Kitabı oku: «Nightcap», sayfa 2

Bruce took a deep breath, and popped another bloodpressure pill. “Your brother called.”

“Why are you answering phones?”

“I thought it was you,” said Bruce in his needy voice.

“Which brother?”

“The bar owner. He left messages for you on your phone.”

Sean pulled his phone from his pocket, noted the absence of coverage and swore. He headed for his office phone and dialed Gabe’s cell.

“What?”

“They shut Prime down, Sean. What the hell did you do? You were supposed to fix this problem, not make it worse. For the past two years I’ve been fighting with the health department, the building department, the liquor board and the gas company, but nobody’s ever shut the place down before. And do you know what today is? It’s Thursday and tomorrow is Friday. Do you know what people like to do on Friday? Drink.”

Sean frowned. This was supposed to be fixed. “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Who shut it down?”

“Some pencilhead from the mayor’s office. Along with the health department. Along with the historical society. Along with the state liquor authority. It was a huge party. You should have been there.”

No way. No freaking way that Cleo Hollings had done this. She was at the bargaining table. She couldn’t have done it. Women didn’t pull this crap on Sean. Ever.

“The mayor’s office? You’re sure?” he asked enunciating carefully, wanting to know exactly where the blame belonged. It would only take one short phone call from her. Thirty seconds or less. Yeah, she could have done it. And she had been mad. Tired, cranky…frustrated. He remembered those sleepy eyes and got himself aroused once again, which only made him madder. So Cleo Hollings really wanted to go head-to-head with him? Fine.

“Posted a notice on the door, it’s all here in black and white. Not serving drinks tomorrow, Sean.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he answered tightly. “We’ll have you opened before happy hour.”

“Are you sure?”

Sean’s smile wasn’t nice. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

2

STRIKE NEGOTIATIONS were stalled, and Cleo came back to her office in a foul mood. The lead negotiator had started by yelling at her, Cleo had yelled back, and things went downhill from there. When she returned to the bull pen where her offices were, Sean O’Sullivan was there waiting. He looked flushed, heated with anger and…yes, even then, resembling Mark Anthony.

This no-life stuff was starting to fry her brain.

“You had one of your little flying monkeys shut down the bar, didn’t you?” he ranted, striding into her office, daring to read her the riot act—her—in her own office. Suddenly his hotness factor didn’t matter so much, although he did have a great angry voice. Good tone, a lot of malevolence and that trace of New York that made most people fear for their lives.

Belinda, one of her interns, came and stood in the doorway. “We tried to stop him, but he knows the security guards. I’m sorry.”

Cleo looked at Belinda, looked at the man. Pointed to Belinda. “I’ll handle this.” Belinda didn’t look happy, she never looked happy, but she obeyed.

And then Cleo turned to the matter at hand. Sean O’Sullivan. “We’re in the middle of a strike and I’m supposed to be running point with the transit authority. Do you honestly believe I have time to mess with you?”

“Somebody did.”

“Not me,” she said, defending herself because she was tired of everybody accusing her of everything. Undeservedly. Sometimes she deserved it, but not today, and especially not this.

He held up his hand, his eyes puzzled. “You didn’t do this?”

“Nor did any of my little flying monkeys, either,” she said, with a tight smile.

The man took a long breath and stuffed his hands in his pockets, but not before she noticed the fists. Somebody had a temper.

“Someone from this office shut the bar down.”

Tony, intern number two, appeared in the doorway, and asked, “Need help, Miss Hollings? I know your meeting with the mayor is coming up. I can kick this guy out,” he said, ignoring the fact that this guy could take him down in ten seconds or less. Tony was like that—loyal, yet short on brains. He’d go far in city government.

“It’s a bit late for that, Tony. I’ll look after it, thank you for trying.” Tony gave Sean one more look and then left the office.

Cleo glanced at her watch. Tony was right about one thing, the mayor was going to be here any second, waiting for an update. “You will leave. Now is good.”

The stranger slammed her door shut, and settled himself on her couch as if he planned to stay. He looked around the room, the picture of casual indulgence. “I don’t care if you have time or not. Somebody in this office is screwing up my brother’s life and I’m not happy about it.”

“Nobody from this office is interested in your bar. I have a meeting with the mayor.”

“Still haven’t fixed that strike yet?” he asked, and this time, it was her hands that fisted.

Jackass. Mark Anthony? Fat chance of that. Mark Anthony would never question her governing skills, not even if he thought that Cleopatra had sabotaged his fiefdom. Okay, maybe then.

“So if there is a strike that’s keeping everybody so busy,” he continued, “how come someone from this office, someone from the health department, someone from the historical society and somebody from the state liquor authority are all out posting a notice on the door at my brother’s bar?”

Cleo’s eyes narrowed at that. Out of habit, she turned her angry voice into her soothing constituent voice. It wasn’t easy, but a necessary job requirement. “I can’t do this at the moment, but I promise that I’ll look into it as soon as the strike is over.”

“Gee, now I think I’ll sleep better,” he snapped back, seeing her soothing constituent voice for what is was. A sham.

“I like you better when you’re nice,” she ventured, which was a half truth. She liked him better when he was nice, but he got her insides all tight and humming when he wasn’t. Disturbing, yet true.

“Most people do,” he responded, and then pulled out a phone in the middle of her office, as if he owned the joint.

Cleo pointed at the door. The man smiled back.

Jackass.

“Mike. It’s Sean O’Sullivan. How you doing? How’s the wife? Really, what is this, number four? Getting busy, aren’t you? So listen, talk to me here. I’m running down to the station at Prince Street, late for court, you know how it goes, and I race down the stairs, and when I get to the bottom, it’s all empty, so I whap myself on the head for being such an idiot that I forgot about the strike. You guys are killing me here. You know what you’re doing to my career, and don’t laugh….”

Cleo watched him. Fascinated. He was a lawyer. It explained much. But who was Mike?

“I know you don’t have anything to do with it, but what’s the real holdup on the strike?”

“Yeah, mayor’s a dickhead, I know, I know. I didn’t vote for him.”

Sean stood up, and began pacing around the office as he talked, completely taking over the place. He ignored her Rutgers diploma on the wall, ignored the press pictures next to it, ignored the picture of Bobby McNamara at his inauguration and even ignored the half-knitted afghan that she hadn’t stitched on in ten years, but still kept her warm when absolutely necessary. He ignored everything, including Cleo.

“Pay raise of ten percent? That’s nutso in this day and age, Mike. Why don’t your guys take something less? I don’t know. Five seems reasonable to me.”

Two seemed reasonable to Cleo, but she started to pay closer attention. Mike, whoever he was, seemed to know things.

Sean nodded, stopping a moment to tap the mayor’s bobblehead on her desk, which nodded back. “They’re holding out for seven?”

Hell would freeze first. A seven percent raise? Was everyone in this town insane? Probably. Including her.

But she wasn’t stupid. She scribbled a note and shoved it at him.

Pension?

He took it. Nodded. “Okay, so what about the pension stuff? What if the transit authority pulled a Detroit, and put some money into a kitty, letting the unions fund it after that?”

Establishing a trust? Oh, creativity. Cunning. And it would save billions in the long run. Cleo liked that. She really, really liked that.

She scribbled a number on the paper and Sean jacked his thumb higher.

Cleo motioned her thumb down.

Sean scribbled a counter number on the paper, and Cleo pulled out her calculator and started running numbers. This could work. She looked at him with surprise. He noticed and flashed a cocky grin as if she should have never doubted him.

“I know, I know, the transit guys are whackjobs, too, but you think they’d bite? They should bite on that. I want to ride the subway again, Mike. It ticks me off. This is my city. Besides that, we’re a few weeks away from Thanksgiving. You got all those kids wanting to see the parade, the giant balloons, Santa Claus. Come on, Mike, those guys can’t disappoint the kids. Santa Claus uses the subway, too, and the kids know it.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m a dreamer. Anyway, just wanted to put a bug in your ear. You know me, always ready to whine about something. Listen. We’ll have to go out to dinner. You and Peggy and the rug rats…

“Nobody special here. Same old, same old, whoever’s on speed dial is good enough for me.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t think hell’s freezing anytime soon…. Uh-oh, boss is yelling. Bad news. Gotta go. Thanks, Mike.”

Sean hung up the phone and looked at Cleo, not missing a beat. “Can you do it?”

“I can’t do it,” she said, only to be contrary, because she was back to being aroused, and it ticked her off that union negotiations could affect her like that. The transit authority could fund the trust, and possibly stave off a fare hike until 2012. The mayor would be a hero.

“I bet you can do it. The city would be stupid not to put it out there. They’ll save millions in the long run.” He collapsed on her couch, again like he owned the place.

“Who’s Mike?” she asked.

“Mike Flaherty. Legal representation for the national transit union in their civil rights cases. We went to Penn State together. And the transit authority was once a client of the firm. Not my area, but I know Mike. He’s a good guy. Peg’s really great.” He talked like he knew everybody in New York, and she began to wonder if he did.

“Who are you?”

“Sean O’Sullivan.”

“I remember your name. Who are you?”

“Lawyer. McFadden Burnett.”

“What do you practice?” she asked, hoping he was contract negotiations. Boring, by the book, pansy-ass contract negotiations.

“Medical malpractice defense.”

Medical malpractice defense? In the jungle of law, med-mal defense lawyers were the carnivores. The ones with sharp teeth and a bloodthirsty mind. Oh, it would be a sick, misanthropic woman to have that depraved factoid twist her panties in a knot. A very tight, pressurized knot. Very, very sick.

Unfortunately, all she could think about was Sean leaning over the conference room table, taking a deposition, hammering away at the witness, over and over, pounding, pounding until they were weeping for him to stop…

Very, very sick.

“You sure he can follow through?” she asked, calling upon every inch of her humanity, and methodically untwisting her panties.

Sean shrugged. “He doesn’t have any reason to lie to me. Try it and see. It’s a starting point for negotiations, since whatever you’re doing isn’t working. And don’t go over five-and-a-half percent on the wage increase. Mike was saying seven, but he always shoots high by a couple of points. I played poker with him a few times. Not pretty, especially after he’s had too much to drink.”

“I’m going to owe you for this, aren’t I?” she asked. She didn’t have debts, not even a mortgage. She hated owing favors, she hated payback, but she had a feeling that Sean O’Sullivan was hard-core about payback, demanding his pound of flesh, pounding away until she was weeping….

Oh, gawd. This was only, only from lack of sleep. And possibly lack of sex, because the hallway quickie at last year’s Christmas party with George from media relations did not even count in the big scheme of things. And it certainly was right up in there in Cleo’s “mistakes that I won’t make again” file.

Sean O’Sullivan smiled at her, with a slow show of teeth, and a look in his eyes that said, “I don’t do quickies.” Cleo shivered. “You’ll owe me, but only if you think you can get ten thousand unionized transit workers in line in the next twenty-four hours.”

She could feel the hot flash in her blood. Medical malpractice, she reminded herself, trying to stop the bubbling in her veins. It didn’t help. “I can have them crying for mercy in two.”

“Dinner tonight. And you’re going to listen to me about Prime.”

“Negotiations,” she shot back.

“A drink, then,” he countered. “After the talks.”

She looked at him, studied that squared, stubborn jaw, considered the shadowed, take-no-prisoners gaze and scrutinized the nose that had probably been broken twice. She understood why.

“All right,” she replied, against her own better judgment. She would be needed at home, and probably had only about an extra thirty minutes to herself, but that was more than enough time. In her world of transit workers, wastewater, taxation and permits, it wasn’t often that a Sean O’Sullivan walked in. Nope, he was her orgasm, and she was going for it before he walked out again. “It might be late before the talks wind up,” she warned.

“The later the better,” he replied, tossing his card on the desk, causing the mayor’s bobblehead to shake with disapproval.

In the upper cavity of her chest, there was a strange thudding, a chamber long forgotten. Sean O’Sullivan was a player, she reminded herself. A walking orgasm and nothing more. Thirty minutes and out. And hopefully, the thirty minutes would be well worth it.

Cleo took the card in her fingers, knowing it was better to get things over with, repay the favors and get back to the chaos of her own life.

BOBBY MCNAMARA, THE MAYOR OF New York City, was in his first term, a lifelong liberal, yet he had the magical ability to attract the money-backed vote of the Wall Street Republicans. The crime rate was down, unemployment was down, tax revenues were flowing like New York’s finest Finger Lakes wine, and the housing bust had yet to quash the Manhattan real estate market. In the five boroughs of New York, times were definitely good. The McNamara administration had been a tremendous success, in no small part due to Cleo’s long hours and hard work.

The mayor was a good-looking man, distinguished, in that fifty-year-old, news anchor way, with a gravelly voice that matched his appearance. Bobby had the usual politician’s eye for the ladies, but he never stepped out of bounds, which is why he and Cleo worked together so well. There was lots of gossip over the years, but Cleo kept her nose down, Bobby kept his nose clean, and without any smoke to fuel the fire, the gossip always died away.

However, whenever Bobby was nervous, the fingers on his left hand played in the air, never staying still. Right now, Bobby seemed to be typing out War and Peace.

“We’re getting killed, Cleo,” he said, taking a moment to reread the latest headline about the strike, “STALLED,” and then grimaced painfully. “Tell me you can work a miracle.”

“I can work a miracle,” Cleo assured.

“Really?” he asked.

“Yeah. Trust me, boss. We’re fine.” Okay, that was cocky, possibly stupid because she didn’t know if Sean’s insider info would amount to anything or not; however, he had been sure of himself. Arrogant. Confident. Attitudes like that didn’t come from delusions, they were earned.

The talks were in a midtown hotel, and before Cleo left her office, she showered, changed, and yes, the green cashmere was the best date dress she kept in her office, and no, she did not pull her hair back into a ponytail because it flattered her cheekbones. It was because she needed to keep her hair out of her eyes while she ran numbers during the talks.

Happily, a mere two hours later, Cleo knew that Sean O’Sullivan had been right. The city’s chief negotiator and the transit union boss were sorting out the final details of the agreement, and Cleo walked from the room, nearly dancing with the power of it.

Her first call? That was easy. A heads-up to the mayor to shave and wear the Brooks Brothers jacket in navy that matched his eyes and showed up well on television because the strike was nearly over.

City Hall was empty except for the security guards. Somehow everyone knew the strike had been settled. The security guards waved as she walked alone to her office. Cleo was dead on her feet, but there was a smile on her face. The Wicked Witch of Murray Street was smiling. Anyone who knew her would call it job satisfaction. Sean O’Sullivan would call it anticipation. He would be right.

Once in her office, she checked for new messages. If there was an emergency at home, she had to call him and cancel. The chance would be gone because Cleo didn’t get chances like this often. She wanted to see him, wanted to feel his arms, his mouth. Wanted to feel those killer thighs wrapped around her, and feel her blood race. It had been so long since she felt like this, and it was selfish to want tonight. However, if they were fast, and she made it home before midnight, everything would work out fine.

There was only one message. It was from the mayor, telling her congratulations again, and asking her to set up a meeting with the Healthy New York committee first thing tomorrow morning. With the transit strike priority number one, they’d avoided the whole issue of Bobby’s brainchild, a free children’s clinic in Harlem and, in the mayor’s words, “time was wasting.”

Right.

Cleo took a deep breath and dialed.

“Yes?” Sean answered, knowing exactly who it was. Even over the phone, the sensual voice made her pulse beat faster.

“Tell me where to meet you.”

“There’s a place at the corner of Forty-seventh and Tenth. How long will it take you?”

Cleo peeked out the window at the streets. “Give me half an hour.”

“See you then.”

3

THE DRIVER DROPPED HER OFF at the address that Sean had given her, and Cleo stepped out of the Town Car.

“You need me to wait?” he asked. A congenial man, Thomas, Tommy, Stewart, Eric, something…

“No need.” In a few hours the transit workers would be drifting back to work and, worst case at this time of night, she could take a cab. The November wind was kicking up and Cleo pulled her black leather coat tight. Soon she would have to move from leather to wool, but she really liked her black leather. There was probably something subliminal in that, but Cleo chose not to analyze it.

Right now, she was here to listen to Sean O’Sullivan, try to fix his problem and sneak in a six-minute orgasm as a personal aside. She had forty-five minutes before she had to be home, so time was of the essence. As a master in productivity, Cleo could get to full climax in one hundred and forty seconds. Forty-five minutes was positively utopian.

With her schedule and her life, tonight was pretty much it for the next three months, and she was pinning all her hopes on Sean O’Sullivan. Hopefully in the full forty-five minutes he would give her enough memories to get her through the winter. She smiled to herself because she suspected he would.

Gingerly Cleo stepped up to the old wooden door of the bar and then stopped, shaking her head in disbelief. The city’s closure notice was nailed there prominently, and she realized exactly where he had directed her.

Prime.

She should have figured it out immediately and maybe if she was operating on more sleep, she would have.

Was it worth it to go above and beyond the call of duty, all for lust? Did she really need sex? Her womanly parts protested that it wasn’t merely a rhetorical question.

Ruthlessly she ignored them, studying the fine print on the notice on the door. It was by the book, offering no clues as to who was directing this little vendetta. People thought that bureaucracy was all cut and dried, computerized and inhumane, but that was a far cry from the sordid truth. Every single employee knew the exact steps to make someone’s life miserable. And that was the beauty of city government. So many opportunities for mayhem and havoc.

Not that Cleo spent her time working on petty schemes. No, she had a city that needed her 24/7. A city, and right now—a bar.

The place was definitely from another era. A green awning on the outside, a smoked glass window with oldfashioned beveling around the edges. She was admiring that beveling when Sean walked up behind her, still in the same suit that he’d been in earlier. This time, the trendy black tie had worked its way loose.

“Come on in,” he invited, his eyes skimming over her, and the black leather coat wasn’t enough to stop the shiver down her back. Anticipation. Ruthlessly she ignored that, too. This was business, at least for now. She stepped inside and it was as if she’d gone back in time. Three separate mahogany bars formed a U shape. The floor was oak, pockmocked from years of abuse. Even with all the imperfections it was still shiny and polished to a sparkling gleam. Pictures and even more pictures lined the wall, tacked together with tape, staples, nails and pins, and they were all pictures of people in the bar. New Yorkers over the years.

Oh, she didn’t want to like this. She didn’t want to like him too much. All she wanted was one orgasm, and to go back home to her nicely frantic life.

“Like it?” he asked, watching her face for clues.

Too much. “It’s nice. Like a thousand bars in the city. So, tell me what’s been happening.” Cleo frowned, a trademarked frown that had been known far and wide to strike fear in the hearts of city workers, and sometimes even her boss.

Sean didn’t even look fazed. He gestured for her to take a seat and then pulled up a stool next to her. “Two years ago, my brother Gabe bought up the space next door, and then started having some problems with the bar. Gabe, myself and my brother Daniel are on the deed, and we help out some, but it’s really Gabe’s bar. When it was a speakeasy back in the twenties, they called it O’Sullivans. Our great-grandfather opened the place, and over the years an O’Sullivan always ran it. It faded out and nobody really cared, and an uncle or cousin, somebody, I don’t know who, split it in two, and sold off the half next door. Gabe, he wanted to get it back, to restore the place to the way it was. Anyway, the problems started when he filed the building permit. They held it up until I got a friend in the building department to give us a pass, and then after that it was a health inspection, but then I had a friend in the health department, and she helped me straighten out that mess, although it wasn’t pretty. Then the pipes under the sidewalk outside needed work and they had to tear up the concrete and that lasted a month, and now we’re fighting the historical building designation, and somewhere along the way, the building department took back the building permit, so we’re stuck with a half-renovated bar.”

He pointed to the back wall, which wasn’t wood, but a canvas tarp.

Either the O’Sullivans were the unluckiest building owners in the tristate area, or else something dirty was going on—which was always a distinct possibility.

“You think this is all coming from the mayor’s office?” she asked.

“It’s the only place that has ties to all the agencies that have caused us problems.” He sat forward, his hands pressing on his thighs and she noticed a subtle shift in him. The eyes weren’t so sure anymore, not so cocky. Family. Nothing like family to shatter a normal person into little emotional pieces. “Can you do something?”

“Yes,” she promised, and she would. This was her job; this was what she lived for. Okay, the perks were nice, but fixing the city? That was even nicer. Tomorrow, Cleo would talk to the mayor’s secretary. It’d be a start.

“Then we toast,” he said, pulling out a bottle of champagne from behind the counter and pouring two flutes of bubbling, fizzing champagne that hurt just to look at it. “It’s my brother’s best. If you don’t tell him, I’ll replace it before he notices it.”

She lifted her glass, took the obligatory inhale, but it was him that kept drawing her senses. Champagne was for sissies.

Sean O’Sullivan was like a cauldron of steamy magic, calling her name. The intense heat warming her skin, the strong emotions tickling her nose and the taste…she couldn’t imagine the taste, but her mouth was watering for a taste.

“You’re being very nice about helping me out,” he told her, sounding disgustingly surprised.

Cleo sighed. “I should have known you’d be a chauvinist.”

The dark brows rose. “I thought I was giving you a compliment.”

“If there was no surprise in your voice, it’d be a compliment. With that tone, it’s a backhanded one at best. If I yell at people, if I make someone do their job, if I put huge demands on people, I’m, well…you know the word. It’s not my favorite. Put a man in my shoes, with my mouth, and he’d be a hero.”

“I read the article about you. Fascinating. The Wicked Witch of Murray Street. Is that why you got the nickname?”

It wasn’t a story that she told often, it definitely wasn’t the story she’d told the reporter, but she was tired, and she liked the way Sean’s eyes focused on her with such intensity, as if she was the only woman who existed. “Right out of college, I got a job in the city’s public housing office. It’s a total zoo there. When I started, I was a complete greenhorn. I said please and thank-you and told people how great they were doing. Management 101. Nothing ever got done, and my performance reviews sucked eggs. Finally, after eighteen months, one of my superiors—a woman—took me aside and told me that this was New York, not Buckingham Palace, and I needed to grow a pair and that people were going to walk all over me if I kept acting nice. So I stopped, and you know what? She was right. I yelled, I got problems solved. I perfected my snarl, and people did things outside the job description for the first time in their careers. I embraced my inner dictator, and lo and behold, I got noticed. Why do you think I’m the only female Deputy Mayor on his staff?”

“I heard he likes the ladies,” he remarked casually, those intense eyes focused on her mouth.

Quickly Cleo downed her champagne, feeling the buzz, but not from the alcohol. “Is that your not so subtle way of asking if I’m sleeping with him?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“I bet he’s disappointed,” he murmured, piercing eyes full of questions.

“I make him look good, he deals with the disappointment.”

“So is there somebody?” he asked, refilling her glass.

“Is there somebody I’m sleeping with?” she clarified, wondering if that would deter him. She didn’t think so. He looked like a man with one driving goal.

Her.

“Sleeping, not sleeping, dating, involved with, living with, etc. Any of the above.”

“There’s no one,” she told him, because she didn’t have space in her life for anyone.

“Good. Then who’s Mark?”

Cleo felt something warm her cheeks. Some people referred to it as ‘curl up and die’ embarrassment. There were things she would confess, but a ludicrous sexual fantasy where she was the ruler of the world was not one of them. “He’s nobody.”

“You can tell me,” Sean coaxed, his voice dripping with innuendo, like a man who knew she had sexual fantasies and wanted to hear them all—in explicit, step-by-step, nerve-shattering detail.

No.

“What if there is another man?” she shot back, deciding his ego was entirely too big.

He shrugged. “It’s a challenge. But not impossible.”

“You think you’re that good?” She arched a brow in what she hoped was patent disbelief, rather than hopeful enthusiasm.

“See, that’s a trap that a lot of people fall into. They think there’s some silver bullet to sex. But the truth is that every woman is unique and most men are too lazy to discover that all-important fact. Every woman has that one place on her skin that aches to be touched, and it’s a man’s job to find it. The one way of kissing her that makes her mouth hum. That one thing that she’s dying to do, but would never confess to anyone. Everything comes down to that moment when her eyes get hot and wild, and she’s not seeing anyone else but you.”

“And you know all that about me?” she asked, both terrified and aroused, her breath quickening with each slow and seductive word.

“Not yet,” he said, and he took her right hand, turned it over, and stroked his index finger over her palm. “A woman’s body is like a map. You start at one place. Then another. Then another and eventually you discover what she wants.”

Cleo struggled to breathe. That sounded like a helluva lot longer than forty-five minutes.

Discreetly she sneaked a look at her watch before she remembered. She didn’t have a lot longer than thirty minutes. She didn’t even have a little longer. All she had was what she had, and she knew that thirty minutes was never going to cut it.

He wasn’t the kind of man who did quickies, she recalled, cutting off the disappointment before it could start.

Time to leave. Time to cut her losses and scram. She kept telling herself that, but instead she sat, foolishly glued to the bar stool. Her hand was clutching his, as she fell into the dark, dangerous eyes.

“I have to leave,” she said, her voice weak with what sounded like longing.

Before she could move, before she could leave, before she could come to her senses, he had pulled her into his lap. His mouth came down on hers, and longing started in earnest.