Relentless

by Sybil Bartel

  Startled by his brazen touch, by the heat suddenly coursing through my body, by the roughness of his grasp, I pulled back.

  Instantly I mourned the loss of the physical connection.

  His larger-than-life presence had taken me by surprise, and thoughts were flying through my mind unchecked. If I was going to measure his single touch against my entire marriage, there’d be no comparison. This blond-haired young man would take the win. But a chance meeting in a hotel bar next to a seventeen-year marriage wasn’t a comparison. It was a cruel joke fate was playing at my expense, and I didn’t want to engage with that kind of pretense.

  I wanted simple.

  So that’s what I gave him.

  The simple truth.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I admitted.

  I WANTED TO DEVOUR HER.

  Every gorgeous, sad inch. I may have only been a twelve-year-old kid when I first met her, but I knew then what I knew now.

  I was looking at an unhappy woman, and I wanted to change that.

  She was too damn beautiful not to smile, but I’d promised not to hit on her. Not tonight anyway. So I changed course, like I’d done so many damn times in my life, it was becoming second nature. “What’s your favorite food?”

  One of her perfect eyebrows shot up. “Are you asking me to dinner?”

  “No.” I smiled. “It’s too late for dinner.” It wasn’t. “I’m asking what you like to eat. Simple question. Favorite food. Don’t think, don’t give it time to soak in, just tell me the first thing that pops into your head. Favorite food,” I repeated.

  She picked up her wineglass and brought it almost all the way to her lips. “Sourdough toast, sliced thin, toasted crisp, spread with chevre and a drizzle of balsamic glaze.”

  It was so damn specific, I laughed. “Is that all?” I didn’t know what the fuck chevre or balsamic glaze was, and I didn’t care. I made a mental note and filed that shit away.

  She frowned, and her voice came out clipped. “There has to be more?”

  “No, darlin’, there doesn’t. It’s perfect.” She was perfect. In a haunted sort of way. “Now tell me your favorite drink. Same rules. No thinking.”

  “Fresh squeezed orange juice from Florida oranges.”

  I grinned. “Florida, huh?”

  “Yes.” She nodded seriously. “They taste different than Californian or imported oranges.”

  Not sure I’d ever had a conversation about citrus with a woman before, but I liked it. It was real. Honest. “Different how?”

  “Less bitter, more sweet, but not cloying.”

  Her answer was so quick and sure, she sounded like she’d given the whole damn thing thought, and that made her even more intriguing. I liked a woman who enjoyed food—not that her slight frame suggested it, but this conversation was moving in the right direction.

  “Okay, next question.” I smiled at her again, but she still didn’t take the bait. “You ready?”

  “What’s your favorite food?” she countered.

  Eye contact, no shift in her seat, a little bit of demand in her tone—hell yeah. My smile held. “I’m a man, darlin’. I’m gonna say steak. A big cowboy ribeye grilled on an open flame.”

  She looked like she was fighting a smile. “Let me guess, seared but still rare in the middle.”

  “Is there any other way?”

  She rolled her eyes. “And to drink?” She glanced at my Bud. “Domestic beer?”

  I winked. “Now you’re getting it.”

  She picked her glass up and finished her wine before making to stand. “And now I’m leaving.”

  Shit.

  Taking a calculated risk, I grasped her wrist. “Can I ask you one more question?”

  First glancing at my hand on her arm, then discreetly looking around the bar, she brought her gaze back to mine. “If you must.”

  “Do you ever have a second glass? Or is one your limit?” Luna had said she didn’t usually drink.

  She frowned. “Are you monitoring my alcohol intake?”

  “Not at all.” I searched her face for any sign of the woman I saw a moment ago who almost smiled while accusing me of liking rare steak. “I’m just wondering if you’ll join me for another round.” I didn’t wait for a rejection before I threw down my best attempt at persuasion. “I don’t bite, and I still haven’t kept my promise to you.” I let half my mouth tip up. “Plus, I have a story for you.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to hear a story.” She twisted her arm out of my grasp, but she didn’t move to leave.

  “Everyone loves a bedtime story.”

  “Is that right?” she challenged.

  Hot damn, she didn’t say no. “One hundred percent right. If Mutt was around, you could ask him.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You told your dog bedtime stories?”

  “Damn straight. Who else was I gonna tell them to?”

  “A girlfriend,” she stated, like it was the most obvious answer in the world. “Or a wife.”

  I grinned. “You fishing?”

  “For what?” she asked incredulously.

  “My status.”

  Shaking her head, her skeptical expression said it all. “If I have to ask your status after sitting through a drink with you, then I’ve failed at being a woman for over three decades.”

  “Good. Glad we got that cleared up.” I winked. “But for the record, if I wasn’t single, I wouldn’t have asked you to join me for a drink, no matter how beautiful you are.”

  The one perfect eyebrow came up again. “Do you really think that’s going to work on me?”

  I feigned innocence. “Will what work?”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about, Mr. Flirtatious.”

  Amping up my grin, I pulled my wallet out. “Not that I’m complaining about the nickname, sweetheart, but would you like to know my name?” I held a hand up to the bartender.

  “No,” she clipped too quickly.

  “Another round?” the bartender asked without enthusiasm.

  I glanced at her. “Another glass of wine or would you like something else?”

  Tucking her purse under her arm, she clasped her hands in front of herself. “You’re awfully sure of yourself.”

  I glanced at the bartender. “Give us a minute?”

  “Yep.” He walked off.

  My expression serious, I gave her an out. “I’d like to have another drink with you. I don’t care if it’s an eighteen-year-old scotch or a glass of water. But I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable or coerce you into a damn thing, darlin’.” I held her pretty, green-eyed gaze. “I’m enjoying your company, but if you’re not enjoying mine, don’t do me any favors.” Next to firearms, the second thing I hated most was a dose of pity.

  She looked at me for three seconds, then she surprised the hell out of me. “Why?”

  “Come again?”

  “Why are you enjoying sitting at a hotel bar bantering with a humorless older woman on a Sunday night?”

  Taken off guard, I threw down one of my trump cards. “I’m guessing you’re thirty-five, thirty-six max.” I knew exactly how old she was. “That’d make you about twelve when I was conceived.” I lowered my voice. “You’re not old enough to be my mother, darlin’. And even if you were, I’d still ask you to join me for that second drink.”

  Shaking her head, she averted her gaze.

  Then she placed her purse on the bar and sat back down. “I must be insane.”

  LIKE A FOOL, AND A desperate one at that, I sat back down.

  Wide and unreserved, he smiled at me. “Excellent choice. White wine again?”

  Just like it did every time he’d smiled at me tonight, my stomach fluttered.

  I was a thirty-six-year-old divorcee with an eighteen-year-old stepdaughter. I didn’t do stomach fluttering or flirting in a hotel bar with a… oh God. “How old are you?” It was a rhetorical question. I’d done the math. I knew how old he was, but the more appropriate question should’ve been, how young wa
s he?

  “Twenty-three,” he answered as natural as breathing. “Wine?”

  Drinks. With a twenty-three-year-old. Jesus, Summer would have a field day with this. I’d never hear the end of it if she found out, let alone my ex-husband.

  Then it hit me.

  What the hell did I care what they thought?

  I’d been an outsider in their lives for years. I didn’t answer to either of them. I didn’t answer to anyone anymore, except the board of directors for my charity organization.

  This was my life.

  So I took control. “Wine is fine.” Even though I never had a second glass, because my ex-husband had always told me it was unseemly for women to have more, especially in public. I’d been a child bride at eighteen, and I’d listened to everything he’d said.

  Nodding once, Mr. Young and Cocky held his hand up for the bartender, and the surly bastard, unlike when I’d tried to get his attention, acknowledged him.

  Except the tall and muscular man sitting next to me wasn’t cocky. He was confident, polite, and, yes, incredibly alpha for someone his age, but I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t the most intriguing man I’d met in years. And his smile? I mentally shook my head. It was as if it reached out and touched my soul every time he flashed it, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of familiarity, like I’d seen it before. Except that was impossible. I would’ve remembered a man looking like he looked if I’d met him before.

  “Another glass of wine, a Bud and a menu,” he told the bartender.

  The bartender nodded and walked off.

  “A menu?” I asked dryly. “I thought you said it was too late for dinner.”

  “Appetizers.” He winked, and it worked for him. “You hungry?”

  I was a former model. I was born hungry. If my stomach didn’t growl at least three times a day, I panicked. “No,” I lied. I was starving. I hadn’t eaten dinner.

  The bartender returned with our drinks and a menu as Mr. Young and Cocky threw down a credit card. “Thanks, man. Start a tab?”

  “Yep.” The bartender nodded at the menu. “Let me know what you want. Kitchen is only serving dinner for another half hour, then you’re limited to the bar menu on back.”

  “Got it.” Mr. Blond looked at the menu as the bartender walked off again. “What do you like to eat, darlin’?”

  The way he used the term of endearment was different than any of the sycophantic men I’d dealt with since I was twelve. He wasn’t saying it to be flirtatious or in a leering manner. He was using it because he was comfortable with it. In fact, he seemed to be comfortable with everything, his own skin, my company, this bar… Oh God. What if this was his MO? What if he came here frequently to pick up random women and take them upstairs?

  “Have you been here before?” The question blurted out like an accusation.

  “Nope, first time.” He didn’t look up from the menu. “To eat, darlin’?”

  Relieved that he wasn’t a regular here, I exhaled. “I’m not hungry. Pick what you want.” I would eat a salad when I got home later. Another byproduct of my years with Leo Amherst. He thought women shouldn’t stuff their faces in public.

  “Any food allergies?”

  “Like I said, not eating.”

  Undeterred, he looked up and smiled at me. “I’ll take that as a no then.”

  I briefly closed my eyes. Then I stupidly gave him another tidbit of personal information. “No nuts.”

  He frowned. “Peanuts or tree nuts? Anaphylactic?”

  “No, no allergy.” Too fattening. “I don’t prefer them.”

  “Got it.” He nodded and went back to studying the menu with more intensity than I’d seen any man look at a menu before.

  He was still looking it over when the bartender came back.

  “Make a decision?”

  “Yeah.” Mr. Blond rubbed a hand over his chin. “Vegetable flat bread, no cheese, hummus platter, and the roasted vegetable salad, no pecans.”

  The bartender nodded and went to his computer terminal.

  I looked at Mr. Young and Cocky. “For someone who said his favorite food was steak, you ordered like you’re a vegetarian.” He’d also ordered food sans nuts.

  Smiling distractedly, he took a sip of his beer.

  I studied him a moment. “Are you a vegetarian?”

  “I’m Texan, sweetheart.” He chuckled, but it was almost without humor. “That’d be against my aunt Ginny’s cardinal rule.”

  “Your aunt has a cardinal rule about vegetarianism?”

  “No, about her cooking. If she makes it, you eat it.” He smiled wistfully.

  It was charming, and I almost wanted to meet his aunt. “I don’t have any aunts.” Or uncles.

  “That’s both a blessing and a shame.”

  The bartender came back with our new drinks and gave us cloth napkins rolled with silverware and small appetizer plates.

  “Thank you.” Mr. Blond tipped his chin at him, then grabbed his beer with two fingers and his thumb and casually held it out to me. “Cheers.”

  I picked my glass up and touched it to his beer. “Skål.”

  Half his mouth tipped up. “Swedish. I like it.”

  Heat touched my cheeks, and I was thankful for the dark bar. I was impressed that he knew the origin of my toast, but it had me wondering again if he knew who I was.

  “Are you from Sweden?”

  “I am,” I answered carefully, dreading what he might say or ask next. I didn’t want to be Fallon the supermodel. Not tonight. Not with this man.

  “Miami is a long way from Sweden’s winters.”

  I exhaled a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “It is.” Though I hardly remembered anymore.

  “What brought you to the States?”

  A mother who had ambitions that far exceeded a simple life in Marstrand as a wife to a ferry captain. “Work.”

  “What kind of work?” he asked casually.

  Still not quite believing it, but also impossibly addicted to the idea of being anonymous, I stared at him a moment. He’d been a mere child when I was at the height of my career. It was very possible he had no idea who I was. “A little of everything,” I evaded.

  “Where in Sweden?” he asked, leaving my vague explanation alone.

  “A small island you’ve probably never heard of.”

  “Try me.”

  “Marstrand.”

  He smiled. “You’re right. But then again, the way I grew up, you didn’t even think about looking past the great state of Texas.”

  “Then why are you in Florida?”

  He shrugged. “Life.”

  “Not work?”

  His easy smile showed back up. “Little of that too.”

  “What line of work are you in?” The question fell out of my consciousness so easily, I forgot he was thoroughly too young for me.

  “Security.”

  Unease immediately crept back in. Of course he worked in security. His physique, his mannerisms, I should’ve realized this. “Sounds… exciting.”

  He laughed. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “I suppose it depends on what type of security you do.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” he answered vaguely. “What about you?”

  “What about me?” I hedged.

  “What brings a beautiful woman out on a Sunday night to a hotel bar in Miami Beach by herself?” He looked at me with mischief. “Unless you’d rather not say because you’re worried about offending my delicate sensibilities.”

  Caught between offense and the absurdity of his implication, I shook my head. “I’m pretty sure there’s nothing delicate about you.”

  “There you’d be wrong.”

  The quiet shift in his voice, the refocus of his gaze to straight ahead, the lack of humor in his tone, it all caught me off guard. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now that I was looking at him and seeing past his appearance, there was something in his eyes—something vulnerable.

  His easy demean
or with me, his openness, I almost let it wear off and asked if his vulnerability was the result of a broken heart, but I refrained and we were silent a moment.

  He swirled his bottle on the bar.

  I drank some wine.

  We shared space, and I was surprised to realize I didn’t hate it. In fact, I hadn’t even thought of Summer or Leo in the past few moments, and the reprieve was… incredible. Which made me feel guilty about Summer.

  Mentally sighing, I took another sip of wine, but then I glanced at him and realized something.

  He was still.

  Like I was still.

  No nervous energy, no need to fill the silence, no sordid glances or crudely suggestive comments. He was… refreshing. And increasingly more addicting by the second.

  With his ridiculously large biceps stretching his T-shirt, he cocked his head and focused his intent gaze on me. “Thomas,” he stated.

  Staring at the dirty blond scruff on his angular jaw, I blinked. “Thomas?”

  “My name. In case you don’t want to call me ‘Mr. Flirtatious’ anymore.” He winked.

  I almost smiled. “Not Tom?”

  “No.” He chuckled but then quickly sobered. “And definitely not Tommy. Never Tommy.”

  “Thomas,” I repeated, testing it out.

  “Yes, ma’am, that’s my name. Don’t wear it out. Or do. I’ll give you a free pass.”

  For some reason, I smiled. Slight and closed mouth, but it was there.

  “Aha! Knew I could coax one out of you.” He laughed outright and nudged my shoulder with his, but then he didn’t lean back into his own space. Instead, he dropped his voice and his beautiful eyes shone with happiness. “Feels good, darlin’, doesn’t it?”

  The skin on my bare shoulder tingled, and the scent of him all at once surrounded me.

  Sandalwood, oakmoss, fresh air and crisp linen—understated and more elegant than a twenty-three-year-old had any right to be, he smelled absolutely incredible. My mouth suddenly went dry, and my heart was racing, and all at once, I wanted to lean into him and run away.