Page 8 of Beck and Call

The moment he left, the men Jana set her sights on moved to join us.

"Ladies, I'm Daniel and this is Markus. We'd offer to get you a drink, but we can see you've already got one." Daniel reached out his hand to Jana.

She took his hand and he kissed her knuckles. "What's your name, beautiful?"

The smile she gave him was one of the phoniest I'd ever seen her give. "Jana Easton, pleased to meet you both. Tell me, have you always been interested in the interior design of children's libraries?"

She delivered the question so seriously even I almost didn't pick up on her sarcasm. She definitely was less impressed with these gentlemen now that they were right in front of her. Not an uncommon outcome when I'd go out with her. There seemed to be an extra amount of bitterness this time though. Seeing the mean girl from her past was messing with her head.

Daniel hemmed and hawed while he tried to come up with an appropriate response to her odd question. Finally, she took pity on him, and let him off the hook. "Relax, we don't really care about the charity either. No one here does, but don't tell my mother."

Daniel dropped his head into his hand. "Marjorie Easton is your mother."

"For the last twenty-six years," she teased.

Markus smirked at her. "You're a bad girl, aren't you?"

She reassessed him and smiled a predatory smile. "Probably not as bad as you think you want, but likely more than you can handle."

"Is that a challenge?" he flirted.

She tossed back the rest of her drink and set the glass back on the counter. "If you think you're up for it."

He held out his hand. "Dance with me."

She accepted his hand. "Love to."

Realizing he was rejected, Daniel turned toward me. He had two strikes against him already. He used the generic, "beautiful" when speaking to Jana, which earned him some serious eye rolling from me. Then he made it worse when he tried to be charming by giving her a hand kiss. That move was rarely executed well, and this wasn't one of those times.

"Would you care to dance?" He held out his hand to me, and I just knew I'd be wiping his saliva off my hand in the next few moments, because I was still too much of a southern lady to turn down a dance.

"She's busy," a deep voice growled behind me.

"She can answer for herself," Daniel challenged.

I would have answered for myself, but the low timber of the somewhat familiar voice sent a shiver down my spine. Slowly, I turned around and had to grab onto the bar when I realized Beckett was standing behind me.

"I'm busy," I muttered to Daniel, wanting him to leave me alone with my handsome stranger.

He grumbled something under his breath and gave up like the lame hand kisser he was.

"You didn't contact me," Beckett said once we were alone.

"It's only been a few hours," I reminded him.

"Somehow I don't think that matters. If you were going to get in touch with me, you'd have done it already."

It was a little creepy how accurate of a read he had on me after one conversation. "Then it's lucky we ran into each other again, isn't it?" It was as close as I would get to telling him he was right.

"If I believed in fate I would say this qualified. I've been thinking about you most of the day. I’ve got a solution to your problem.”

“My problem?” I asked.

“I’d like to offer you a job."

Up to this point I thought he was flirting with me, but I'd obviously misread the situation. He wasn't attracted to me, he pitied me. I wasn't going to feel bad about it though.

Yes, he was the most attractive man I'd ever seen in real life, but he was also older than I was. A man like him would be searching for a partner. Of course, I was assuming he was single. Just because he didn't have a ring didn't mean he didn't have a long-term girlfriend or even a fiancée.

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