It's in His Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page B

miss with going back to playing a year ago, but then things had gone to all sorts of hell, reinforcing her stage fright and giving her a wicked case of claustrophobia to boot.
    Play me, Becca
. . .
    Fine. Since fighting the urge was like trying not to need air, she sat. Her heart sped up, but she was still breathing. So far so good. She set her fingertips on the cool keys.
    Still good.
    And almost before she realized it, she’d begun playing a little piece she’d written for Jase years ago. It flowed out of her with shocking ease, and when she finished, she blinked like she was waking from a trance. Then she looked around.
    Jax was smiling at her from behind the bar and when he caught her eye, he gave her a thumbs-up. Oh, God. Breaking out in a sweat, she jumped up and raced into the bathroom to stare at herself in the mirror. Flushed. Shaky. She thought about throwing up, but then someone came in to use the facilities and she decided she couldn’t throw up with an audience. So she splashed cold water on her hot face, told herself she was totally fine, and then got back to work to prove it.
    Luckily, the dinner crowd hit and she got too busy to think. She worked the friendliness as best she could. But she quickly discovered it wasn’t a substitute for talent. In the first hour, she spilled a pitcher of beer down herself, mixed up two orders—and in doing so nearly poisoned someone when she gave the cashew-allergic customer a cashew chicken salad—and then undercharged a large group by thirty bucks.
    Jax stepped in to help her, but by then she was frazzled beyond repair. “Listen,” he said very kindly, considering, “maybe you should stick with playing. You’re amazing on the piano. Can you sing?”
    “No,” she said, and grimaced. “Well, yes.” But she
couldn’t
stick with playing, because she couldn’t play in front of an audience without having heart failure. “I really can do this waitressing thing,” she said.
    Jax shook his head but kept his voice very gentle. “You’re not cut out for this job, Becca. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”
    She was beginning to think she wasn’t cut out for her life, but she met his gaze evenly, her own determined. “I bet you, remember? By the end of the night, you’ll see. Please? One more try?”
    He looked at her for a long moment and then sighed. “Okay, then. One more try.”
    A group of three guys walked in the door and took a table. Fortifying her courage, Becca gathered menus and strode over there with a ready-made smile, which congealed when she saw who it was.
    Sexy Grumpy Surfer and his two cohorts.
    Bolstering herself, she set the menus on the table. “Welcome, gentlemen.”
    SGS was sprawled back in his chair, long legs stretched out in front of him crossed at the ankles, his sun-streaked hair unruly as ever, looking like sin personified as he took her in. She did her best to smile, ignoring the butterflies suddenly fluttering low in her belly. “What can I get you to start?”
    “Pitcher of beer. And you’re new,” one of them said, the one with the sweetest smile and the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. He had short brown hair he’d forgotten to comb, some scruff on a square jaw, and was wearing cargo pants and a polo shirt with a small screwdriver sticking out of the breast pocket. “I’m Cole,” he told her, “and this big lug here . . .” He gestured to the dark-haired, dark-eyed, darkly dangerously good-looking guy next to him. “Tanner.” Then he jerked his chin toward SGS. “You apparently already know this one.”
    “Yes,” Becca said. “SGS.”
    They all just looked at her.
    “Sexy Grumpy Surfer,” she clarified.
    Cole and Tanner burst out laughing.
    SGS just gave her a long, steady, paybacks-are-a-bitch smile.
    “Or Grandpa,” Cole offered. “That’s what we call him because he always seems to know the weirdest shit.”
    “And Grandma works, too,” Tanner said. “When he’s being a chick. No offense.”
    Sam