Hard Knocks
Page 7
Breathless from his potent stare, Yvette lifted a hand to wiggle her fingers in a small wave.
Suddenly he went into motion. Saying something to the guy next to him, Cannon handed him the pool stick. The other men—some of them fighters, by the looks of them—jokingly protested. One of the women, smiling too widely, grabbed his arm with playful arguments.
After a whisper in her ear and a kiss to her cheek, Cannon disengaged from her. He pulled a roll of bills out of his pocket, tossed them on the table to appease everyone and walked away.
Knowing she’d caused a scene, heat rushed into Yvette’s face. She could feel everyone staring at her now. In order to cope, she kept her gaze only on Cannon. Breathing harder, she tracked his stride around the tables, around human bottlenecks and displaced chairs on a path to reach her.
God, she thought she’d remembered, but the powerful way he affected her felt entirely new. She bit her bottom lip hard, fighting the urge to flee—or launch herself at him.
And suddenly it was too late to do, either. Cannon reached her, still said nothing as his attention moved over her again, this time with more familiarity. The reality of him was so much better than the memory, his height, how his wide shoulders blocked out the view of the rest of the room—sometimes the rest of the world.
She saw how deepened breathing swelled his chest, the loose-limbed way he held his long muscular arms, the intent way he watched her.
Being this near to him wrecked her poise. The silence made her more jittery still, so she licked her lips and whispered, “Cannon...”
One corner of his mouth curled as he touched her cheek, smoothed his fingertips along her jaw. Then, as if it happened all the time, he drew her into his chest and hugged her right off her feet...
Copyright © 2014 by Lori Foster
ISBN-13: 9781459256224
HARD KNOCKS
Copyright © 2014 by Lori Foster
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
www.Harlequin.com