The SEAL's Rebel Librarian (14 page)

“Time's helpful,” Keenan said blandly. “You going to stay in school? Because Grey Wolfe still hasn't replaced me.”

“I called them yesterday,” Jack said. “The job's mine if I want it.”

“Great. Take over my lease, would you? It's a great apartment, best location in all of Istanbul, and the neighbor's cat is a real sweetheart. Comes over for double feedings, sits on your lap and purrs.”

Jack threw him an incredulous stare. “A cat? You were looking after a cat?”

“Don't knock it,” Keenan said. “You'll like having company when you get home. Keeps you from being too lonely.”

“Don't push it,” Jack said. “Just because you're in love … with my … I don't want to think about it … doesn't mean I've got to pair off.”

“Sure,” Keenan said in the tone of voice he used when their CO asked for the impossible in less than twenty-four hours. “You're a lone wolf. I feel you.”

“Please don't,” Jack said, his brain spinning up images of pairing off with Erin before he shot himself down. No way would she want the life he was after. She was all about commitments, keeping her word. She had a job, a life here … No. She had a wrecked motorcycle and a ten-year-old car and lived in a borrowed house because she thought all she could have was a life among someone else's souvenirs.

But she could have so much more.

Fuck this. “Keep it,” he said to the bartender when he brought the bottle of whiskey to their end of the bar.

“Where are you going?” Keenan asked.

Jack slapped some bills on the bar to pay his tab, then shrugged into his jacket. “I'm going to convince Erin to break her word.”

*   *   *

He rode through Lancaster's dark streets, listening to the roar of bike, idly racing a couple of kids off the line, slowing down almost immediately to turn into Erin's neighborhood. He thought of her sitting in that house, looking around at the life she dreamed of living, the life she thought would never be hers. He thought of what he could offer her that might tempt her to break her word.

A light was on at the back of the house, the casement cranked open in the window he'd identified as her bedroom, curtains blowing through to the backyard. She hadn't put the screens in yet. He killed the bike's engine and kicked down the stand, then swung his leg over. Maybe she was in bed, maybe she was in pain—he'd make this as easy as possible for her. He sidestepped between two lilac bushes and rapped on the window frame. “Erin,” he said quietly, trying not to scare her.

The breeze blew the curtains back just enough to show her sitting up in bed, dressed in a soft T-shirt and pajama pants, a book open in her lap. She looked up, then eased out of bed and came over to the window.

“Jack,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

The scent of lilac was heavy in the night air. “Change your mind, Erin.”

“What?”

“I don't want you to keep your word. Break your promise to me. Change your mind.”

She shook her head. “You're just saying that because—”

“Come with me to Istanbul,” he said. “That's what I'm saying.”

She blinked. Stared. “Istanbul? As in the capital of Turkey?”

“I start work there in a couple of weeks. I can't promise I'll be around all the time. I might not work for weeks, and I might work for months straight. But Istanbul is a seriously cool city. Lots of history. You can travel. Istanbul sits at the intersection of Europe and Asia. Greece, Italy, France, Germany, Egypt, Morocco, all just a couple of hours by plane. I'm taking over Keenan's lease. He said the neighbor's sweetheart of a cat adopted him. Think of the kitty. Someone has to feed the poor, helpless kitty while I'm working…” His voice trailed off.

Her eyes were widening, color flooding her cheeks. “You … want me to come with you? Quit my job? You're the SEAL, Jack. I'm just an ordinary woman, and ordinary women don't quit good jobs.”

Fuck that. Sideways. “Erin. You're not ordinary.”

“With you I'm not ordinary.”

“So be with me. Always.”

Her eyes widened, disbelief and hope warring on her face. He tried to think like an ordinary person, about pension plans and 401k programs and money in the bank. “Take a sabbatical,” he hedged, “like your professor friend. Be extraordinary. With me.”

“Librarians don't get sabbaticals,” she said, but he could see her brain churning. “But I might be able to arrange a leave. Or … I could quit my job.”

She was trying it on for size, and if he knew anything about Erin Kent, it was that once an idea took hold in her mind, she wouldn't let it go. “Or quit, if you can't take a leave. I know it sounds crazy, but contractor work pays well, and I—”

“I have savings,” she interrupted.

“And I love you,” he finished.

“And I'm getting an insurance check for my bike,” she said over him, obviously warming to the possibility, then blinked. Really looked at him. “You love me?”

“I do,” he said, listening to the crickets, the leaves rustling in the warming breeze, the evening primrose under Erin's window giving off a soft, innocent scent. Spring in Lancaster was a potent time. He reached down and snapped off a blossom, then held it out to her. “I do, Erin. I give you my word.”

“I give you mine,” she whispered. “I love you, too.”

“Use some of the insurance money to buy a plane ticket,” he said, warming to the idea. “And delete that Tinder profile. I don't want to date you. I want to live every single second of the rest of my life with you. Dating is for ordinary people. You and me, we're not ordinary.”

Her mouth opened. Closed. He saw wild hope and soaring joy in her eyes. “We aren't,” she agreed.

“Change your mind, Erin,” he murmured.

She leaned forward and kissed him. “Hi, Jack,” she said. “I changed my mind.”

“Good,” he said. “Stand back.” He hoisted himself up and swung a leg over, letting himself into the room, into her life.

Forever.

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 …

READ ON FOR A PREVIEW OF
UNDER THE SURFACE
!

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 rectangular 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, but 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 you 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.