by Robin Kaye
She tried to picture it and failed. No matter what this guy wore he’d look hot. He was a hot nerd.
“So, you said you worked when you wanted to.” He leaned in close. “What do you do and does it require a uniform?” His deep voice dipped another half an octave and made her feel as if he were picturing her in a French maid costume.
She took a drink of her tepid water to wet her parched throat. The man had a way of driving her mind right into the nearest gutter. “Me?” God, did she just squeak? “I do voice-overs, sing backup and some voice acting—no uniform required, except this,” she motioned to her dress.
His mouth quirked into a full smile. “That definitely beats chino waders.”
Wendy brought over her Orange Crush and Rocki thanked her before taking a healthy swig. “I like to play dress-up when I’m onstage and whenever the mood strikes. For everything else I can get away with yoga pants and a T-shirt if I feel like it, but I prefer dress-up.”
“You certainly excel at it.” He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat.
He was definitely picturing her in a French maid costume. She almost told him she had one, complete with feather duster and fishnet stockings but stopped herself just in time.
“What is voice acting?”
“I record audiobooks—different voices for different characters, that kind of thing. It’s fun and it keeps me in shoe money. What can I say? Shoes are my only vice.”
One of his eyebrows rose and he shot her a sexy smirk. “You’re sure about that?”
She had a feeling that if she spent more time with him, before she knew it, she’d have a long list of vices. The man was potent, and the way his eyes raked over her sent goose bumps skittering across her chest and shoulders. She was afraid it wasn’t the only physical response he could see.
“Your occupation and only vices are certainly more interesting than mine—IT security can be pretty boring.”
“You don’t look as if you lead a boring life—just the opposite. I’m seeing a hard-nosed cyber warrior. But then I’ve always had a vivid imagination. So, what are your vices?”
“Fast bikes, faster computers, and beautiful women with sultry voices and strange shoe fetishes—not necessarily in that order.”
“My shoe fetish is not strange.” He didn’t look as if he believed her, or maybe he would just prefer it to be strange and sexual—not that she’d know what shoes had to do with sex except maybe having sex with shoes on. . . .
“You don’t have a New York accent—”
She laughed, almost glad for the change of subject. “No, but you do.”
“So where are you from?”
“The Midwest and New England. You?”
“I’m from here, but I’ve traveled all over.”
“Wanderlust?”
“No, navy.”
“Join the navy, see the world?”
“That’s what they say.” He peeled the label off his bottle of beer. “Some parts are better than others. Still, it got me out of Red Hook.”
“And yet here you are.”
His eyes met hers and seemed to transmit a warning. “Temporarily.”
Okay, so he was going off on another adventure. “Where are you off to next?”
“Bahrain most likely.”
“The Middle East? Well, that’s certainly not a place a man with very many vices would be comfortable living.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Don’t they frown on the whole wine, women, and song thing out there? Isn’t it an Islamic country?”
“Yes, it is. Bahrain is Middle East lite. It’s a definite rub, but the job is challenging, the money is amazing, and there’s nothing keeping me in the States.”
“No wife or family?”
“If I had a wife, I wouldn’t be buying you a drink. No wife, no girlfriend, and as for my family—they’re used to me being away. Between school and the navy, I’ve been gone ten years. At least with this job I’ll be able to visit a few times a year. I’ll probably see them more than when I was in the navy.”
She checked her watch and realized her time was up. The rest of the band had taken the stage and the music had been switched off, and all that could be heard was the low murmur of conversation. “Well, that’s my cue. Thanks for the drink.” She took a long swallow and set down the empty glass.
“You’re welcome. Thanks for the company.” He stood and offered her a hand. Damn, he even had manners. He helped her out of the booth and she almost got lost in his dreamy hazel eyes. “I hope we can do it again.”
Rocki blew out a breath and decided there were a hell of a lot of things she’d like to do with him, the least of which was having a drink between sets. “Maybe. You know where I work . . . some of the time at least.”
• • •
Slater watched Rocki O’Sullivan saunter back to the bar with a host of hungry eyes following her. The woman collected attention like a magnet collects shards of metal. He knew all about the laws of attraction, but had never experienced attraction this strong.
Damn, he wished Rocki wasn’t his father’s employee. Sleeping with the help was bad business.
Rocki hadn’t blinked when he’d told her he was here only temporarily. She hadn’t gone running off because he wasn’t going to be here long enough to get attached, and after Dominique, the last thing he was looking for was attachment.
Attraction was one thing; attachment was another. All he wanted was a way to let off some steam, someone to have fun with, and if he was lucky enough to see Rocki wearing nothing but those funky shoes of hers, all the better.
She rounded the bar and shot him a teasing smile before slipping under the pass-through. After refilling her water, she moseyed toward the stage, stopping to say hello to a few people who looked like regulars and to hug a big guy Slater recognized immediately. The tendons in his neck and shoulders tightened as if someone had taken a ratchet to them. “Shit. Frankie DeBruscio.”
Frankie had spent his entire high school career beating the crap out of Slater and his brothers.
Slater had always heard that when someone returned to their childhood home, everything looked smaller than they remembered. Unfortunately this wasn’t true of badass bullies like Frankie.
Their eyes locked and a smile cut Frankie’s face in half—either he was happy to see Slater back in the ’hood, or he was looking forward to another fight.
Slater grabbed the back of his neck and tried to loosen his spasming muscles. It was way too late to pretend he hadn’t recognized Frankie. All Slater could do was thank God he was a lot bigger now than he’d been at eighteen—the last time he’d tangled with Frankie. Luckily, he’d hit a few growth spurts. He’d grown four or five inches and packed on seventy-five pounds of muscle. He was no longer the scrawny kid Frankie used as a punching bag.
He cursed under his breath. The last thing he’d expected on his first full day home was to see Frankie. Slater figured Frankie would be in prison by now. But then a few people probably thought the same of Slater.
Frankie grabbed the hand of the woman beside him and made a beeline for Slater. Shit. He recognized the woman too—Patrice Taylor. She was just as beautiful as he’d remembered. Her mocha-colored skin shimmered and her long dyed blond hair fell in perfect order around her shoulders, as if she were starring in a shampoo commercial. When she spotted Slater, her smile widened, and her bright eyes locked on him. He groaned, praying it wouldn’t be a painful reunion—he was not in the mood for a barroom brawl.
“Slater Shaw! Well aren’t you a sight?” Patrice threw her arms around him, going in for a hug, and a kiss on the cheek. “My, my, look at you. I always thought you’d fill out. I just had no idea how well.”
He cringed, waiting for Frankie to pound him into dust—or at least try.
“When did you get back home, and how long are
you staying?”
“I flew in yesterday. As for how long I’m staying? Maybe until the first of the year. How are you, Patrice? You’re as beautiful as ever.” He spoke to her but watched Frankie over her shoulder.
“You remember my husband, Francis, right?”
Husband? The school bully married the prom queen? “Francis?” Frankie had always beaten the crap out of anyone who dared to call him Francis—even the teachers. “Married. Wow. Congratulations.”
Frankie slid beside his wife and took Slater’s hand in a crushing grip, pulled him into a guy-hug, and pounded his back, almost knocking the wind out of him. “Good to see you back here, man.”
“Really?”
“Pete must be thrilled to have you home.”
Slater wasn’t sure if Pop was thrilled, but whatever—he didn’t even want to contemplate the reason for the less than thrilled reaction he’d received from the old man.
Patrice waved to Rocki, who had just started singing.
Slater couldn’t help but notice that Rocki’s eyes almost bugged out when she saw the three of them together. He wasn’t sure why, but Patrice grabbed his hand and dragged him toward the booth he’d just vacated. “Now sit down and tell us all about what you’ve been up to. Pete said you left the navy and went to grad school in Seattle. And you worked for Microsoft?”
Frankie pulled Patrice into the booth beside him. She snuggled up and rested against his big broad chest. “Give the man a minute, woman, and for God’s sake, take a breath.”
“I am breathing, you big galoot.” Patrice elbowed Frankie—make that Francis. “I’m excited that Pete’s last little rooster has returned to the nest.”
Slater had never been referred to as a rooster, a cock maybe, a rooster no. He looked from Patrice to Frankie—it was just too surreal. “I didn’t know you and Pop were close.”
Francis shrugged. “I’ve been working for Pete since shortly before Logan left. I caused Logan to need a few stitches, and Pete told me I could work for him to pay off the hospital bill or he’d call the cops. Your old man helped me, believed in me. I became a paramedic and I still help out here on my off time.”
Leave it to Pop to take on another troubled teen. And Frankie had been as troubled as they came. “You’ve worked for Pop for the last ten years?”
“On and off . . . whenever he needed a hand. We’re close to Bree too. When Pete had his heart attack, we did all we could to help her out. The woman had her hands full with Nicki and the bar, and Pete in the hospital.”
Patrice waved a hand in front of her husband. “Francis, enough about us. I want to find out about Slater. So?”
“So what?”
“Tell us everything. And don’t you dare leave anything out. We haven’t seen you in forever. Of course, Pete’s mentioned what you’ve been up to, but it’s always better to get the story right from the horse’s mouth.”
Slater didn’t even know where to start or why they were so interested. “I’d much rather hear about you two. How long have you been married?”
Patrice spun her wedding ring around her long finger. “Almost seven years. We got married right after I graduated nursing school. We had our daughter Cassidy a year and a half later—she’s five and a half—and our second, Callie, is three. I work three days a week at Methodist and run roughshod over the family the rest of the time. Now, what about you?”
“What about me?”
Patrice gave him a don’t-even-try-to-mess-with-me look. “What have you been up to?”
“I was in the navy for eight years. When I got out, I went to Digipen Institute of Technology and got my master’s in computer security.”
“You work at Microsoft?”
“I had a paid internship; now I’m waiting on a contract with OPEC. They want to buy a program I developed and hire me to implement it.”
“OPEC? As in oil?” Frankie asked.
“Yep, that would be them.”
Patrice leaned forward. “Where will you work?”
“Bahrain to begin with—if all goes well.” If not, he’d be looking for a job but couldn’t imagine going back to Seattle. No. He’d find a job someplace else. Someplace that was Dominique-free.
Drinks were delivered and both Frankie—make that Francis, damn that was going to take some getting used to—and Patrice thanked the server by name.
Patrice took a sip of her margarita and licked the salt off her top lip. “Bahrain.” She looked as if she were searching her internal database. He saw the spark the moment she retrieved the data. “Isn’t that an island in the Middle East?”
Slater took a drink and peeled the edge of the label off the cold bottle, not meeting Patrice’s penetrating golden brown eyes. “That’s correct.”
“What’s a guy like you going to do in an Islamic country?”
“A guy like me? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Dude, Patrice meant a single guy like you.” Frankie took a swig of his beer.
Patrice interrupted. “No, I meant the girl-in-every-port kind of guy. I’ve heard all the stories.”
“You have? From who?”
“Storm and Logan.”
Francis looked a little sheepish. “Patti has a way of dragging information out of anyone with a pulse. Still, isn’t it gonna be a bitch trying to get a date there?”
“I don’t know. I really hadn’t thought about it.” All he thought about was getting away from Dominique, Seattle, and Red Hook. Oh, and making a shit-ton of money. So much money that after five years, he would make Dominique and her new fiancé look like paupers. “It doesn’t matter. The last thing I need is a woman to complicate my life.”
Patrice pushed her long hair behind her shoulders and nailed him with her golden brown stare. “Complicate your life? Sounds to me as if you don’t have much of a life to complicate. You’ve been gone almost ten years, and all you’ve talked about is your job. Granted, it sounds as if you’ve been plenty busy and very successful, but do you have a life? A life outside work? It doesn’t sound as if you’ve taken much time to smell the roses.”
“Patrice, there aren’t many roses in the middle of the Arabian Sea, and since I left the navy, I’ve been working my ass off to get through school. I’ve been busy. Smelling the roses hasn’t been an option.”
A smile spread across Patrice’s pretty face, the kind of smile that made him wonder if she knew something he didn’t, and made the hair on his arms prepare to evacuate his skin. “Well, you have a month or so to just sit back and smell all the roses you want. And don’t think I didn’t notice how you watched my girl Rocki walk away. She was sitting here with you for her entire break, wasn’t she?”
Shit. “Rocki seems very nice.”
“Of course she’s nice. She’s one of my best friends and she’s single.”
Yes, they’d established that. “She’s also Pop’s employee, and since I’ll be helping out here at the Crow’s Nest and plan to be out of here come the first of the year, it’s probably best not to complicate matters.”
“Oh that’s right. You don’t need a woman to complicate your so-called life.”
“Right.” Not unless Rocki was into some very uncomplicated, hot, explosive, mind-numbing sex and could keep it on the down-low. Still, the gleam in Patrice’s eye told him she already saw too much.
“Hey, you’re both adults, and as far as I know, Rocki doesn’t like complications either. She dates, but she’s never had a long-term relationship in the three years that I’ve known her.”
Francis wrapped his arm around his wife. “Now, Patrice, keep your nose out of his business.”
Patrice waved away her husband’s warning. “What? So I want my friends to enjoy themselves. They’re both single adults and they’re both not looking for”—she held her fingers up to make air quotes—“complications. I think they’d be perf
ect for each other. Temporarily, that is, and from the sparks shooting between them while they were tucked into this booth earlier, they’re not going to be able to stay out of each other’s pants for long anyway.”
Patrice slid out of the booth pulling Frankie along with her. “You know what I always say, if you can’t beat them, you might as well just cheer them on. It’s like rooting for the Cubs—you know it’s not going to end well, but it’s always fun to watch.”
CHAPTER 3
Rocki loved her friend Patrice like a sister. She’d never had one, but she knew from having a brother that sometimes you could love your sibling and want to throttle him or her at the same time. On her way to the stage, she’d given Francis and Patrice a hug, refilled her water, and then started her next forty-minute set. She sang, played the piano, and watched Patrice make a beeline for the hot biker dude whose table Rocki had just left.
To her amazement, Patrice proceeded to hug and kiss him like they were lifelong friends. Shit. To say that Patrice was known for sticking her nose in everyone’s business was like saying that Congressman Weiner was known for sexting—it was the God’s honest truth. Patrice would know the poor man’s life story before she let him leave the booth.
Thinking back, Rocki realized she hadn’t even gotten the guy’s name. She’d been too busy mentally divesting him of all clothing to ask pertinent questions. Sometimes she wondered about herself. Was she so sex starved she’d jump the first man who floated her boat? Unfortunately the boat was a naval vessel. Great. She had no problem imagining him in dress whites or out of them apparently. Of course, when it came to men, her one weakness was a man in uniform and if they were sailors, all the better. That was why she always made it a point, during Fleet Week, to stroll through South Street Seaport daily and check out the scenery.
The trio retired to the same booth she and hot biker guy had shared. The poor man looked as if Patrice had just read him his Miranda rights. What the hell was she up to? And how did she and Francis know him? Sure, the guy said he was from Red Hook, but he’d also said he’d been away for ten years.
Rocki made it through her set without messing up the words, which was a true miracle, because the entire time, she found her gaze landing on the booth and the man.
