Never Stay Past Midnight

by Mira Lyn Kelly

  This was what she got for confiding.

  “It wasn’t a cry for anything—” Bruno stomped his big paw with renewed puppy vigor “—aghg, Bruno, no!—least of all matchmaking services.”

  “Right. You haven’t been out on a date since Eric. And that was over a year ago. I’ve been telling you for months it was time to move on and find someone new, but you keep brushing me off with all the business about not being ready and no time or energy, needing to ‘do something’ with your life. Blah, blah, blah… And then you go and pick up some random guy—who does not count as a date, by the way—and do it in a car. I’m sorry, but if that doesn’t smack of desperation, I don’t know what does.”

  Elise coughed out her protest. “I am not desperate!”

  “Denial, is it? Well, consider this my intervention, sister. Some day you’ll thank me.”

  Some day she’d strangle her.

  “I’m not going out with him,” Elise said flatly, considering only too late where that kind of statement would take her.

  Ally’s arms crossed as her upper lip curved into that bossy big-sister sneer. “And I’m not canceling for you.”

  A battle of wills. The kind that never seemed to end the way she wanted it to.

  “Which means, Elise, if you don’t show up, then Hank—a nice, emotionally in-touch, stand-up man—will be sitting there Friday night…waiting…” Ally’s face screwed up into

  a facsimile of the would-be angst this Hank would suffer “…wondering why… Was it something about him…? Maybe he should just stop trying…putting himself out there and give up…”

  Ugh.

  This was why she never won…her sister knew just how to hit her.

  Elise let out a long-suffering sigh that Ally batted off like a gnat as she pulled open the rear door of the wagon to check the infant restraints and coo at her groggy son. Straining beneath Bruno’s weight, Elise pushed to her toes and craned her neck to catch a peek of that beautiful downy head.

  “So sweet,” she whispered to her sister, who beamed back appreciatively as she quietly shut the door.

  But then Ally was back to business. Hand on hip, stubborn chin leading the helm. “You might like him. Come on, it’s a couple of hours. What’s the big deal?”

  The big deal was Elise didn’t want to like this Hank who came so highly recommended. She was afraid to meet some guy who might be perfect, because she wasn’t in a place in her life with room for a perfect man.

  Her thumb rubbed at the fourth finger of her left hand, and that same twinge of bitterness and sorrow stirred at the feel of the bare skin there.

  She simply didn’t have enough to give. Not yet. She was starting her own business. Trying to build something, not just for herself, but for all of them. And even once she got it going, she’d probably still need to hang on to one or two of her other jobs. Between that and the situation with her family, she’d be lucky to find herself with five minutes to spare. Let alone the requisite time for phone calls and dates it took to get to know someone.

  Whoever this Hank was, he deserved more. Better. “I’m really not interested.”

  Ally clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and shrugged. “But you’re going anyway. Later, sis.”

  * * *

  Six miles and Levi hadn’t found it yet. That quiet numb where thinking shut down and nothing registered but the repetitive slap of his feet hitting pavement. The quiet place where he could mentally disconnect. Recharge. Clear his head. Following the network of intersecting paths at the south end of Grant Park—the grassy lakefront oasis within an urban sprawl, proudly referred to as Chicago’s “front yard”—he pushed toward the pedestrian overpass and the far-reaching tracks that ran beneath. Tried to find some sort of Zen place within the gusty wind and rush of traffic, but he couldn’t quite get there.

  Sweat stung his eyes and oxygen burned through his lungs with each hard pull of breath. Still he kept thinking about the call earlier that morning from his guy in Seattle. Another problem with the contractor. The kind that Levi could have resolved within thirty seconds if he’d been there, but now had them pushed back another day at least.

  Turn it off. Turn it off. Turn it off—

  “Bruno, heel!” The cry rang out, tugging Levi’s consciousness out of that middle space and settling it firmly on a remarkably familiar knot of blonde curls bobbing atop a tight little curvy package of a woman as she stumbled down the path, one arm tethered to a dog almost as big as she was.

  Elise. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he followed her with his eyes.

  Miss Exceptionally Distracting herself. She’d blown his mind with that crazy, bendy body and those soft, breathy cries at his ear. Her smart-mouthed teasing, nervous fluster, and broken rules.

  They’d been good together and he liked her a damned lot. But he had his own rules regarding women like Elise—women who were all about commitment. To their families, their relationships, themselves. He left them alone—and he’d already broken his rules once just to get a taste of her. Only that taste merely whetted his palate for more and it had been a near miracle that he’d finally let her go. Which was why, as much as he might like another foray into the kind of compelling distraction she’d offered, he veered off to the opposite path from the one she occupied. Pushed his thoughts to the rising skyline reaching wide ahead of him. Michigan Avenue…still a good distance from Elise’s Printer’s Row apartment.

  He didn’t remember a dog.

  That one would have been tough to miss.

  Turn it off, turn it off, turn it…

  Of course, now that he’d seen her, now that he knew she was right over there, she was back in his mind, daring him to revisit the details of a night he hadn’t quite had enough of. Thinking how he’d gotten lost in her body…in her laugh…in that hellfire hot kiss when she’d been pinned against the steering wheel—

  Damn. He was watching her again too, jogging backwards like a total jackass. His body reacting in a way that wasn’t wholly conducive to running.

  He needed to run.

  Only he didn’t really like the look of that Great Dane dragging her down the path.

  What was it about these little women with dogs so big they couldn’t handle them?

  And Elise definitely wasn’t handling this one.

  The dog bounded right, nearly tripping her. Then cut back left, jerking her forward. Levi’s brow drew down as he headed toward the canine fiasco in action. If someone didn’t take control, Elise was going to get hurt—

  That was when the dog stilled, head snapping around at the sound barely permeating Levi’s consciousness.

  Fire truck.

  The dog took off like a flash, his powerful haunches pushing beyond Elise’s strength and taking her down hard into the grass. She bounced once—damn, that couldn’t feel good. And whoa, was that mud?—before the leash jerked free of her wrist and then the dog was speeding away even as she scrambled to her knees. “Bad dog, Bruno!”

  By then, Levi’d already pushed into a dead run. As distractions went, apparently, Elise was the kind that couldn’t be ignored.

  CHAPTER TWO

  HEART racing, Elise shoved up from the wet grass, taking off as soon as she’d found her footing.

  Oh, yeah, she got a list, all right. And the dog was on it.

  Just as soon as she got him back.

  Only she was losing ground at a rate that didn’t bode well for capture. Bruno tore across the open grass, then raced headlong through the “Agora” sculptural installation, giving Elise an instant of relief. Of the one hundred and six nine-foot cast-iron pieces, one of those freaky sets of legs was bound to catch the leash whipping behind Bruno with every wild lope.

  Except then he’d broken free and without any signs of slowing. Not even as he closed in on the street…

  Oh, God.

  The Roosevelt/Michigan Avenue intersection surged with six lanes of downtown city traffic—buses, taxis, and cars, all gunning it to make the
ir turn, catch the light, get where they were going.

  She was too far behind.

  “Bruno!” she called, panic slamming through her with the knowledge there was no way she could get to him in time.

  No. Please don’t let this be happening. Please, please, please…

  And then, suddenly it wasn’t. Two feet from the curb, Bruno wheeled around, jerked back from the street by the man who’d snared his leash at the last second.

  “Bruno, heel!” The harsh command boomed with enough force to cow the puppy beast to the ground at his feet.

  She couldn’t believe it. Bruno was safe. Saved. By some stranger she hadn’t even seen coming.

  “Thank you,” Elise wheezed, only her voice came thin through lips that had gone as numb as the legs that had carried her that final distance to where they’d stopped. Dropping into a crouch, she buried her face in Bruno’s neck, sucking air in deep gulps until after a minute or two the buzzing in her head subsided and she tried for her voice again. “Thank you… So much… I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you did.”

  Lifting her face from Bruno’s warm fur, she squinted up at her rescuer, who was standing bent over, legs apart, hands on his knees. Breath ripping in and out of him in savage draws. Sweat-soaked hair hung in front of his brow, obscuring his face from view as he gave a short nod of acknowledgment.

  Returning her attention to Bruno, she rubbed her fingers through his short hair, each stroke another reassurance that this sweet, sleekly powerful dummy was okay. His tongue spilling out of his giant, toothy mouth, she could swear he was grinning at her.

  “Yeah, you’re fine,” she said, the tremors within her easing. “Which means…you’re so on my list.”

  Beside her, her savior chuckled, straightening to his full height. “He’s a dog. You can’t put him on your list.”

  That voice. Low, deeply masculine. Distinctive with the kind of roughed-up character a woman didn’t forget. Especially when the seductive rumble of it had punctuated the high points of her sexual existence just one week before.

  Oh, God, it couldn’t be him. And yet that same frisson of awareness she’d felt at the first bookstore bump told her it was. That and the sheer size of him. The man was big enough that before she could make it past his bare chest to his face she had to start again, beginning back at his oversized running shoes, working up the solid cut of his calves to where the powerful slabs of his thighs flexed and bunched beneath his shifting weight.

  Wow, he had a lot of leg. A lot of well-muscled, cut-from-stone, chase-down-a-Great-Dane, Clark-Kent-out-for-a-jog leg, braced in one of those uber-masculine stances that somehow combined total fatigue with a readiness to go again. Leg that ended beneath a pair of steel-gray mid-length running shorts that were just the right amount of loose to—

  “Elise…you’re looking up my shorts.”

  “What? No,” she gasped, shocked. First, in hearing her name, which confirmed her rescuer’s identity, and then, because—oh, God—she totally was! Only it wasn’t some creepy, salacious leer. Not really. It was just that this was the first time she was seeing the details of the body she’d been wrapped around—had explored with her hands and mouth, had lain awake each night since thinking about—in the light of day. Sure she’d had an idea of what he was built like. Touch was a powerful sense and there’d been enough diffused light from the streetlamps outside for her to see the general dimensions, but this—

  Not asking him to leave a lamp on had been a monumental mistake.

  That powerful musculature bunched again, showcasing yet another hypnotic set of furrows, planes, and ridges. Her belly tensed, tightened with the knowledge that she’d had this.

  Even his knees were nice—

  “Yeah,” he said with a gruff chuckle. “Except you are. Right now. Still.”

  Elise slapped her hands over her eyes. “No…well, okay, yes, I was…b-but it’s not like you think,” she stammered, humiliation—hot and intense—knocking her onto her backside as she grappled for a recovery from what, in that moment, seemed mortification of the unrecoverable variety. “You’re just so big and…”

  This time his laughter burst out, full and robust. Unrestrained. And the hands she’d only seconds ago dared to release from her eyes instantly clapped over her mouth.

  Levi crouched beside her, giving her a square-on look at his face. At the stone-carved cut of his heavy cheekbones, the straight line of his nose, and his squared-off, solid jaw. God, everything about this man said strength. Everything except those deep, whirlpool-blue eyes of his that seemed to warn of danger even as they drew her in with a splash of promised fun.

  She’d really hoped never to see him again.

  One dark brow cocked to match the smile slanted across his lips, sending a flutter of nervous butterflies batting about within her. “Sweetheart, you just get better and better.”

  “Uh-h-h…” was all the farther she’d gotten before he wrapped his big hand around her elbow, and tugged her to her feet. Maybe it was the too fast shift to standing or the lingering effects of her adrenaline rush, or maybe it was just the insane reaction of her body and mind being in such close proximity to the best time they’d had in too long to remember, but suddenly her legs weren’t quite steady, her knees gone elastic beneath her… And then she was stumbling forward. Straight into the solid wall of hard-packed, hot-to-the-touch, make-her-shiver-and-burn-all-at-once Levi Davis.

  “Whoa, you okay?” he asked, the amusement in his tone tinged with concern. His right hand was still closed around her elbow and the left had caught her at the small of her back, holding her in a flush press from thigh to breasts, palms flat against his abdomen, fingertips resting in the shallow well between two tensed muscles.

  Eyes straight ahead, staring at the flat masculine nipple mere inches from her face, she managed a slight nod. Blinked and tried to draw a mind-cleansing breath, reminding herself of all the reasons she needed to keep her distance from a man like this…mainly that he was a walking, talking, Bermuda Triangle to good judgment, the pull of him sending her moral compass into a tailspin.

  She needed to get a grip. Take a few cleansing breaths to clear her head.

  In through the nose—

  Oh, bad idea. Very bad. This close, all she could smell was the heady scent of clean, masculine exertion.

  Sweat.

  Soap.

  Levi.

  God, he smelled so good she nearly groaned. But on the heels of the shorts incident, she’d come across looking like some kind of park-side predator taking advantage of his good Samaritan tendencies to cop a feel and sneak a peek.

  She swallowed, trying to ignore the spicy scent of him spurring shadowed memories of his body moving above hers, their limbs a slick tangle, her tongue tracing a salty path up one flexed bicep—

  Not helping.

  Shake it off, Elise. This man just rescued Bruno. Thank him and step away.

  Pushing her gaze upward, she found him staring down at her, the churning depths of his gaze impossible to read.

  Or maybe not so impossible after all.

  The fingers at her back tensed so the tips pressed into her skin, and the air around them took on the same slow-building charge she’d felt sparking between them that first night. The one that seemed infinitely more dangerous a week past her one-night’s expiration date.

  “Trouble, trouble,” he murmured, gaze dropping to her lips.

  Trouble. He’d said it just inside her apartment, those hard-hewn features wearing an almost bewildered expression. And then he’d leaned in for one last kiss that had flamed as out of control as the rest of their night.

  “Yeah.” She let out a shaky breath, taking a deliberate step back. “But I swear, it’s only physical.”

  The corner of Levi’s mouth kicked up as he pushed a few fallen strands from his brow. “Thanks. That’s a relief. Me too.”

  “Okay, good.” She was sure that was good. And equally sure there was more truth in Levi’s words th
an there had been in her own.

  * * *

  Man, this girl was priceless, but she wasn’t getting that dog home alone. All it would take was a pigeon or some stray scrap of trash blowing by and little miss muddy package wouldn’t just smear through the grass—she’d be bouncing down East Balboa Street, and Bruno here would be loose for a nasty game of street tag. Neither of which were acceptable. So after a quick check of the time, he said, “Okay, let’s head back to your place. But we’ve got to make it quick. I need to be at the club in about an hour.”

  Her brow crinkled as she gave him a sort of perturbed once-over, crossed her arms against her chest, and took a small step back. “Levi, I really, really appreciate you saving Bruno, and I know I was looking…and then with what I said…but I can’t have sex with you again.”

  Sex?

  On a day when he hadn’t thought he’d even crack a smile, Levi found himself giving into another laugh. Rubbing a hand over his jaw, he shook his head. “I’m offering to help you get the dog home. And so we’re clear, I’m offering in spite of the fact that you were looking up my shorts…not because of it.”

  She blinked at him, shifting her feet. “I swear I wasn’t trying to pick you up with that.”

  “I get it,” he said straight-faced, taking up some of the slack on Bruno’s leash as she waved in the general direction they were heading. “You just like to look.”

  “What—no! Excuse me,” she huffed, all indignant now. “The shorts thing was—ack, just forget it.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Whatever.” The shorts thing was the highlight of his year. And the pretty pink blush burning its way up her cheeks at that moment was coming in for a close second. Especially with the contrasting streaks of mud across her chin and chest, the few blades of grass tucked into the vee of her jogging tank, and the knot of sexy, disheveled gold atop her head. It made her look kind of innocent and dirty all at once.

  Not exactly a turn-off.

  Not that it mattered.