Wonderful.

With zero food in my stomach, the two nips of gin from earlier are making me dizzy and slightly fuzzy. The huge martini in front of me that I’m already halfway through isn’t exactly helping in that department.

But that was the entire point of coming here - numbness, solitude, escape. I just want to disappear - to get lost in my own booze-soaked escape, which is why a dim hotel bar on an empty Wednesday night seemed like a great idea, until this idiot plunked down next to me.

My eyes search again for help, but the bartender is still occupied with the same guys at the end. The larger, broad-shouldered guy with the dark hair and his back to me, and the smaller guy with glasses.

“Look,” I snap, turning back to the guy leaning against the bar next to me, the last of the social niceties my mother would approve of dropping like a curtain.

“I’m not looking for conversation, okay? Please leave me alone.”

“Aww, c’mon gorgeous, why don’t you let me buy you a-”

“I said no, alright?” My voice raises a notch.

“Oh like you weren’t looking for a free drink wearing that hot little number,” he says with a smirk, his eyes dropping languidly to the front of my dress, making me sorely regret my decision to even come here.

I should’ve worn sweatpants.

Hell, I should have had room service bring me martinis to my room all night until I couldn’t operate the phone anymore.

“Look, I don’t think you’re hearing what I’m saying-”

“Oh I heard what you said, honey.” His arm suddenly slides across the bar in front of me as he gets right in my face, making me shrink into my barstool. “But I think you should give me a shot.”

I cringe, swallowing the lump in my throat and my body going tense as his other hand slides across my bare shoulder. And I’m trying to find my voice, when suddenly his hand is wrenched away from me.

“Is there a problem here?”

The Texas-twanged voice behind me is deep and honeyed, like leather and polished wood. I quickly turn at the sound of it, and as my eyes travel up the broad chest to the mouth those words came out of, I feel my pulse skip a beat.

Holy crap.

Those very perfect, very gorgeous lips above a squared and chiseled jaw covered in a faint stubble. The man is gorgeous, in a ruggedly boyish way. His hazel eyes pierce right into me as the faintest hint of a smile - something just this side of arrogant - teases those perfect lips.

He’s wearing dark jeans and a white t-shirt, pulled tight across his thick chest and broad shoulders, and even if part of me - the part that channels my mother - wants to raise a brow at how casually he’s dressed for a place like this, I bite my tongue. He’s effortlessly handsome - an easy sort of cool like a young Brando or Paul Newman.

My eyes drop to the inked lines of tattoos swirling down his powerful looking arms. The sleeve-tattoo crowd of LA tend to be scrawny hipster types, while the buff, arrogant types are usually all clean cut.

And here he is not conforming to either one.

“I-”

“Hey pal,” the scummy guy butts forward, boldly shoving a finger at the much bigger guy’s chest. “Move the fuck along.”

Texas’s eyes pull from mine momentarily, and his face darkens as he narrows them at the smaller man. “I asked if there was a problem here.”

The smaller guy snorts. “Not ’til you got here and tried to run your lame game on-”

“On my wife?”

The guy stops, and I jerk my eyes back to the Texan.

What?