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Saks swept the floor of the bar for the third time as the antsy feeling that jittered through his body hijacked his concentration. Chrissy showing up unexpectedly had been a jolt to his system. The kiss he’d given her, innocent as the light brush was, had put his body on high alert. He hadn’t been able to do a damn thing about keeping his cock from stirring with the scent of her now clinging to his shirt. His rebellious dick went from half-hard to hard at the thought of her blonde hair hanging on her shoulders. Or her svelte body in that dress that hugged every curve as if it made love to her.
He only hoped she would show tonight, though it was getting late and he needed to turn on the security system. Saks held out, hoping she’d still show.
“Hey,” Hawk said, interrupting his reverie. “Hand me a beer, will you?”
“Just because you live here doesn’t give you free access to Luke’s brew.”
“Jeez, chill, bro. I just need something to take the edge off my thirst. Fuck. Just put it on my tab.”
“Luke lets you run a tab?” Saks eyed Hawk with skepticism. Probies, probational members, like Hawk weren’t given tabs.
“Well, hell, I do live here,” Hawk groused.
“Brah, you haven’t even turned back the covers on your bed yet.”
“Oh,” Hawk laughed. “I thought you did that.”
“I’m not the help, asshole.”
“Really, ‘cause you’re doing a good imitation by all that broom-pushing you’re doing.”
“Fuck you.”
Against his better judgment, he pulled a domestic from the cooler and set it on the table next to the couch. But Hawk was persistent.
“It’s that chick,” Hawk said, “isn’t it?”
“What chick?” Saks said, with as much disinterest as he could muster.
“That blonde at the hospital.”
“Was there a blonde?”
Hawk snorted. “I’ve never seen you grin, until today, when that woman showed up at the elevator.”
“What are you talking about? I smile all the time.”
“Bro, you make Spock look emo.”
Saks scoffed. Hawk’s charms were fast wearing thin, especially since Saks was on edge waiting for Chrissy to show.
For a woman who had flown seven hours on an intercontinental flight, she’d looked hot. Dressed in a very business-professional gray suit with a scoop-neck cream shirt, she’d appeared every inch the librarian type. But her shapely legs in black hose and black spike heels were definitely not that. An image of Chrissy’s legs wrapped around his waist made him grip the broom handle tight enough to make his knuckles turn white.
In his dirty flash fantasy, he tore open the crotch of her hose and buried his face in her sweetness, lapping her cream, and breathing in her sexy musk. And just as it had done all day, his cock twitched. It grew hard as he imagined her head tossing, and her fingers curling in ecstasy around his bedpost while she called his name.
A sharp rap on the door snapped Saks out of his reverie.
“I’ll get it,” Hawk said as he pushed off the couch with a groan
Good. The kid should do something other than sitting around on his ass.
Saks put away the broom and the dustpan in the closet in the step-up alcove recessed from the main bar. Here, painted on the furthest wall, was the logo for the Hades Spawn with was a skull with wings. Two pool tables sat here, tables he’d taken to keep himself occupied while he waited for his life to straighten out.
It was taking a long fucking time.
“Well, hello,” Hawk greeted in an overly-solicitous voice.
“Is Saks here?” a woman queried.
His heart raced in his chest. Chrissy. Damn, she came.
“Yeah. He’s in the pool corner.”
“Where’s that?”
“That way, darling.”
Chrissy’s heels clicked on the laminate flooring. Quickly Saks whipped a cue off the wall in an attempt to act nonchalant, and pulled the triangle off a rack of balls.
“Hey,” she said, looking up from beside the bar.
“Hi,” he said. Saks smiled when he saw her, and he realized that Hawk was right. He did grin like a fool when she was around.
“Playing pool?”
He shrugged. Like a teenager speaking to a girl for the first time, he got tongue-tied.
“Can a girl get a drink around here?” She smiled, and he melted. What he would give to wrap his arms around her right now.
“Is that all you Serafini say?” he said with a grin.
“Hey. There are only two good purposes for a man. One of them is liquor.”
“That sounds sexist.” He stepped out of the alcove and behind the bar. “What’s the other?”
“Lawn work,” she said, a saucy glint in her eye. Hell, anything she said was provocative. Saks suspected that she could read him the phone book, and he’d get hard at the sound of her voice.
“What do you like? Craft or domestic?”
“Anything wet.”
Oh, damn.
Come over here, baby, said his cock. I got something for you here.
Shut up and act like a grown man.
I am. Why aren’t you?
Saks popped the top on a high-end craft beer and poured it into a glass.
“You’ve got those bartending skills down,” she said.
“I should. I’ve helped at the Red Bull enough times. Family business.”
She took a pull on the amber liquid. Chrissy wore red lipstick, a sexier color than she usually wore, and her flesh pressed the outline of her lips onto the clear glass. He swallowed hard as his prior fantasy of her lips wrapping around his cock filled his head.
“How have you been?” Chrissy asked. “I mean, after the shooting.”
And the entire month you abandoned me? Chrissy’s perfume wafted to his nose, sophisticated and sexy, and thinking became difficult.
“Fine,” he said. Words weren’t coming easily. “And you?” he managed to ease out.
“Great,” she said. But her voice didn’t carry the enthusiasm her word implied. So, things weren’t “great” in James Pearson land?
“How’s your boss?” he pressed.
Chrissy looked away. “It’s a temporary job. My contract is only for a year. I’m earning enough money that I don’t have worry about anything until I find a new one.”
This Saks hadn’t known. It gave his besotted heart a smidgeon of hope. “And then?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been too busy to think about it.”
“Oh.” Saks, on the other hand, had been saddled with way too much extra time that had left him consumed with thoughts of her.
“Have you learned anything about who sent those goombahs to shoot you?”
Saks shook his head. “The leads have grown cold. The guys the police arrested bonded out and disappeared. My cousin’s still working on it, though.”
“Your cousin?”
“Louis Anglotti, one of Westfield’s finest, detective division.”
“Oh. That guy?”
“Yeah. You’ve met him?”
She nodded. “Let’s just say he didn’t leave a favorable impression.”
Saks’ brow pinched. He wondered where she could’ve met him, but by the way she was staring into her beer it didn’t seem there was a chance she was going to explain. “Might explain why he’s still single. Too much ‘on the job’ even when he isn’t.”
“I guess when you’re a detective you have to be. Still, I didn’t make him out to be a Rocco.”
“No one does, not even his bosses. You hear anything more from the Serafini side on this mess?”
“No one’s talking. My grandfather, however, has gone fishing.”
“Fishing?”
“My father would use that word when Grandpa disappeared for a while. So, since my father is in the hospital, I’m thinking it’s the family business type of fishing.”
“Your grandfather is trying to find whoever hired those goons?”
“That’s my guess.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good idea.”
“He’s full of bad ideas. And it worries me. But you can’t stop him, so...”
“Yeah, you can’t stop Uncle Vits either.”
Her face drew into a pensive expression as she ran a manicured finger around the rim of her glass. “Well, I should go.”
Go? When she’d just gotten here? Saks scrambled for an idea to keep her here.
“Come on,” he said. “How about a game of pool?”
She shook her head. “I’m not any good at it.”
“I’ll be playing with a handicap. My shoulder is still stiff as hell.”
“Saks,” she sighed.
“Come on, one game. Hawk over there can barely move off the couch. You’d be doing a good deed for the disabled.” He gave her a grin, and his heart stilled while he waited for her answer.
She shook her head and sighed. “One game.”
He took a breath when his heart started to beat again. “All right, one game.” If he had anything to do about it, though, it wouldn’t end there.
“And no funny business,” she scolded.
“Funny business? I’m very serious about pool. What do you want? Eight-ball?”
“Eight-ball is fine.” She stepped into the alcove and examined the pool cues.
Saks watched her beautifully rounded ass move under her skirt, and his cock twitched again. “Hmm, you didn’t bat an eye. Are you hustling me?”
“Moi?” she said, batting her eyelashes. “There’s no cash on the table, so how could I be hustling you?”
“I suspect I’m in trouble. But you know what? I’ll take that bet.” He pulled a twenty from his wallet and put it on the edge of the table.
“Whoa, a big, bad twenty,” Chrissy taunted.
“Let me see your money.”
Chrissy reached for her purse, pulled out a fifty, and laid it on top of Saks’ money.
“You gonna match it?” she said, a competitive glint in her eye.
“Sweetie, I can match you dollar for dollar, and,” he said, pulling a ten and twenty from his wallet, “move for move.”
