Garrett led me down an empty corridor ending in a set of double doors that opened to the alley behind the club. He didn’t release my arm until the metal doors clanged closed behind us, shutting out the pounding beat of the music inside. Even though he’d released me, he still invaded my space, giving me no option to escape.

“What are we doing out here?” I asked, shivering against the cold breeze. “It’s freezing.”

“That’s ’cause you’re practically naked,” he grunted.

Tipping my head back far enough to scowl up at him, I crossed my arms over me in an effort to stave off the chill. “Am not,” I argued insolently. “Did you see those other women in there? I might as well be wearing a burka, for Christ’s sake!”

Garrett crossed his arms over his chest and glared down at me like I’d done something to piss him off. “I don’t give a shit about those other women. They aren’t the mother of my child.”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” I snapped past chattering teeth. “Can we please go back in? I’m freezing my tits off out here,” I asked, past caring that I sounded like a whiny teenager. I might have been feeling the effects of those three shots, but it wasn’t enough to protect me against potential frostbite.

“Jesus Christ,” he sighed with a roll of his eyes as he shrugged off his worn leather jacket. It wasn’t the type of worn that made it look beaten up; it looked stylishly distressed and vintage. It was a cool-as-hell jacket, and as he reached around me to slide it on my shoulders, I decided I wanted to keep it forever. It was toasty warm from Garrett’s body heat and smelled absolutely amazing.

“There. That better?” he asked with gruff sarcasm. The exasperation on his face would have made me laugh if I wasn’t a teensy bit drunk and my legs weren’t at risk of turning into blocks of ice.

I hugged the jacket closer to me, hoping it was obvious I was sniffing the cologne that lingered before asking, “What are you doing here? Are you following me?”

He scoffed, as if the idea was beneath him, which, seeing as he was a world-famous rock star, it probably was. “What am I doing here? The better question is what are you doing here, Gwen? Our record label closed down this whole place to throw a private party to celebrate the end of our tour. How did you even get through the door?”

My shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I don’t know. That big guy at the door with a swollen neck said we’d do and let us in.”

“He said you’d do?”

If I had all my faculties, I probably would have noticed the frostiness in Garrett’s voice, but… drunk brain.

“Yeah. He did this….” I ogled him, doing my best impression of the bouncer, and adopted a weird, deep voice. “‘You’ll do. Go on in.’ Then he opened the door.”

“I’ll kill him,” he growled.

I pulled my nose out of his jacket and stopped sniffing. “Huh? What? Why? Because he let me into your stupid little party?”

“You don’t belong here.”

Indignation cut through the haze of alcohol. “Why? Because I’m not slutty enough? Because having the mother of your daughter in the same club makes hooking up with random skanks awkward for you? So sorry to kill your buzz, jerk-off, but I have just as much a right to be here as any—”

Garrett’s hand clapped over my mouth. “Fuck me, you’re even more annoying when you’re drunk.”

“I’m not annoying!” I shouted, but since his hand was blocking the words, it came out more like “mime mot mammowing.”

“If you’d tone down the crazy for two seconds and give me a chance to talk, I’d explain that wasn’t what I meant. You don’t belong here because you’re better than all those bitches inside.”

When all I did was stare—mainly because what he’d just said rendered me speechless—he finally removed his hand from my mouth. But instead of dropping it back to his side, his fingers grazed along my jaw before his palm cupped the side of my neck.

The unexpected touch caused my heart rate to spike, and the way his eyes darkened fried what few functioning brain cells I had left.

“How drunk are you right now?” he asked, his voice gravelly as he took a step closer.

“Uh….” What the hell was happening? I felt like I’d just entered the twilight zone. Everything felt backward. Down was up, left was right, and my hatred for Garrett Wilder suddenly took the back burner to my body’s nagging desire for him.

“Gwen,” he called, pulling me back into reality.

“Huh?”

“I asked how drunk you are right now.”

Everything was wrong. The way he was looking at me shouldn’t have caused goose bumps to break out across my skin. His touch shouldn’t make the flesh on my neck burn. This was bad, bad, bad.

“I don’t think—”

The door to the alley swung open, breaking through the foggy, disconcerting moment Garrett and I were having.

I jumped away right before I heard Corrine’s voice. “Thank God. There you are.”

I should have been thankful for the interruption, but for some insane reason all I felt was loss.

“Sorry, sir,” Ian said, trailing closely behind her. “She’s scarily good at giving the slip.”

“Hey! Hi! Hey! There you are,” I rambled in a high-pitched voice.

Corrie’s suspicious, squinty-eyed gaze bounced between Garrett and me. “What’s going on out here? What’s happening? What did I interrupt?”

“Whoa.” The laugh that bubbled up my throat sounded like a demented hyena. I held my hands up in surrender. “Calm down, crazy. Nothing’s happening. Just two people shooting the breeze.” God, tequila and I did not mix well.

“Really? Then why are you being weird?”

More hyena laughter. “I’m not being weird! You’re being weird!”

Garrett came to stand next to me and whispered, “Tone it down,” before turning his attention back to Corrie. “I just needed to talk to her about Liddy.”

The skepticism on her face finally began to clear. “All right. Well, are you done, ’cause I’m ready to get out of here. Some drunk guy just asked how much I’d charge to let him lick my neck. I’m officially over this scene.”

“Yes!” I shouted with a little too much enthusiasm. I was feeling a bunch of things that I had no business feeling; the safest thing I could do was get far, far away from him before I did something I’d regret come morning… again. “We should go. It’s getting late.”

The niggling sense of disappointment that twisted my belly into knots as I allowed Corrine to lead me away grew heavier when I chanced a peek at Garrett over my shoulder.

And the most disconcerting thing about the entire exchange was that I felt like I was running away from something big.