Exposed. Julie Leto

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СКАЧАТЬ the last two words as if he was joking, but Max knew Charlie well enough to realize his friend was a hopeless romantic. He was a free spirit who’d finally found some level ground with a job he was damn good at and a woman who obviously adored him, and vice versa.

      “Yeah, well, if marrying your true love is so highly rated, what the hell are you doing here with me?” Max asked. “You should be home in bed with Sheri, not keeping me out till dawn.”

      Charlie chuckled, then quieted when Ariana grabbed a black apron from the coatrack behind the bar.

      “Sheri could use a little time to herself and you need me to talk some sense into you.”

      Max barely heard Charlie’s explanation, more intrigued with watching Ariana flip the apron over her head before freeing her dark hair from beneath the pretied knot around her neck and fanning the luxurious length of it over her back. While wrapping the tie around her slim waist, she instructed the young guy who’d served their beer to cover the tables while she took over behind the bar. She tilted her hat at that jaunty angle that grabbed Max right at the center of his groin, and before he could look away, she captured his stare with a questioning glance.

      “Something I can get you?” she asked.

      Max sipped his beer, trying not to wince when the brew suddenly tasted strangely flat. “I’m fine, thanks.”

      She smiled, then made her way from one end of the bar to the other, checking on her customers, making small talk, replacing empty glasses and refilling snack bowls—all done with a quiet animation that made her both friendly and mysterious at the same time.

      Max decided then and there that he was an idiot. He knew all about the lust Charlie lectured about. He’d been feeling the pull with growing intensity ever since he jogged into Athens by the Bay a little over two years ago and caught sight of the owner’s niece helping a crew unload boxes from a delivery truck.

      If he’d simply flirted with her and gotten to know her, he’d probably be long over this intense interest. Instead, he’d played cool, ignored the attraction, turned away from her not-quite-shy, not-quite-inviting smiles that haunted him long after he’d run from the restaurant to the office, showered and parked himself behind his desk.

      Now he was less than a day away from marriage, and the woman of his dreams was only an arm’s length away.

      “Hey, Ari,” Charlie called, “how ‘bout one of your specialty drinks for the road?”

      “You driving?” she asked, grabbing a cone-shaped glass from beneath the bar.

      Charlie grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, guess I am. Then how about making one for my old friend here?” He slapped Max on the shoulder. “He needs it more than I do anyway.”

      Ariana didn’t laugh as Max expected, or as perhaps Charlie expected as well. Instead, she grabbed a collection of exotic liqueurs, one blue, one green, one amber, pouring the jewel-toned liquids into the glass on the edge of a knife, skillfully layering them with a clear, unidentified libation, so the colors barely mixed. After floating a layer of ruby-red grenadine on top, she moved toward them.

      With confident grace, she lifted the drink in one hand and a bottle of ouzo in the other. She set the glass down in front of Max and without a word, swirled the ouzo over the grenadine. Focused on the glass, Ariana shielded her eyes from Max behind thick lashes, pressing the lips of her generous mouth into a pout that was focused and sexy as hell. When she finally looked up, meeting his thirsty stare straight on, he caught the glimmer of a smile twinkling in her night-black eyes.

      He slid his hand forward, brushing his fingers over the base of the glass. She crooked her finger around the stem. “Not so fast,” she instructed, her voice breathy and low, but compelling all the same.

      He questioned her with raised eyebrows.

      She stepped up on the lower shelf behind the bar so she could lean forward and keep their exchange private. Max wanted to glance aside to see if Charlie or anyone else was watching, but he was slowly, surely, losing himself in the depths of her fathomless eyes. To hell with everyone else. She was just offering him a drink, not her body.

      “This is my most special specialty.” She skimmed her finger on the top layer of ouzo, careful not to disturb the rainbow of liqueurs underneath, then dampened the rim of the glass—precisely where his mouth would be when he took a drink. “I don’t make it for just anyone.”

      Max’s mouth dried. He moistened his lips with a thickening tongue. “I’m flattered.”

      “You should be. But you have to do your part, too.” She dampened her finger again, but this time she touched the taste of ouzo to her lips. “This drink is called a Flaming Eros. Just like good loving, it takes two to make it hot.”

      Hot? Oh, yeah. Max was learning about heat very, very quickly. His collar grew tight around his neck. His body dampened with sweat. The perfectly starched shirt beneath his perfectly pressed jacket was starting to buckle.

      “Makes sense,” he managed to say.

      Her fingers dipped into the pocket of her apron, then she slid her hand toward his, something small hidden beneath her palm.

      Her phone number maybe? The key to her apartment?

      He glanced down. A box of matches?

      “So,” she said, slightly louder, but still in a voice meant entirely for him, “care to light my fire?”

      2

      ARIANA SWALLOWED, savoring the ouzo she’d boldly stolen from his drink. She didn’t know where the seductive move had come from; she wasn’t exactly experienced with this sort of thing. But she’d spent enough time tending bar to watch some real pros work the room. Judging by the way Max Forrester’s pupils expanded and darkened his eyes from pale jade to pine green, she wasn’t doing half bad.

      One week of freedom was all she had and, dammit, she wanted to spend at least one night with the man she’d lusted for since the first time she’d seen him. She’d never had an indiscriminate affair and, quite honestly, she wasn’t starting now. Hell, since her divorce, she’d become the most discriminating woman in San Francisco. But Max Forrester exceeded even her high standards. He was gorgeous, had not just a steady job, but a full-fledged career and, according to Charlie, wasn’t in the market for a wife.

      She’d made the mistake of marrying her first lover and ended up waylaying her own goals and dreams in favor of his. Charlie claimed Max was a man of strong ethics, but he wasn’t interested in long-term entanglements. And according to her own personal observation, he was potently sexy, inherently classy and, most important, he was undeniably interested.

      Max took the box of matches from her, fumbling slightly wile sliding it open, and extracted a single match without spilling the others. She couldn’t help but be impressed. She, being incredibly clumsy, had long ago taken to inviting her customers to remove a match rather than risk her sending them flying across the polished teak countertop. But she’d never made the offer with such a libidinous double entendre as “Care to light my fire?” Or if she had, the second meaning simply hadn’t occurred to her before. That invitation to fire her personal hot spot belonged to Max and Max alone.

      He shut the box, then poised the red-tipped end of the match against the flint. “My mother told me never to play with matches.”

      She СКАЧАТЬ