by Tessa Bailey
Over. And over. You think I could stop at kissing?”
A shiver moved down her spine at the change in his tone. “What else did you have in mind?”
“Do you really want to know? Think very carefully before you decide.”
She swallowed with difficulty. Interesting didn’t begin to cover this man. “Tell me.”
He moved closer, his chest brushing her back.
Enough to tease her, make her want to arch against him just enough to say, the next move is yours. His mouth hovered an inch away from her ear when he spoke. “After watching that show you just put on, I have a lot of things in mind.” One hand left the bar to brush her hip. Ruby couldn’t stop herself from backing up, bringing her body flush against his. Troy hummed in satisfaction at her boldness. “Next time you bend over a table, I’m going to wrap all that hair around my fist and pull your head back. I want to watch your eyes glaze over when I fuck you into oblivion.”
Heat shot through her entire body and settled
between her thighs. She could hear her own quick intakes of breath, her accelerated heartbeat. The air she dragged into her lungs felt thick. This never happened to her. Her carefully constructed aloofness never deserted her, especially around men. But when Troy slid his hand from her hip to her belly, she shuddered under the simple contact.
“I didn’t say you could touch me.” Ruby forced the words out, her breath harsh to her own ears.
“Oh, baby. Yes, you did. Maybe not with words.” A single finger traced the waistband of her jeans. Slowly.
Invitingly. “Come home with me. Let me worship that beautiful body. All goddamn night.”
She regained some of her composure then. What the hell was she doing? She’d stopped into O’Hanlon’s to make a quick buck and bail. Instead, she was letting this near-stranger put his hands on her. Talk to her in a way that should feel wrong, but didn’t. At all. It felt sinfully good. Still, she didn’t make a habit of going home with men she’d just met. Or engaging in casual sex. She needed to put some distance between them so she could think clearly.
Ruby pushed off the table and moved away from him, already regretting the loss of contact. “I’m not going home with you.” She glanced over his shoulder where Troy’s two buddies still sat at the bar, one attempting to flirt with a blond, the other playboy-looking guy leaning back in his stool, the redheaded bartender parked between his outstretched thighs.
“Why don’t you follow their lead? You’d have a better chance of getting laid with someone else.”
He shook his head once. “Not interested in someone else.”
Frowning, she studied his features and found nothing but honesty. Where the hell had this guy come from? How could someone she’d just met make her want to break her own rules? She wanted to go home with him, she realized with a jolt of surprise. To see exactly what worshiping her body entailed. She’d never been so tempted in her life. It scared her a little how much. “That’s too bad. I have a train to catch back to Brooklyn.”
Troy scoffed. “You’re not taking the subway this late. It’s nearly one o’clock in the morning.”
“Excuse me?” She laughed in disbelief. “I’ve been taking the train since I could walk.”
He considered her for a moment, then shrugged.
“Fine. Let’s go.”
She hesitated. “What do you mean ‘let’s’?”
“I’ll ride with you to make sure the enemy you just made doesn’t follow you home to take his money back.
Then I’ll walk you to your door and leave.”
No way. Couldn’t let it happen. She didn’t want him to see where she lived. Not that she felt ashamed, exactly, of her microscopic studio apartment located above the Chinese takeout place.
“Your concern is touching, but I don’t need an escort.” He looked nowhere close to budging. “Fine, I’ll just take a cab.”
“You won’t get a cab in this snow storm.”
“You know the city pretty well for being new in town.”
He regarded her curiously. “How did you know I was new in town? I didn’t tell you that.”
“Lucky guess.”
Troy was silent for a moment, contemplating her.
“There’s an easy solution to this. You stay at my place. I take the couch. I’ll drive you home myself in the morning, when I haven’t been drinking.”
She could probably lose him if she wanted to.
Weave through the crowded bar, duck out the door, and shortcut down a side street before he even got his coat on. It’s what she would do under most circumstances.
Another part of her, however, wanted to appease her curiosity. To see where he lived, to find out what made him tick. She didn’t want to say good night just yet.
And at the end of the day, she’d always loved a good gamble.
“Let me see your wallet.”
His head jerked back. “What?”
“Let me look through your wallet,” she repeated.
“Then I’ll decide if I can trust you enough to stay with you tonight.”
Troy barked a laugh. “I just watched you fleece a guy for a chunk of cash and you want me to voluntarily hand you my wallet?”
“How can I trust you if you can’t trust me?” They were both still a moment, eyeballing each other in the middle of the rowdy bar. Finally, with an expression that said he couldn’t believe his own decision, he reached into his back pocket and tossed his wallet onto the table. She stared down in shock at the black leather wallet clipped to a shiny NYPD badge. “You’re a cop?”
“Detective, yes.”
“Now I know I can’t trust you.”
“Explain that logic.”
She gestured to the pool table where a new game
had started. “You just watched me fleece a guy, as you put it, and did nothing to stop me.”
“I’m not on the clock.”
Ruby narrowed her eyes. Damn, she usually had the ability to pick out cops from a mile away. How he’d managed to slip under her radar, she couldn’t fathom. She reached down and picked up the wallet, weighing it in her hands for a moment before she flipped it open. The first thing that caught her eye was a picture of an older couple, presumably his parents. A point in his favor. They looked happy, the older man who shared Troy’s good looks, and the much shorter merry-looking woman he had his arm thrown around.
Pushing aside a flash of melancholy, she moved on.
Gym membership, credit card, condom. She flashed him a look. He shrugged. No pictures of any kids or wifey-looking chicks. No frequent buyer card for a massage parlor. No Post-it reminders to chop up and eat anyone. He appeared to check out.
Ruby was nearing the end of her inspection when another picture grabbed her attention. Troy standing next to a man, about the same age, both wearing police uniforms. Wrigley Field towered behind them in the background. Abruptly, the wallet was snatched from her hands.
“Finished?”
She looked at him curiously. “Who is that?”
With jerky motions, he yanked his coat off the back of his chair and pulled it on around his broad shoulders.
Ruby followed suit with her own coat, watching him as she did so. Something about the picture had struck a nerve. In seconds, his demeanor had gone from teasing to rigid.
“My ex-partner, Grant,” he explained finally. “Did I pass muster? Can we go now?”
She’d always been too curious for her own good.
“Why ex-partner? What happened?” As the words left her mouth, she realized what was coming and immediately wanted to take back her question.
Troy sighed, pinning her with a look. “He’s dead. Shot during a raid earlier this year.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered before he’d even finished his explanation. Her stomach felt hollow.
She wanted to rewind the last minute and start fresh, make him smile again. An odd reaction to have over someone she’d just met,
but there it was. Damn her nosiness. With a shaky swallow, she reached over and took his hand. “Let’s go.”
With a curt nod in his friends’ direction, he led her from the bar.
Chapter Three
Troy watched Ruby move around his half-unpacked kitchen, her inquisitive gaze lighting on every surface, taking stock of the slightest details. His takeout menus, the brand of his whiskey. He doubted anything escaped her attention. She would have made a hell of an investigator, he thought wryly. Each time he spoke, Troy could actually see her weighing his words, searching for another meaning, discerning his tone.
Street smarts were probably a necessity for someone who made their living hustling people out of money.
The thought made him frown.
She took off her coat and hung it on the back of his dining room chair, once again revealing those long, jean-encased legs and low-cut black sweater. He’d nearly imploded earlier, watching her bend over in those jeans. Seeing the smooth skin of her lower back peek out just over the top each time. His mind had gone wild with the fantasy of unbuttoning those jeans, wrenching them down over her ass, and hauling her back onto his waiting erection. It had been the sweetest kind of torture, sitting aroused in the overcrowded bar, hoping for a glimpse of her cleavage, while at the same time, battling the urge to belt her back into her coat so no one else had the privilege of seeing her high, deliciously rounded breasts.
The way she’d so casually and efficiently divested the guy out of his money earlier still blew his mind.
Oh, she’d done it before. Many, many times. Troy had watched her opponent get progressively angry as the game wore on and luckily he’d been there to intervene.
Surely she wasn’t always so fortunate. He had a hard time believing the men she beat simply handed over their money once they realized they’d been conned.
He thought of the types of places she probably frequented looking for a game and inwardly cringed.
A girl who looked like her caused a stir merely by walking down the street, let alone in male-dominated pool halls. What she did on a regular basis couldn’t be considered safe by any stretch of the imagination.
She said she could take care of herself. To an extent, he believed her. But someone had introduced her to the world of gambling and he wanted to know who. It didn’t take a seasoned detective to see she was sharply intelligent and could probably do anything she wished with her life. Yet someone had encouraged her to become a professional liar instead. One who, as far as he knew, worked alone in a dangerous city with no one to step in if things went south. It made him uneasy just thinking about the possibilities. In his line of work, he knew all too well how quickly things could go to shit. The way they had with Grant.
As always, the thought of his ex-partner sent a feeling of discomfort hurtling through his chest. He’d been presented with too many reminders tonight.
First, watching Daniel and Brent interact in a way that reminded him of all too much of Grant’s antics.
Then again when Ruby stumbled on the picture in his wallet. But he couldn’t think about it yet. The pain of that fatal night months ago still felt fresh as though it had taken place yesterday.
He looked up to find Ruby watching him closely, as if she could read every single thought in his head.
Strangely, it comforted him, knowing he didn’t have to say the words out loud.
“Are you hungry?”
Ruby quirked a dark brow at his sudden question.
“You’re going to cook for me at one in the morning?”
“Have a seat,” he directed. After a moment of hesitation during which Troy suspected she was battling the urge to ignore his instruction, she pulled out a dining chair and sat, watching him expectantly.
“Omelet, okay?”
“Let’s see what you got, Chicago boy,” she responded, her lips edging up into a smile.
Troy threw an exasperated glance at her as he walked to the refrigerator to begin pulling out ingredients. “What tipped you off? The accent?”
Her smile dimmed a little, and he remembered.
In the picture she’d seen of him and Grant in their uniforms, Wrigley Field had been in the background.
Thankfully, she changed the subject. “What part of town are you from?”
“Oak Park. It’s a suburb just west of Chicago. You familiar?”
“I’ve been through Chicago once or twice,” she hedged.
“Really.” He pulled a Tupperware container out of the fridge and set it next to the carton of eggs. “Why do I get the feeling you weren’t there to catch a Cubs game?”
She ignored his question. “Are those prechopped peppers in that Tupperware container?”
Troy cracked an egg into a bowl. “Yeah.”
“I’m not sleeping with you.”
“Jesus,” he choked out. “How did we arrive here from prechopped peppers?”
Ruby pushed back her chair and stood, the poster child for nervous energy. “You must cook for girls pretty often to chop up peppers in advance, that’s all I’m saying. So if there are strings attached to that omelet, I don’t want it. No matter how good it tastes, the answer is no.”
“Actually, the peppers are for me.” He gestured with the spatula. “My mother is a chef back in Chicago.
It’s just something she always kept in the fridge, and I guess I got used to it.”
“Huh.” She sat back down and watched him cook the omelet. Once he’d finished, he slid it onto a plate and set it in front of her, then pulled out his own chair and sat.
“Who taught you how to play pool like that?”
The fork paused halfway to her mouth. “I see.
You cooked for me, so now I’m obligated to answer your questions.” When Troy simply waited, she sighed, muttering something about cops under her breath.
“My father.”
“And he approves of you going to these places on your own? Using the skill he taught you to take people’s money?”
“Approve?” She quickly swallowed her bite. “He encourages it.”
Troy’s hand flexed on the table as that infuriating piece of information sunk in. “That’s great. He knowingly sends you into dangerous situations. Sounds like he really cares about you.”
Ruby flinched a little at his sharply delivered words, and Troy desperately wished he could take them back. Her hand came to rest limply beside her plate, like he’d made her lose her appetite. When she spoke, her voice sounded different. Less confident.
And it sliced through him. “Maybe you’re right. But I don’t think he sees it like that.” She set her fork down, crossed her arms over her middle. “You’ve heard that proverb, teach a man to fish and you’ll feed him his entire life? Teaching me how to play pool was his way of feeding me for life. He didn’t, doesn’t, know any other way.”
Troy leaned forward. “Listen, I didn’t mean to say your father doesn’t care about you. I’m sorry if that’s how it sounded. I just don’t think hustling pool is the safest way to make money.”
Her chin came up, filling him with relief that he hadn’t completely shaken her self-assurance. “I didn’t come here for a lecture. We just met. You have no say in what I choose to do.”
“What did you come here for? You thought about taking off back at the bar. Searching for the quickest exit route. Why didn’t you blow me off?”
She smiled a little. “You’re one of the smart ones, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. I am.” Troy took her plate and rinsed it in the sink, then turned toward the bedroom. “I’ll go grab you something to sleep in and get myself set up on the couch.”
He could feel the weight of her suspicious gaze on his back as he walked down the hallway.
Chapter Four
What in the hell am I doing here?
Ruby slipped Troy’s navy blue police department shirt over her head and stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. No one could accuse her of bein
g a scrupulous virgin, but she didn’t go home with strange men she’d known less than an hour. Ever. Especially a cop, for Christ’s sake. What would her father, who’d taught her how to identify, avoid, and evade the police, think about her standing in a cop’s bathroom, wearing department-issued paraphernalia? He’d probably never recover from his fit of laughter. As a lifelong gambler who’d introduced his only child to the lifestyle, Jim Elliott had never spoken about members of the police force with anything but disdain. She’d grown up believing they were the ones trying to keep money out of their hands and thus, food off their table.
So why was she standing there, hoping the bathroom door would open? Hoping Troy would stride inside and kiss the breath out of her. See right through her protests and take her to bed like she wanted. She didn’t understand it. The relentless tug in her belly.
The urge to fit her ass against his lap, wiggle her hips a little. Entice him into touching her. She’d been assailed by images of them together since they’d left the bar.
He’d put the first one in her head. Bent over the pool table with her hair wrapped around his fist. From there they’d spread like wildfire.
How come the hesitation to indulge herself, then?
She knew why. Troy didn’t strike her as one-nightstand material. Unlike her, he came from a good family. A prechopped pepper kind of family. His eyes held a trace of sadness, she suspected over the death of his partner. Even when he laughed, it still lurked there, a reminder of his pain. She shouldn’t care so much. Or be so curious to learn more about him. She should have already scratched the itch and slipped out the door as soon as he fell asleep. Only the thought of doing so left her cold. And dammit, if she left without looking back, she wasn’t so sure it would be easy to forget the drink-denying, omelet-cooking, blue-eyed detective.
She pushed the troubling thoughts aside and focused on the now. Since when did she do anything besides live in the moment? Later. She would worry about the stupid feelings knocking around inside her chest later. Hell, they’d probably cease to exist as soon as she managed to work Troy out of her system.
