Allison Leigh - Just Friends?

He set the bottom of the cue stick on the floor. The tip of it stood higher than Leandra’s head. “I don’t think either one of us question my ability.” He took Leandra’s hand and wrapped it around the shaft of the stick, keeping it in place with his own hand around hers. “Do we?”

There was a knot in her throat, making it difficult to breathe. His hand felt hot against hers.

“Well?” He prompted when she failed to answer.

She shook herself, snatching the stick and her hand away from him. Ignoring the faint smile that touched his wicked, wicked mouth, she turned to the pool table only to find that at least a dozen people had joined Sarah in watching them.

She felt her face flush even hotter.

Her parents. Her cousins. Ted. They were all there. Even the players at the other pool tables had gone silent.

Great.

“One hundred dollars,” she said brusquely. “You sure you’re good for it, Taggart?”

He cocked an eyebrow.

Making a face, she pointed the cue at the table. “Rack them up, then. Striped balls, any pocket.”

While Evan gathered all of the balls in the rack, Sarah scooted next to Leandra. “You were supposed to be distracting him, remember?”

“Yeah, a fine idea you had,” she muttered. “I’m going to make an ass out of myself, right here in front of everyone. Even Ted and his little camcorder, there.”

Sarah glanced over at the cameraman. “I didn’t even realize that thing he’s been playing with all evening was a camera.”

After more than a year of working together, Leandra wasn’t the least interested in Ted and his penchant for electronics. Instead, she kept her focus on Evan’s work at the table. He removed the rack with a goading smile, and waved his hand over the table, as if inviting her to humiliate herself.

“Just take your time,” Sarah advised under her breath. “Remember everything we’ve ever been taught about pool.”

The first thing Leandra had been taught was not to place a bet that she wasn’t absolutely certain of winning.

She centered the cue ball over the headspot, settled her left hand on the felt, making a bridge for the stick and sliding it slowly back and forth, experimentally, as she focused on the leading ball of the rack.

“Gonna take all night there, sport?”

She drew back and let fly.

The racked balls exploded. Two balls, one solid, one striped, plowed into the corner pockets.

A couple of hoots followed from the peanut gallery.

Leandra closed them out.

It was not so easy to close out Evan, though, as she moved around the table, studying the position of the remaining striped balls. He leisurely moved out of her way when she pointedly stopped next to him.

“Sure you want to try that shot?” His voice was solicitous. “You’re gonna have to cut the eleven ball to get the right angle.”

Shut up, she thought. She leaned over, lining up the shot. He was right, though. She’d have to hit the cue ball into the striped ball exactly to one side of center in order to gain the forty-five-degree angle she needed for the ball to head toward the corner pocket. Narrowing her eyes, she drew in a breath, and made her stroke.

The balls clacked together and old eleven rolled right into the pocket. More slowly than she’d intended, but at least it dropped.

“That’s my girl,” she heard her father say.

“Five more to go,” Evan murmured as she slipped by him yet again.

As a distracter, he was much more effective than she’d been. “I should have let Ted tape you snoring all night long.”

“Who says I snore?”

She leaned over and sank two balls, slam bam. “Jake. You were college roommates.” She straightened for only a moment before leaning over again. “Hope you don’t need that hundred too badly, sport.”

He’d moved around the table, opposite her. “Did you know that I can see right down your shirt?”

She barely kept the tip of her stick from hitting the felt. Her skin prickled and she fought the urge to straighten. To press her hand against the scooped neckline of her T-shirt and hold it flat against her meager chest, just in case he was not merely spouting tripe.

Whether or not he could see down her shirt, she still felt her nipples tighten, and prayed that he wouldn’t notice.

Three striped balls to go, she reminded herself, and she would get out of the bar, go home and not have to see Evan again until Sunday evening.

She set her jaw, kept her grip on the stick loose and stroked.

Only when the green-striped ball toppled into the pocket did she let out her breath.

“Looking a little stressed there,” Evan murmured. “Sure you don’t need a break?”

She rounded the table, knocked into his shin with the butt of her stick and smiled sweetly. “So sorry.”

He merely lifted his beer bottle and sipped.

She envied him a bit. Her mouth felt parched. And when she leaned over for the next shot, she couldn’t help but glance down to see how, exactly, her T-shirt behaved.

It was as snug against her torso as ever and when she looked up, the glint of laughter in Evan’s expression was unmistakable.

He’d caught her looking.

She slammed the sixth ball into a corner pocket. Only one striped ball remained. But it had a nightmare position, nearly blocked by two solids and frozen against the side cushion.

She could hear the murmur from the peanut gallery and didn’t dare look their way. Knowing the family as she did, she was afraid they might well be placing side bets.

“Feeling the pressure?” Evan leaned down on his forearms beside her, acting for all the world as if they were bosom buddies. “Not even sure I could make that shot, truth be told.”

For as long as Leandra could remember, there had always been a haze of smoke clinging to the interior of Colbys. Now was no different.

Yet despite the smoke, she could still smell the fresh, clean scent that she was beginning to identify with Evan and only Evan.

“I can make the shot,” she assured, lying right through her teeth.

He shrugged. “Maybe. Or you could just fess up about Ed-wa-ahrd, and we’ll call it even.”

She narrowed her eyes, ostensibly studying the table. “A person might think that your curiosity where Eduard is concerned has nothing to do with Jake, and everything to do with you.”

“Maybe it does.”

She bit down on her tongue, not at all expecting that admission. She’d just been tossing out the accusation to goad him.

“You going to give up, Leandra?” Ted’s voice drew her attention. He had moved closer to the pool table from the high-top where she’d last seen him, and was holding up his palm-size video recorder.

Evan was still watching her.

And she had an unbidden vision of him lowering his head toward hers, brushing his lips across hers.

Feeling thoroughly unsettled, she shook her head in answer to Ted, but just as much to shake the image of Evan kissing her from her head, and lined up the shot.

The stripe missed the pocket by a good six inches. Smiling wryly, she turned to face the gallery, shrugging. “Them’s the breaks,” she said lightly as she extended the cue stick toward Evan.

What was she doing, thinking about Evan kissing her? The only time he’d ever kissed her had been on the cheek at their high school graduation.

She pulled her cash out of her pocket again and counted out another fifty, picked up the cash that was still sitting on the rail, and folded it all together. “There you go, Doc. Add that to your lunch fund.”

Evan eyed the woman and the cash she was holding out. He didn’t want Leandra’s damn money. He wanted to know who the hell the French guy was and what he’d meant—or still meant—to Leandra. Loyalty to Jake was only an excuse.