The blonde server he had hoped not to see floated along the other side of the bar until she was standing right across from him. As she had countless evenings before she lurched up onto her toes, leaned over the bar and tilted her head so she could speak directly into his ear. She was so close he could have smelled the mint of her gum even without an immortal man’s sense of smell.
“The usual?”
“Yes,” he said, leaning back into the tall chair and pulling his hands down until they rested in his lap. Riley McMartin had a habit of letting those long painted nails of hers float down to the countertop and dance across his hands as she turned to fill his order. It was something he was sure Riley intended to be seductive and flirty but he found it annoying and desperate. Riley, he told himself as the corners of his mouth fought to curl upward, would be the second thing he would change about the bar.
It’s too bad, too, he thought as he watched her ease the stopper out of the old crystal decanter. Women like Riley, with their too-tight pants and their too-blonde hair, used to be the exception. They were the women you went to but told no one about, he mused. Now, women who throw themselves out there were the norm. A long low sigh escaped from his chest. There was no beauty--no elegance--left in the world.