Page 16 of Sirens
“Can’t have you getting anything on that cashmere.”
Maggie held her breath as he walked around behind her and looped the halter strap over her head. His warm fingertips brushed the sensitive skin of her nape as he lifted her hair to adjust the fit. Goosebumps cascaded down her torso and armswhen he captured the ties on either side of her hips and knotted them behind the small of her back.
His hands lingered for a moment before finally retreating back into his own space.
“Not bad,” Maggie said when her lungs remembered how to process oxygen. On the rare instances when she’d had occasion to don an apron, her tits had typically ended up playing peekaboo with the panel of fabric meant to cover the average chest.
And Trent McGarvey’s chest was a good deal broader than hers, if not quite as convex.
A fact he seemed to also notice as he followed her gaze, then cleared his throat.
“What should we start with?” he asked, consulting the array of bottles. “A rum and Coke?”
Maggie arched an eyebrow at him. “I’m pretty sure I know what goes in a rum and Coke.”
“But do you know howmuch ofeach goes in it?” he asked. “Because Myrtle was three sheets to the wind after two of yours, and I’ve personally seen that woman drink lumberjacks under the table.”
“I knew there was something I liked about her,” Maggie said, accepting the bottle of Bacardi McGarvey held out to her.
Their fingers brushed during the exchange, sending a jolt up Maggie’s arm that nearly made her fumble the bottle. Her nails clicked ridiculously against the glass as she nearly dropped it.
“Careful, rookie,” he said. “A bartender who can’t hold her liquor isn’t going to last long around here.”
“I can hold mineandyours.” Maggie planted the bottle on the counter with a satisfying thunk. “How’d you get to be such a cocktail snob, anyway?”
“Snob?” Trent chuckled and began arranging cocktail tools on the polished countertop. “That sounds like a judgment.”
“Not a judgment,” Maggie said. “An observation.”
“So you like to watch?”
Maggie’s cheeks grew warm as the suggestive words hung in the air. He was close enough now that his breath stirred the hair at her temple as he leaned in to snag a bottle of simple syrup.
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “What about you?”
Trent’s eyes flickered to meet hers before he turned back to the counter, his movements slow and deliberate as he set various implements on the gleaming counter. “All the times.”
Maggie’s heart took a header into her nether regions.
She knew what he was insinuating, and truth be told, she suspected she’d rather enjoy it. But this shit here was a disaster waiting to happen. Townsend Harbor was bent to be equal parts recovery ward and hidey-hole. As geographically distant from the life she’d led in Boston as she could get while remaining in the same country. And for reasons she didn’t want to think about while standing this close to the man who occupied this pristine palace of solitude, she needed to.
Maggie cleared her throat, trying to ignore the heat that was pooling low in her belly. “You didn’t answer my question about the cocktail snobbery.”
He looked thoughtful for a beat.
“Spent my twenties focused on quantity,” he said, his voice low and smooth. “My thirties are about quality.”
She wondered if that maxim had applied to all of his appetites.
“I enjoy the artistry of it,” he continued. “And how that art rewards precision.”
Precision. Artistry. Order.
Oh, this man wassonot her type.
So, what was it about the way he moved, the way he talked, that made her feel like someone had buried a live coal behind her sternum?
“Fair enough,” she said, hoping to distract herself from her own thoughts. “Which precision-rewarding drink will we be starting with?”
