by Anne Calhoun
They stuck out like two East Side gangbangers in an upscale nightclub.
Murmurs rippled through the crowd as the trio made their way to the back of the dance floor. Natalie, in conversation with Mario at the far end of the bar, looked up as the shift in energy eddied to the far ends of the room. Lyle said something to a blonde woman that made her draw back, jaw open in shock, then headed straight for Eve.
Stuck behind the bar, Matt did his best to track Lyle’s movements, but distance, demanding customers, and the shifting crowd on the dance floor made it impossible to get an accurate read on their interaction. McCormick discreetly worked his way closer to Sorenson at the far end of the dance floor, only one customer separating them from Lyle and Eve. The crowd closed again, blocking Matt’s view.
Then Eve, Lyle, and the two sore thumbs rose above the crowd, up the winding staircase to her office, Eve smiling over her shoulder at Lyle, as if nothing was wrong.
Except for the white-knuckled grip on her iPhone.
Matt’s every instinct was to abandon his station and find out what the hell was going on in her office. Three thugs and one slender female alone in a confined space usually meant brutal trouble.
The raspberry daiquiri Matt extended across the bar to a customer nearly slipped from his grasp and onto her expensive-looking white top. “Omigod,” the woman gasped as the crushed ice and deep red juice sloshed to the rim of the glass.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he said, flashing all thousand watts at her as a distraction. Glass firmly in hand, she smiled back, mollified.
He looked up at the closed door and drawn curtains. No sign of movement, but the office was good-sized and in this noise no one would hear her scream. He’d give them another thirty seconds, then he was going up there. He’d think of a good reason to abandon his station on a busy Friday night and storm Eve’s office, a place bartenders rarely went.
Then the mysterious door in Eve’s office, the wooden staircase leading from the alley to a second-story door, and the best way to minimize the impact from the two out-of-place thugs clicked together in his brain. He caught McCormick’s eye and tipped his head toward the front door. Sorenson and McCormick pushed through the crowd to the door as Matt brushed past Tom and Mario to the end of the bar, then down the hall to the storeroom. He tugged open the door to hear Eve’s voice above him, on the staircase’s landing. She’d taken Lyle and his friends through the office and out the back door. Smart. Thinking on her feet.
“Look,” she snapped, her voice sharp enough to slice through the brick walls lining the alley. “This isn’t the strip club down by the warehouses you guys used back in the day, the one the cops raided the nights they weren’t slipping dollar bills into thongs. If you want this to work, you have to fit in, and you have to treat my customers with some respect, or I’ll go out of business and then we’re all screwed. Understand?”
“Understood,” Lyle said. “Looks nice in there. You done good, Evie. Not bad for an East Side girl. It’ll be even better when you get rid of that thing.”
Matt followed Lyle’s glance to the brick wall behind Eye Candy. Get rid of what thing? The building?
“I have to get back to work,” she said, her voice warming from arctic to almost-friendly. Matt could hear the effort it took. “I’ll call you later.”
But she didn’t step back to let them in the building. There was a pause, then the sound of shuffling feet on wooden stairs, as Lyle and the two thugs trotted down the steps and turned the corner to the parking lot. Using the wooden stopper Matt wedged open the storeroom door, then followed them, sticking to the shadows, his running shoes making the slightest of scuffling noises in the dirt. He paused just outside the bright lights illuminating the crowded lot and watched Lyle get into the passenger seat of a Cadillac Escalade. The engine turned over and the SUV moved smoothly into traffic.
Avoiding Cesar’s eye wasn’t easy, but fortunately a party of scantily dressed women was fishing IDs out of tiny purses and bras. Matt scanned the parking lot until he saw Sorenson’s pale hair and rhinestone combs winking in the lights at the back of the lot, then jogged over.
Sorenson sat on the trunk of Lieutenant Hawthorn’s car, knees primly together, her bare feet resting on the bumper, her spike heels neatly lined up beside her. Hawthorn stood off to the side, elbows braced on the roof as he spoke into his cell phone: “… left the parking lot in a black Escalade.” He rattled off the plate, waited a second, then disconnected the call. “McCormick just picked them up at the corner. He’ll follow them, see where they go next. What happened?”
“She sent them out the back door,” Matt said, his heart pounding. “There’s a door from her office to her apartment that leads to the alley.”
“I remember,” Hawthorn said. “Did you hear them?”
“Through a crack in the storeroom door,” Matt confirmed. “She handled it like a boss, LT. Ice in her veins. We need to tell her what’s going on. She can handle it.”
“Absolutely not,” Hawthorn said, “because the more involved Murphy gets with Eye Candy, the better our case is. It’s best for her if she doesn’t know. The less she knows, the less she can accidentally give away, and the less danger she’s in. Just do your job.”
“We can’t keep her in the dark,” Matt objected.
“The hell we can’t, Detective,” Hawthorn said. “We do it all the time. You do it all the time. Sorenson’s going back in. Get some sleep, get your head screwed on straight. I don’t want to see you before noon.”
Shoes in hand, Sorenson slid off the trunk of the car. They waited while Hawthorn left, then Sorenson looked at him. “I hate these shoes,” she said conversationally, turning over the heels so the jeweled straps glittered in the lights. “My feet hurt, my back hurts, and my toes feel like they’ve been crammed in a sardine can. Next time you go undercover, do it at an old folks’ home so I can wear comfortable shoes.”
“I’m going back in through the storeroom,” he said in response.
Matt jogged around the back of the bar and through the storeroom door, struggling to remain calm. Objective. Inside the bar the DJ was leading everyone in some arm-waving, swaying chant, the atmosphere was back to rockin’ and rollin’. He needed to find Eve. Size and strength, not finesse, powered his progress through the room.
He found her down a short hallway, in front of the small alcove housing a relic from the twentieth century, a pay phone. Hands on her hips, her pursed lips and frown better suited a librarian, not the sexy woman dressed like a high-class call girl. A quick glance in the circular mirror high in the corner of the alcove revealed a brunette alternately shoving her skirt down her thighs and buttoning up her blouse behind a red-faced, tight-lipped man with his hands on his hips.
Try as he might, he hadn’t been able to shake the cop’s sense of humor, so he smiled as he came to parade rest behind Eve and folded his arms over his chest, giving Eve some consequence in case the guy got belligerent. “Need any help?”
“No, thank you, Chad,” Eve replied, decorum dripping from her voice. “Our friends are either going to get another drink and enjoy the music, or continue their conversation outside.”
The man nodded, taut frustration evident on his face, and the girl finally got her blouse buttoned. With the same gesture she’d used to send Lyle on his way, she extended her hand toward the main room, a wordless invitation to return to the bar, or leave. They scurried back into the wall of humanity and sound, leaving him alone with Eve.
To his surprise Eve spun around to face him and crossed her arms. The flirtatious bar owner was gone. “Where the hell were you?”
The brusque demand startled him. His job was to not react, keep situations calm, so words were the right answer in this situation, apologetic, explanatory words that smoothed over a rocky start to a relationship he needed to keep her safe, not let the department down. Instead, he used what he knew worked. He reached out and gripped the nape of her neck, holding her still as he searched her eyes.
/> His possessive move sparked a quick intake of breath, but she didn’t shy away, never broke eye contact. His forearm lifted her hair so it slid forward, against the curve of her cheekbone, hiding her expression. With his other hand he impatiently brushed it back, saw awareness flare in her green eyes as his palm lingered along her jaw.
“Fine,” she said, rising to his silent challenge, and stepped close enough for him to feel the rise and fall of her breasts with each quick breath. Her hands dropped to his hip bones then slipped under the hem of his T-shirt to brush against his lower abdomen, turning his efforts to control her into a challenge. The pulse at her throat leapt in response to the involuntary tightening of his grip; while she made no move to break his hold, she was anything but pliant under his hand. Color crept into her cheekbones, softening her lips, and her eyes went that shade of ocean green that made him think the wall in the alcove looked pretty good as a flat surface …
Get your head back in the game, Dorchester. Forget slow. He needed her trusting him, into him, safe with him, and he knew exactly how to go about getting what he needed.
Three giggling women emerged from the restroom and tottered down the hallway. The spell shattered, and Matt let his hand drop, his abused knuckles tingling from the silky slide of her hair against the back of his hand.
Eve stepped back, came up short against the wall. “That was fun,” she said, “but I asked you a question. Where were you?”
“I needed a break,” he said. But breaks were authorized by Eve or Natalie only, and only when things were slow.
“You better not have been in my parking lot,” she said, anger and just a hint of hurt vibrating under her skin.
He went rigid before his brain jerked into high gear and he remembered that to her, “parking lot” meant back-of-pickup-truck liaisons, not a rendezvous with two cops. “I saw a friend leaving, a male friend, someone I hadn’t seen in a long time,” he improvised.
She lifted one eyebrow, and her fingers lightly brushed just above the waistband of his jeans. “We’ll talk about this later, but if you leave your station for a break without permission from me or Natalie again, you’re fired. You’re hot as hell, but business comes first.”
She stalked down the hallway without a backward glance, as if she was the one who held all the cards, leaving him off-balance and uncertain. A Maud Ward ballad, the perfect slow dance song, emerged from the generic transition music, and Matt flashed back to the Rusty Nickel on that warm April night two years earlier. Rain had sheeted from a low, sullen sky, soaking him and his partner as they waded through the runoff streaming into the sewers and into the flash mob threatening to crush several women against the bar’s closed front door. A little shouting, some backup arriving, and the crowd dispersed. He’d hung around as long as possible, listening to muffled guitar through the wood door before they caught another call.
He didn’t remember seeing Eve. Maybe she was already inside. She knew every bouncer and bar owner in town, so she might have slipped in through the back door. Men did favors for women like Eve just to be near her. See her smile.
After her last interaction with him, she wasn’t smiling. He took a deep breath and rolled his neck and shoulders to loosen up. Then he did the only thing he could to keep her safe. He went back to work.
CHAPTER FIVE
Just as the DJ cut the sound, Eve closed the front door behind the gum-smacking blonde with the spectacularly creative hairdo. The uncanny two a.m. quiet settled over the bar after closing, but rather than being soothing or seductive, tonight it jangled every one of Eve’s nerves.
Her family accused her of acting on impulse. What they didn’t realize was that the impulses came from a lifetime of family values. They just showed up bigger, brighter, flashier than getting married and having kids, like opening Eye Candy or going to the cops with Lyle’s offer of much needed cash in exchange for fronting his illegal business. Ten years ago Lyle had treated her like his little sister, affectionate but without any of the teasing or bossing she endured from Caleb. What happened tonight was her first clue that Lyle Murphy would play rough.
Cesar was putting away his stool in the storeroom when she cornered him.
“What happened?” she asked, keeping her voice low and reassuring.
“He just kept coming,” Cesar said. “I didn’t think you’d want me to level him, so I let them in.”
He had a point. He also had a ninth-grade education, no job skills, no legal work experience, and no future but the streets if she couldn’t keep him employed while he worked on his GED. “It’s okay,” she said. “I can deal with Lyle. Let him in but anyone who doesn’t meet our dress code has to wait outside. Keep them away from the queue.” Baggy pants and hip hop shirts were one thing, but no woman should have to listen to what she’d heard from Lyle’s bodyguards—“C’mon, drop it like it’s hot”—in the thirty seconds it took to get them upstairs.
“I got it,” he confirmed. As he stood up he slipped a battered paperback copy of Moby Dick into his shorts pocket.
“Good,” she said, then looked down at the book. “What’s this I hear about you skipping GED classes?”
“It’s the math,” he said, awkwardly shifting his shoulders. “History and English I got, but we started Algebra a couple weeks ago. X’s and Y’s. Balancing equations. It don’t make sense to me.”
She heaved a mental sigh of relief. He wasn’t quitting, just having trouble with the work. Keeping her expression even, she said, “I’m pretty good at math, if you want some help.”
“I dunno,” he said, hitching up his jeans. “I got a lot of late work.”
“Come by before your next class. We’ll get you caught up. Walk Natalie to her car, then you’re done.” She handed him his share of the take for the night.
Tom winked and nudged her shoulder. She knew he’d like to add benefits to their friendship, but his shoulder nudge didn’t register after Chad’s out-of-the-blue dominant move in the hallway. “Hey, Hot Stuff, a couple of us are heading over to Mario’s for drinks. You have plans?”
One hand on her hip, Eve lifted one eyebrow at Tom. He grinned at her, unrepentant, but didn’t say anything else. She glanced at Chad. His eyes never left her face, but his personality had disappeared behind a brick wall. He looked distant, a little hard. Untouchable. Unapproachable. Maybe the reminder that she was his boss had put him off. So be it.
“Thanks, but I’m going to call it a night,” she said.
Chad left with the rest of the guys without a backward glance. Let off their leash, the door slammed on a raucous discussion over the night’s best … best tits, best ass, best legs, and best in show.
She switched off the lights in the dish room, the storeroom, and the bathrooms before powering down the overheads in the main bar and taking the stairs to the second floor. She gathered her laptop and the night’s paperwork, then stepped across the threshold between work and personal life. As soon as she switched on the lamp next to the love seat, a knock came at the apartment door.
Outside stood Chad Henderson.
“Hey,” he said as he slid his phone into his pocket.
“Hey,” Eve said, a little off-balance. She’d expected Natalie, maybe Tom. Not Chad. “I thought you were getting drinks with the guys.”
“I wanted to apologize. What I did tonight was unprofessional. It won’t happen again.”
Chad just delivered, without a hint of irritation or sullenness, the perfect apology to go with the perfect edgy, commanding demeanor from the hallway. Blunt, straightforward, no excuses, and the lingering irritation dissipated into the humid night air. “I’m all about second chances, Chad. Third chances, not so much.”
“No third chance necessary,” he said. “You said my choices for meals were breakfast at one or dinner at three a.m. How’s dinner sound?”
He’d taken off the Eye Candy T-shirt and replaced it with a dark green polo. One half of the collar stood up while the other lay down against the curve where his shoulder
met his neck. She reached out and smoothed it. He didn’t move under her touch, simply watched her with that inscrutable expression on his face.
“Apology accepted. We’re good. You don’t have to take me out.”
He gave her a crooked grin. “You’re not going to eat? You had an orange at four.”
“I had a yogurt for breakfast,” she said defensively. “Look, this body doesn’t maintain itself. I’m on the rock star diet.”
Two lines appeared between his eyebrows. “Beer and cigarettes?”
“No,” she said, straight-faced. “We all stay skinny ’cause we just don’t eat.”
A rusty chuckle, then, “Have dinner with me, Eve.”
Simple words, voiced with low command that didn’t quite cover an oddly intent need. “Okay,” she said.
Something in him seemed to ease at her assent. “Get changed. I can’t take you anywhere in that outfit without starting a riot,” he said, the deep rasp of his voice settling into her skin.
“I can’t take these heels for another minute anyway,” she admitted. “Come in. I won’t take long.”
“You live back here?” he said as he stepped into the apartment and looked around. Faded cabinets and battered Formica countertops enclosed an area large enough for one person to work in. A bar stool sat under the counter facing the living room. The apartment was small and dim with windows in the kitchen and bedroom only, so she hadn’t spent much on renovations, instead plowing all her seed money into the bar. But she’d painted the walls a soft yellow, and used bright red and orange throw pillows on her denim sofa to make the living room inviting. “It’s not exactly the safest neighborhood.”
