by Ally Blake
Something about the careless way his jacket hung over the back of the stool made April shift on her seat. As for the way his shirt pulled tightly across his broad back as he hunched over his drink – her type or not, he made for a compelling picture.
But it was his aloneness that got to her the most. He didn’t seem to notice anyone or anything else in the place, focussed as he was on some invisible point in the near distance, his long fingers toying unconsciously with the rim of his empty glass.
There was a man who looked anything but comfortable. Which was maybe why he’d pulled her attention again and again. In that moment she knew how he felt.
“That one?” Hazel asked, her voice warm and soft.
And April realised she’d been staring, which was expressly against one of Hazel’s rules. Only this time she didn’t turn back, blush, brush off Hazel’s comment.
This time a breathy voice in the back of her head whispered, “That one.”
“Excellent choice, darling. Now go get him,” Hazel said. “No pressure. Easy as you please. Remember he’s not the score. He’s merely practice.”
April wasn’t sure the man could rightly be called merely anything.
Hazel stood, motioned for April to do the same. Then with a deft flick of practiced fingers, Hazel began unpicking bobby pins from April’s precarious bun.
With a panicked, “No!” April tried to stop her. There’d be no controlling the riot now.
But Hazel was having none of it. She batted April’s hands away. By the time the auburn kinks and curls fell about her ears, it was too late for April to do anything but attempt to tuck them back, giving Hazel access to the scarf at her neck. She slid it free, then deftly tied it around April’s waist, cinching her floaty cream dress in tight before yanking towards the back and gathering it in a kind of silhouette at the front and a bustle at her less than voluptuous behind.
“Shake.” Hazel insisted, with what April assumed as a frown. Her marble smooth forehead made it hard to tell.
April wiggled.
“Not like that. Like a dog after a rain shower.”
April shook like a dog after a rain shower.
“Better.”
Seriously? The scarf around her waist was so tight she couldn’t fully breathe and her hair felt like a cloud sitting on top of her head. And that was considered better? If Hazel pinched her cheeks in order to pinken them, April would pinch her right on back.
But Hazel grabbed her small glittery clutch.
“Where are you going?” April asked, her voice pitching.
“To freshen up. Better if you don’t have an audience. Trust me. Go. Go! You’ll be fine. Nobody ever died from talking to a man.”
Well, that was categorically untrue. Women had historically been drugged, kidnapped, dismembered by serial killers most of whom were men. Not that Mr. Enigma looked like a serial killer. He looked sublime.
Realising she was staring again, April dragged her eyes back to Hazel only to find she was already disappearing around the far corner.
Wiping sweating palms down the sides of her now poufy dress, April focussed on Mr. Enigma’s beltline – specifically the spot where his white shirt had become slightly untucked, making him seem a little more human. The she tugged her shoulders back – her boobs definitely getting in on the action, despite Hazel’s assurances – and moved.
Sidling up to the stool next to her target, she tucked her hands around the edge of the bar. Mostly to stop them from shaking. When the world didn’t explode, she glanced sideways.
Far away he’d been imposing. Up close the man was spectacular. Huge. Like Avenger big. All broad shoulders and long legs. Sun-burnished skin gleamed against the white of his rolled up shirt. His big, square hands looked like they could break the glass with a gentle squeeze.
How on earth was she meant to recommend herself to an Avenger? She glanced back at the empty table. Thought about all the reasons why she’d ended up exactly where she was.
Hazel was right. It couldn’t hurt to give it a go.
She coughed. Not the most subtle move on the planet, but it worked.
The stranger glanced her way. His hooded gaze shifted over her hair—please let her not look like she’d stuck her finger in a socket—then slid up her neck as she swallowed, hard, before landing on her mouth.
Good lordy, but he was pretty.
Dark-blonde hair separated into frustrated grooves. Deep-set eyes shadowed by thick lashes. A sharply carved jaw not even slightly softened by the faint shadow of stubble. And to top it off, the most kissable mouth she had ever seen. The fact that his nose looked like it might have been broken at one point did nothing to mar his basic perfection.
It seemed like an eternity before his eyes lifted to hers.
It was worth the wait.
Blue, they were, deepest, dark blue. And intense. With a kind of focus that made her breath slide out of her lungs in a slow burn.
“Hi,” she said. When it came out like a choked whisper she cleared her throat and tried again. “Hi.”
After a long, painful beat the man nodded; the move pure, lazy elegance. His dark eyes continued burning into hers, like a wolf deciding whether his inclination to pounce was due to hunger or instinct.
She should be taking notes. Here was a man who knew how to recommend himself with nothing more than a look.
Belatedly remembering why she’d approached the guy, April tried to recall Hazel’s hints. Something about lifting. Catching. Holding. But what if she lifted, caught and held the wrong bits? Talk about a bad first impression—
In the end it didn’t matter.
The man turned to the bar and went back to frowning into his drink.
And that was that. No “can I help with anything in particular”. No “can I get you something for your dry throat”? No “where have you been all my life”?
Like a knot slipping free, the tension in her belly uncoiled and April found herself hit with a deep, and all encompassing, need to laugh. Raucously. Until she got a stitch. It was a testament to her willpower that she held it in.
An emotional response to acute stimulus. Her mother would call it, sucking all the fun out of the experience. Not that April was having fun, per say. But it sure was something.
So, now what? Pick another guy? Beg for a different exercise? Ask Hazel to go over her stale, old resume with a red pen so together they could nut out a formal way to convince her boss to reconsider the company-wide vote of “not-fun enough”?
No. Her immediate future was on the line. Her “happy right now” was in tatters. Little Miss Nice wasn’t cutting it anymore. If she needed to engage in a little guerrilla warfare in order to take on Jase – aka The Adorable and Wily Job Stealer – then so be it.
April hopped onto the stool beside her bar buddy. It wobbled a little as if it had one leg shorter than the rest. She waited for it to settle, then – after apologising mentally to her bra burning sisters of old – she tugged her shoulders back and pushed her boobs out, just to be sure.
The movement was enough to shift her centre of gravity; her top half tipping forwards, the stool tipping backwards. Not much over five and a half feet, her shoes didn’t touch the floor. With no purchase she panicked. Rocking the chair forward to counteract its momentum she managed to lift it right off its back legs.
“Whoop!” April grabbed the bar, putting every pelvic floor exercise she’d ever been shown to use.
Then the stool began to slide—
Suddenly everything came to a halt as a pair of strong arms caught her – one around her waist, the other gripping the stool, or – more accurately – pressed right up against her outthrust backside.
“I’ve got you,” said a deep satiny voice.
“You sure?”
“Promise.”
“Because it doesn’t feel like it.”
The stranger’s arm slid further around her waist, getting a real good grip. Muscles banded against her belly. Heat seeped through her dress.
Whoa, Nelly.
“Better?”
She nodded. Her focus vacillating between her mortal embarrassment and the hot press of his long fingers at her waist.
“Ready?” he asked, close enough his breath whispered past her ear.
Before she made up her mind, the hard muscles of his bicep pressed under her breasts, then with one deft move he heaved the stool – and her – upright.
Heart racing, April gripped the bar with both hands and breathed. Or at least she tried. Not easy when the man’s hand took a slow release of her, his fingers trailing over her stomach before finally setting her free.
She turned the stranger’s way to find him watching her with those blue, blue eyes. Only now they weren’t so contained. Now she saw a very definite glint right down deep inside.
Knowing instinctively this would be her only chance, she shoved a hand towards him. “I’m April.”
A beat slunk between them, stretching and contracting. April’s fingers tingled with a desire to curl into her palm. But at the very last moment the man held out his hand and took hers.
For all his taciturn sangfroid, his hand was warm. His grip enveloping. Sparks shot down April’s arm, leaving her with a slippery, keen, head-spinning sensation.
“Finn,” he said. Cavernous and dark, smooth as silk, his voice slid from her ears all the way to her toes.
He let go first. For a heart-tightening second April thought he might turn away from her again. If he did that would be it. She’d slink away, having failed at the first hurdle.
She could have kissed him when he asked, “What are you drinking?”
Not kiss him kiss him, of course. Just... well. Anyway.
“Water,” she said. After her death-defying stool-tipping act anything else would be a let down.
A lone eyebrow slid north. “Me too. Though I added a little scotch to mine. For colour.”
“Nothing wrong with colour.”
When his mouth quirked on one side, a sexy bracket creating a parenthesis at the edge of his lips, all she could think was, Dfurfjuburblewubb.
Finn nudged his chin north and the bartender was at his side in two seconds flat.
April would have bet the farm on the fact he never had to stick his boobs out in order to feel powerful, or whatever the male equivalent might be. She nearly managed not to glance towards his lap, but not quite.
That said, this exercise was about her attempt to make an impression on him, not the other way around.
When Finn glanced at his watch, April knew she had to make this quick. In her world that meant getting real, and fast. Which went something like this...
“You’ve been nursing that empty glass for a while now.”
A flash of something sparked in his Irish blue eyes. Incredulity? Wouldn’t be the first time.
“And how would you know that?”
“I was watching you.”
“Were you now?”
“It’s kind of a personal hobby of mine.” Years spent under her mother’s forced tutelage into body language—what kind of mother – and divorcee – would she be if she didn’t teach her daughters how to ferret out masculine subterfuge—meant reading people came as naturally to her as breathing. Another reason she’d be awesome in that new job.
“Everyone else in this place is at least pretending to have a good time.” A burst of male laughter from somewhere behind them punctuated her theory. Finn’s magnetic gaze didn’t budge. “But I’d hazard a guess that you are”—desolate, heavyhearted, alone—“brooding.”
“Are you always this unrepentantly curious?”
Not an answer. He was blocking her. Mother = psychiatrist. Under normal circumstances, with that voice, such pure seduction, deep and slow and rumbling, she’d have let him. But this was a speed date even if he didn’t know it.
“Pretty much. So you may as well tell me what a guy like you could possibly be so worried about it takes staring into an empty glass of scotch to figure it out?”
“A guy like me?”
Deflection that time. Oh, he was good. Not good enough to trick her, mind, but good. And attractive. Seriously, mind-numbingly attractive.
Lucky for her, she wasn’t actually attracted to him. Dark and broody self-contained sorts were not her type. Not in the slightest.
What was the point she was trying to make, again?
“Yes. A guy like you,” she said. “I may be a fan of the op shop school of fashion myself, but I recognise a tailored suit when I see one. Expensive hair cut. Handmade shoes. The scotch you ordered is top-shelf. And, needless to say, you’re—” She stumbled at calling the guy gorgeous to his face. “You’re not ugly.”
At that he laughed, loud enough the girls down the end of the bar turned and sighed. April didn’t blame them. She was struggling not to sigh a little herself. And she was immune.
“Is that your version of a pick-up line?”
Her hands flew to her cheeks. “No. Imagine! I’m actually a girl who appreciates a good line. Points for effort and all that. Now stop trying to distract me. We are talking about you, and your friend, the glass. I even started making up stories in my head. Had you been stood up, perhaps?”
She got a flicker of an eyebrow for that one. Yeah, like that had ever happened.
“Maybe the cup had been empty from the start as you’ve been struggling with sobriety. If so tell me to shut up right now.”
The man gave her nothing. Not with words anyway. The way he turned towards her a fraction more, the way his thumb rubbed at the rim of his glass, the way the parenthesis at one side of his kissable mouth winked into existence and stayed right where it was told her plenty.
His sobriety was fine.
And if he’d dismissed her with a glance the first time, he wasn’t planning on doing so again anytime soon.
Her voice was a little husky as she went on. “Perhaps you have to give someone bad news and are struggling to figure how to do it.”
The glint in his eye flashed brighter.
“Ha! That’s it!” April clicked her fingers right below his nose before doing a little happy dance on the stool. It wobbled precariously. She swore and grabbed the edges of the seat tight.
Laughter lighting his gaze, he said, “You okay?”
“I’m actually not entirely sure,” she admitted. Because, unlike this guy, deflection wasn’t her thing. “But we are still talking about you. What’s the bad news, and who’s about to get it?”
Finn’s thumb scratched over the shadow on his chin as his eyes flicked over April’s shoulder. She followed it only to see the cocktail table was still empty bar the bottle of bubbly and two glasses. Meaning Hazel took some freshening. Or April had been ditched.
When April looked back at Finn, his blue, blue eyes were back to watching her with the same intensity as earlier, as if he was trying to figure out what to do with her.
Whatever he wants.
Um, no! Mr. Dark and Broody was not for her. And she would have bet the farm that Tinker Bells with reddish cloud-like hair and freckled knees weren’t his go-to type either. She was like the empty scotch glass – a holding pattern.
And that was just fine.
“Unrepentantly curious and savvy,” Finn finally said, his thumb now pressing against his lips.
April struggled not to stare. It was a nice thumb. Neat square nail. Even his knuckles were gorgeous. “You know it.”
“Not lacking in self-worth.”
“I’m well aware of my skills. That is true.”
“And not ugly.”
Her eyes snapped back to his. Despite the fact that it was her line, and a bad one at that, there was no denying the surge of sensation that tripped and tumbled unexpectedly inside her belly as the beautiful man at her side used it on her.
April swallowed, knowing her voice would have been a squeak otherwise. “Now you’re trying to distract me from my mission to unearth the secret of the empty glass.”
He leant forward, his voice dropping. “I
s it working?”
She did the same. “Not even a little.”
He seemed to realise how close their faces had become a fraction later than she did. His next breath taking its time to fill his lungs. His dark gaze dropped to her mouth.
The guy knew how to give a woman his full attention like nobody’s business. He was charismatic and focussed, making April feel like they were in a bubble, separate from the rest of the bar. The rest of the universe. For a girl who’d had to pay someone to teach her how not to be taken for granted, it was heady stuff.
The bartender arrived at that moment, sliding two matching tumblers of scotch and water across the bar.
Finn lifted his drink in salute. April clinked. And eased back into her corner as if her heart wasn’t galloping away from her. “So this problem you have, is it a girl problem? Work problem? Family problem?”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re not going to let this drop, are you?”
She shook her head slowly. Then sipped at her scotch. It was smooth and rich, with a kick at the end. She licked a stray drop from the edge of her lip.
His eyes dropped at the move. His nostrils flaring as his gaze stayed for a long, drawn-out beat. Then he looked past her with more nonchalance than she could muster in a lifetime.
“I’m a total stranger,” she babbled to cover up the fact her heart now kicked hard and fast against her ribs. “This is as far from my usual haunts on as its possible to get. Ever been to Saloon Central in Surry Hills? No, of course you haven’t. That’s my kind of hangout. A street full of dives. And you’re—” She waved an accusing hand at him. Like it was his fault he’d been born looking the way he had. “Anyway, we’ve never met before so the likelihood is we’ll never meet again. So why not use me.” It’d be fair, because I’m sure as heck-fire using you. “I make a great sounding board. Another of my many and varied skills.”
Now that was recommending herself like a boss!
A beat later, Finn asked, “You trying to rescue me, April?”
Was she? Surely not. She was trying to make an impression, that was all. Besides, rescuing men from themselves was the kind of thing she did to men she was attracted to. Her Florence Nightingale complex was rather pathological that way. Worse, he’d picked up on that. While she’d been trying to slowly unravel him, he’d silently pulled her apart.
