She shook her head. The loud music had obviously popped a bunch of her mental screws loose. Every time she went to court, she faced men more confident and swaggering than him. And she put them all right back in their place, too. She just had to find her game face. Where’d the damn thing gone?
“So what can I do for you ladies?” Tieri asked. “Is there a problem with anything?”
Eve and Reiley laughed with manic energy she’d never seen from them before. “No, nothing at all!” Eve blurted. “We just saw you here and…wanted to say thank you for the party.” She bit her lip like an awkward teen. “I’m—errrmmm—oh shit, who am I?”
Tieri turned a little more, his black suit jacket opening to reveal a physique that really could’ve come from the same beautiful-people magazine as his date. The guy literally bulged in all the right places, which got highlighted even more as he rose from his bar stool with the fluid grace of a dancer. With a slight smirk, he leaned and read Eve’s name badge. “Does Pascal ring a bell?”
“Oh yeah! Th-thank you. Pascal, that’s it. Lieutenant Eve Pascal, sir. And these are my friends, Lieutenants Reiley Young and Celina Kouris. We’re with the Midwest JAG office.”
“Hmmm. Gorgeous
and
smart. Thank you for your service to our country, counselors. This is the least I can do to signify the gratitude.”
“The least?” Eve giggled again. “Are you kidding? This party is—well—wow. Seriously. I’ve been coming since you started it.”
“Me too!” Reiley arced her hand in a fast wave.
The man tilted his head, looking to Celina again. His smile hitched at one side. “And you three?”
“No.”
She couldn’t get it out fast enough. As she shifted her weight, a rush of heat tormented her. His gaze was like a damn spotlight, and she had nowhere to hide. She drew in a breath against the panic that followed. Maybe this was how it started. Maybe this was the opening tactic with men like him. Men who thought their black Amex and their practiced stare could get a woman to drop everything in her life,
everyone
in her life, to float away with them into the sunset on a fifty-foot yacht. Playing to women like her own mother and sister-in-law, who proved them completely right.
“No,” she repeated, more firmly this time. “I don’t do dances.”
Especially ones backed by players like you, Mr. Tieri.
“Cel!” Rei gave her a playful swat on the arm, but her eyes were wide with threat. “Be. Nice!”
She flashed a grin of false sweetness. Reiley’s reaction ensured she’d gone for exactly the right tone and achieved it.
But her private celebration was destroyed by Tieri’s smooth interjection. “It’s okay. I don’t usually do dances either. I’m just the guy with the checkbook.” He nodded to a man who sat nearby, whom Cel only now recognized. It was Mark Moore, former Indiana senator and new Chi-town transplant, looking relaxed and happy as he cuddled with a mahogany-haired woman who looked a lot more normal than Ms. Society Page. “My best friend Mark,” he said in introduction. “And the bastard you have to officially thank for this thing. He’s just found out he’s going to be a daddy. And since his first offspring is currently blowing up the net with her single being downloaded, we need to make sure the next gets a decent round of celebration. Would you ladies care to join us in some more champagne? And of course, one glass of cider for Rose over there.”
Again, the man’s words included Eve and Rei, but his stare twined only around her. She risked looking directly back this time. And regretted it. He gazed with more determination than ever, as if she were a knot he longed to untangle. And she felt his energy too, pulling at the tight ends of her composure, a relentless tug at her blood, her bones, her nerves…
No.
No.
The resolve was easy to maintain. All she had to do was remember the house, heavy with Dad’s agony, the morning after Mom left them for the president of her bank. And Dylan, the rock of their family, crumbling to emotional dust when Natalie divorced him for an international commodities czar.
She wasn’t biting into the same poisoned apple. Or drinking a drop of the champagne that precluded it either.
“Cel?” It was Eve this time with the big bug eyes, only hers were filled with desperation. “C’mon. You wanna?”
She gave her friend a rueful glance, then steeled her jaw. “I’m sorry. I don’t do bubbles either.”
“Cel-eeeee-naaaa…”
Now she actually laughed. “God, you’re persistent. Listen, you two stay and have fun.” She found a spot on the wall that was suddenly interesting. She wouldn’t look at him again. She couldn’t. “I just need to get out of here. I’ll be around the corner, at the Blue Sax Grill. It’s safe. See you in a bit.”
Chapter Three
An hour later, Dante looked at his watch again. Then rolled his shoulders again. Both actions did nothing to slough the tension that set on him like a vulture from the second his little surprise from fate had walked out the door. He’d watched every step she took on those goddamn gorgeous pumps, inwardly cursing himself for an idiot as she’d left. Every instinct in his body had screamed at him that stars really did collide, that he’d just been handed the fucking proof on life’s golden platter, and now he’d let that evidence walk out the door on him.
She’d left, he was certain,
because
of him.
Now things were developing into an even bigger mess.
His scowl literally hurt while he watched Lieutenants Pascal and Young bop by on the dance floor as the middle links of a conga line, fueled by three glasses of champagne apiece. Those were the drinks
he’d
witnessed them suck down. He wasn’t sure what other libations had gone into those girls since they’d headed to the dance floor with a pair of dashing young ensigns, but from the looks of it, they were experimenting in the neighborhood of the let’s-mix-our-alcohol-and-see-what-happens category now.
With their friend, none the wiser, waiting at a bar around the corner.
Just as midnight struck.
“Shit.”
Celina Kouris was a smart woman. That part was clear. He nodded, needing the move as backup for the reassurance. She was smart, and she also clearly had her friends figured out. She’d eventually discern what was happening and come back to the ballroom.
Wouldn’t she?
She hadn’t been able to get out of here fast enough. The certainty of it was a nail in his brain. Something about him acted like a single-pole magnet on her, repelling her despite all the signs she gave of wanting to come closer, of wanting to stay. But in the end, when she left, the move was final.
No, she wouldn’t come back.
So had she stayed at the Grill?
And if not, where the hell was she now?
“Shit.”
A tight sigh next to him wasn’t much help. “That’s about the twentieth time you’ve said that, honey.”
Meredith’s voice was still smooth as her Botox-injected skin. Dante swung a glance at her. “You’re right.” He didn’t relax, though she curved an anticipating smile. “You want to leave, don’t you?” As she drew breath for a flirty return, he pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. At the same time, he beckoned his driver forward with a tick of his fingers. “Vincent will make sure you get home safely, darling. Thank you for your company tonight. I’ll call—”
The woman pressed a finger to his lips. “No you won’t, Dante.” For the first time tonight, real emotion entered her face. “It’s okay. Really.” She reached inside his jacket pocket and slid out his cell. “Call your damsel in distress, Prince Charming. I’m sure the Blue Sax is easy enough for directory assistance, even during the witching hour.”
He gave her a soft smile. He joined another kiss to it, this time to her cheek, as he waited through the four interminable rings it took for the information operator to pick up. With every number he pressed to click through to the Blue Sax, his anxiety ratcheted higher. Christ; he had no idea why, either. This was crazy, like one of those metaphysical premonitions the late-night TV psychics were always having. He knew the woman was named after a Pleiades star and had the eyes of a forest nymph. End of story. It wasn’t like her chi could call to his aura, sending messages clear up the street like—
“Blue Sax!” It was a scream more than an answer, given by some kid who couldn’t be more than twenty-three.
“Hello?” He didn’t hide the confusion in his tone. Like the other end could even hear him. Within seconds, a riot filled his ear. Crashing glass. Splintering wood. Flesh pounding on flesh. At least a dozen voices shouting different versions of the
F
bomb.
“Hello?” the kid shrieked again. “Is…is this the police? Shit, if you can hear me, please come now! Two guys decided to knock heads over some bitch, and now the whole place is going insane. It’s like a fucking Dirty Harry movie in here! We need—”
He barely took the time to click the line off before tearing out of the Hilton like the building had caught fire. Flames were almost what he expected to find as he whipped his gaze one way then the other down the block. Providing just as clear as a signal blaze was the melee on the sidewalk fifty yards down, starring a handful of brawlers bathed in aqua-blue light, who lunged at one another like rabid wolves after raw meat.
Dante broke into a sprint. He was glad he did, because he reached the front door half a second before a fleet of Chicago police cars arrived and screeched into a fantail pattern, closing off access to the Blue Sax from anyone else.
Inside, the dim lighting and the flying bodies created a war zone. The two behemoths who’d likely started the brawl now stood on opposing tables, shouting at each other in drunken slurs. Even if they made sense, it was likely nobody heard them over the screeches from the woman who stood at ground level between them, her black hair matted, fake eyelashes drooping with her distraught tears.
“Jesus,” Dante muttered. He took in a breath without trying to smell the air, and grimaced when he was unsuccessful. It smelled like a dirty locker room drenched in beer. Probably a fitting impression, anyway.
He lunged on, dodging a couple of flying bottles before warding off a couple of bloodthirsty guys with the force of his glare. “Fuck,” he growled. A gentleman’s act wasn’t going to cut it here. Time to go as primal as the rest of this mob. He let loose a full bellow.
“Celina! Celina, are you still here?”
Some poor jerk got thrown down the length of the bar at that second, hollering and smashing glasses as he went. That should have made it impossible for him to hear the moan, full of a female’s pain, that came from the stockroom at the back of the bar.
It
should
have, but it didn’t.
His senses sharpened with that surreal pull again, that feeling he’d gotten as soon as they’d met, then again when he’d called here searching for her. He knew, with furious certainty, the moan had been hers.
“Shit!”
He crunched and slid through broken glass and spilled booze as he ran for the stockroom. He slammed the door back, temporarily blinded by the bright light, and then—
“Fuck!”
She’d been pulled back into a corner by two huge guys in black T-shirts and jeans. They pinned her against the wall, one on each side, and had apparently just done so if the full bottle of Jack Daniel’s in her right hand was any clear sign. Her hair had tumbled from its pins, and her whole face was racked with fury, except if someone knew to look right into her eyes. Those deep green depths showed nothing but black now, betraying the terror she barely contained beneath that wildcat’s grimace. Dante swallowed hard, hoping like hell that the third hulk in the room, the one now approaching her flailing legs with a couple of lengths of twine, didn’t see the same thing.
Hell. The fuckwad noticed, all right. He told her so too, in every inch of his oily grin and every note of his lusty chuckle.
Dante took in her eyes once again, and the dark desperation of them reached out, clouding the edges of his own vision. The haze thickened as his rage did. “Take one step further, and your dick is going to become best friends with that twine.”
The guy flashed a smarmy smile. “Oh yeah, fancy pants? Says you and what army?”
“Army?”
For a split second, he had trouble comprehending that the ferocious sound had come from Celina. But he stared with a gape mixed of pride and shock as she backed it with a move clearly powered by her wrath. Using the beefy arms of her two captors as anchors, she swung her legs up and out. With one decisive kick of her miracle pumps, she caught Smarmy Smile in the center of his crotch. “That’s courtesy of the United States
Navy
, asshole. Don’t mix us up again.”
Dante didn’t need another invitation to move. As the bastard doubled over on a groan, he ripped away the twine and whipped a fast figure eight around the guy’s thick wrists. He looped the second length of the thick rope through the middle of that bond, then joined the ends and pulled them down, beneath the asswipe’s belt line, and grabbed for whatever he could get in one lunge. From the high-pitched squeal he got in reaction, he knew he’d gotten enough. He cinched the bundle tight, then increased the torture by doubling the twine back on itself and finishing with another figure-eight knot.
Smarmy’s screams went instantly Dolby stereo in the small room, but they didn’t drown the clunks of thick glass meeting a couple of skulls. Despite the rage dominating his blood, Dante grinned. Sure enough, when he looked up, Celina was standing over one of the thugs, the whiskey bottle in both her hands like a baseball bat. The guy on the ground had gone full fetal, one hand clutching his crotch, the other gripping his black-and-blue jaw. The second thug raised his own arms at Celina in surrender, just before he whirled and sped from the room.
Her breath coming in heaves, her eyes still black with terror, she backed toward Dante. He saw the shivers start already, her system revolting from its nuclear blast of adrenaline. Her arms went slack. Her face looked lost. The bottle slipped from her hand and hit the bully under her in his gut.
She took two steps toward Dante. Then fell into his arms.