Under the Surface

by Anne Calhoun

  His touch gave her bedroom eyes.

  Last night he’d diverted her from hooking up by suggesting they “date”. But even dating wouldn’t stay at the hand-holding stage for long. She’d expect more. Kissing. Touching. Full body contact. Naked, sweating, rhythmic movement full body contact. “Whatever it takes” was the motto for most undercover cops, and Matt was the best there was, especially on long-term assignments. He’d do “whatever it takes” to blend in.

  But while sleeping with her was a betrayal, pretending to date her was ten times the deception. He didn’t need weeks in Eve’s company to know he was trading a physical lie for an emotional one, or to know that she’d tolerate neither.

  Rather than think about that, he focused on the way she interacted with customers. Women might come to Eye Candy for the bartenders and the dancing, but he’d bet they also came back to see Eve, who had a real knack for making everyone feel drawn into her inner circle. She circulated, moving from group to group, introducing people, getting clusters to merge and new friendships to form. After even a two-minute conversation with a customer, that person smiled more widely, laughed a little louder, looked just a little looser and more relaxed. She reflected light like the dozens of tiny, mirrored disco balls dangling above the dance floor, taking whatever energy radiated from an individual and multiplying it.

  He strode into the squad room and nodded a greeting to Sorenson. Lieutenant Hawthorn emerged from his office and braced himself against Andy’s desk. “Report.”

  Sorenson had scrounged up a whiteboard and a bulletin board, the latter of which was now decorated with photographs of the pertinent players: Lyle Murphy, Eve Webber, and Lyle’s most frequent companion, a known offender from the East Side called Travis Jenkins. On the whiteboard Matt wrote out a list of employees, giving first names and last names when he’d been able to hear them, and drew a basic sketch of the bar’s interior and exterior, including exits. “The staircase you can see in the bar goes into her office. There’s a door here,” he said, tapping the spot on the diagram, “and a staircase down to the alley you can see from the storeroom door. I’m guessing her apartment is behind the door in her office.”

  “I’ll start pulling files,” Sorenson said. “Does Lyle have anyone on the inside?”

  “Cesar,” Matt said. “Maybe. I don’t recognize him, but the ink connects him to the Strykers at some point in time.”

  “Good work,” Hawthorn said as he examined the building layout and the photographs. “Stay alert. We lose her, we lose the whole case.”

  The group dispersed, leaving Sorenson leaning against his desk, staring at the pictures on the bulletin boards. “She likes you,” she said, noncommittal, just observing.

  He didn’t pretend to not know who she meant, but he did try to play it down. “She’s flirting. It’s a way of life for her.”

  “Is that a trained observer’s read on Eve Webber?” Sorenson asked with a mocking look. “She doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman who takes no for an answer.”

  I know exactly how to read Eve Webber. She’s sexy as hell, secretive, whip-smart, and for the first time in a very long time, I want something. I want her.

  I always finish what I start.

  At the memory of Eve’s husky voice, both flirtatious and flat-out serious, he flushed. He actually flushed, a very male, very human response—a very un-Dorchester response. Sorenson didn’t miss it. Both blond eyebrows rose ever so slightly. He firmed up his voice and said, “I’ve got this.”

  “By the way, Hawthorn and I will be in the bar tonight. Hawthorn called in McCormick to handle exterior surveillance.”

  “Got it.” He pushed away from the desk and headed back to Eye Candy.

  * * *

  Shortly after Eve found her chopping groove, Pauli ambled into the bar and disappeared down the hall. Every shift, he’d set himself up in the dish room with his homework and his iPod, emerging again at the end of the night soaked in sweat and smelling of industrial soap. A few minutes later the front door opened again, briefly silhouetting a now familiar, tall, muscular figure against the summer sky before closing.

  Chad, who thought she deserved better than fast, back early again.

  “You don’t need to get here until closer to five,” she said.

  “I’m turning in my paperwork before you get busy, in case you had any questions.” He slid the completed W-4 and application onto the bar.

  She wiped her hands on a towel, then reached for the papers, neatly filled out in black ink with block printing. “No felonies or drug convictions, right?” she asked absently as she skimmed the application.

  “No.”

  “It’s not a deal-breaker,” she said. “I just want to know up front.”

  “The answer’s still no.”

  “Looking good,” she said, eyeing his freshly washed and slightly smaller Eye Candy T-shirt. She tried to keep an amused smile off her face, and failed. “Laundry tip. Use the low heat dryer setting for cotton.”

  “Yeah, I got that.” He came around the corner of the bar, clearly intending to help, but she stopped him at the end of the bar.

  “As much as I’d like the help, I can’t afford to pay you to come in a couple of hours early every night.”

  “It’s three bucks an hour,” he said. “I work for tips.”

  “Three dollars an hour times two hours a day times five days a week is really thirty bucks a week,” she replied.

  “On the house,” he said as he came around the end of the bar.

  “I’ll pay you for today,” she said, brushing past him to get upstairs before the office door opened. “Just show up when your shift starts from here on out.”

  She hurried past him but he caught her wrist in one hand, halting her forward progress while he looked her over. Even across the distance of their outstretched arms, his gaze struck sparks as it flickered against her curves. She wore one of her favorite bar outfits, a pair of black leather short-shorts, and a white, sheer, fitted long-sleeved T-shirt over a black silk camisole. Heavy beaten silver discs dangled from her ears, with a matching bracelet around her wrist. Black heeled shoes with an ankle strap lengthened her legs. And if Natalie asked, she’d forgotten she wore the outfit just last week. It had nothing to do with Chad.

  “I told you to take advantage of me,” he said, his deep voice a gravelly rumble in the silence of the bar.

  She took a step back toward him, leaving only slowly heating air between their bodies, and decided to see if he’d keep his word. “You also told me we were taking things slow. If I can take advantage of you, the storeroom’s quiet and dark this time of day.”

  One brief caress of his thumb across her wrist, then he let her go. In the silence that followed her heels sounded loud and sharp against the parquet dance floor. As she walked, she felt his gaze on her hips and the length of her legs.

  “I bet guys walk into walls when you go out in that outfit,” he said. He hadn’t raised his voice but it still carried into the farthest corners of the echoing, empty room.

  She’d always known it wasn’t the outside that mattered, but who you were inside. What you did. She smiled, because unlike most men who complimented her, Chad meant it without expecting anything in return, then scrolled through her iPod. “Do you have a preference for music?”

  “No club music, no boy bands, no disco, no punk, nothing from the fifties.”

  Amused, she raised an eyebrow at the decisive list. “Do you like anyone local?” she asked as she scrolled without much hope of a positive answer. Most people lapped up the pap distributed by nationally owned radio corporations.

  “Yeah,” he said without batting an eye. “Maud Ward, The Parakeets, Doe-Eyed Girl.”

  Three of her favorite bands. “Maud’s great. Did you see the feature in the paper last week? She’s going to be back in Lancaster this winter, recording her new album, which is great for us. When she’s working on new material she shows up around town and does impromptu concerts to try out
the new stuff. I’ve been trying to get her to do a show here, but she’s been touring all summer,” she said and found her name in the Artists list and slid the iPod into the Bose SoundDock she had on the bar. A low, melodic voice tumbled out into the bar, backed only by a single guitar, the sound of chatter and laughter running under the music.

  “She’s great,” Matt said, half-focused on the song, unfamiliar but definitely Maud. “What’s this?”

  “I recorded it at the Rusty Nickel one Sunday night a couple of years ago, when she was working on material for her last album. This is an early version of ‘Take Me Away.’”

  He swept lime wedges into a plastic tub, then looked at her. “The Rusty Nickel, a couple of years ago. April, right?”

  “It was warm, but raining cats and dogs,” she said in agreement as she found a second knife. “Were you there?”

  “I was there,” he said slowly. “How did you get in? I heard the cops had to turn away a couple hundred people.”

  “I know Maud. Back when she was busking on corners in SoMa and selling CDs from her guitar case, I helped her get some gigs at smaller venues so she could get the word out. She usually gives me a heads up when she’s back in town.”

  “You hang out with Maud Ward.”

  “Not regularly or anything,” she started, but stopped when he cocked an eyebrow. “Okay, yes, I hang out with Maud Ward.”

  “Her number’s in your cell phone.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there anyone in this town you don’t know?”

  “I don’t know you,” she said, cocking her head and smiling at him. “Yet. Looks like we’ve already found something to talk about.”

  “I don’t get to many concerts anymore. Working too many nights.” He reduced another lime to wedges, his rhythm hypnotic, easy, automatic. She’d always been a sucker for hands. Not smooth, manicured, executive hands, but workingman’s hands, the skin rough with scrapes and gouges and calluses. It made for such an erotic contrast, strong and tough, yet tightly controlled.

  “Where did you get the idea to open Eye Candy?”

  The question snapped her out of her fantasies. “I’ve wanted to own my own business for a long time,” she said, giving him the short version of her views on business and community involvement. “As for opening a nightclub … my dad’s a pastor, which is a labor of love, so my brother and I were on our own for college tuition.” She scraped a dozen cut lemons into a tub and reached for more. “The summer before college I helped a girlfriend serve at a society wedding at the Metropolitan Club. The guy with the liquor contract for the Met also owned a club. He said he liked my work ethic, although in hindsight maybe my work ethic was icing on the cake.”

  Chad smiled like he knew where this was going.

  “He told me I could make two hundred a night in tips, working for him. I knew my parents would go through the roof if I did, and when I saw the uniform I almost didn’t take the shift because the skirt was straight out of a French maid costume and came with fishnet tights and four-inch heels. But I gave it a shot, and he was right. My first night three different men, all old enough to be my father, gave me a twenty for a buck-fifty beer and told me to keep the change. I told myself it was a fluke, that there was no way a man would tip me twenty dollars to watch me bring him a beer, but it happened the next night, and the next night, and the next…”

  A huff of laughter as he worked. “Sheltered much?”

  “Not after a week at Platinum. I put myself through college with those tips. Eventually I ended up running private parties, including networking events at the Met, and along the way I discovered that I’m good at this. That’s when I first got the idea to open Eye Candy. The real money’s in the liquor, not the tips.”

  “What did your parents think about that?”

  It wasn’t their first fight over her life choices. It wasn’t the last either. “Imagine what you’d think a pastor and his wife would think of their daughter working as a cocktail waitress, then take that to a factor of ten.”

  Despite his careful attention to the garnishes he was prepping, he seemed to be listening with his entire body. “Tips that good must have come in handy when it came time to buy this place,” he said, still focused on the rapidly diminishing pile of limes.

  “They did.” So did a degree in finance with a minor in math, and some savvy insider investment advice given along with a ten from some of Lancaster’s leading investment bankers when she brought them a cognac with a smile. They thought she was cute, in her little skirts and frilly tights, asking questions about the stock market and investment strategies, like an East Side girl could make something of herself.

  This East Side girl would, and she’d bring the East Side with her when she did.

  “Done?” he asked when she set down her knife. At her nod he gathered the empty boxes and took them to the storeroom while she dumped the final lemon slices into the last plastic tub and distributed them to each section of the bar. A moment later Chad reappeared. He slid her a look under thick reddish lashes as he took in her casual position, braced against the bar. “Taking a break?” he asked as he washed his hands.

  “Getting help with prep certainly frees up some time,” she answered.

  “Any time,” he said.

  She reached for an orange, rolled it between her palms, then dug her blunt-cut fingernails into the rind, peeling away chunks to expose the juicy fruit underneath. The tangy scent rose into the charged air between them, mixing with the musky heat rising from his skin while he washed fruit residue from his hands. Eve realized he’d cut the stinging lemons without a wince or a complaint.

  “This is a tough neighborhood. How did you decide to buy this building?”

  “A good friend offered me the building for the right price. You know, usually I can’t get a word in edgewise with guys. Tell me something about you.”

  “Nothing interesting about me, boss.”

  “You’re working this tall, dark, and mysterious thing pretty hard,” she said. “Conversation goes both ways. Why bartending?”

  He shrugged. “Desk jobs expect you to be there at eight a.m., caffeinated and ready to work. I’m not a morning person,” he said as he crossed the small distance between them and braced his hip on the counter.

  “I’m not either,” she said distractedly as she peeled apart another section of orange. “Mornings suck.”

  A thin trail of liquid escaped the rind and ran down her wrist; without thinking she lifted her inner arm to her mouth and licked off the juice. His eyes darkened, the pupils dilating into the hazel irises.

  “Want some?” she asked innocently, offering him the orange.

  “I’d say something about apples,” he replied as he pulled off a couple of sections, “but you’ve heard that before.”

  “Eve gets the short end of the stick in that story,” she said. “Adam could have said no. He didn’t. Yeah, she was temping but take some responsibility.”

  His laugh seemed a little forced, and they both jumped when Natalie flung the door open. She tossed a casual wave to them, yodeling along to a song Eve vaguely recognized as a dance hit from the eighties.

  “What the hell is she singing?” Chad asked, bracing one hand on the bar, the other on his hip.

  “Pop, disco, hair bands, boy bands, punk, everything eighties,” she said, breathless. “The music died when Backstreet Boys broke up. On the plus side, we don’t have to fight over who gets nights off to go to concerts.”

  “She’s gonna go deaf if she doesn’t turn the volume down on those headphones.”

  Natalie stopped mid-yodel in the middle of the dance floor. “What’s he doing here so early?” she yelled at Eve.

  Eve motioned for her to remove the earbuds.

  “What’s he doing here so early?” Nat said again as she wrapped the earbud cord around the iPod.

  “We heard you the first time,” Eve said patiently. “He seems to think I need help with prep.”

  “Help with pr
ep, huh? Flirting with the boss, I think.”

  “Just making myself useful,” Chad said. Nat continued up the stairs, letting herself into the office.

  Eve rolled her eyes at the choirboy tone in his voice. “You could be more useful,” she said in a low undertone.

  Another simmering hazel look through intriguingly reddish-brown lashes. “Slow, remember? Conversation. Getting to know you.”

  “What about getting to know you?”

  “Next time.”

  “I’ll hold you to it,” she said.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  This wasn’t going to be easy.

  A couple of hours into a crazy Saturday night, Matt told himself the conversation with Eve before Eye Candy opened had netted good information and background details, but he knew already that his plan to take things slow wouldn’t hold up for long. Eve was smart, determined, ran her show like the motherfucking boss she was. No way in hell would she wait around for him like some sweet young thing.

  No way in hell would a woman like that give a second chance to a professional liar.

  At seven forty-two his partner arrived. Her blonde hair was done up in a fancy arrangement of curls and combs with butterflies on them, and her eyes were transformed by contacts that this time turned her average blue irises into the color of the Caribbean in travel ads. She wore a shimmery, barely there neon-blue dress, cracked her gum at Tom and got an apple martini and a wink in return, then disappeared into the crowd.

  At eight nineteen Conn McCormick walked into the bar. Wearing jeans and a loose button-down, he steadfastly ignored the frank appraisals from the women at the bar and ordered a Rolling Rock from Matt. The anonymous exchange took seconds, then McCormick took up position against the railing surrounding the dance floor, giving himself a good view of both the door and the bar. As Matt watched, McCormick let himself get drawn into a conversation with a brunette Matt knew was half past toasted because he’d served her the last three of her four rum and Sprites. He almost wished he could listen in, just for the laughs.

  At eight forty-seven Lyle Murphy, easily identifiable from surveillance photos, walked in. Matt barely managed to restrain a double take as Lyle smiled, said a few words, and patted Cesar on the shoulder. The two guys with Lyle, one matching the description of Travis, the other unfamiliar to Matt, also didn’t bother to produce IDs. Lyle wore pleated slacks, a preppy sweater, and a hat straight off Justin Timberlake’s head. Alone he would have blended right in with the crowd, but his two companions wore the latest in homeboy fashion—baggy jeans, and loose rapper shirts.