by Alison Kent
Cali couldn’t resist. It was as if she were caught like a fish by a sparkling lure. Dirty dishes and all, she headed that way, reeled in by his sweet look of boyish mischief. His smile nearly brought her to her knees.
And how clichéd was that? One thing she knew well from her creative writing studies was never to settle for the first thing that came to mind, that originality was worth the struggle and the pain.
None of that mattered. Because this was real life, not fiction. And the way Will Cooper looked at her made putting one foot in front of the other a monumental feat of motor skills. She was a complete wreck, her thoughts of Will having strayed into taboo territory after listening earlier to Erin’s plans for seducing a man. A man she didn’t even yet know.
And Cali knew Will well.
A light shudder settled at the base of her spine as she set the tray on the bar and leaned her upper arm against it, moving as close to Will as propriety allowed, then moving closer—between his stool and the one beside, when his body heat beckoned.
The look on his face, the pensive expression and slightly crooked smile, had her longing to crawl straight up into his lap, wrap her arms around his neck and be done with this hands-off business.
“One of these days you are really going to have to rework your schedule and factor in some time off.” Will reached up and tucked an errant curl behind Cali’s ear. His hand lingered and then, frowning, he withdrew his touch, a look of uncertain surprise darkening his features—as if he had no idea that his hand had a mind of its own.
Cali did her level best not to scoot even closer and bury her face into the crook where his neck met his shoulder. The temptation of his warmth was hard to ignore. What she did, however, lifting her hand to retrace the path his had taken, was equally revealing. He watched the movement of her fingers, the fluttering motions she made trying to cover her blunder.
Oh, but she wished she was better at hiding her emotions because Will’s gaze had snagged on hers and she knew exactly what he was seeing. Her eyes had always been huge and liquid and unable to hide her feelings. And what she was feeling right now was exactly what she didn’t want Will to know she felt.
The way her heart tripped through her chest at the thought of his touch, the way her thoughts tripped over one another on the way to her tongue, the way arousal tripped down the length of her spine to settle deep in the core of her belly where she really wished Will would put his hand.
But he was staring and waiting and her hesitation was only making things worse. If only Erin hadn’t planted the seed of the idea for seduction. But she had—and now, looking into Will’s eyes, standing so close to the stool where he sat, Cali couldn’t think of anything else.
She took a step back and strove to appear unaffected. “I get time off. It’s just the same nights I have class. We have class.”
A corner of Will’s mouth quirked with a crooked grin. “So how come if we have three nights a week together in class and I hang out here the nights you work that it seems like we don’t have any time together?”
“Because we don’t have any time together.” Cali shrugged even as expectation increased the rhythm of her heart. Was he wanting them to have time together? “We have class time and work time and we try to squeeze studying and brainstorming into snatches that seem about as long as a commercial break.”
“Yeah. I know.” He fingered another of her stray curls, this time running the back of his hand and his fingers down the side of her throat. “But I was talking about us. Spending time. Together.”
“Us? Together? Not working on the screenplay?” Cali had to be sure of what Will was thinking because what she was thinking had to be obvious. Her cheeks felt like two stovetop burners turned up high. Was he really suggesting what she’d hoped now for two months he’d suggest?
“Right.” He moved his hand back to his beer mug and winked. “Last I knew it was called dating. Or, at least, hanging out.”
He’d added the second part when her breath had hitched at the first. His use of the word dating had thrown her for a loop. That was all. She hadn’t meant to give him pause when she’d paused. She’d only been making sure she was still breathing and that her feet were still on the ground.
“Hanging out sounds great,” she said though it sounded like a crummy silver medal compared to the gold of dating Will. Why the hell had she hesitated?
This was it. Now or never. She had two seconds to make her decision because a customer had signaled for a refill on his beer. And then she caught sight of Erin chatting with three white-shirt-and-designer-suited hotties at the bar and that was it.
Man To Do time.
Cali picked up her tray. “Hanging out sounds great. But dating? Now that sounds like heaven.”
And then she leaned forward and kissed his bristly cheek, feeling the fire of Will’s gaze burning into her back as she walked away.
3
Raleigh Slater needed to catch up on his shut-eye. The catnaps and midday siestas he’d been surviving on weren’t cuttin’ it anymore. He needed eight hours. He needed ten. Hell, combine the two and make it an even eighteen. He was running ragged and it was beginning to show.
Not in his work. That wasn’t going to happen. He hadn’t busted his ass for the biggest part of his life only to turn around and fuck it up by falling asleep on the job. But it was beginning to show in his face.
He dragged a hand down his jaw, needing a shave, afraid, as dog-tired as he was, that he’d slip and slice through his jugular if he put as much as an electric razor to his skin. He stared at his mirrored reflection, realizing the thought actually held a measure of appeal.
One nice clean slash and it would all be over. His career. His life. And the godforsaken wait for the end he’d seen coming since turning down a devil’s bargain with the prince of darkness himself. A decision Raleigh was living to regret.
Yep, one good slash and he’d be done with this nightmare. And wasn’t that exactly what HE was waiting for Raleigh to do. To take himself out. To realize the monumental mistake he’d made when he’d “just said no.”
That was why HE had sent the woman. Raleigh should’ve been faster on the uptake. He’d taken way too long to figure it out.
Every time he turned around she was there, crossing his line of sight while he sat holed up on a stakeout, distracting him from the subject at hand with her long-as-the- Mississippi legs and amazingly fair skin—considering she lived in a city where the sun ate and burned flesh with abandon—and her copper-colored hair swinging…
Copper-colored hair? Fuck. Had he really just written copper-colored hair?
Sitting in a booth in a far dark corner of the bar, Sebastian fingered his pencil until it threatened to snap under the pressure of angry frustration. He stared at the yellow legal pad, shook his head and snorted.
The female protagonist in this Ryder Falco novel did not have copper-colored hair. She was a rare white blonde befitting her angelic nature. Clichéd, perhaps, and he might change his mind during revisions. But one thing was certain.
The red hair he was writing about belonged to Erin Thatcher and not his fictional heroine.
After another night with less than three hours of sleep—or had it been daylight when he’d finally crawled into bed?—he’d decided tonight was the night he’d make his long overdue visit to Paddington’s On Main. And this time he’d actually walked through the door.
He’d waited, timing his visit to an hour when he’d known the bar would be busy, wanting to remain undetected as long as he could. The same way he remained undetected when he walked the streets at night—the best way he’d found of getting into Raleigh’s skin to move his story forward. So what if Sebastian ended up on the corner across the street from the bar every time, staring through the windows fronting Main Street?
He told himself he needed to observe her in her natural habitat in order to plan his next move. Less of a lion stalking a gazelle and more of a hawk preparing to pluck unsuspecting prey. Though he doub
ted she was all that oblivious to the sparks biting between them. Not with the way he’d caught her more than once wetting her lips while he watched.
He’d brought pencil and paper to Paddington’s and parked his backside in a booth that gave him a full view of the circular bar where she ruled. He liked that about her. That she was a woman in charge of her world.
Confidence was a good thing. Meant she knew what she wanted. Lessened the chances of her being too repressed to answer any questions he asked. Or to reply when he demanded. He wanted to give Erin Thatcher what she wanted. Because making her sweat wasn’t going to cut it.
Before he could figure out the source of his obsession, he had to take her to bed.
ERIN COULDN’T BREATHE. She doubted her lungs would ever start working again and, if they did, she still wouldn’t be able to breathe. And, no. It wasn’t the cigar smoke asphyxia she’d been anticipating for the past year finally doing her in.
She was totally, freaking paralyzed.
Sweat coated her palms, tickled the small of her back, soaked into the underwire bra she wore beneath her black monogrammed polo. The hair growing low on her nape frizzed; her skin buzzed from the static.
Ten minutes ago she’d been fine. Peachy keen fine. Then she’d looked up and seen him. The Scary Guy, her Man To Do, was sitting in the booth behind The Daring Duo. And, of course, he was facing this way, staring at her, unabashedly watching her every move.
What was he doing here? In a million years she wouldn’t buy this as a coincidence. He’d never come in to Paddington’s before. She would’ve remembered. And she couldn’t believe he’d randomly picked tonight—less than twenty-four hours after she’d brought herself off to the imagined fantasy of his hands—to visit.
This was too weird. Too totally weird.
She’d sent Cali to take his order—but only after explaining the flush of heat to her face in girlfriend-manspeak. Cali had looked at Erin like she’d lost her mind. He was The Scary Guy Erin planned to seduce? He looked like a man who had virgins for dessert, tossing them into the volcano for his after-dinner show.
And Erin thought she’d survive sleeping with him? Cali’s voice couldn’t have screamed, “Are you crazy?” any louder than her expression.
And if Cali didn’t get back here in the next thirty seconds, Erin was going to cross the room, strangle—then fire—her best friend. What the hell good did it do for Cali to waitress at Paddington’s when it took her this long to find out what the man wanted? This was not good for business. Not in the least.
Count to twenty, Erin. Count to twenty.
She could’ve counted to twenty-two thousand and it wouldn’t have been enough of a distraction. She needed something, anything, to ease the sensation of having her every move watched, her figure in her black pants and polo scrutinized, her head of burnt straw studied the way one would inspect a ripe peach before plucking it from a branch overhead.
Ripe peach indeed, she mused, even while admitting her juices were stirred. She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d actually visited her dreams. Or if he’d been in her room those minutes before she’d fallen asleep, those minutes when she’d imagined his hands to be the ones slipping into her panties and the folds of her sex.
What other reason would compel him to come here? He couldn’t have randomly picked Paddington’s to visit tonight, not after the fantasies she’d woven of his mouth and his body. She’d psychically summoned him. That was it. He’d come because she’d mentally called.
And nothing had ever frightened her more.
Yet…this wasn’t a Hannibal Lecter sort of scary at all. This wasn’t a wet-yourpants sort of scary. At least not the wetting usually associated with fear. No, this was more the stirred juices of a plucked peach, wet-your-panties sort of trepidation. The thought had Erin chuckling at herself. And chuckling at herself was a good thing, right?
Oh, God. Please let laughing be good and not the signal of her descent into demented hysteria.
Where the bloody hell was Cali? How long could it take to take the man’s order and make the short walk back to the bar? But Erin didn’t dare turn around. Not when she knew she’d be unable to pull off anything resembling disinterest. Because her juices were not the only thing stirred. Her interest was spinning as wildly as the bar’s blender on frappé.
Finally, Cali’s crepe-soled footsteps sounded around the end of the bar. “Well, well, well.” She moved to the cooler and pulled out a bottle of rich amber ale. Rich, imported and expensive amber ale. “I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into, girlfriend. You’ve chosen to do a man with the most excellent taste.”
Erin sank into the wide yawn of the floor opening beneath her. Leaning back against the bar, she crossed one arm over her middle and rubbed her forehead with her other hand. “Great. Just great. It’s definitely plutonium.”
“Say
what?”
“Nothing.” She waved off Cali’s query. “Just trying to decide if I want to back out before it’s too late.”
“Uh-uh. No backing out.” Cali shook her head until her curls heartily bounced.
“Not when I’ve decided to join you in your crazy scheme.”
Erin’s head came up. “Join me? Now what are you talking about?”
“Hold that thought. I’ve got an order to deliver.” Cali inclined her head toward the far side of the bar where the stools were rapidly filling. “And you need to quit slacking off and get back to work.”
The rest of the busy weekday evening found Erin and Cali with time to exchange only snippets of conversation, tossing off the verbal shorthand they’d developed during the last year of stepping over and around one another, dodging customers and servers and swinging kitchen doors. The verbal shorthand that helped streamline the bar’s operation. The verbal shorthand that was usually enough.
But not tonight. Tonight Erin needed to talk. She counted her lucky stars that it wasn’t the weekend or she’d never have managed to find out even the tidbits Cali collected and managed to whisper in passing.
“I’m not sure what he’s writing,” Cali said, exchanging empties for another round of drinks. Erin had noticed his legal pad earlier and sent Cali to snoop. “It looks like an article or a journal. Maybe even a story.”
“A story? You’re the screenwriter and you can’t tell what it is he’s writing?” Erin shoved a crate of clean beer mugs beneath the bar. “What am I paying you good money for if you can’t even snoop worth a damn?”
“If my salary is your idea of good money, we need to talk,” Cali said and scooted out from behind the bar before Erin could get her mouth around a comeback.
She put half her mind back to taking care of the customers clustered around the circular bar. With the hour growing late, the after-work professionals had been joined by the more Bohemian crowd that frequented Paddington’s long into the late night hours.
And, why not? Lots of artsy types spent time creating in quiet cafés or corner Starbucks. Even now, Will Cooper sat huddled over his notebook, working to make order from his and Cali’s chaotic collaboration, though tonight he seemed more distracted than usual. Interesting that.
So, why shouldn’t Erin’s Scary Guy find Paddington’s to be conducive to his brand of expressive art…if art was indeed what he was writing and not a list of possibilities involving plutonium? Argh, would this night never end?
Getting back to work, she finally talked the Rat Pack wanna-bes into sharing two pitchers so she didn’t have to hover near where they sat refilling one mug after another. Usually she didn’t mind the fending off of flirty come-ons that were part and parcel of bartending. But tonight she had too much on her mind. And having her Man To Do in the house wasn’t helping her state of mind.
For some reason, she found herself less of the confidante or counselor Rory had always been to his regulars—both here in Houston and in Devon’s Paddington’s. Rory, being the lovable but landlocked seafarer that he was, had spun many a mean yarn while drawing dra
ft beer or pouring shots, yet had known instinctively when to talk and when to listen.
Erin, on the other hand, sold drinks and served drinks and shot the bull or the breeze without inviting any sort of deeper intimacy from her patrons. A part of her wanted to offer more, to be the proprietor of good drink and better conversation Rory had been.
She wanted her granddad to be proud of what she’d accomplished. Instead, she often felt he wouldn’t approve, that she’d carried on but at the expense of his vision. And that left her conflicted and more than a little bit blue.
Tonight she had less than her usual cadre of wits, so making chitchat offered zero appeal. Still, welcoming any and all distractions, she allowed herself to be drawn into several of the conversations. Any excuse to stay busy, focused on work, and avoid freaking out over The Scary Guy, wondering why he’d come here, what he wanted from her and why he hadn’t yet come to get it.
