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Synopsis
Welcome to Eye Candy, the East Side’s hottest nightclub where the bartenders are hot, the cocktails are fancy, and danger lurks just under the surface…
Eve Webber, the gorgeous and savvy owner of Eye Candy, knows better than anyone that growing up on the wrong side of the tracks comes with certain complications. Determined to run a clean business and fix up the East Side, Eve’s plans get temporarily stalled when a potential new hire walks into her bar. The sexual chemistry crackling between them is a potent distraction…even if she refuses to mix business with the promise of pleasure.
Detective Matt Dorchester lives by strict rules that have kept him alive in impossible situations. When his latest undercover assignment has him playing a bartender, his desire for the passionate owner has him breaking every single one. Eve is in danger and her life depends on his secrecy. But once their attraction reaches a climactic conclusion, Matt must make a desperate choice: Tell her the truth about who he really is—or risk a once-in-a-lifetime love to save her life?
Release date: May 31, 2016
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Print pages: 304
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Under The Surface
Anne Calhoun
CHAPTER ONE
Sex on a stick, Lord, that’s all I need … walking, talking sex on a stick. If he can mix a decent drink, so much the better.
Eve Webber shifted two boxes of limes to the far end of the bar and considered apologizing to the Almighty for making the risqué request. Not a single lesson in eighteen years of Sunday school covered petitioning the Lord for a good-looking man. But with a location on the edge of Lancaster’s struggling East Side and nine people depending on her for their paychecks, Eye Candy’s success depended heavily on gorgeous male bartenders who lived up to the bar’s provocative name. She’d take all the help she could get.
“Drop-dead sexy, knowledgeable, with just a smidgen of honor. That’s all I need,” she muttered.
She picked up her iPhone and scanned for chatter on Facebook and Twitter. A couple of posts from women in her target market, young professionals, about meeting up at Eye Candy after work, which was very welcome news. She replied, tweeted her drink specials, then set the phone in the portable speaker unit for background music while she finished prepping the bar for the evening rush.
The heavy steel door swung open. She looked up from the limes and saw a lean figure silhouetted in a rectangle of thick August sunlight that cloaked his head and shoulders, shrouding his face.
“Chad Henderson?” she said, and if her voice was a little breathier than usual, well, he’d caught her off guard.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The two words ran together, automatic yet without a hint of deference, not a drawled opening to flirtation. “Come on in,” she called, consciously steadying her voice.
She moved out from behind the bar to meet him. He didn’t offer any of the small talk applicants often used to connect with her, so she leaned against the end of the bar and watched him scrutinize Eye Candy’s interior as he wove his way through the tables toward her. The walls were black-painted cinderblock, and tables and stools surrounded the oak parquet dance floor on three sides; her DJ’s booth comprised the fourth side and backed one short wall of the rectangular room. The solid oak, custom-crafted bar she’d purchased for a pittance at a bankruptcy auction ran along the other short end of the room. The place was empty and echoing now, but in three hours couples would pack the dance floor and every table would be occupied.
Chad stopped in front of her and slid the earpiece of his Revo sunglasses into the V of his shirt, exposing surprisingly hard ridges of pectoral muscle, given his lean frame.
“Eve Webber. I own Eye Candy.” She offered her hand and got a firm grip in return as she took inventory. Maybe six feet tall, because her heels brought her to five ten and their eyes were just level. He wore running shoes, faded jeans too loose to draw attention to anything underneath, and a dark green button-down with the top two buttons undone. Reddish-brown hair long enough to show finger-combing ridges curled at his ears and shirt collar, and hazel eyes met Eve’s assessing look without a hint of expression.
“Thanks for the interview.”
Definitely not anxious, or eager, or any of the other adjectives normally used to describe a job applicant in a tough economy. She liked the cool confidence. It made him very watchable. Some women liked to flirt openly with a sexy-yet-safe bad boy. Others wanted to watch, and wonder. He wasn’t exactly sex on a stick, but if he had any skill behind a bar at all, Chad would round out the eye candy quite nicely.
“Make yourself comfortable,” she said as she leaned against the bar and gestured to one of the bar stools.
He braced himself against the stool and crossed his legs at the ankle, effectively trapping her between his body and the bar. After another glance at her, one that seemed to take in every detail of her face and body, he folded his arms across his chest and scanned the room again. “Nice setup.”
“Thanks. I’ve only been open a couple of months, but business is good so far.” She’d made a high-stakes bet on a building on the edge of the proposed Riverside Business Park, an urban renewal project due for a vote in the city council in the next few weeks. If it passed, Eve’s lifelong neighborhood on Lancaster’s East Side would get a much-needed influx of money, jobs, and attention.
She wasn’t going to think about what it would mean to her and the East Side if the vote failed. She’d poured her life savings and a hefty small business loan into the interior. Any hint of insolvency and her family would pounce on the excuse to send her back to a desk job.
The way Chad blocked her in left no other option than to use the heel of her boot to hitch herself onto the stool next to his. She crossed her legs, and his gaze flickered over their length, displayed to their best advantage in the short skirt slit to the top of her thigh. His gaze slowly returned to her face, and when that green-brown gaze met hers, she felt a heady charge flicker across her skin.
“Tell me about your experience,” she said, trying to focus, because each second of silence amped up the current crackling between them.
“I’m at Gino’s.”
Not good. A neighborhood bar south of downtown, Gino’s was a cop hangout, a laid-back, low-energy, peanut-shells-on-the-floor, ESPN-on-the-TV kind of place, where local law enforcement went to unwind, not raise hell. As bars went, it was about as far from Eye Candy’s high-energy dance club vibe as possible.
“Why leave? Getting beers for cops is much easier than mixing hundreds of cocktails a night.”
“I need full-time hours.” He looked around again. “And better tips.”
“This isn’t Gino’s. Not by a long shot,” she said. “You’ll work for your tips here.”
She didn’t mean to infuse a sexual overtone into that comment, but somehow the insinuation hung between them. His eyes darkened from hazel to mossy green, and a hint of color stained his cheekbones. Okay, they had chemistry, that heart-pounding, shallow-breathing feeling that meant the pheromones were surging.
Chemistry with me means chemistry with customers, she thought firmly. Watching him work would tell her all she needed to know. “Feel up to making me something?” she asked lightly.
“Mojito? Cosmo? Cum in a Hot Tub?”
He got points for naming her three most popular cocktails, in order no less, and major points for including the last one without a hint of innuendo in his face or voice. “Let’s try a cosmo,” she said.
He moved past her, close enough that she felt the soft denim of his jeans brush against her bare thigh, then strolled behind the bar, found the Absolut, the triple sec, and the juices, and measured all the ingredients over ice scooped into a metal shaker, his movements precise. A couple of deft twists of his wrist, then he poured the drink into a chilled glass snagged from the fridge under the bar.
“I haven’t sliced the oranges yet,” she said when he scanned the half-filled tubs of garnishes.
He set the drink on a napkin in front of her, offering it to her with the stem between his index and middle fingers to avoid leaving prints on the glass. She sipped as he splashed the shaker through the wash, rinse, and sanitize sinks, then set it on a towel to dry. His ease in his body boded well for someone who’d spend eight-plus hours a night on his feet, handling glass and premium liquor.
“Nice.”
He nodded his thanks and reached for a bar towel.
“You’ll have to pick up the pace, though. We’ve got a line out the door nearly every night.”
“No problem,” he said as he dried his hands, then looked at his abraded knuckles. Not a wince, or a comment.
“You don’t talk much.”
In the silence that followed, the door between her office and her apartment slammed closed. Chad looked up at the noise, then back at her, clearly expecting an explanation, but she held his gaze and waited. Finally he said, “Bartenders should be good listeners.”
Based on that comment, she’d better set the tone now. “Eye Candy isn’t just a bar. It’s an experience. Women come for hot bartenders, dance music, great drinks, and a chance to unwind with girlfriends. The hookup quotient is high because the men come for what they call ‘prime pussy.’” A small smile lifted the corners of his mouth and formed crinkles around his eyes, the flash of personality an appealing insight into an otherwise blank front. So she added, “My office is over the men’s room and unfortunately voices carry up the ductwork.
“The ground rules are that you’ve got a smile for everyone, no matter if she’s the prettiest girl in the room or her chunky, self-conscious best friend. No outrageous flirting, no requests for phone numbers or email addresses. No calling numbers if they come across the bar on a napkin or a twenty or a thong, which happened on Tuesday and led to one of my bartenders hooking up with a customer in the back of a pickup in my parking lot. I fired him before he had his jeans up. She went home alone, unsatisfied, and pissed off. That’s not good for business and therefore pisses me off. Are we clear?”
A moment of silence, then, “Your bar, your rules.”
Not many men could make that sound sexy, yet coming in Chad’s whiskey rough voice, it sounded like temptation poured from a bottle. Eve thought for a moment, unable to put her finger on how he struck her, but the weekend was coming, he was clearly competent behind a bar, and her gut told her he wouldn’t get caught bare-assed in the bed of a Dodge Ram.
“Take a shift tonight,” she said. “If I like what I see, you’re hired. If not, we go our separate ways.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
“Come back around just before five and I’ll get you your shirt and introduce you to the rest of the crew.”
This time all she got was a nod. She continued to study him, absently running her thumb and index finger up and down the glass stem. He met her eyes without reservation, as comfortable with her assessment as he was without it. The silence stretching between them took on an increasingly intemperate life of its own, and she broke eye contact first.
She handed him the glass. His fingers brushed hers as he took it from her, and the brief contact struck sparks along her fingers and halted her breath for a long second.
“Thanks for coming by. I’ll lock up behind you.”
He came around from behind the bar to follow her to the big steel door. She didn’t peek over her shoulder at him. She didn’t put any additional sass into her walk. Yet with each click of her heels against the cement floor, the tension hovering in the bar’s dim, silent air ratcheted up another notch. She opened the door and waited while he slipped between her body and the edge, into the parking lot. Then it was her turn to watch him walk to his Jeep and climb in. The engine caught, revved, the back end of the Jeep skittered a little as the tires spun, then got enough traction to propel the car into traffic.
Startled into laughter, she leaned a shoulder against the doorframe and watched the Jeep zip away. “Not what I expected,” she said. “Not what I expected at all.”
She let the door swing shut, shot the bolt, and was halfway back to the bar when a knock on the door had her turning on her heel and retracing her steps. When she opened the door, her father stood blinking in the sunlight.
“Dad,” she said, hearing delight and surprise in her voice.
“Hello, Eve.”
She stepped back to let him in, then gave him a quick hug. “I didn’t know you were coming. What can I get you? Juice? Soda?”
“Just water,” he said.
Her father, a pastor for a small, vibrant church in the heart of the East Side, didn’t drink. She scooped ice into a glass and dispensed water from the nozzle, then set the glass on the bar. Despite a grand opening that drew hundreds of Lancaster’s young professionals, and an entertainment reporter and photographer from the Times-Courier, this was her father’s first visit to Eye Candy. Her heart was pounding, so she picked up the knife and took refuge in the never-ending prep tasks. “What brings you by?”
“I was in the neighborhood,” he said, and looked around. As he did, Eve knew he was seeing a sound system that cost more than the average East Side family spent on housing for a year and a wall of premium liquor that represented money that could have helped families facing shut-off notices or repaired the only vehicle available to get a breadwinner to a job.
The silence stretched. Eve swept the ends of the lemons into a trash bin, felt the juice sting a small paper cut on her index finger as much as the old argument stung her pride. Pastors’ daughters didn’t open nightclubs. They married sensible, stable men, got nine-to-five jobs with sensible, stable companies, and raised sensible, stable children. She’d tried “sensible and stable” on for size right after college, because her family deemed her dream of opening her own entertainment venue a frivolous waste of her time and education. So she’d dutifully gone to work in the marketing department of an insurance company, and spent two years gasping for air in a sea of gray-walled cubicles before “throwing her life away” to return to her position as an events coordinator for the Metropolitan Club. She’d saved her commissions, studied the market and the community needs, written business plan after business plan, and a year ago bought the building housing Eye Candy.
“I’m glad you came. Nat and I missed you at the soft opening,” she said as she ripped open the top of a box of limes with a little more force than necessary. Getting her parents to the grand opening never would have happened.
“Your mother and I thought this was another one of your impulses.” His normally deep, confident voice came with pauses between. The heart attack earlier in the summer had left him weakened, and he’d rushed his recovery to return to his vocation: taking care of the people in his congregation, and on the East Side. They’d fought over Eye Candy, and for a moment Eve considered closing her doors to ease her father’s mind.
“It’s two years of work, Dad,” she said simply, “not an impulse.”
The words fell flat in the empty bar, but her father said nothing about the folly of putting all her eggs in one basket. “This will help the East Side, Dad.”
“I was out at the prison yesterday. Victor said Lyle showed up without warning during visiting hours last Friday,” he said. “Victor says his son is full of big talk and improbable dreams, like always.”
Her heart thudded against her breastbone, then stayed lodged in her throat. That’s why she wouldn’t shut down. Her family had a long history with the Murphys, from her father’s lifelong friendship with Victor to her own unpredictable, complicated relationship with his ambitious son, Lyle. Lyle had paid her a visit, asking for some help with his own startup.
“A business associate of mine will bring you some cash during the evening, when you’re open. You deposit it with your nightly take, then transfer it into another company’s online account. A trip to the bank and a couple of clicks of the mouse.”
“You’re starting a new business,” she said, her brain whirring furiously away. “Selling…?”
“I’m in recreation,” Lyle said.
Which meant drugs. Lyle would be back only if the opportunity was worth his while, which meant something big, generating enough income that he’d need it laundered. A bar like hers that took in thousands of dollars a week in cash without providing a tangible product was the perfect front. “The bank will notice if my deposits jump suddenly.”
“It won’t be much,” he said easily. “A little more on Fridays and Saturdays, a little less during the week. You’re busy. Doing well. No one will notice.”
“And you’d want me to transfer it to other accounts?”
He nodded.
“Business income must be accounted for and taxed,” she said, as if she was worried about tax evasion. “Taxes pay for schools and roads and business development parks that provide jobs for local residents.”
He leaned forward, all earnestness. “I don’t mind funding local projects. Five percent ongoing for your trouble, to get you through the dry spells, or to help any community organization you want. Your dad’s new program. The basketball court looks pretty beat up. He could buy new computers for the job training program.”
He thought he could buy her. She pursed her lips, like she was considering the offer.
“You don’t have to give me an answer now,” he said. “I’ll catch you later, see what you’ve decided.”
She’d seen a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take apart a prominent pipeline of cocaine and heroin into Lancaster, and gone to the police with the information. They’d asked her if she’d help them get the evidence they’d need to take out the biggest threat to the East Side’s economic and social health.
She was the lynchpin, and she couldn’t tell anyone. Lieutenant Ian Hawthorn, her contact, made two things abundantly clear: they needed hard-and-fast evidence of Lyle Murphy’s intent to launder drug money through Eye Candy, and she couldn’t tell a soul what she was doing. Not her father, who believed in salvation and second chances. Not her brother, a defense attorney who believed all cops were lying bullies with badges. Not her best friend and manager. No one. Which meant she couldn’t say anything to her father about staying away from Victor, his best friend from childhood, because Victor might tip off Lyle.
“Nothing wrong with dreaming, Dad,” she said finally.
“You’ll be at dinner Monday night?”
Two years ago, before the rift over her job that kept her from the Webber Monday family nights for eighteen months, he wouldn’t have asked. “I will,” she said lightly. “Love to Mom.”
The door closed behind him, and Eve went back to the cartons of fruit waiting for her, wielding the knife precisely, as if lemons sliced in quarter-inch increments would settle her nerves. But as she worked, the memory of the shuttered look in Chad’s dark hazel eyes skittered across her skin to settle deep in her belly. While every owner and manager paid lip service to “appropriate relationships” and “professional work environments,” the sexually charged atmosphere of bars and nightclubs was a breeding ground for quick, explosive, short-lived relationships based on chemistry—the kind of chemistry she’d felt in one ten-minute interview. With the bar finally launched to a promising whirlwind of buzz and a whole lot of chemistry with her newest bartender candidate, for the first time in a very long time she could look forward to mixing a little pleasure with business.
What her parents didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Everyone kept secrets, even a pastor’s daughter.
* * *
Mistake number one: the “yes, ma’am” that came right after he opened the door and made eye contact with Eve Webber. The connection hit him like a blow to the sternum, dropping him twelve years into the past to boot camp, where ma’am and sir became spinal reflexes. While a bartender in need of a job might use ma’am out of respect, his tone would have been gentler, less authoritative.
Mistake number two: getting scratch on the way onto the street. Ideal employees didn’t drive like a sixteen-year-old trying to impress a girl in the school parking lot. But the adrenaline contracted the muscles in his calf, and the next thing he knew the rear tires were spinning. Once again, instinct took over and he automatically corrected for the swerve. In an effort to slow his pulse he exhaled slow and deep, relaxed his grip on the wheel, and, most important, lifted the gas pedal from the Jeep’s floor.
For Detective Matt Dorchester, one of the most treacherous parts of undercover work for the Lancaster Police Department was discovering exactly how deeply military and paramilitary organizations were carved into his bones. Twenty minutes into his newest role and he’d already made two dangerous mistakes, two more than he’d made in either of his previous, months-long undercover assignments.
Most men know how to steer out of a skid. It’s not a dead giveaway that you’ve spent years behind the wheel of a Crown Vic with the Interceptor package. Most important, you’re not clinging to your honor with your fingertips.
The sun hung low in the sky, the mid-afternoon heat index just over a hundred degrees. The humidity-saturated air lay thick and damp against his skin as he scrupulously obeyed the speed limit all the way from Eye Candy to the Eastern Precinct. Storefronts and chrome bumpers reflected the sun’s glare as heat and shimmer, much like the thick layers of Eve Webber’s black hair fell in her face as she talked, glinting against her jaw, her cheekbone. Intellectually he knew it would be cool to the touch, but that didn’t stop his hand from tingling with the desire to slide through the strands.
Get a grip, Dorchester. That wasn’t a job interview, let alone a date. You’re a cop. She’s an informant in danger.
At the stoplight before the turn into the Eastern Precinct he flexed his hand to short-circuit the sensation in his fingers, felt the scabs covering his knuckles tug at the healing skin. He’d stop tonight, get another bottle of ibuprofen for his brother, and pick up a tube of antibacterial ointment while he was at it. Battered knuckles wouldn’t go over well in a bar like Eye Candy. Once inside the building, he sidestepped Officer Connor McCormick bringing in a handcuffed, viciously swearing man.
“Busy night?” Matt asked, taking in his arrest’s prison-honed muscles and ink. Conn was a couple of inches taller than Matt and built like a tank. Conn had started working undercover in the last few months, mostly buy-and-busts. Matt knew him as a solid cop, usually first on a scene, and like Matt, he lived and breathed the job.
“Never a dull moment,” Conn said, grinning.
“What’d he do?” Matt asked, nodding at Conn’s detainee.
“Breaking and entering, assault, resisting arrest,” Conn said. “For starters. Pattern matches a string of similar incidents.”
“You got nothing, motherfucker,” the guy snarled.
“What I’ve got is DNA from when you spit on me,” Conn said, almost cheerful as the guy tried to wrench free. “Where do you think you’re going? You’re handcuffed and in the middle of the Block,” he asked, using the name on the street for the Eastern. More usefully, he tightened his grip on the pressure point in the guy’s elbow. “This dance is just getting started.”
The guy snarled out a string of profanities describing his night with Conn’s mother.
“Sounds about right,” Conn said, but Matt didn’t miss the glint in Conn’s eye. “She’s been dead for twenty years, but dead’s probably the only way you get laid.”
The guy checked for a second. “Respects, man,” he said, “but you’re still a pig motherfucker. Get your fucking hand off my fucking elbow! I can’t feel my fucking fingers!”
“Need a hand?” Matt asked.
“Nah,” Conn said. “He’s a pussy … cat. Besides, Hawthorn’s looking for you.”
Great. Matt left him to it, and took the stairs two at a time to the undercover unit’s bullpen. His partner, Detective Joanna Sorenson, sat at her desk. Another detective, Andy Carlucci, loomed over her shoulder, a blatant invasion of personal space guaranteed to drive Sorenson nuts.
“Jesus Christ, Dorchester, you’re going undercover in a strip club? Who’d you piss off?” Carlucci said, mock-astonished. “No neo-Nazis? No domestic terrorists stockpiling explosives?”
Jealousy rode the edges of the words. Carlucci routinely petitioned Lieutenant Hawthorn for undercover assignments, and was just as routinely turned down. Volatile and far too quick to make assumptions or rush a situation, Carlucci lacked the qualities crucial for successful undercover work: an unflappable demeanor, bone-deep patience, wits, and finely tuned instincts. Matt’s father drilled in unemotional patience. Nineteen months in Iraq and eight years on Lancaster’s streets honed the wits and instincts.
Matt ignored Carlucci, sat down across from Sorenson, and powered up his laptop. Carlucci lingered at Sorenson’s shoulder for a moment, then straightened and folded his arms across his chest. “Watch your back with the owner,” he said. “A guy hiring all male bartenders…” He let the end of the sentence hang in the air. When he didn’t get the expected protest, or any response at all, he linked his fingers across his belly and spoke to Sorenson. “Your last name’s Sorenson. You’re third generation LPD and your father shit gold bricks so you can write your own ticket with the lieutenant, but you’re working with this stiff. He’s got zero personality.”
“He gets the job done,” Sorenson said without looking up.
“Low standards, Sorenson,” Carlucci said.
At the stress on Sorenson’s last name Matt cut Andy a look, but Andy still focused on Sorenson, who was proofreading an arrest report. “Getting the job done is the only standard that matters, Carlucci,” she replied with a lack of interest that would successfully drive Carlucci nuts. “How’s your clearance rate?”
Carlucci turned back to his own desk. “Fuck you both.”
“Black, two sugars, thanks,” Sorenson said absently.
Same shit, different day. Matt dropped Carlucci from his awareness, started a new case file, and began composing the report describing his interview with Eve Webber.
At fifteen thirty hours I approached Ms. Webber in her place of business. Subject is female, Caucasian, approximately five feet six inches—
… mostly slim, toned legs.…
… green eyes, black hair …
… that kept falling in her eyes …
That memory halted his fingers on the keyboard. Touching hair was often a subconscious gesture expressing interest in a man. Eve Webber’s just wouldn’t stay out of her face, sliding free from its mooring behind her ear, shadowing an eye, but he didn’t think she was coming on to him. A woman prepared to tell a potential bartender to keep his hands off the customers or face retribution akin to the wrath of God wouldn’t bother to flirt. She’d name a time and place, and bring her best game.
And flirting didn’t explain that strange humming connection that revved into the red zone when their fingers met.
“What’s this all about anyway?” Carlucci asked.
The informant offered the job contingent on satisfactory performance tonight.
Delete.
Matt reached for the distancing language of a police report to describe the bar’s interior, the possibility of alternate exits upstairs or in the back.
“The operation with the FBI and the DEA to get Lyle Murphy. He’s moving home and bringing bad news with him,” Sorenson said when it became apparent Matt wasn’t going to bother answering Carlucci.
“What kind of bad news?”
“The Strykers.”
As he reread the report, Matt heard Carlucci’s faint whistle. Much better. Calm, logical, focused on the case at hand. No mention of hair or legs or eyes, as if describing features could sum up the sheer femininity radiating from Eve Webber during a simple job interview. Ten minutes with her and he’d felt something. Still felt it thirty minutes later. Not desire. He understood desire, dealt with it. This was different, more visceral, deeply buried, long forgotten, and leading him to make two mistakes when the acceptable error rate was zero point zero.
Lieutenant Ian Hawthorn walked down the aisle between the detectives’ desks. “Well?” he said to Matt.
“I’ve got a trial shift tonight,” Matt said. “If she’s happy at the end of it, I’ve got the job.”
Hawthorn folded his arms. “The FBI’s been running this operation for over a year, and getting nowhere until a couple of weeks ago, when Ms. Webber walked in off the street and said Murphy approached her about using her bar to launder the money they’re making in the region. She agreed to be an informant and help us get him. She’s the connection the Feds needed to get the whole chain, from the buy-and-busts on street corners right up to the top guys.”
Carlucci whistled again.
“That’s the good news. The bad news is that somehow word got back to Murphy. McCormick was booking a Stryker when she walked in. Maybe he saw her, and reported back to Lyle Murphy. It doesn’t matter,” Hawthorn said. “She managed to talk her way out of the situation with Lyle but people who inform on the Strykers have a nasty habit of dying in a drive-by, or worse, disappearing off the face of the earth. So Detective Dorchester just got himself a job as Eye Candy’s newest bartender.”
“This is a big fucking deal. Shouldn’t we put in plainclothes officers?” Carlucci asked. “Hang out in the bar, keep an eye on the situation?”
Sorenson shoved her keyboard tray under her desk and looked at Carlucci, her gaze flicking over the buzz cut, slacks, and suit jacket. “Even plainclothes cops look like cops. They walk and talk and think like cops, and a ten-year-old in that neighborhood can pick us out of a crowd. Matt, on the other hand, looks like the kind of guy who’d bounce from job to job, city to city. Just the right amount of bad boy,” she said consideringly. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Matt said. He knew exactly how he looked, ho
Sex on a stick, Lord, that’s all I need … walking, talking sex on a stick. If he can mix a decent drink, so much the better.
Eve Webber shifted two boxes of limes to the far end of the bar and considered apologizing to the Almighty for making the risqué request. Not a single lesson in eighteen years of Sunday school covered petitioning the Lord for a good-looking man. But with a location on the edge of Lancaster’s struggling East Side and nine people depending on her for their paychecks, Eye Candy’s success depended heavily on gorgeous male bartenders who lived up to the bar’s provocative name. She’d take all the help she could get.
“Drop-dead sexy, knowledgeable, with just a smidgen of honor. That’s all I need,” she muttered.
She picked up her iPhone and scanned for chatter on Facebook and Twitter. A couple of posts from women in her target market, young professionals, about meeting up at Eye Candy after work, which was very welcome news. She replied, tweeted her drink specials, then set the phone in the portable speaker unit for background music while she finished prepping the bar for the evening rush.
The heavy steel door swung open. She looked up from the limes and saw a lean figure silhouetted in a rectangle of thick August sunlight that cloaked his head and shoulders, shrouding his face.
“Chad Henderson?” she said, and if her voice was a little breathier than usual, well, he’d caught her off guard.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The two words ran together, automatic yet without a hint of deference, not a drawled opening to flirtation. “Come on in,” she called, consciously steadying her voice.
She moved out from behind the bar to meet him. He didn’t offer any of the small talk applicants often used to connect with her, so she leaned against the end of the bar and watched him scrutinize Eye Candy’s interior as he wove his way through the tables toward her. The walls were black-painted cinderblock, and tables and stools surrounded the oak parquet dance floor on three sides; her DJ’s booth comprised the fourth side and backed one short wall of the rectangular room. The solid oak, custom-crafted bar she’d purchased for a pittance at a bankruptcy auction ran along the other short end of the room. The place was empty and echoing now, but in three hours couples would pack the dance floor and every table would be occupied.
Chad stopped in front of her and slid the earpiece of his Revo sunglasses into the V of his shirt, exposing surprisingly hard ridges of pectoral muscle, given his lean frame.
“Eve Webber. I own Eye Candy.” She offered her hand and got a firm grip in return as she took inventory. Maybe six feet tall, because her heels brought her to five ten and their eyes were just level. He wore running shoes, faded jeans too loose to draw attention to anything underneath, and a dark green button-down with the top two buttons undone. Reddish-brown hair long enough to show finger-combing ridges curled at his ears and shirt collar, and hazel eyes met Eve’s assessing look without a hint of expression.
“Thanks for the interview.”
Definitely not anxious, or eager, or any of the other adjectives normally used to describe a job applicant in a tough economy. She liked the cool confidence. It made him very watchable. Some women liked to flirt openly with a sexy-yet-safe bad boy. Others wanted to watch, and wonder. He wasn’t exactly sex on a stick, but if he had any skill behind a bar at all, Chad would round out the eye candy quite nicely.
“Make yourself comfortable,” she said as she leaned against the bar and gestured to one of the bar stools.
He braced himself against the stool and crossed his legs at the ankle, effectively trapping her between his body and the bar. After another glance at her, one that seemed to take in every detail of her face and body, he folded his arms across his chest and scanned the room again. “Nice setup.”
“Thanks. I’ve only been open a couple of months, but business is good so far.” She’d made a high-stakes bet on a building on the edge of the proposed Riverside Business Park, an urban renewal project due for a vote in the city council in the next few weeks. If it passed, Eve’s lifelong neighborhood on Lancaster’s East Side would get a much-needed influx of money, jobs, and attention.
She wasn’t going to think about what it would mean to her and the East Side if the vote failed. She’d poured her life savings and a hefty small business loan into the interior. Any hint of insolvency and her family would pounce on the excuse to send her back to a desk job.
The way Chad blocked her in left no other option than to use the heel of her boot to hitch herself onto the stool next to his. She crossed her legs, and his gaze flickered over their length, displayed to their best advantage in the short skirt slit to the top of her thigh. His gaze slowly returned to her face, and when that green-brown gaze met hers, she felt a heady charge flicker across her skin.
“Tell me about your experience,” she said, trying to focus, because each second of silence amped up the current crackling between them.
“I’m at Gino’s.”
Not good. A neighborhood bar south of downtown, Gino’s was a cop hangout, a laid-back, low-energy, peanut-shells-on-the-floor, ESPN-on-the-TV kind of place, where local law enforcement went to unwind, not raise hell. As bars went, it was about as far from Eye Candy’s high-energy dance club vibe as possible.
“Why leave? Getting beers for cops is much easier than mixing hundreds of cocktails a night.”
“I need full-time hours.” He looked around again. “And better tips.”
“This isn’t Gino’s. Not by a long shot,” she said. “You’ll work for your tips here.”
She didn’t mean to infuse a sexual overtone into that comment, but somehow the insinuation hung between them. His eyes darkened from hazel to mossy green, and a hint of color stained his cheekbones. Okay, they had chemistry, that heart-pounding, shallow-breathing feeling that meant the pheromones were surging.
Chemistry with me means chemistry with customers, she thought firmly. Watching him work would tell her all she needed to know. “Feel up to making me something?” she asked lightly.
“Mojito? Cosmo? Cum in a Hot Tub?”
He got points for naming her three most popular cocktails, in order no less, and major points for including the last one without a hint of innuendo in his face or voice. “Let’s try a cosmo,” she said.
He moved past her, close enough that she felt the soft denim of his jeans brush against her bare thigh, then strolled behind the bar, found the Absolut, the triple sec, and the juices, and measured all the ingredients over ice scooped into a metal shaker, his movements precise. A couple of deft twists of his wrist, then he poured the drink into a chilled glass snagged from the fridge under the bar.
“I haven’t sliced the oranges yet,” she said when he scanned the half-filled tubs of garnishes.
He set the drink on a napkin in front of her, offering it to her with the stem between his index and middle fingers to avoid leaving prints on the glass. She sipped as he splashed the shaker through the wash, rinse, and sanitize sinks, then set it on a towel to dry. His ease in his body boded well for someone who’d spend eight-plus hours a night on his feet, handling glass and premium liquor.
“Nice.”
He nodded his thanks and reached for a bar towel.
“You’ll have to pick up the pace, though. We’ve got a line out the door nearly every night.”
“No problem,” he said as he dried his hands, then looked at his abraded knuckles. Not a wince, or a comment.
“You don’t talk much.”
In the silence that followed, the door between her office and her apartment slammed closed. Chad looked up at the noise, then back at her, clearly expecting an explanation, but she held his gaze and waited. Finally he said, “Bartenders should be good listeners.”
Based on that comment, she’d better set the tone now. “Eye Candy isn’t just a bar. It’s an experience. Women come for hot bartenders, dance music, great drinks, and a chance to unwind with girlfriends. The hookup quotient is high because the men come for what they call ‘prime pussy.’” A small smile lifted the corners of his mouth and formed crinkles around his eyes, the flash of personality an appealing insight into an otherwise blank front. So she added, “My office is over the men’s room and unfortunately voices carry up the ductwork.
“The ground rules are that you’ve got a smile for everyone, no matter if she’s the prettiest girl in the room or her chunky, self-conscious best friend. No outrageous flirting, no requests for phone numbers or email addresses. No calling numbers if they come across the bar on a napkin or a twenty or a thong, which happened on Tuesday and led to one of my bartenders hooking up with a customer in the back of a pickup in my parking lot. I fired him before he had his jeans up. She went home alone, unsatisfied, and pissed off. That’s not good for business and therefore pisses me off. Are we clear?”
A moment of silence, then, “Your bar, your rules.”
Not many men could make that sound sexy, yet coming in Chad’s whiskey rough voice, it sounded like temptation poured from a bottle. Eve thought for a moment, unable to put her finger on how he struck her, but the weekend was coming, he was clearly competent behind a bar, and her gut told her he wouldn’t get caught bare-assed in the bed of a Dodge Ram.
“Take a shift tonight,” she said. “If I like what I see, you’re hired. If not, we go our separate ways.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
“Come back around just before five and I’ll get you your shirt and introduce you to the rest of the crew.”
This time all she got was a nod. She continued to study him, absently running her thumb and index finger up and down the glass stem. He met her eyes without reservation, as comfortable with her assessment as he was without it. The silence stretching between them took on an increasingly intemperate life of its own, and she broke eye contact first.
She handed him the glass. His fingers brushed hers as he took it from her, and the brief contact struck sparks along her fingers and halted her breath for a long second.
“Thanks for coming by. I’ll lock up behind you.”
He came around from behind the bar to follow her to the big steel door. She didn’t peek over her shoulder at him. She didn’t put any additional sass into her walk. Yet with each click of her heels against the cement floor, the tension hovering in the bar’s dim, silent air ratcheted up another notch. She opened the door and waited while he slipped between her body and the edge, into the parking lot. Then it was her turn to watch him walk to his Jeep and climb in. The engine caught, revved, the back end of the Jeep skittered a little as the tires spun, then got enough traction to propel the car into traffic.
Startled into laughter, she leaned a shoulder against the doorframe and watched the Jeep zip away. “Not what I expected,” she said. “Not what I expected at all.”
She let the door swing shut, shot the bolt, and was halfway back to the bar when a knock on the door had her turning on her heel and retracing her steps. When she opened the door, her father stood blinking in the sunlight.
“Dad,” she said, hearing delight and surprise in her voice.
“Hello, Eve.”
She stepped back to let him in, then gave him a quick hug. “I didn’t know you were coming. What can I get you? Juice? Soda?”
“Just water,” he said.
Her father, a pastor for a small, vibrant church in the heart of the East Side, didn’t drink. She scooped ice into a glass and dispensed water from the nozzle, then set the glass on the bar. Despite a grand opening that drew hundreds of Lancaster’s young professionals, and an entertainment reporter and photographer from the Times-Courier, this was her father’s first visit to Eye Candy. Her heart was pounding, so she picked up the knife and took refuge in the never-ending prep tasks. “What brings you by?”
“I was in the neighborhood,” he said, and looked around. As he did, Eve knew he was seeing a sound system that cost more than the average East Side family spent on housing for a year and a wall of premium liquor that represented money that could have helped families facing shut-off notices or repaired the only vehicle available to get a breadwinner to a job.
The silence stretched. Eve swept the ends of the lemons into a trash bin, felt the juice sting a small paper cut on her index finger as much as the old argument stung her pride. Pastors’ daughters didn’t open nightclubs. They married sensible, stable men, got nine-to-five jobs with sensible, stable companies, and raised sensible, stable children. She’d tried “sensible and stable” on for size right after college, because her family deemed her dream of opening her own entertainment venue a frivolous waste of her time and education. So she’d dutifully gone to work in the marketing department of an insurance company, and spent two years gasping for air in a sea of gray-walled cubicles before “throwing her life away” to return to her position as an events coordinator for the Metropolitan Club. She’d saved her commissions, studied the market and the community needs, written business plan after business plan, and a year ago bought the building housing Eye Candy.
“I’m glad you came. Nat and I missed you at the soft opening,” she said as she ripped open the top of a box of limes with a little more force than necessary. Getting her parents to the grand opening never would have happened.
“Your mother and I thought this was another one of your impulses.” His normally deep, confident voice came with pauses between. The heart attack earlier in the summer had left him weakened, and he’d rushed his recovery to return to his vocation: taking care of the people in his congregation, and on the East Side. They’d fought over Eye Candy, and for a moment Eve considered closing her doors to ease her father’s mind.
“It’s two years of work, Dad,” she said simply, “not an impulse.”
The words fell flat in the empty bar, but her father said nothing about the folly of putting all her eggs in one basket. “This will help the East Side, Dad.”
“I was out at the prison yesterday. Victor said Lyle showed up without warning during visiting hours last Friday,” he said. “Victor says his son is full of big talk and improbable dreams, like always.”
Her heart thudded against her breastbone, then stayed lodged in her throat. That’s why she wouldn’t shut down. Her family had a long history with the Murphys, from her father’s lifelong friendship with Victor to her own unpredictable, complicated relationship with his ambitious son, Lyle. Lyle had paid her a visit, asking for some help with his own startup.
“A business associate of mine will bring you some cash during the evening, when you’re open. You deposit it with your nightly take, then transfer it into another company’s online account. A trip to the bank and a couple of clicks of the mouse.”
“You’re starting a new business,” she said, her brain whirring furiously away. “Selling…?”
“I’m in recreation,” Lyle said.
Which meant drugs. Lyle would be back only if the opportunity was worth his while, which meant something big, generating enough income that he’d need it laundered. A bar like hers that took in thousands of dollars a week in cash without providing a tangible product was the perfect front. “The bank will notice if my deposits jump suddenly.”
“It won’t be much,” he said easily. “A little more on Fridays and Saturdays, a little less during the week. You’re busy. Doing well. No one will notice.”
“And you’d want me to transfer it to other accounts?”
He nodded.
“Business income must be accounted for and taxed,” she said, as if she was worried about tax evasion. “Taxes pay for schools and roads and business development parks that provide jobs for local residents.”
He leaned forward, all earnestness. “I don’t mind funding local projects. Five percent ongoing for your trouble, to get you through the dry spells, or to help any community organization you want. Your dad’s new program. The basketball court looks pretty beat up. He could buy new computers for the job training program.”
He thought he could buy her. She pursed her lips, like she was considering the offer.
“You don’t have to give me an answer now,” he said. “I’ll catch you later, see what you’ve decided.”
She’d seen a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take apart a prominent pipeline of cocaine and heroin into Lancaster, and gone to the police with the information. They’d asked her if she’d help them get the evidence they’d need to take out the biggest threat to the East Side’s economic and social health.
She was the lynchpin, and she couldn’t tell anyone. Lieutenant Ian Hawthorn, her contact, made two things abundantly clear: they needed hard-and-fast evidence of Lyle Murphy’s intent to launder drug money through Eye Candy, and she couldn’t tell a soul what she was doing. Not her father, who believed in salvation and second chances. Not her brother, a defense attorney who believed all cops were lying bullies with badges. Not her best friend and manager. No one. Which meant she couldn’t say anything to her father about staying away from Victor, his best friend from childhood, because Victor might tip off Lyle.
“Nothing wrong with dreaming, Dad,” she said finally.
“You’ll be at dinner Monday night?”
Two years ago, before the rift over her job that kept her from the Webber Monday family nights for eighteen months, he wouldn’t have asked. “I will,” she said lightly. “Love to Mom.”
The door closed behind him, and Eve went back to the cartons of fruit waiting for her, wielding the knife precisely, as if lemons sliced in quarter-inch increments would settle her nerves. But as she worked, the memory of the shuttered look in Chad’s dark hazel eyes skittered across her skin to settle deep in her belly. While every owner and manager paid lip service to “appropriate relationships” and “professional work environments,” the sexually charged atmosphere of bars and nightclubs was a breeding ground for quick, explosive, short-lived relationships based on chemistry—the kind of chemistry she’d felt in one ten-minute interview. With the bar finally launched to a promising whirlwind of buzz and a whole lot of chemistry with her newest bartender candidate, for the first time in a very long time she could look forward to mixing a little pleasure with business.
What her parents didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Everyone kept secrets, even a pastor’s daughter.
* * *
Mistake number one: the “yes, ma’am” that came right after he opened the door and made eye contact with Eve Webber. The connection hit him like a blow to the sternum, dropping him twelve years into the past to boot camp, where ma’am and sir became spinal reflexes. While a bartender in need of a job might use ma’am out of respect, his tone would have been gentler, less authoritative.
Mistake number two: getting scratch on the way onto the street. Ideal employees didn’t drive like a sixteen-year-old trying to impress a girl in the school parking lot. But the adrenaline contracted the muscles in his calf, and the next thing he knew the rear tires were spinning. Once again, instinct took over and he automatically corrected for the swerve. In an effort to slow his pulse he exhaled slow and deep, relaxed his grip on the wheel, and, most important, lifted the gas pedal from the Jeep’s floor.
For Detective Matt Dorchester, one of the most treacherous parts of undercover work for the Lancaster Police Department was discovering exactly how deeply military and paramilitary organizations were carved into his bones. Twenty minutes into his newest role and he’d already made two dangerous mistakes, two more than he’d made in either of his previous, months-long undercover assignments.
Most men know how to steer out of a skid. It’s not a dead giveaway that you’ve spent years behind the wheel of a Crown Vic with the Interceptor package. Most important, you’re not clinging to your honor with your fingertips.
The sun hung low in the sky, the mid-afternoon heat index just over a hundred degrees. The humidity-saturated air lay thick and damp against his skin as he scrupulously obeyed the speed limit all the way from Eye Candy to the Eastern Precinct. Storefronts and chrome bumpers reflected the sun’s glare as heat and shimmer, much like the thick layers of Eve Webber’s black hair fell in her face as she talked, glinting against her jaw, her cheekbone. Intellectually he knew it would be cool to the touch, but that didn’t stop his hand from tingling with the desire to slide through the strands.
Get a grip, Dorchester. That wasn’t a job interview, let alone a date. You’re a cop. She’s an informant in danger.
At the stoplight before the turn into the Eastern Precinct he flexed his hand to short-circuit the sensation in his fingers, felt the scabs covering his knuckles tug at the healing skin. He’d stop tonight, get another bottle of ibuprofen for his brother, and pick up a tube of antibacterial ointment while he was at it. Battered knuckles wouldn’t go over well in a bar like Eye Candy. Once inside the building, he sidestepped Officer Connor McCormick bringing in a handcuffed, viciously swearing man.
“Busy night?” Matt asked, taking in his arrest’s prison-honed muscles and ink. Conn was a couple of inches taller than Matt and built like a tank. Conn had started working undercover in the last few months, mostly buy-and-busts. Matt knew him as a solid cop, usually first on a scene, and like Matt, he lived and breathed the job.
“Never a dull moment,” Conn said, grinning.
“What’d he do?” Matt asked, nodding at Conn’s detainee.
“Breaking and entering, assault, resisting arrest,” Conn said. “For starters. Pattern matches a string of similar incidents.”
“You got nothing, motherfucker,” the guy snarled.
“What I’ve got is DNA from when you spit on me,” Conn said, almost cheerful as the guy tried to wrench free. “Where do you think you’re going? You’re handcuffed and in the middle of the Block,” he asked, using the name on the street for the Eastern. More usefully, he tightened his grip on the pressure point in the guy’s elbow. “This dance is just getting started.”
The guy snarled out a string of profanities describing his night with Conn’s mother.
“Sounds about right,” Conn said, but Matt didn’t miss the glint in Conn’s eye. “She’s been dead for twenty years, but dead’s probably the only way you get laid.”
The guy checked for a second. “Respects, man,” he said, “but you’re still a pig motherfucker. Get your fucking hand off my fucking elbow! I can’t feel my fucking fingers!”
“Need a hand?” Matt asked.
“Nah,” Conn said. “He’s a pussy … cat. Besides, Hawthorn’s looking for you.”
Great. Matt left him to it, and took the stairs two at a time to the undercover unit’s bullpen. His partner, Detective Joanna Sorenson, sat at her desk. Another detective, Andy Carlucci, loomed over her shoulder, a blatant invasion of personal space guaranteed to drive Sorenson nuts.
“Jesus Christ, Dorchester, you’re going undercover in a strip club? Who’d you piss off?” Carlucci said, mock-astonished. “No neo-Nazis? No domestic terrorists stockpiling explosives?”
Jealousy rode the edges of the words. Carlucci routinely petitioned Lieutenant Hawthorn for undercover assignments, and was just as routinely turned down. Volatile and far too quick to make assumptions or rush a situation, Carlucci lacked the qualities crucial for successful undercover work: an unflappable demeanor, bone-deep patience, wits, and finely tuned instincts. Matt’s father drilled in unemotional patience. Nineteen months in Iraq and eight years on Lancaster’s streets honed the wits and instincts.
Matt ignored Carlucci, sat down across from Sorenson, and powered up his laptop. Carlucci lingered at Sorenson’s shoulder for a moment, then straightened and folded his arms across his chest. “Watch your back with the owner,” he said. “A guy hiring all male bartenders…” He let the end of the sentence hang in the air. When he didn’t get the expected protest, or any response at all, he linked his fingers across his belly and spoke to Sorenson. “Your last name’s Sorenson. You’re third generation LPD and your father shit gold bricks so you can write your own ticket with the lieutenant, but you’re working with this stiff. He’s got zero personality.”
“He gets the job done,” Sorenson said without looking up.
“Low standards, Sorenson,” Carlucci said.
At the stress on Sorenson’s last name Matt cut Andy a look, but Andy still focused on Sorenson, who was proofreading an arrest report. “Getting the job done is the only standard that matters, Carlucci,” she replied with a lack of interest that would successfully drive Carlucci nuts. “How’s your clearance rate?”
Carlucci turned back to his own desk. “Fuck you both.”
“Black, two sugars, thanks,” Sorenson said absently.
Same shit, different day. Matt dropped Carlucci from his awareness, started a new case file, and began composing the report describing his interview with Eve Webber.
At fifteen thirty hours I approached Ms. Webber in her place of business. Subject is female, Caucasian, approximately five feet six inches—
… mostly slim, toned legs.…
… green eyes, black hair …
… that kept falling in her eyes …
That memory halted his fingers on the keyboard. Touching hair was often a subconscious gesture expressing interest in a man. Eve Webber’s just wouldn’t stay out of her face, sliding free from its mooring behind her ear, shadowing an eye, but he didn’t think she was coming on to him. A woman prepared to tell a potential bartender to keep his hands off the customers or face retribution akin to the wrath of God wouldn’t bother to flirt. She’d name a time and place, and bring her best game.
And flirting didn’t explain that strange humming connection that revved into the red zone when their fingers met.
“What’s this all about anyway?” Carlucci asked.
The informant offered the job contingent on satisfactory performance tonight.
Delete.
Matt reached for the distancing language of a police report to describe the bar’s interior, the possibility of alternate exits upstairs or in the back.
“The operation with the FBI and the DEA to get Lyle Murphy. He’s moving home and bringing bad news with him,” Sorenson said when it became apparent Matt wasn’t going to bother answering Carlucci.
“What kind of bad news?”
“The Strykers.”
As he reread the report, Matt heard Carlucci’s faint whistle. Much better. Calm, logical, focused on the case at hand. No mention of hair or legs or eyes, as if describing features could sum up the sheer femininity radiating from Eve Webber during a simple job interview. Ten minutes with her and he’d felt something. Still felt it thirty minutes later. Not desire. He understood desire, dealt with it. This was different, more visceral, deeply buried, long forgotten, and leading him to make two mistakes when the acceptable error rate was zero point zero.
Lieutenant Ian Hawthorn walked down the aisle between the detectives’ desks. “Well?” he said to Matt.
“I’ve got a trial shift tonight,” Matt said. “If she’s happy at the end of it, I’ve got the job.”
Hawthorn folded his arms. “The FBI’s been running this operation for over a year, and getting nowhere until a couple of weeks ago, when Ms. Webber walked in off the street and said Murphy approached her about using her bar to launder the money they’re making in the region. She agreed to be an informant and help us get him. She’s the connection the Feds needed to get the whole chain, from the buy-and-busts on street corners right up to the top guys.”
Carlucci whistled again.
“That’s the good news. The bad news is that somehow word got back to Murphy. McCormick was booking a Stryker when she walked in. Maybe he saw her, and reported back to Lyle Murphy. It doesn’t matter,” Hawthorn said. “She managed to talk her way out of the situation with Lyle but people who inform on the Strykers have a nasty habit of dying in a drive-by, or worse, disappearing off the face of the earth. So Detective Dorchester just got himself a job as Eye Candy’s newest bartender.”
“This is a big fucking deal. Shouldn’t we put in plainclothes officers?” Carlucci asked. “Hang out in the bar, keep an eye on the situation?”
Sorenson shoved her keyboard tray under her desk and looked at Carlucci, her gaze flicking over the buzz cut, slacks, and suit jacket. “Even plainclothes cops look like cops. They walk and talk and think like cops, and a ten-year-old in that neighborhood can pick us out of a crowd. Matt, on the other hand, looks like the kind of guy who’d bounce from job to job, city to city. Just the right amount of bad boy,” she said consideringly. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Matt said. He knew exactly how he looked, ho
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