All A Man Can Be. Virginia Kantra

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СКАЧАТЬ raised her chin and slid off her bar stool.

      At least he could take orders, she thought, as she checked his total for the day. And he could add. Apparently he wasn’t dipping into the cash register, either. There was no reason for her to feel so gosh darn uncomfortable around the man.

      No reason except he looked like an invitation to be bad.

      She watched him prowl around the room, collecting glasses, emptying ashtrays. Maybe it was the hard, long body, the jet-black hair, the take-no-prisoners face. Maybe it was the wicked dark brows over those I’ve-got-a-secret eyes. Maybe it was—

      —her problem. She rubbed the space between her eyebrows, as if she could massage her tension away. Her fault. The man couldn’t help the way he looked, for goodness’s sake.

      He swung a chair up onto a table, the muscles flexing in his back and arms, and her stomach actually fluttered.

      She frowned.

      “You want to lock up, too?” Mark asked, his voice flat.

      Oh, dear. She didn’t want him to think she didn’t trust him.

      Although that had been one of Zack’s favorite ploys, pretending injury at her lack of trust. Don’t you trust me? he’d demanded, making her feel horrible, while he boinked every film student and wannabe actress who would lie down for his camera.

      She swallowed hard. That was personal, she told herself. This was business.

      She looked at Mark’s hard, expressionless face.

      “You can do it,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound as strained as she felt. “I’ll see you in the morning, and we can talk about procedures then. Eight o’clock.”

      “Nine,” he said. At least he didn’t make a crack about her being late. “Let me walk you to your car.”

      “That’s not necessary, thanks.”

      He strolled closer. Her pulse jumped. She made an effort not to retreat. “Because you can take care of yourself.”

      “I can, you know.” Suddenly it was important that he see her as a competent, confident individual, and not another bar bunny. “I’ve taken self-defense classes.”

      “Great. So you don’t need an escort. Maybe I need to see you to your car anyway.”

      That was clever of him, Nicole decided. And rather sweet. As they walked to the entrance, she tried to find a way to say so that wouldn’t sound like a come-on.

      “I appreciate your concern for security.”

      He slanted a look at her as he opened the door. “Security, hell. I can’t afford to let anything happen to you.”

      She was immediately flattered. And suspicious. “Why not?”

      “Didn’t you ever ask why the owners were in such a hurry to sell?”

      The parking lot was very dark. And isolated. The wind rustled the trees and ruffled the water. High overhead, the pale moon rode the cloudy sky. At this hour all the other Front Street businesses were closed. The other buildings were dark and faraway. The only light came from a bait-and-convenience store at the far end of the marina.

      Nicole took a deep breath. She would have to investigate the cost of more lights. “I—no. Kathy never said.”

      “Never mind, then.”

      She dug her heels into the gravel of the parking lot. “Tell me.”

      He shrugged. “Last spring three women were followed or attacked after leaving the Blue Moon. One of them was murdered. The police chief, Denko, finally figured it was the owner who did it. Tim Brown. He was convicted, and his wife put the bar up for sale.”

      Nicole was shaken. “That’s terrible. But if the man who did it is locked up—”

      “Yeah, if. Some folks still think the police got the wrong guy.”

      He slouched beside her car. She couldn’t read his expression in the dark. There was just this general impression of black hair, broad shoulders and male menace.

      Her heart pounded. “Who do they think did it?”

      His smile gleamed like a knife in the shadows. “Me.”

      Chapter 3

      He had pulled some boneheaded, shortsighted stunts in the past, Mark thought as he polished off the last Palermo’s crescent for breakfast. School fights. Petty vandalism.

      He snagged a quart of milk from the fridge, sniffed and drank from the carton.

      Scaring his new boss in the parking lot didn’t rank up there with the time he’d liberated a powerboat to go joyriding at the age of twenty or his career-ending screwup in punching out an officer. But it was still dumb.

      He’d be lucky if Blondie didn’t fire him.

      Unless… He lowered the milk carton. Unless that had been his aim all along. Piss her off enough, and he wouldn’t even have to take responsibility for quitting.

      Self-sabotage, his sister would call it, with the authority of a woman who had gotten her start editing the “Ask Irma” column in the Eden Town Gazette. Mark didn’t believe in that psychobabble self-help bull. He replaced the empty carton in the fridge and closed the door. Anyway, he took responsibility.

      When he had to.

      Which, admittedly, wasn’t very often.

      He shuffled through the bright stack of advertising flyers until he uncovered the cream-colored letterhead from the lawyer.

      “Jane Gilbert” was typed below the nearly illegible signature. The phone number was printed above. His gut tightened.

      He glanced at his watch. Eight-twenty. He wasn’t due to meet Blondie at the bar for another forty minutes. Plenty of time to call this Gilbert broad and find out what the hell she expected him to do about the bombshell she’d lobbed into his life.

      Hell. He picked up the phone.

      She had let him intimidate her, Nicole thought grimly, meeting her own serious blue gaze in the bathroom mirror. She knew it.

      And she knew better.

      It was all covered in chapter six of Losing the Losers in Your Life. You couldn’t always control the people around you, but you could control your reactions to them. And her pulse-pounding, breath-catching reaction to Mark DeLucca—which had to be apprehension, it would just be too awful it if were lust—well, anyway, that would have to stop.

      She nodded decisively at her reflection and got an encouraging nod in reply. Yanking open the bathroom door, she marched into the hall and collided with her exquisitely turned-out roommate.

      “Ouch,” the redhead said. “You’re in a hurry this morning.”

      Nicole СКАЧАТЬ