“Nah.” She shook her head and pressed a soft kiss to my cheek. “I’ll find someone new. I always do.”
She wandered away with a slump to her shoulders and I found myself worrying about her when I really didn’t want to. Jo was one of the misunderstood. She could grate on your nerves with her materialism, but humble you with her loyalty to her family. She might love pretty shoes but they took a backburner when it came to making sure her kid brother and mom were okay. Unfortunately, that loyalty also meant she’d trample over anyone who got in her way, and be trampled over by anyone willing to use her situation against her. “I’m going on my break. I’ll send Craig out.”
I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me, wondering who her next victim would be. Or was that whose victim she would next become?
“It’s quiet tonight.” Craig ambled towards me two minutes later with a can of soda in hand. Tall, dark-haired and good-looking, Craig probably pulled in just as many tips as Jo and I did. He was a perennial flirt. And he was good at it.
“It’s summer,” I mused, casting an eye around the quiet club before turning my back to lean on the bar. “It’ll pick up weekdays again when August comes around.” I didn’t have to explain I meant it would pick up because of the Edinburgh Festival. In August, the entire city was taken over by the famous festival. Tourists descended on the city, stealing all the best tables in all the best restaurants and there was always so many of them they made walking five steps into a five minute journey.
Tips were great though.
Craig groaned and leaned closer to me. “I’m bored.” He flicked his eyes over my body with lazy perusal. “Want to shag me in the men’s toilets?”
He asked me this every shift.
I always said no, and then told him to ‘shag’ Jo instead. His reply: ‘Been there, done that’. I was a friendly challenge and I think he honestly had deluded himself into thinking he’d one day conquer me.
“Well? Do you?” A familiar soft voice asked from behind me.
I whirled around, blinking in surprise to find Ellie on the other side of the bar. Behind her was a guy I didn’t recognize and… Braden.
Blanching instantly, still mortified from yesterday, I barely noted the carefully blank expression in his eyes as he watched Craig.
Wrenching my own gaze from him, I smiled weakly at Ellie. “Um… what are you doing here?”
Ellie and I had, had dinner together the night before. I’d told her Braden had stopped by, but I hadn’t told her about the whole naked thing. She’d told me about her class, and I could understand why she’d make such a great tutor. Her passion for art history was infectious and I found myself listening to her with genuine interest.
All and all, it had been a pleasant first dinner. Ellie had asked me a couple of personal questions that I had managed to deflect back onto her. I now knew that she was a big sister to half-siblings, Hannah (fourteen) and Declan (ten). Her mom, Elodie Nichols, lived in the Stockbridge area of Edinburgh with her husband Clark. Elodie was a part-time manager at the Sheraton Grand Hotel, and Clark, a professor of classical history at the university. It was clear from the way she talked that Ellie adored them all and I got the impression that Braden spent more time with this family than his own mother.
At lunch today, Ellie and I had taken a break from our own work and met in the sitting room for food and a little bit of television. We’d sniggered our way through an episode of classic British comedy ‘Are you Being Served?’ and had bonded in comfortable silence. I’d felt as though I were gaining surprisingly fast but steady ground with my new roommate.
However, turning up at my work with her brother? Well that was not cool. Not that she knew about my incident yesterday with her brother…
“We’re meeting up with some friends for a drink in Tigerlily. We thought we’d stop by to say hi.” She grinned at me, her eyes dancing with mischief in a seventh grader kind of way before she slanted them questioningly in Craig’s direction.
Tigerlily huh? That was a nice place. I noted Ellie’s pretty sequin dress. It looked like something from the 1920’s and screamed designer. It was the first time I’d seen her so put together and with Braden standing next to her wearing another dapper suit as well as their companion, Adam, I felt a little out of sorts. Despite all my money, I wasn’t used to the obviously stylish, ‘cocktails and crème brulee’ kind of lifestyle these guys were used to. Somehow disappointed, I realized I did not fit in with this crowd.
“Oh,” I answered dumbly, ignoring her questioning eyebrows.
“This is Adam.” Ellie turned to the guy behind her as soon as she realized I wasn’t going to answer her silent query. Ellie’s pale eyes turned dark with deep warmth as she looked up at Adam and I wondered if this guy was her boyfriend. Not that she’d mentioned a boyfriend. The dark-haired hottie was just a little shorter than Braden with broad shoulders that filled out his suit nicely.
His warm dark eyes glittered at me under the bar lights as he smiled. “Hi. Nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
“Adam is Braden’s best friend,” Ellie explained and then turned to her brother. As soon as she looked at him she burst out laughing, her giggles filling the bar like fairy bubbles as she glanced back at me over her shoulder. “I would introduce you to Braden but I believe… you’ve already met.” I barely heard the word ‘met’ over her choked laughter.
I stiffened.
She knew.
Eyes narrowed, I shot Braden a disgusted look. “You told her.”
“Told her what?” Adam asked bemused, looking at the still chortling Ellie as though she’d gone mad.
Braden’s mouth turned up in amusement as he answered Adam without taking his eyes off me, “That I walked in on Jocelyn when she was wandering around the flat naked.”
Adam eyed me curiously.
“No,” I retorted with a bite in my tone. “I was coming out of the bathroom looking for a towel.”
“He saw you naked?” Craig interrupted, a scowl marring his forehead.
“Braden Carmichael.” Braden stuck a hand across the bar for Craig to shake. “Nice to meet you.”
Craig took it, seeming a little dazed by Braden. Great. Even men were charmed by him. While he smiled at Craig, that smile disappeared when his eyes fell on me again. I detected a slight chill in them and frowned. What had I done now?
“I have a girlfriend,” Braden assured Craig. “I wasn’t putting the moves on yours.”
“Oh, Joss isn’t my girlfriend.” Craig shook his head with a cocky grin down at me. “Not for my lack of trying.”
“Customer.” I pointed to the girl at the other end of the bar, glad for an excuse to get rid of him.
As soon as he was gone, Ellie was leaning against the bar. “Not your boyfriend? Really? Why not? He’s cute. And he certainly thinks you’re hot.”
“He’s a walking sexually transmitted disease,” I answered grumpily, running a dishrag over an invisible spot on the bar, desperately trying to avoid Braden’s gaze.
“Does he always talk to you like that?”
Braden’s question brought my head up reluctantly and I immediately felt the need to reassure him and defend Craig when I saw his cool, lethal eyes narrowed in my colleague’s direction. “He doesn’t mean anything by it.”
“Oh man, that break surely wasn’t ten minutes?” Jo complained as she wandered slowly behind the bar. She reeked of cigarette smoke. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would put up with any habit that made them stink so badly. I wrinkled my nose at her and Jo instantly understood. Not taking it to heart, she just shrugged and blew me a teasing kiss as she stopped to lean against the bar across from Braden. Her big green eyes drank him in as though he were a cigarette she was trying to quit. “And who do we have here?”
“I’m Ellie.” She waved at Jo as though she was a cute fifteen year old. I smiled at her. She was kind of adorable. “I’m Joss’ new flatmate.”
“Hi.” Jo offered her a polite smile
before looking back at Braden expectantly.
I wasn’t at all annoyed by her blatant interest in him.
“Braden.” He nodded at her, his eyes quickly returning to my face.
Okay.
Really?
I was stunned.
If I were honest with myself I would admit that I had been bracing myself to watch Braden turn the flirt up a notch for Jo. She was tall, model thin, and had thick, poker-straight, long strawberry blonde hair. If Braden Carmichael transformed into a smoldering flirt around me then I had totally been expecting him to melt Jo into the floor with his charm.
Instead he’d been kind of cool towards her.
That did not make me happy in any way.
Hmm. I’d always been good at lying to myself.
“Braden Carmichael?” Jo asked, oblivious to his disinterest. “Oh my God. You own Fire.”
Damn my curiosity over this guy. “Fire?”
“The club on Victoria Street. You know, just off the Grassmarket.” Jo’s eyelashes were batting a mile a minute at him now.
He owns a nightclub. Of course he does.
“I do,” he muttered and then checked his watch.
I knew that move. I used that move whenever I was uncomfortable. In that moment I really wanted to slap Jo for gushing all over him. Braden was not replacing Steven. No way.
“I love that place,” Jo continued, leaning further over the bar to give him an eagle-eye view of her small, inconsequential chest.
Meow. Where did that come from?
“Maybe we could go together some time? I’m Jo, by the way.”
Ugh. She was giggling like a five-year-old. For some reason that giggle, which I heard every Thursday and Friday night, was suddenly very irritating.
Braden nudged Ellie as if to say ‘let’s go’, his expression impatient now. But Ellie was too busy murmuring to Adam to notice her brother’s quiet desperation.
“What do you say?” Jo persisted.
Braden shot me a searching look I didn’t quite understand before shrugging at her. “I have a girlfriend.”
Jo snorted, fluffing her hair over her shoulder. “So leave her at home.”
Oh Jesus C… “Ellie, didn’t you say you guys were meeting someone?” I asked loudly enough to drag her away from Adam. She needed to rescue her brother pronto.
“What?”
I gave her a pointed look and repeated the question with gritted teeth.
Finally recognizing the look on Jo’s face and the one on her brother’s, Ellie nodded wide-eyed with understanding. “Oh yes. We better leave.”
Jo sulked. “Don’t you-”
“Jo!” Craig called for assistance from the bottom end of the bar where more customers had started congregating. I sort of loved him in that moment.
Grumbling, Jo shot Braden a childish pout and hurried over to Craig and the waiting customers.
“Sorry.” Ellie bit her lip, casting Braden an apologetic look.
He waved her apology off and stepped back, gesturing like a gentleman for her to take the lead out of the bar.
“Bye, Joss.” She gave me a wide smile and a wave. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Yeah. Have a good night.”
I observed the proprietary hand Adam placed on Ellie’s lower back as he nodded a polite goodbye my way and led her out. Was there something going on there? Possibly. Not that I would ask her about it. She’d only turn my curiosity back on me with questions about my non-existent love life and then she’d want to know why my love-life was non-existent. That was not a conversation I wanted to have with anyone.
My skin prickled and reluctantly I let my gaze travel back to Braden who’d taken a step towards the bar, the polite coolness from earlier replaced with a heat that was all too familiar.
“Thanks for the rescue.” I swear his low, rumbling voice vibrated all the way into my panties.
Squirming inwardly, I tried for nonchalance. “No problem. Jo’s a sweetheart and she doesn’t mean any harm… but she’s a blatant gold digger.”
Braden just nodded, seeming uninterested in anything Jo-related.
Silence quickly fell between us, our eyes catching, staying, locking. I didn’t even realize my mouth had fallen open until his eyes dipped to stare at it.
What the hell was this?
I snapped back from him, feeling my skin flush as I glanced around to see if anyone else had caught the moment between us. No one was watching.
Why wasn’t he leaving?
Looking back at him, I tried not to seem unnerved, when in actuality I was so out of my depth. I attempted unsuccessfully to ignore his slow, heated perusal of my body. He had to stop doing that!
When his eyes eventually crawled their way back up to mine, I made a face at him. I couldn’t believe him. He’d pretty much ignored Jo, but for me he’d turn on ‘the sex’. Did he get some sick satisfaction out of tormenting me?
Stepping back from the bar with a quick grin, Braden shook his head at me.
“What?” I scowled.
He smirked at me. I hated when guys smirked at me. Even sexy smirks like his. “I don’t know what I like better…” he mused, stroking his chin in teasing contemplation. “…the naked you, or you in that tank top. D’s right?”
What? I frowned, totally confused.
And then it hit me.
Jerk!
The asshole had just—correctly—guessed my bra cup size. He was never going to let me live down yesterday. I could see that now.
I threw my dishrag at him and he laughed, dodging it. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Then he was gone before I could summon up an epic retort that would knock him on his ass.
I swear to God, the next time we met, I’d get the last word in.
~4~
Lena, the heroine of my fantasy series, and a bad-ass assassin in the kingdom of Morvern, was supposed to be planning her attack on the Queen’s Lieutenant, Arvane—a mage who was secretly having an affair with the Queen’s nephew, and using his influence and magic to manipulate monarchical and political control. Instead, Lena had begun fantasizing about stripping, Ten, leader of the Queen’s guard, naked. Ten, who had been a blonde in the first five chapters, was now dark-haired with pale blue eyes. He was also not supposed to be the romantic hero. There wasn’t supposed to be a romantic hero at all. This was all about Lena!
Frustrated, I pushed away from my laptop.
Freaking Braden! He was even polluting my manuscript with his sexual toxicity.
That’s it. I was giving up for today. Knowing Ellie was bringing Chinese takeout home for dinner after her research at the university, I decided to slot in some time at the gym just around the corner on Queen Street as a pre-emptive attack on the calories. I generally didn’t care about my food intake, but I had been into sports at school and liked to keep in shape. Good thing too, because I really liked chips, or crisps, as they were called here. Any chips, all chips, fattening, delicious, and crispy chips. My close relationship with chips was possibly the most real in my life.
I drove out my frustration over my book into the treadmill, crosstrainer, bike and weights until I was a sweating, jellified mess. The workout relaxed me–enough that my brain started to work again. A character started forming in my head and she wouldn’t leave me alone. Mostly because she was a lot like me. She was alone in life, independent, driven. She’d grown up in foster care in Scotland and moved to the US on a work visa and ended up falling in love…
The character was my mom. My mom’s story had been great until it ended tragically. Everyone loves a good tragedy. Everyone would love my mom. She’d been spunky and outspoken, but really kind and compassionate. My dad had adored her from the minute he met her but it had taken him six months to break down her defenses. Their romance had been epic. I’d never thought about writing a romance before, but I couldn’t get the idea of immortalizing my parents on paper out of my head. Flashes of memories I’d buried under a steel and cold will s
tarted passing across my eyes until the gym disappeared around me: my mom standing at the kitchen sink, washing the dishes because she didn’t trust the dishwasher. My dad quietly pressing up against her back, his arms sliding around her waist and hugging her close as he whispered in her ear. Whatever he’d said had made her melt back against him, her head tilting up for his kiss. Then it flashed to my dad chasing my mom inside the house at night, the door slamming, scaring the bejesus out of me and my babysitter. My mom yelling at him for being an alpha male douchebag. My dad growling about how he wasn’t going to stand by and watch some jerk from her work blatantly flirting with her in front of him. My mom screaming that he didn’t have to punch the guy. ‘He had his hand on your ass!’ my dad had snapped back, as I watched on in bewildered amazement. Someone had had his hand on my mom’s ass in front of my dad? Idiot. ‘I was taking care of it!’ my mom argued. ‘Not fast enough! You’re not working with him anymore!’ From there the argument had escalated until my babysitter was running out of there without waiting for her payment. But I wasn’t worried by the argument. My parents had always had a passionate relationship. The argument would resolve itself. And it did. My dad apologized for losing his cool but wouldn’t budge on the whole ‘not working with him’ thing. The issue became such a big deal that my mom eventually agreed, because the jerk from her work was, well, a jerk and I assumed there was more to the story than just what had happened that night. My mom actually moved to a different accountancy firm. Marriage was all about compromise she’d said, and dad would do it for her.
The memories were so clear. I could see the gold in my mom’s hazel eyes, could smell my dad’s cologne, could feel his arms around me, my mom’s hand brushing through my hair…
My chest squeezed tight and I stumbled on the treadmill, the world around me coming back, but in a pulsing of color and noise that didn’t make sense. My blood was pounding in my ears, my heart rate had escalated so fast I struggled to breathe. Pain flared up my knee, but I was barely aware of it, or the strong hands helping me to my feet and on to solid ground.
“Focus on your breathing,” a soothing voice coached in my ear.
On Dublin Street Page 4