Harlequin Blaze June 2015 Box Set: Midnight ThunderFevered NightsCome On OverTriple Time

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  “Have it your way.” Cade shrugged and turned back to the game. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. That girl is trouble.”

  Right, Gabe thought as he tried to pay attention to what was going on down on the field. Now where I have heard that before?

  * * *

  “HERE.” DEVIN DRAGGED Gabe into her apartment and thrust a pile of clothes at him. Blue Converse low-tops, faded jeans and a gray Pogues T-shirt. “Put these on.”

  Gabe checked the tags. “How’d you know what sizes I wear?”

  “Holly.” Devin gave herself a mental gold star for resourcefulness.

  Gabe blinked. “You called her in Istanbul?”

  “It was a fashion emergency.” Devin pushed him toward the open bathroom door. “Now get your butt in there and put them on. We’ve got places to go and people to see.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He shot her a smile that could have powered the entire northeast grid, stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind him.

  She sagged against the wall and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. She needed this to work better than her last brilliant idea. Gabe would probably bail on their arrangement if she screwed up again. And without him, her chances of finding Victor were next to nil.

  She’d been patient, not wanting to bug Gabe for information about her brother. But it had been over a week. A little push wouldn’t hurt, would it?

  “Any word on Victor?” She bit her lip and waited for his answer.

  “Not yet.” His voice carried through the closed door. “I found his caseworker, but she hasn’t returned any of my calls. If I don’t hear from her by Monday, I’ll...damn.”

  “What’s wrong?” She moved to the door.

  “These jeans are a little tight.”

  She barely suppressed a guffaw. “That’s how they’re supposed to be.”

  “My underwear is bunching up.”

  “Then take them off.” She licked her lips, imagining him gloriously naked under all that blue denim. “It’ll be our little secret.”

  She hoped to hell the rustling behind the door meant he was following her instructions.

  “Uh, what should I do with these things?” he asked a minute later. “And the rest of my clothes?”

  Jackpot.

  “Just throw them in the hamper in the closet. I’ll wash them for you. Consider it your reward for being a good sport.” Not to mention insurance she’d see him again. Were guys as attached to their boxers as women were to their thongs?

  The bathroom door creaked open and Gabe strode out with all the confidence of a runway model.

  “Do I pass muster?” He did a slow turn for her inspection.

  Pass? He’d gone straight to the head of the mother-loving class.

  She’d gawked at him in a suit. Ogled him in business casual. But in the quintessential male uniform of faded jeans and a simple T-shirt?

  Yum diddly dum dum dum.

  The jeans hugged his delectable ass and showcased muscular thighs. The soft cotton shirt cupped his pecs then fell loosely over his taut stomach and abs, ending at his waistband. She sucked in a breath. Clearly, the guy hit the gym regularly. No one got a physique like that sitting at a desk all day. Even if he did bike to work.

  “That bad?” Gabe raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “Uh, no. You look great.”

  Lame, lame, lame. Time to cut her losses and get him out in public where she’d have less of a chance to make a complete fool of herself.

  She grabbed her purse from the couch. “Let’s go.”

  He followed her to the door. “Are you planning on filling me in on your plan?”

  “We’re going to a pub crawl in the Village.” He started to speak but she cut him off. “Before you say anything, it’s not all about the party. I learned my lesson last time. This is a cultural event.”

  “How is schlepping from bar to bar getting progressively more wasted cultural?”

  “It’s a literary pub crawl. Actors take us on a tour of bars where some of New York’s greatest authors hung out, drank and wrote. Edgar Allen Poe. Eugene O’Neill. Louisa May Alcott. And it’s all for charity.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “As a knuckle tattoo.”

  “Wow, Devin that sounds...”

  Her heart skipped a beat or ten while she waited for his reaction.

  “...perfect. What’s the charity?”

  She let out a long breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding and reached for the doorknob. “Turn the Page. We train volunteers to go into schools and work with kids who are struggling with reading.”

  She swung the door open. Always well-mannered, Gabe held it for her as she walked through. “We?”

  Oops. She hadn’t meant to let that slip. As usual, her brain went on strike around Gabe.

  She locked the door behind them.

  “Yeah, I help them out sometimes.” More than sometimes, but this wasn’t the time for true confessions. This night was supposed to be about getting Operation Loosey Goosey back on track.

  “Sometimes, huh?” Damn. Looked like Mr. State’s Attorney was just starting his cross-examination. With a hand on her back, he escorted her down the stairs. “Why is it I get the feeling you’re holding out on me?”

  “How should I know? I’m an open book.” They reached the foyer and she stopped, her arms spread wide in a look-at-me gesture. “What you see is what you get.”

  Tough. Uncomplicated. Alone.

  “You can’t fool me. You want everyone to think you’re a tiger.” He tapped a finger to her chest, right above her racing heart. “But deep down you’re just a big ole pussycat.”

  “Am not.” She pushed open the door to the street and headed outside, needing to put a little distance between them. Who the hell was he, acting like he knew her better than she knew herself? And damn him for being right.

  “Sure.” Gabe sprinted to catch up to her. “That’s why you’re helping me win over Holcomb.”

  “Payback,” she tossed over her shoulder. “For helping me find Victor.”

  “And why you’re reading to underprivileged kids.”

  “I like Harry Potter.”

  He snickered. “If you say so.”

  “I do.” She stopped at the corner. “Here we are.”

  “Already?”

  She motioned toward the blue-and-white sign overhead. “The White Horse Tavern. Watering hole to icons Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson and Frank McCourt. And the start of our tour.”

  Gabe smiled and took her elbow, pulling her to the side as a group of what looked like college students spilled out of the bar. “What are you, one of the guides?”

  “Right.” She shrugged off his hand, annoyed at the tingles spreading up her arm. “Like anyone would follow me anywhere.”

  “I would.” He held the door open—that gentleman thing again—and waved her inside. “I did. I followed you here.”

  He was so close she could practically feel his six-pack pressing against her back. Her stammered response was swallowed up in the chaos of the bar as they made their way toward a crowd gathered across the room. A woman at the center broke from the group when she spotted Devin.

  “Chica! You made it.” She gave Devin a quick hug.

  “I said I would. And I never break a promise.”

  “Who’s the guaperas?”

  Devin coughed discretely. “Ariela, Gabe. Gabe, Ariela.”

  He held out his hand. Ariela took it, holding on a little too tight and a little too long for Devin’s liking. Not that Devin had any say in it. She and Gabe were friends. Not even. Acquaintances, really.

  Who wound up with their tongues in each other’s mouths almost every time they saw each other.

&nb
sp; “What’s a guaperas?” he asked. “Should I be insulted?”

  “I wish.” Devin crossed her arms in front of her chest.

  “Far from it.” Ariela eyed him up and down, the glint in her baby browns telegraphing her appreciation. “It’s nice to finally meet one of Devin’s friends. She’s one of our best volunteers. Every Tuesday, like clockwork.”

  Devin shot her friend a look that could have stripped paint. “Ariela’s brother owns the tattoo parlor where I work. She’s the one who got me involved with Turn the Page.”

  “Every Tuesday, huh?” Gabe’s normally somber eyes flashed with playfulness.

  “Thursdays, too, sometimes, when we need someone to fill in. Devin’s a real lifesaver. I wish my other volunteers had half her dedication.” Ariela checked the time on her smart phone. “Time to get this show on the road. I’d better go corral the tour guide. I’ll catch up with you both later.”

  “Thursdays, too,” Gabe teased as Ariela sauntered back to the group. “That’s a lot of Harry Potter.”

  “It’s hard to say no to Ariela. She’s a force of nature.” A pair of fellow volunteers waved Devin over to the bar, and she elbowed her way through the crowd toward them.

  “Is there anyone you don’t know in this place?” Gabe trailed after her.

  “I don’t know her.” Devin jerked her head toward a statuesque blonde entering the bar. Way overdressed, probably in designer duds from head to toe. Not a hair out of place. Definitely not someone who’d stoop to associate with a tattoo artist/bartender with an earful of piercings and a piss-poor attitude.

  Gabe stiffened and put a hand on Devin’s shoulder, stopping her. “I do.” His voice was strained. “That’s my ex.”

  6

  FIRST FRANK’S IDIOT BROTHER. Now Kara.

  “Bourbon. Neat.” Gabe slid a twenty across the bar to the bartender.

  In a city of over eight million people, why was it so damned hard to steer clear of the handful he didn’t want to see?

  “Pace yourself.” Devin shouldered her way into the spot next to him at the rail, waving off her friends. “We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

  “Make it a double.” He nodded toward Devin. “And whatever the lady’s having.”

  She ordered a Jack and soda and waited until the bartender returned with their drinks. “Bad breakup?”

  He sipped his bourbon. The strong, smoky liquid slid down his throat like velvet, warming him from the inside out. “More embarrassing than anything else.”

  “How long ago?”

  He eyed Kara across the room. She didn’t seem bored now, surrounded by a pack of fawning admirers. Had she seen him? Did he care? “A few weeks.”

  “So that night in the park...”

  “Yeah.” He nursed his drink. “We’d just split up.”

  He didn’t bother filling her in on the details of his botched proposal. There was only so much humiliation a guy could take.

  “Damn.” She rested an elbow on the bar and stared into her Jack and soda. Then she straightened and snapped her head toward him. He could almost see the lightbulb flash on above her. “Wait a minute. All that bullshit about you being boring...”

  Fuck. The last thing he wanted was for Devin to feel sorry for him because his ex thought he was as exciting as watching grass grow. Bad enough she knew about Holcomb.

  “Was that because of her?” Devin’s eyes shot razor blades at Kara. “What did she say to you?”

  Double fuck.

  “Attention, everyone.” Ariela stood in the center of the room and tapped a glass with a spoon, sparing Gabe from answering. With a relieved sigh, he shifted his attention to their host.

  “On behalf of Turn the Page, I’d like to thank you all for coming this evening. I’m sure you’re all ready to get this party started, so I won’t talk long. But I wanted to give a shout-out to a very special donor who’s with us tonight.”

  Gabe didn’t have to be a fortune teller to figure out who Ariela was talking about. She held out her hand, and Kara joined her, flipping her hair over her shoulder and beaming at the crowd, basking in the glare of the public eye.

  Why hadn’t he noticed that about her before? Now that he thought about it, she had an almost compulsive need to be the center of attention. Restaurants. Theaters. Concerts. The world was her stage, and he’d been nothing more than a bit player in her drama.

  Thank God she’d said no.

  Out of the corner of his eye he caught Devin, smirking over the rim of her glass. He couldn’t imagine her courting the spotlight. Hell, she’d barely wanted to admit she volunteered, and when she did let it slip she’d downplayed her involvement.

  “Without Kara Humphries and her family’s foundation, none of this would have been possible,” Ariela continued, interrupting Gabe’s thoughts before he could analyze the significance of the fact that he was mentally comparing Devin to the woman whom, only weeks before, he’d planned to spend the rest of his life with. “We’re so happy to have them aboard as sponsors for the first time this year, and we hope they’ll be with us for years to come”

  Kara’s smile widened and she gave the crowd her best beauty-queen wave. The crowd applauded politely, with the exception of Devin, who made a gagging noise then covered it by coughing into her hand.

  Ariela motioned toward a bespectacled young man in a gray herringbone fedora at the other end of the bar. “You’ve heard enough from me, so I’ll turn things over to Josh, our tour guide for the rest of the night. Drink up, and give generously.”

  “Kind of a prima donna, isn’t she?” Devin drained her Jack and soda and plunked her empty glass onto the bar.

  “Your friend?”

  “No. Your ex.” She took his arm and dragged him across the hardwood floor toward Josh. “Come on. Let’s get closer. I want to hear this. Legend has it Dylan Thomas drank himself to death here, and his ghost still comes back for his favorite corner table.”

  The next couple of hours were a blur of new faces, small talk and literary tidbits courtesy of Josh. With Devin at his side as they traveled from bar to bar, Gabe felt more and more at ease as the night wore on. It could have been the booze. But he didn’t think so. He’d known to pace himself even without Devin’s warning.

  No, something else was lowering his inhibitions, making him comfortable navigating a sea of strangers.

  Someone else.

  Devin.

  She’d called Ariela a force of nature, but Devin was the dynamo. She seemed to have an endless supply of energy, bopping from bar stool to bar stool, introducing him to everyone, picking up the slack when the conversation lagged.

  “Having fun yet?” Devin asked midway through their third stop on the tour, Kettle of Fish, a basement bar with a divey, bookish vibe frequented by beatniks like Bob Dylan and Jack Kerouac.

  “Surprisingly, yes.” He rested a foot on the bottom rung of his bar stool. “Although I don’t think I’ll remember the names of half these people in the morning. Hell, I don’t remember them now.”

  “You’re doing great, all things considered.” She glared at Kara, a few feet down the bar rail, then looked back at him, her eyes warmer. “There’s hope for you yet.”

  “Thanks.” He owed her. Big time. And not just for helping him break the ice. He was pretty sure she was responsible for keeping Kara at bay, too. The few times he’d thought his ex was about to approach him, Devin had stopped her with an evil eye and a possessive hand on his arm or around his waist. A hand that felt a little too warm. A little too familiar. A little too comfortable.

  Not that he needed protection. Watching Kara holding court all night had only proved that marrying her would have been a colossal mistake. But it was nice to be the protected instead of the protector for a change.

  “Just a few more minutes here,
and we’ll move on to the fourth and final stop on our literary and epicurean journey,” Josh announced. “The Minetta Tavern, favorite haunt of poet E. E. Cummings and home of the famous Black Label burger.”

  Gabe’s stomach grumbled at the mention of food.

  “I need to make a pit stop.” Devin handed him her half-full glass. “Try not to get in too much trouble while I’m gone.”

  “I’ll wait until you get back to start anything.” He set the glass on the bar behind him.

  She sauntered off, her perfect ass swaying hypnotically in her cutoff shorts as she weaved her way through the packed bar. He shifted in his seat and reminded himself—not for the first time—of all the reasons why acting on the obvious chemistry between them would be a screw-up of epic proportions. Sister’s best friend. Holcomb’s endorsement. The upcoming election.

  “Gabe.”

  A breathy voice interrupted the laundry list of excuses running through his mind.

  “Kara.” He swiveled on the bar stool to face her. “You look well.”

  “And you look—” she studied him “—different.”

  He shrugged. “It was time for a change.”

  “I hope it’s not because of anything I said.” She fiddled with the clasp on her trendy bag.

  “Nope.” He picked up his drink, swirled, sipped and stared at her. He wasn’t trying to be rude. It was just that after weeks of wondering how he’d react if he saw Kara again, he didn’t have much to say to her.

  He checked the clock behind the bar. Where was Devin? He’d never understood why women took so long in the bathroom. What the hell did they do in there, anyway?

  “Seriously, Gabe. I’m worried about you.” Kara pulled out the stool next to his and sat, putting a hand on his thigh. Her shiny red nails were a stark contrast to the faded denim of his jeans. “The clothes. That girl you’re with. I wanted to talk to you earlier, but I was afraid she’d come at me with a switchblade.”

  Christ, had she always been so judgmental? Yet another flaw he’d overlooked.

  “I’m a big boy.” He picked up her hand and removed it from his leg, relieved that he felt nothing when she touched him. “I can take care of myself.”