“HE DUMPED YOU, DIDN’T HE?”
For a moment, Lacey Baptiste wasn’t sure if the sleek-haired blonde in the fire-engine red minidress was talking to her or someone else at the second-floor bar of Atlanta’s hottest nightclub, Blind Dates. But once the slim woman with the gravity-defying breasts sidled up next to her and tilted her wineglass toward Lacey in salute, she knew. After all, she was the only one at the bar who didn’t have a guy hanging on her every word. Her guy, as the stranger put it, had just dumped her.
“In record time,” Lacey admitted, taking another long sip of her sour apple martini, hoping the vodka concoction would take the edge off the sting of rejection. Just four years ago, the thought of a guy unloading her five minutes into a date—blind or otherwise—would have been completely absurd.
Lacey Baptiste had been the queen of the Atlanta party scene, crowned long before her eighteenth birthday. Since scoring her first fake ID in high school, Lacey and her friends had ruled the social arena in every part of Atlanta from Buckhead to Midtown. If other women envied her, Lacey barely had time to notice. She’d been too busy dancing and drinking and sometimes even singing on Karaoke night.
Not to mention hanging out with the guys who gave Hotlanta its name. Back then, she’d had more men chasing her than she’d known what to do with. Yet the ones she’d allowed to catch her had taught her quite a bit. But never one to dabble with anything as serious as a committed relationship, she’d flitted away from each of them at the first opportunity, preferring to live wild and free.
Now the words “serious” and “committed” defined her life. She’d graduated from Emory, then been recruited to Quantico, Virginia, as a supervisory special agent for the FBI, National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime division. Now she was a top agent in her department and an instructor at Quantico. Her eye for detail, innate curiosity and natural profiling abilities clinched her quick invitation onto the elite NCAVC team. She trained new recruits, supervised interns, and often took the lead position in tough-to-solve cases, even though she was still considered a rookie by most of the vets.
So to ensure she held on to their respect, Lacey focused every aspect of her life on being the best FBI agent in Virginia. She wore professional clothes, hair and makeup—all the time, even when off-duty. She kept her voice low, her necklines high. Her flirtatious personality? Permanently sidelined. Her insatiable need for fun? Tucked neatly away in a memory book.
Just weeks away from her annual review, Lacey knew a promotion, perhaps even a transfer to headquarters, loomed in her future like gold at the end of the rainbow. The flavor of success teased her tastebuds with the same bite as the Pucker Sour Apple liqueur in her drink. She wouldn’t risk her career, but she’d been desperate to break free, live, party and savor life’s pleasures, if only for a few days.
Which was why she’d insisted her sister, her last living relative in Atlanta, arrange for some male companionship for her on her first trip home in four years. The guy Eve had lined up had possessed all the makings of a perfect weekend fling—good-looking, self-supporting, sports-car owning…and with enough clout to gain them entrance to Atlanta’s hottest new club.
Why he’d cleared out two minutes after learning what she did for a living had her considering just what he did to afford his designer clothes and foreign-made car. Luckily, she’d been quick enough to note the license-plate number on his Jag. Come Monday morning, she’d put her knowledge to use. No one ran from the FBI unless they had something to hide.
And no one dumped Lacey Baptiste without paying a price.
Yet until then, she had choices to make. Call Eve and suggest they share popcorn and pay-per-view back at Lacey’s hotel or hang out in the club in case her luck changed.
“I didn’t mean to intrude,” the stranger added, waving the bartender over and pushing her nearly empty glass forward. She declined a refill, but grabbed a handful of the heart-shaped pretzels Lacey had been eyeing for the past few minutes.
Damn, but she’d been so looking forward to a romantic dinner for two in the third-floor restaurant. Something with lots of fattening sauce and, of course, dessert. She only had this weekend to be herself. She had to make it count.
“You’re not intruding,” Lacey said, smiling as she snagged a few snacks for herself. “But I sure find it hard to believe you got dumped, too. Not in that dress.”
The stranger’s laugh was guarded, but reached her eyes, a subtle shade of blue. But she was wearing colored contacts, Lacey noted, unable to turn off her instincts for more than a few minutes at a time.
“Thanks, and no, I haven’t been dumped tonight. Not yet. The man I’m supposed to meet is over there,” she nodded toward the entrance, “but I’m afraid I can’t meet him as we arranged. I’m all dressed up with no place to go.”
“Can’t meet him? Why not? If you don’t mind me asking,” she clarified. Lacey’s quenchless curiosity had been the personality trait that had pointed her toward her current career.
The stranger waved her hand. “I don’t mind at all. He’s a real hunk, but he used to date my cousin, until she broke up with him. She was so in love with him at first! And he is such a dreamboat. You know the type—flowers for no reason. Dance machine. Master in the bedroom.”
Lacey fought the need to close her eyes, to block the fantasy. Did they make guys like that anymore? Of course they did! She just didn’t allow herself to know them.
“Sounds too good to be true. Why did your cousin dump him?” she asked.
“Some women don’t know a good thing when they have it,” the woman claimed, causing Lacey to nod in total agreement. “She wasn’t nice about breaking his heart, either. And when she finally realized what she’d lost, he wouldn’t take her back. So despite how tempted I am, I can’t go out with him on this blind date. I don’t even want to deal with the drama. It’s such a frickin’ small world,” she finished, clearly exasperated.
Lacey glanced toward the entrance, but too many people were mingling about for her to pick anyone out without a description. Most of the people were already paired up, but it was hard to tell with whom. Blind Dates had hit the scene with a great concept—a restaurant, bar, dance place where you could meet the stranger of your dreams. In fact, you couldn’t progress to the second two levels—the dance floor and bar on the second landing and the restaurant on the third—without a date or reservation for two. On the bottom floor, they had a bank of computer terminals so people could communicate anonymously before they met and “moved up.” The staff even hosted speed-dating round-robins—twenty men and twenty women “dated” for five minutes at a time, then switched partners until everyone had met, then they voted on who they would like to meet again.
But mainly, Blind Dates had become a first-date haven for couples thrust together by family and friends. Lots to do and lots of eyes watching. And lots of other couples in the same boat. Safety in numbers.
“So, is Mr. Perfect from here?” Lacey asked, unable to tamp down her curiosity.
“From what I understand.”
“Then I might know him, too. Where is he? I want to see this monument to male perfection,” Lacey claimed, somewhat doubtful. Handsome, dances and good in bed? What were the chances, really?
The woman led Lacey around a potted ficus tree twinkling with tiny white lights. They shifted from side to side until enough people moved out of the way so she could point Lacey in the right direction.
“There,” the stranger said. “In the black shirt and jeans.”
Lacey nearly swallowed her tongue. The first thing that registered was that no, she didn’t know this god among men. The second thing that registered was that man-oh-man, could she have a hot time getting to know him. Dark, long hair brushing against impressive shoulders—so unlike the crew cuts she’d become used to seeing at the Bureau. His pecs looked rock hard, even from a distance. His hips bounced ever so slightly to the latin beat drumming off the dance floor. And man, she could grab that ass with both hands and likely break a few fingernails. Maybe this trip to Blind Dates wasn’t a waste of time. What was she going to have to pay her new friend to wrangle an introduction?
She turned to ask, but with a smug smile, the stranger winked. “Want to meet him?”
“Did Sherman burn Atlanta?”
“I suck at history, but I can definitely sense more than just a spark of interest in you.”
Lacey bit her bottom lip. “A girl would have to be an ice queen to walk away from him willingly. You sure your loyalty to your cousin is that strong, because if she was that much of an idiot…”
The stranger laughed, then lured Lacey back to the bar. “I can’t agree with you more, but I’m not going to be in town much longer. Why start trouble when there’s no possible future?”
Lacey ordered another martini, then directed her new friend to choose her poison. “After checking him out, I can think of a thousand reasons to start trouble. Particularly when there’s no possible future. I’m heading out of town myself come Sunday night and I was really hoping to hook up with someone this weekend. Have some fun.”
The woman waved away the bartender without ordering and nearly whooped with joy. “This is perfect then!”
“What?”
“You can take my place tonight on my blind date. I was fixed up through friends at work and I was supposed to meet him five minutes ago. That’s why he’s standing right by the door. I don’t want to have to explain why I’m bailing on him. But if you distract him…”
The hairs along the back of Lacey’s neck tingled. Something wasn’t right here. But did she care? Really? This wasn’t her jurisdiction. Besides, the woman in the red dress certainly didn’t look like trouble…at least, not the criminal kind. What did Lacey care, anyway? She’d come to Atlanta for the weekend precisely to give her FBI persona a long-deserved rest and drag out the much-beloved, much-ignored party girl she used to be. And if this guy could really dance…
“What the hell,” she concluded. “You think he’d be interested?”
The stranger leveled her with a mocking look of indignation. “You’re kidding, right?”
She was kidding, partly. Lacey looked hot and she knew it. Immediately after landing at Hartsfield, she’d driven her rental car straight to Lenox Square and bought the least amount of dress for the most amount of money. And of course, spiky heels and a teenie, tiny purse to match.
Which reminded her. All she’d been able to shove inside the Kate Spade was her driver’s license, her ultra-thin cell phone, a roll of breath mints and a compact. She’d left her lipstick in the car. One glance in the mirror behind the bar told her that the second sour apple martini had completely diluted the last of her Chanel Ruby Slipper lip color. She couldn’t go meet Mr. Perfect by the door until she fixed her face.
“I need to go out to my car for a minute,” she explained.
“You can’t! By the time the valet gets your keys, he’ll be gone. I’m already late!”
Lacey sensed something off-kilter with the stranger’s level of desperation, but she couldn’t deny the reality. No guy that hunky was going to hang around long without a date. The time to act was now.
“I need lipstick,” she said simply.
The stranger responded in a flash, whipping out a metallic silver tube. “Here, take this. Tell him Gina said maybe next time, okay?”
Gina shoved the lipstick into Lacey’s hand and by the time Lacey had pulled out her compact to guide a quick application of the dark raisin color, she’d disappeared. Well, not completely. As Lacey moved toward the entrance, she spotted a flash of red just on the other side of the dance floor, undoubtedly waiting to make a break toward the back exit.
Whatever. If this Gina woman wanted to blow her chance on account of some loyalty to her dippy cousin, who was she to argue? For all she knew, the whole story was a lie. But bottom line—Lacey didn’t care. She’d come home to Atlanta to have a good time, and she was going to live it up if it was the last thing she did. If this hunk wasn’t agreeable, she’d simply find one who was.
Though she planned to do everything in her power to make sure he was agreeable—at least for one night.