Challenging the Center (Santa Fe Bobcats) Read online

  “There’s an interesting smile.”

  Kat started and looked toward the voice. A few feet away a young woman sat with her hip propped on a stainless steel cooler behind the bar, wiping out a beer mug before reaching above her head to rest it on a hook.

  “Me?” Kat looked around, but she was one of only a few people in the establishment.

  “Yeah. You’re here early. Most people don’t get here until late. I figure the reason you’re here is the same reason for that smile.”

  Kat took in the other woman, who was probably close to her age. The bartender’s long black hair was pulled into two pigtails, which should have looked juvenile, but she’d done something with it to make the parts poof out and it almost looked… edgy instead. Combined with the tight polo shirt that exposed a few inches of pale stomach, short denim shorts and painfully high heels, she was everything Kat wished she could have been. Confident, no excuses, full stop.

  “I, uh…” Kat checked her phone. “It’s, like, eight. Isn’t this when people go out for drinks? Why is it so dead in here?”

  The bartender laughed, a throaty sound that fit her look, and wandered over to lean against the bar a few inches to Kat’s left. Now that she was closer, Kat could see her eyes were a gorgeous, vivid blue and were heavily accentuated with eyeliner and mascara, which should have been too much when combined with her cherry-red lips but looked just about perfect. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

  “That obvious, huh?” Kat smiled and shrugged one shoulder. “I asked the driver to take me somewhere for local color. I got dropped off here. How much does your manager pay for that service?”

  The other woman laughed again. “Nothing. You’re early, that’s all. Give it another two hours, and this place will be standing room only.”

  Kat glanced around once more, taking in the two gentlemen she’d guess were in their seventies playing a game of checkers at a table close to the door. They were the only other patrons. “Uh, yeah. Okay.”

  The bartender laughed again and held out a hand. Her fingernails were painted midnight black. “I’m Sissy.”

  “Sissy?” Kat asked dubiously, then mentally smacked herself. Rude. “That’s… a cool name.”

  Sissy raised a brow to call her on the bullshit. “Childhood nickname, can’t seem to shake it. We all use nicknames around here, so I kept that one. Real name’s Stacy, though I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention that to any other customers. We usually try to keep a bit of a barrier there.”

  “Sure.” This was definitely a little odd but whatever. She had nowhere else to be. “I’m Kat. Also a nickname, but that’s obvious.”

  “Unless your parents had a feline fetish, that’s a pretty easy bet.” Sissy grinned and propped her elbows on the bar. “What do you do for a living, Kat?”

  “Normally, I’m a tennis player. Currently on a break,” she added, tilting the nearly empty bottle of beer. “Just taking in the sights somewhere else.”

  “Tennis. Like, professional? Wimbledon and the US Open and all that?” Sissy’s eyes went wide. “The one where you play in the tiny skirts, right? Tell me I’m right.”

  “You’d be right.” The tiny skirt didn’t bother Kat anymore, but she preferred playing in shorts when she could get away with it.

  Sissy’s smile grew more calculating. “I have to admit, I don’t follow the sport, so I don’t know you. I hope that’s not going to offend you any.”

  “Not a bit.” If not being recognized would piss her off, Kat would never have a happy day. “You a native to the area?” Sissy nodded. “What should I see while I’m here?”

  “Tell you what,” she began, then paused when another woman dressed similarly to Sissy walked out from the back through the double swinging doors. This woman, however, was a tanned blonde with a super-high ponytail that made Kat think of a cheerleader on top of the pyramid. “Hey, Diane.”

  “Hey, Siss.” She picked up a carton of something and walked back through the doors.

  “Diane? So much for nicknames.”

  “That is her nickname. You know, ’cause she’s the all-American sweetheart. The John Mellencamp song?” When Kat shook her head in confusion, Sissy sang, “Little ditty, ’bout Jack and Diane…”

  “Oh!” Kat snickered. “I follow you. So her real name isn’t Diane.”

  “Now you’ve got it. Hey.” She stood up straight. “Do you ever work when you’re not, you know, wearing a tiny skirt and swinging a racket, whacking some balls?”

  “If you’re asking if I have a second job besides playing, then not right now, though I have before.” And probably would have to again if things didn’t change.

  “So you’ve got nothing going on. Come back and help us stack boxes.”

  “Why?” Kat asked warily.

  “Because I won’t charge you for the beer,” Sissy said. “And because it’ll waste time while we wait for it to actually get busy.”

  Kat considered her options—going to the back and stacking boxes with two potential new friends, or heading to the sterile apartment with a babysitter living next door.

  “Just how heavy are the boxes?”

  Chapter 3

  After three hours of prodding the front desk and messaging every Uber driver on duty, Michael finally managed to figure out where Kat had gone. And God, was he furious.

  He walked through the doors of Sin’s Inn, took a deep breath, then surged forward through the crowd. And by “surged,” it was more like a slow waddle. People were everywhere, standing in groups and clumps here and there, creating a maze of ever-changing pathways to walk through. Each time he thought he saw an opening, it changed on him.

  It was like taking on the Patriots’ defense, only you couldn’t hit anyone.

  Never fun.

  He kept his eyes peeled for Kat or anyone who looked remotely like Kat, but couldn’t see her on the dance floor… or what he knew they called a dance floor. It was just an open area that people had started using for dancing when the place first opened. That was the beauty—or the horror—of Sin’s Inn. There were almost no rules, minus those that would get the place shut down.

  He hadn’t been here in years. Naturally, Kat would find this place on her first freaking night in town.

  He caught sight of someone that might have been Kat from behind, sitting on the bar, and fought his way over toward them. Finally. A break. Kat perched on the lip of the wooden bar, her feet firmly on the barstool below where her ass should have been.

  No… her ass should have been home. In her apartment. Alone.

  “Kat,” he growled, reaching out to grab her hand as she gestured midsentence. Her eyes widened, and then she smiled at him.

  That smile punched him through the gut. It wasn’t the impersonal smile you gave a stranger, or the loopy, slightly off-centered smile you’d hand out when you were drunk. It was genuine and real. She was happy. And damn beautiful with it.

  “Hey, Manny,” she said, tugging on his hand as it held firm to hers. “Come meet my friends. This is Davis, and this here is Stanley. They were giving me the scoop on the Santa Fe scene.”

  Michael gave each guy, who was practically salivating at Kat’s feet, a brief nod. “Nice to meet you. Kat, we need to—”

  “Oh! And here.” She leaned back almost as if doing a back bend—God, she was flexible—and tapped a woman on the shoulder, who was a few feet away behind the bar. Her wingspan was incredible. “Sissy, come over and meet my manny.”

  My manny. Though he knew she didn’t mean it that way, it sounded almost like an endearment. Far from it, in reality.

  “Hey, Manny.” The woman he presumed was called Sissy—though everyone knew the servers used nicknames at Sin’s Inn—shot him a smile as she uncapped two long necks and slid them down the bar toward other waiting patrons.

  “It’s Michael,” he corrected before thinking.

  “I call him Manny,” Kat started, but one of the two guys she’d introduced to him before broke in.

>   “Hey, aren’t you Michael Lambert?”

  Aw, hell. “Uh, yeah. That’s me. Kat, seriously, we should go.”

  “As in Bobcats Michael Lambert? The guy who snaps the ball into Trey Owens’s waiting hands? Dude, Davis.” The other, who was clearly Stanley, elbowed his friend. “We’re hanging with a Bobcat.”

  Dude. Really? He shot Kat a glare that said I blame you for all this.

  Her return smile sweetly replied, That’s fine.

  “A Bobcat, huh?” Sissy walked up and put a hand on Kat’s shoulder as if they were best friends for two decades. “So we’ve got an NFL guy and a pro tennis player. It’s practically Sports Center up in here.”

  “Pro tennis?” Stanley asked, giving Kat his attention again.

  Davis just stared at her legs. The asshole.

  “How come we’ve never heard of you?”

  “I’m an up-and-comer,” she replied with a sunny smile. “But you’ll know me eventually. Kat Kelly.”

  “Why does that name sound familiar?” Stanley muttered.

  “What are you doing in Santa Fe?” Davis asked.

  “Taking in the sights,” Kat simply said, shrugging as if that explained why she was sitting on top of the bar at the Sin’s Inn in Santa Fe. “Out having some fun while I can.”

  “You’ve had your fun,” Michael started, but the music cut out and everyone became quiet.

  “Okay, ladies and gents, another hour has passed. You know what that means!”

  Michael whirled around, trying to find the source of the voice. But as it was coming over the PA system, it could have been from anywhere. And by the way people jumped up and down, waving their hands and cheering loudly, he knew whatever was coming wasn’t something he wanted to stay for.

  “Kat,” he tried, but his voice didn’t carry far. “Let’s go!”

  But she was looking at Sissy, the bartender, and grinning like a fool.

  That grin was going to lose him an IOU.

  Kat set her beer down and did a half backbend toward Sissy. “What’s this hour’s deal?”

  “It’s ten, so…” Sissy glanced at a sheet behind the bar. “Looks like it’s going to be a lip-sync battle.”

  “Fun!” Kat rubbed her hands together. She was completely tone deaf—but lip syncing? She could totally get behind that. “Where at?”

  Sissy just grinned and shook her head, then made a shoo gesture with her hands. “You’re gonna want to get down off the bar, fair warning.”

  “Okay, but—whoa!” Another bartender—neither Sissy nor Diane—jumped up on the bar holding a microphone. She wore tiny short-shorts, a tank top that had the bar’s emblem screen printed on the back, and had her clearly bottle-enhanced, fire-engine red hair curled and pinned up into a makeshift fauxhawk. Fierce.

  Before she got stomped on, Kat started to slide down onto the barstool she’d propped her feet on. When the stool began to tip, her mind went into overdrive.

  Keep hands away from the beer, look for a good place to land, don’t brace your hands for impact, try to land on your side, use your ass if you can.

  But her split-second calculations proved pointless as Manny Michael’s hands reached out to grab her waist and steady her descent onto the stool, which he made sturdier with one foot on the rung. Intense hazel eyes stared down at her with a clear message.

  You’re a pain in my ass.

  Back at ya, she thought as she twisted out of his grasp.

  “You’re welcome,” he muttered in her ear from behind. She just reached for her beer with one arm and punched back hard with the elbow of her other, connecting with his stomach. The satisfying sound of air leaving his mouth was enough for her.

  “Okay, crazy ladies and gents,” the redhead began, talking into the microphone. “It’s a one-on-one battle tonight with the winner taking the prize of a month of free drinks here at Sin’s Inn. Blind draw on the song, so don’t think you can bring up any old rehearsed moves. None of that garbage in my bar.”

  Her bar? Was she the owner? She looked so young, early thirties at the max was Kat’s guess.

  “So who’s the first victim… I mean, volunteer?” she asked with a siren’s smile and a swivel of hips. Hands thrust in the air all over. Kat jostled to the left, then right, as people rushed toward the bar with their hands extended. She felt someone press their chest close to her back, muscular arms guarding her on either side as their hands grabbed the bar’s edge around her, essentially caging her in.

  She started to panic, then realized it was Michael, and felt her entire body relax a little.

  “This,” Michael said sourly behind her, nearly shouting to be heard, “is why I said we needed to go.”

  “Lighten up, Manny.” She set her beer back down so it wouldn’t fall out of her hands as she was nudged a little by his forearm. A forearm that looked pretty appetizing if that were possible. Could forearms be sexy? She took in the tanned skin, dusted with dark hair and, as his hand flexed on the bar, currently corded with tendons.

  Yeah. Okay, she was convinced. Forearms could be sexy. Too bad this one was attached to a wet blanket babysitter.

  “Our first contestant is… oh, my. Choices.” The woman on the bar cocked a hip to the left and tapped her lips with one finger in mock thought. “Let’s go with… you, stud. There we go. Yes, you. Blue button-down, blond curls, yeah you, cutie.” She made the come here finger crook, and the seas parted as a guy who looked like he’d just come from a business meeting and had loosened his tie as he’d walked in the door crawled up onto the bar. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  “Mark,” he said into the microphone, pumping his fist a little for his buddies who crowed and cheered.

  “Let’s get out of here before it gets worse,” Michael said, his breath fanning her ear. She shivered at the feel. “It only gets wilder from here.”

  “You go,” she shouted over her shoulder as the woman handed the blond the microphone and stepped off the bar via a set of stairs another bartender pushed up. Clever. “I’m staying.”

  “Jesus, Kat, come on. This is not what Sawyer had in mind.”

  “Sawyer knows I’m an adult, and since he’s not my mother, I don’t really care,” she shot back just as the first few bars of a pop song came on. Mark, the contestant, looked around a little wildly as if trying to place the music before the lyrics came around, hoping for a hint somewhere.

  Then it hit her, the song playing. It must have occurred to Mark at the same time, because his eyes grew wide and he hung his head a little as the entire bar broke out into raucous applause at the choice.

  Britney Spears’s “Hit Me Baby One More Time.”

  But with a little coaxing from his buddies, and some catcalls from the bartenders, Mark started getting into it. Verse one, he was pretty timid. Verse two, he added a few moves with his feet. But by the time the final chorus was playing, he was dancing all over the bar, shaking his ass like he was wearing one of those plaid miniskirted schoolgirl outfits.

  Kat threw her head back and laughed at the sight, which put her snugly in the crook of Michael’s arm and neck, but she didn’t give a damn. The whole thing was hilarious, and Mark was a fantastic sport about it. When Mark ended the lip-sync song by jumping up, non-mic-holding hand thrust in the air, head back, Kat clapped as hard as she could, yelling encouragement.

  That was definitely not something she’d be anxious to compete against. With a grin, she sipped her beer and looked behind her to her agent-appointed guardian. “Come on, that was fun, admit it.”

  “No,” he said sternly.

  “You’re the worst,” she sang, poking him in the ribs a little for emphasis. “Smile already, or your face will freeze like that. You’ll spend the rest of your life scaring little old ladies and small children.”

  His lips twitched as if fighting back a smile, but he just shook his head in denial. “I’d rather just head home.”

  “Well, feel free. The door’s that way.” She waved her hand toward the left,
then sighed when he nodded in the opposite direction. “Or that way. Regardless, I can get home the same way I got here.”

  Mark was already off the bar and the redhead back on as Kat waved the empty glass of her beer toward Sissy. The raven-haired beauty came up and grabbed the glass but didn’t step back to watch the show as the rest of the bartenders did.

  “That was quite an act to follow,” the redhead said, cooing and playing the audience brilliantly. “So let’s see who can top that. Hmm.” Scanning the crowd, she looked for her next contestant.

  “Right here!” Sissy yelled out, grabbing Kat’s hand and thrusting it in the air, jumping and waving to catch the leader’s attention. “I’ve got her right here, Red!”

  “Perfect!” Clapping, the woman aptly nicknamed Red motioned for Kat to join her on the bar.

  “What?” Kat pulled her hand away and glared at Sissy. “What the hell?”

  “Go up there!” the bartender motioned, her red lips framing a stunning smile. “Go on, you know you’ll have fun.”

  “I can’t… can’t do that!” Kat stammered. So much for all that bravado. She’d danced on court, she’d dived into pools… but she wouldn’t lip sync in front of a bar of strangers? What was wrong with her?

  Maybe Manny’s aversion to fun was already getting to her.

  “Just go have a good time. That’s what you’re here for, right?” Sissy pulled at her arm a little as if she were going to drag her across the bar. “Give it a try. If you hate it, just stop and hop down. Nobody’s going to make you stay up there.”

  “Kat,” came Michael’s warning growl.

  And it was that growl—almost like a dare—that pushed her into clambering up onto the bar and holding out her hand for the mic.

  Fuck me sideways, what is this chick doing?