I always told myself that Poppy had been my one and only but I wasn’t going to lie she wasn’t my first girl for most of what Asa said. Sure she had most definitely been the first girl to break my heart and she had done so spectacularly. The first girl I had sex with was Joanne Morse when I was fifteen. The first girl I had slow-danced with had been Megan Drake during homecoming the year I scored three touchdowns in one quarter. She was also the girl that had gone down on me for the first time. Once I figured out I could pine for Poppy but still get laid as long as I smiled at a girl and told her she was pretty, I had pretty much run through the entire available and age-appropriate female population of Loveless by the time I graduated high school. The first girl to take home to mama was never going to happen since my mama was in the ground and the girl that had given me my first kiss was the reason I was acting like a drunken idiot tonight. He was right: there had always been another girl after the first and I had never had a last girl yet.

“You guys suck. I just wanted to get drunk and get laid.” They both chuckled at me and I let my glassy eyes land on Dixie as she sauntered up to my side and put a hand on my shoulder.

“I am totally willing to help you out with the last part, Rowdy.”

I liked Dixie. I liked her as a person and liked everything she was working with that made her a pretty girl. She never asked for more than I wanted to give and we always had a good time when we got na**d together. She was a sweetheart, but right now, looking at her and the sexy anticipation in her eyes, I knew there wasn’t any way I was going to be able to go through with taking her home. My mind was on someone else and I didn’t want Dixie to be reduced to a drunken hookup because I was acting like the world’s biggest coward by avoiding the woman I really wanted to be with.

I covered her tiny hand with my own and pushed away from the bar with a lurch. “Not tonight, sugar. These two sorta ruined my mojo.”

There was no way I could drive, so that meant my SUV was staying in the parking lot and I was taking a cab to my apartment.

“Sorry.”

She just shook her head at me and smiled. “I always knew someday someone was going to catch your eye and you were never going to look at any other girl again. It’s the way all of you guys seem to be. As much as it sucks, I have to say it also gives me hope that a guy will look at me that way one day.”

She was turning my rejection into an act of chivalry. Man, she really was a doll.

Asa called me a cab. Zeb helped pour me into the backseat and the poor driver watched me in the rearview mirror all the way to my complex like he was afraid I was going to hurl all over everything I gave him a fat tip to make up for causing him to worry and stumbled into my lonely apartment.

I was really drunk. My head was spinning from booze and memories, so I did what I always did when I was that keyed up. I got out a sketch pad and some charcoal and I drew. I was pretty sure none of it would look like anything legible in the morning when I sobered up, but for the moment it made me settle, focus, and some of the things that were chasing me finally quieted down enough that I could shut my eyes and slump over in a blacked-out heap.

I JERKED AWAKE WITH a start the next day and sent the sketch pad falling to the floor as I scrambled to find my phone from wherever it had landed last night in my train wreck. It was on the kitchen counter next to a bowl of cereal I had poured but obviously never ate, and the Marked number was glaring at me as the Cramps’ heavy and psychedelic guitars rattled my fuzzy head.

“Yeah?” My voiced sounded like I had smoked ten cartons of cigarettes all by myself last night.

“Rowdy?” Salem’s voice was concerned and I flinched involuntarily.

“Yeah. What’s up?”

I added milk to the waiting cereal and took a bite.

“Do you know that it’s after noon? Your first appointment has been waiting for thirty minutes.”

“Fuck me.” I tossed the cereal bowl into the sink and rubbed a hand all over my face. “No, I had no idea. Can you reschedule it and give them a discount for the inconvenience. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” I needed to wash the Jäger out of my system and go back to the bar to get my car. It was going to take more than a few minutes but she didn’t need to know that.

“Are you okay?” Again with her concern and my dick twitching in my pants at the sound of her voice.

“I got tanked last night and blacked out on the couch. I’m fine, just a little annoyed at myself.”

“Okay. I’ll handle the client.”

Her tone had switched from worried to slightly disappointed and I felt it deep in my gut. Whatever was going on between the two of us, whatever she was doing to my head, I still needed to keep things professional between us at work. I owed that to the guys, to my clients, and even to Salem.

“Thank you. I’ll contact him as well and apologize, and I’ll have some designs for you to look at Sunday if you want to meet up.”

She made a weird noise and I heard her move the phone to the side to talk to someone in the shop.

“Fine. You can bring them by my place or just e-mail them to me when you have them ready. I need to spend Sunday and Monday at home this week.”

I wanted to ask her why, and immediately thought she wouldn’t be spending those days alone, and then wanted to kick myself because it wasn’t any of my concern. I agreed and she told me she would text me the address.

I hung up and let my head fall forward on my neck. I was a goddamn mess and I needed to get my act together. It didn’t help my state of mind when my gaze landed on the abandoned sketch pad from the night before that the image staring up me was the one I had spent all night trying to run from and trying to drink away.

It was all there . . . her dark eyes, her endless waves of ebony hair, her perfectly sculpted mouth complete with the winking jewel above her lip, her knowing grin. Plus, the knowledge of every secret I had was there in that hastily drawn image. Even in a drunken haze so bad I could barely remember getting home, she was at the forefront of my mind and I couldn’t get around having to deal with her and the hurt she had left behind.

I picked the pad up and tossed it on the couch in disgust. This was getting out of control and I really had to do something about it.

I took a shower hot enough to scald and rushed to get out the front door in under twenty minutes. My next appointment was at one thirty and I didn’t want to disappoint anyone else today. I hated that feeling.

Work was a nightmare. I was usually the one giving everyone else a hard time, usually the guy ready with a quick retort. But there was no denying that I looked like hammered dog shit and was acting like a bear with a thorn in its paw, so Rule and Nash were ruthless about it all day long. I took the ribbing good-naturedly and made it through the rest of my clients with no incident. I was hoping Salem would still be there when I arrived, but she had left to go to the LoDo shop not long after calling me, which left me feeling unfulfilled and unsatisfied on top of being more hung over than I could ever remember being.