Page 73 of Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver 1)

Andy tapped her glass against his bottle. She kept her gaze away from his hands. She took a drink before she remembered not to.

Mike said, “You cleaned up nice.”

Andy felt a blush work its way up her neck.

“Seriously,” Mike said. “What are you doing in Muscle Shoals?”

She sipped some vodka to give herself time to think. “I thought this was Florence?”

“Same difference.” His smile was crooked. There were flecks of umber in his brown eyes. Was he flirting with her? He couldn’t be flirting with her. He was too good-looking and Andy had always looked too much like somebody’s kid sister.

He said, “You gonna tell me why you’re here or do I have to guess?”

Andy could have cried with relief. “Guess.”

He squinted at her like she was a crystal ball. “People either come here for the book warehouse or the music, but you got a rock-n-roll thing going with your hair, so I’m gonna say music.”

She liked the hair compliment, though she was completely clueless about his guess. “Music is right.”

“You gotta book appointments to tour the studios.” He kept looking at her mouth in a very obvious way. Or maybe it wasn’t obvious. Maybe she was imagining the sparkle in his beautiful eyes, because in her long history of being Andy, no man had ever openly flirted with her like this.

Mike said, “Nobody really plays on weeknights, but there’s a bar over near the river—”

“Tuscumbia,” the bartender volunteered.

“Right, anyway, a lot of musicians, they’ll go out to the clubs and work on new material. You can check online to see who’s gonna be where.” He took his phone out of his back pocket. She watched him dial in the code, which was all 3s. He said, “My mom’s got this story. Back when she was a kid, she saw George Michael working a live set trying out that song, ‘Careless Whisper.’ You know it?”

Andy shook her head. He was just being nice. He wasn’t flirting. She was the only woman here, and he was the best-looking guy, so it followed that he’d be the one talking with her.

But should she be talking back? He had been at the hospital. Now he was here. That couldn’t be right. Andy should go. But she didn’t want to go.

Every time the pendulum of doubt swung her away, he managed to charm it back in his direction.

“Here we go.” Mike put his phone on the bar so she could see the screen. He’d pulled up a website that listed a bunch of names she had never heard of alongside clubs she would never go to.

To be polite, Andy pretended to read the list. Then she wondered if he was waiting for her to suggest they go to a club together, then she wondered how embarrassing it would be if she asked Mike to go and he said no, then she was finishing her drink in one gulp and motioning for another.

Mike asked, “So, where’re you heading to from here?”

Andy almost told him, but she still had a bit of sanity underneath the all-consuming flattery of his attention. “What happened to your head?” She hadn’t noticed before, but he had those weird clear strips holding together a not insignificant cut on his temple.

“Weedeater kicked a rock in my face. Does it look bad?”

Nothing could make him look bad. “How did you know he was my father?”

The crooked grin was back. “The weedeater?”

“The guy with us. Driving the car. At the hospital yester—The day before, or whenever.” Andy had lost track. “You told my dad you were sorry his family was going through this. How did you know he was my father?”

Mike rubbed his jaw again. “I’m kind of nosey.” He spoke with a mixture of embarrassment and pride. “I blame my three older sisters. They were always keeping things from me, so I just kind of got nosey as a way of self-preservation.”

“I haven’t drunk so much that I didn’t notice that you didn’t answer the question.” Andy never articulated her thoughts this way, which should have been a warning, but she was sick of feeling terrified all of the time. “How did you know he was my dad?”

“Your cell phone,” he admitted. “I saw you pull up the text messages and it said DAD at the top, and you texted ‘hurry.’” He pointed to his eyes. “They just go where they want to go.” As if to prove the point, he looked down at her mouth again.

Andy used her last bit of common sense to turn back toward the bar. She rolled her glass between her hands. She had to stop being stupid with this man. Mike was flirting with her when nobody ever flirted with her. He had been at the hospital and now he was hundreds of miles away in a town whose name Andy had never even heard of before she saw it on the exit sign. Setting aside her criminal enterprises, it was just damn creepy that he was here. Not just here, but smiling at her, looking at her mouth, making her feel sexy, buying her drinks.

But Mike lived here. The bartender knew him. And his explanations made sense, especially about Gordon. She remembered Mike hovering at her elbow in front of the hospital while she wrote the text. She remembered the glare that sent him to the bench on the opposite side of the doors.