privacy I desperately needed. I needed to splash some water on my face and try to get a grip on the freight train of desire that was coursing through me.
    “Can I speak to you a minute Payton?”
    The voice I would recognize anywhere sounded unsure, out of character for our group’s rock. I nodded to him over my shoulder as we waited for the wall of bodies blocking the entrance to the washrooms to thin out. The hand on my shoulder exerted gentle pressure as he turned me to face him and backed me to the side of the hallway.
    “I don’t know how to begin Pay, this is hard for me to say but I can’t wait anymore. I can’t sit on the sidelines and watch you make mistake after mistake, with guys that are all wrong for you. I have feelings for you, always have, and I can’t ignore them anymore. I know you’ve been drinking tonight and although I would rather you were stone sober I am taking what I can get. I want my chance Pay. Maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow, but I want my chance okay.”
    All, I could do, was nod. He had just knocked me for the biggest loop of my life. The man, we had included in every form of girly conversation over the years, had been crushing on me. Crushing on me and now needed a chance.
    All of a sudden the ideas circling in my head earlier didn’t seem so weird. I mean if we both wanted it right who would say no? I let my eyes run over Cade without the friend filter I always tried to use. Over six feet tall, he attracted more than his fair share of female attention, most of which he ignored. His years playing on the football team as quarter back had given him broad shoulders and defined athletic physic. Dark blond hair worn short in the back but turned a stylish shaggy in the front spoke to his choice of profession. My gaze settled on his eyes, they glinted with something different, something new and urgent causing my body to heat all over.
    Cade Johnson was the epitome of the boy next door persona. The one that you crush on in first grade and