Human? Ha! Annabel blew out a gusty huff. “He’s dangerous, Devon. He’s wild. I wonder at times how close he is to coming unhinged. Or how much of that attitude is a ruse.”
“I’m sensing kindred spirits here.”
“That doesn’t mean we make a good fit.”
“It also doesn’t guarantee you won’t. Why don’t you give him a chance, Annie?”
She pulled in and blew out a long shuddering breath. “Because I’m scared?”
“Of getting hurt? Or of falling in love? Because I’ve gotta say, hurt shouldn’t be an issue. That’s one thing we both are experts on working our way through.”
“And falling in love?”
“Once you have an answer to that one, you let me know.”
C
HLOE SAT AT THE FAR END
of the horseshoe-shaped bar in Haydon’s Half-Time, going over the spreadsheet she’d written to keep track of the catering details for Devon Lee’s New Year’s Eve showing. Details such as linens and crystal and flatware. Alcohol and ice. Tables and uniforms and cleanup.
Sydney and Macy and Lauren and Poe would share the grunt work. Chloe only hoped the five of them would be able to manage, especially since Poe’s RSVP list had grown from sixty to eighty this past week alone.
P
might not literally stand for
promptly
in the acronym, but Sweet Pete in tennis shoes, what was up with all the last-minute decisions?
Sweet Pete in tennis shoes.
See? She had it in her to curse creatively. She was doing her best to be the woman Eric wanted, to tone down her potty mouth—a toning-down she needed to do anyway, working with young girls as she did these days.
She knew Eric was proud of her for that, for following her heart and returning to school for her Master’s, for making the change from fashion career to establishing gUIDANCE gIRL’s mentoring model. And she hadn’t done it to impress him. She’d done it for herself. gUIDANCE gIRL was a program she could’ve used as a teen.
Making counseling and peer services available to trou
bled girls rather than advising on lip gloss and nail color went a long way to satisfying a restlessness Chloe had thought she would live with all of her life. A restlessness she’d battled until she’d met Eric, and he’d shown her that stability existed outside of fairy tales.
Now she had to figure out where her tranquility had gone.
She drummed her fingers along the sides of her laptop, staring at the screen and the numbers and schedules that no longer made any sense. And wasn’t that exactly the way her days were going lately—nothing making sense? Even the rusty-red henna designs on her palms were more ordered in their intricacy than her life seemed to be.
Glancing down the bar to where Eric stood, towel thrown over his shoulder, smile wide and eyes twinkling as he chatted up a group of regulars in for a beer and their nightly fix of ESPN, she thought back to the night almost two years ago she’d come to Haydon’s Half-Time to ask him to do her a favor.
He’d been wary of her
and
her favor, and the memory made her smile. Hell, she’d never expected he’d take her up on her three-dates-for-three-wishes offer. But she’d been scared of screwing up what she had at gIRL-gEAR back then, and desperate enough to ask for his help in salvaging her reputation and her bad-girl name.
For so long since then she’d thought she’d found her happily-ever-after, but now, watching Eric at work, seeing him in his element, she wasn’t sure of anything. He was the same man he’d always been, the one with whom she’d fallen in love. All she could wonder about was where she’d gone so wrong in making herself over that he didn’t love her as much anymore.
Sensing that he’d looked her way and caught her sight
lessly staring, she grabbed a cocktail napkin and feigned removing a speck of pretzel salt from her eye. Blinking away what she could of the moisture, she glanced up into Eric’s frown.
“What’s wrong, princess?”
She remembered how much she’d hated that endearment, yet now couldn’t imagine hearing anything else. “Nothing. I bit too hard into a pretzel and my contact lens caught the shrapnel.”
“Hmm,” Eric said, obviously aware there wasn’t a basket of pretzels within his arm’s length, much less hers. “I thought you might’ve been crying.”
“No. I’m not crying.” She was lying, of course, and wanting to rub his face in the fact that she was crying over him. But that was childish, and she was trying not to be, so instead she gave him her sexiest smile. “Is there anything I can do in the kitchen, maybe? To help you get out of here early?”
He seemed to consider her questions, but she was convinced that what he was considering instead was what lay in store should he have to spend time with her at home. Lately he worked at least six nights a week; she was certain he’d thought about working seven.
“It would be nice to have more time together, Eric.” He certainly didn’t have to stay until closing every night. He employed a perfectly competent manager who was up for the task. “I can’t make all those babies you used to talk about on my own, you know.”
“I dunno, Chloe.” Eric pulled the towel from his shoulder and wiped a circle on the bar surface next to where she’d set up her mini-office. “Tim mentioned cutting out early, and I pretty much told him to go for it.”
Nothing about the babies. Why wasn’t she surprised? “So you have to lock up. Again.”
Lips pressed together, Eric nodded almost curtly before tilting his head in the direction of her laptop. “Besides,” he said, his tone sharpening with more censure than she’d ever heard from him, “I figure you’re pretty busy with your party planning.”
Chloe rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re still in a snit over my helping out Poe?”
“I don’t do snits, Chloe.”
“Then what do you call your attitude?” she retorted. “You’ve been pissy about it ever since I told you I’d agreed to give her a hand.”
Eric’s towel went back over his shoulder none too gently. His face took on an equally testy expression, and he kept his voice low. “It’s like I told you then. I would’ve appreciated you checking with me before you committed to bailing out Poe.”
Chloe felt anger stir beneath her incredulity. “Since when do I need your permission to help out one of my girlfriends?”
“Hell, Chloe. I never said you needed my permission.” He leaned closer, lowered his voice, but kept the heavy-duty tone. “But we’re a couple. And basic courtesy says we okay things with one another just in case.”
“Come on now, sugar. We’ve been together long enough for you to know that Miss Manners is not my middle name.” And that was it. She was out of here. She closed out her spreadsheet program and slammed shut her laptop.
He hadn’t said anything that would’ve pissed her off ordinarily, but nothing she’d been feeling lately was ordinary in the least. And so it took less than nothing to light her fuse. She bit off the foulest words she knew.
Eric grabbed her by the wrist, tightly enough to force her to look up. “I had plans, Chloe. For us.”
Easy for him to claim after the fact. “Would’ve been nice of you to share. Or have the basic courtesy to okay them with me. Just in case.”
“Surprise plans.” He released her, reached again for his towel as if needing to keep his hands busy. “But I guess they’ll just have to wait, won’t they?”
Yeah, they would. Same as the apology she wasn’t quite ready to make. She would’ve made it, she really would have, if the idea hadn’t left her feeling too exposed, too totally…vulnerable and raw.
She tucked her laptop into her computer case, situating dislodged CDs, a printer cable and the power supply. She took her time, knowing the case was in need of her attention even less than Eric needed to dry his hands.
How in the hell had they let themselves sink this low?
Finally, she looked up, calling on years of spine-stiffening techniques to keep her shoulders back and her chin high. “I suppose you’re right. Surprise or not, they’ll have to wait.”
Eric gave a tired sigh and shake of his head. “I might as well let Tim have New Year’s Eve off, since I won’t be needing it, after all.”
“What? You’d scheduled the thirty-first off? New Year’s Eve?” Oh, God. That much he could’ve told her. She’d had no idea. “I thought with the crowd you’re expecting you’d want to be here.”
“There’s a reason I pay Tim what I do,” Eric said softly. “But, yeah. I should’ve known better than to try to surprise you. Especially since you’ve been so busy lately.”
“Me, busy? What about you?”
“Overcompensating, I guess. I can pull a late shift here and save on staff overtime instead of watching TV at home alone.”
Now, of course, she felt even worse, felt her bottom lip tremble and her eyes fill with tears she wouldn’t be able to blame on any pretzel. If she’d been busy, it simply had been to keep her mind off losing him.
She reached out a hand, and he took it, pulling her closer and kissing the backs of her fingers. “I ruined everything, didn’t I? I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“No, princess. You didn’t ruin anything.” He smiled at her in that way that caused her heart to tumble, her knees to shake, her anger to seem wholly unjustified. “I tell you what. I’ll take New Year’s Eve off anyway. Maybe you could use another bartender?”
“Oh, Eric.” The apology she’d tried to swallow earlier choked her again. She nodded rapidly, wondering if any other man could be so wonderful. “I really could. We’re going to be cutting it close as is.”
“Then that’s the plan.”
“Yo, barkeep!” called a voice from down the bar. “How about you make time with the lady later and get me a beer?”
When Eric rolled his eyes, Chloe opened her mouth to put the bastard in his place. Eric saw her intent and leaned across the bar, shutting her up with a quick, scorching kiss. “That’s Big Bert. I spiked a volleyball onto his head during a game this summer, and he hasn’t quit harassing me yet.”
Oh, gawd, when was the last time he’d given her such a kiss? “Big Bert? As in—”
“Tall, beefy and bleached blond hair that sticks out like a headful of feathers.”
“Now, that’s funny,” she said, and laughed, feeling the first tentative easing of the heaviness that for so long had weighed down her heart.
Eric backed a step away. “Lemme take care of Bert. But we’re on for New Year’s Eve, okay?”
She nodded. It had been hard to let herself fall in love with this man, yet he was so very easy to love. She sighed, praying that maybe they’d just taken the first step back to where they’d been, and hoping the rest of the trip would be free of detours.
O
NE THING
P
ATRICK WOULD
never again take for granted was the value of being connected in a city the size of Houston.
Being Ray’s brother, and Ray being engaged to Sydney, and Sydney being Nolan Ford’s daughter, and Nolan being one of the city’s major money men meant that arranging an interview with the executive chef at Tony’s Restaurant without a single cooking class under his belt was a piece of cake.
No, a piece of a triple-chocolate tart with a cognac crème anglaise. Yeah. That had impressed the hell out of everyone from the manager to the maître d’. And he hadn’t done so badly showing off his seared sea bass and bay scallops with garlic sake sauce, either.
He was definitely feeling more positive about his future than he had since graduation. A degree in business administration. What the hell had he been thinking studying a subject that bored him to tears?
He’d aced it, but had never felt the least bit of interest or excitement the way he did when deciding between mango-grilled chicken or broiled snapper and plantains when cooking with Soledad.
Heading to the far end of Tony’s parking lot and his El Camino, which seemed to have muscled its way into this moneyed neighborhood, Patrick laughed. He actually
laughed. Out loud. Laughed, and liked the feeling of his abs contracting as he did. Life was looking good.
Things with Ray were getting better. Their relationship wasn’t what Patrick would consider one hundred percent, but they were rediscovering more of the easy camaraderie that had always been a part of their brotherly bond. And if this job panned out, Patrick would feel a lot more legitimate than he’d felt in a while.
It wasn’t about the money; Patrick had his future sister-in-law to thank for his good fortune in the hard cash department. Though Sydney and Ray weren’t yet married, her father had done what he could to put Ray’s mind at ease by financing a search effort to locate Patrick. So between the reward put up by Nolan Ford’s venture capitalist firm and the bounty the FBI had put on Russell Dega’s gang—both of which should’ve gone to Soledad—Patrick was doing okay. He’d saved most of that bundle, except for what he’d plunked down on the El Camino. And what he’d used to buy Annabel at the bachelorette auction.
He opened the car door, slid into the seat and shoved the keys into the ignition. But he didn’t start the car right away. He thought, instead, about how much of his current state of mind he owed to the last eight weeks of her company.
He wondered, not for the first time, how truly difficult it was going to be to let her go. Not because he’d grown to depend on her strength to keep him on the straight and narrow, but simply because he’d miss her.
The things he felt for her were so different than what he’d felt with Soledad. That relationship had been about dependence and survival, and separating the two was one thing he’d never been able to do.
But with Annabel—
Slam!
Whoa! Patrick jumped, jerked his head to the right and wrenched his body away from the door. An eternity of seconds blinked by as he took in the walking cane wedged to his door, the hand at the other end, the car blocking his El Camino from behind and the face of Russell Dega.
A face Patrick had last seen twisted with fury and vowing revenge.
Instead of the long hair Dega had always tied with a bandanna, he now wore bronzed streaks in a spiky cut that was colored dark brown. A goatee and mustache hid the scar bisecting his chin, black slacks and a black turtleneck hid the others. But the Euro-trash look did nothing to civilize the murderous glint in his black eyes.
“Mr. Coffey.” Dega smiled without emotion. “It’s good to see you again.”
Patrick felt his teeth on the verge of grinding to dust. His heart lodged like a fat wad of unchewed food in his throat. “Can’t say I share the sentiment, Russ.”
Dega laughed, still with no feeling. “No, I’m sure you don’t. But then the last time we saw one another, you were making off with information I needed, while I was getting shot. I would’ve been in touch sooner—” he gave a carelessly deceptive shrug “—but bullet wounds take time to heal. And then there was the matter of letting the heat die down.”
Patrick didn’t say a word, but cast a quick glance to his right and the mirror there, back to his rearview, moving his hands from the steering wheel to his lap. The bulk of the knife in his pocket settled into his palm—