Sex & The Single Girl. Joanne Rock

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СКАЧАТЬ eyes widened, almost as if she’d said more than she’d meant to. Aidan couldn’t help the slow smile that crept across his face.

      She snatched up her remote and smashed the pause button. “Now, I think we can both agree I’ve humored you tonight. It’s time you either get to the point of your visit or you’re really going to have to leave.”

      Shit. Aidan needed more time to convince Brianne he wasn’t the devil’s spawn she seemed to think him. Then again, maybe all the time in the world wouldn’t be enough to convince her she could trust him.

      One botched encounter with her that night before she left for New York and he ruined the great connection they’d once had.

      Unfortunately, it was time to play hardball because he sure as hell couldn’t walk away from his one and only lead to Melvin Baxter.

      “Actually, I’m going to have to carve out a spot for myself at Club Paradise for a little while, so we might as well try to work together.” He scratched an idle hand across his chest, affecting a casualness he definitely didn’t feel. He flexed his bicep for her benefit. “You really think the muscles are looking ripped?”

      He would have been golden if he could have teased another one of those killer smiles out of her. But as he met her stormy green gaze, he was pretty sure there would be no smiles forthcoming.

      In fact, he was damn certain he was about to experience the brunt of Brianne’s new hell-on-wheels attitude.

      A COLD, CLAMMY FEAR SETTLED in her gut, but Brianne would rather be cut off from her remote for all of eternity than let Aidan know. He wanted to settle in here? To work?

      That could only mean the FBI had her under a microscope, a notion which scared her right down to the silver rings on her toes. If word got out the new club was being investigated, it would taint the place with an underworld feel she and her partners were working hard to overcome.

      Thankfully, she’d learned a thing or two about acting in her time behind the camera as a documentary producer, and it wasn’t that much of a stretch to work up some annoyance at Aidan’s presumptuous, self-absorbed shtick.

      “I’m not about to get into a discussion of your physique in light of your earlier comment.” She met his gaze levelly, hoping no barroom brawls would break out at the club in the moments she took her eyes off the security monitors. The scene inside her office promised to be more explosive anyhow. “What exactly do you mean you need to carve a spot out for yourself at Club Paradise?”

      He leaned back in his chair as if utterly at ease with the notion, then laced his fingers over his reclining chest. “Melvin pissed off a lot of people with this latest stunt, Brianne. You know he took off because we were ready to nail him with racketeering charges?”

      No, she hadn’t known. Didn’t want to know. She’d said goodbye to Melvin and all her mother’s other shady—but well-providing—boyfriends and ex-husbands ten years ago. Brianne was well into a new chapter of her life now.

      Thoughts of Jimmy the guitar player niggled in the back of her mind. Had she somehow started her own parade of shady boyfriends?

      “That doesn’t have anything to do with me or with Club Paradise.” She stood, eager to walk away from the implied intimacy of the darkened room and the proximity of their seating arrangement. She flipped on all the overhead lights, determined to chase away all traces of shadiness in her life. Starting now.

      “Whatever business Mel was running out here, it’s not going on anymore. The women I’m partners with have so much collective fury at the Rat Pack that we could probably take down all of them if they were ever stupid enough to set foot in South Beach again. But they’re not. Mel is gone and he’s going to stay gone.”

      Aidan blinked against the sudden deluge of high wattage filling the room. “And you think you can make it so by the sheer force of your will? Mel has connections all over town and a strong racketeering operation in place. He’s not going to walk away from that income forever.”

      Why had her mother ever married such a loser?

      Bad enough Pauline Wolcott-Baxter-Menendez-Simmons unabashedly married the men for money. Did she have to be so unconcerned with how they made it?

      Brianne leaned against the master control board, strung tight and wishing she could appear half as at-ease as the agent lounging in her office chair. She set the remote control on the panel beside her. “He knows better than to contact me.”

      “I disagree. And since I’m running this investigation, that means I’m going to hang out at the club, watch the surveillance cameras with you, and generally be your best friend for the next few weeks.”

      Like hell. “I don’t think so, Aidan. One of our owners is an attorney, you know. If there’s a way to legally keep you out of here, Lainie will find it.”

      He rose, unfolding his six-foot-four frame from his slouchy position in the chair.

      To Brianne the subtle physical message couldn’t have been more obvious. He was no longer talking to her as an old friend. He was issuing FBI-guy orders in no uncertain terms.

      “I don’t think Lainie is going to find an easy opponent in the justice system, Bri, but good luck. In the meantime, I’ll be here tomorrow night before you open.” He drifted closer, his shuffling walk landing him a scant foot from Brianne.

      She had to look up at him to meet his gaze. One perk of her height was that she usually got to meet men eye-to-eye. She could have gained a couple of inches if she’d pried herself off the soundboard perch, but that would have put her much too close to Aidan.

      “I’m not showing you my videotapes without a search warrant.” By God, she was going to lay down some rules here, too. If Aidan thought he could blithely walk through her door and charm her into doing whatever he wanted, he was dead wrong. She’d learned the hard way not to put her trust in this man.

      “Why? So I can’t see the drunken three a.m. crowd pissing on the sidewalk on their way out of the club? Or so I can’t see the floor show for free? If Melvin’s not going to contact you, what do you care if I sit here and watch your tapes with you?”

      That was the whole damn point. She didn’t care what he saw, she cared that he’d be sitting two feet away from her all night, every night. Besides, she needed to show him he couldn’t waltz back into her life and expect he could manipulate her like some infatuated teenager.

      “Bring a warrant or you don’t see a damn thing.” She’d hold her ground on this one.

      “Fine.” Nodding, he conceded her point. “But I’m going to be all the more demanding about what you have to show me if I go to the trouble of getting the paperwork.”

      She scavenged up a few remnants of her New York attitude, the facade she’d needed to make it in the city’s competitive film industry. She leaned close enough to whisper, her chest hovering inches from his.

      “Demand all you want, Aidan. I don’t think you’ll be able to obtain a warrant for what you really want to see.”

      If there were any justice in the world, the fact that Aidan chose that moment to lick his lips would mean Brianne had the power to make his mouth go dry.

      An idea that СКАЧАТЬ