Page 91 of Jessica, Not Her Real Name
Inglis was looking down at her, concern bracketing his mouth. He opened it to say something, then seemed to think the better of it and closed it. Stepping back, he let her go, and the feeling of security he’d wrapped her in melted into the darkness.
He turned to the kitchen counter, and she heard the click of a lighter. When he faced her again, he was holding a candle propped in a mug.
She gave a shaky laugh. “Definitely a Boy Scout.”
He placed the mug on the table and sat back down, letting his phone light die.
She forced herself to say something irreverent to lighten the mood. “Well,” she said, looking around their little candlelit table. “This is romantic.”
He raised an eyebrow. “We’re drinking terrible whiskey, with a candle that smells like an old crayon, in a house that may not make it through the night. You have a low bar for romance.”
She laughed, still feeling a little giddy from her fright. “Oh, honey, my bar is, like, underground.” She unscrewed the cap, poured them both some more of the terrible whiskey. “Most of the men I’ve dated think opening a can of beer for a woman constitutes a grand gesture. The fact that you’re wearing cologne and haven’t tried to cop a feel yet puts you in the top one percentile, easy.”
He tilted his head slightly, eyes glinting with something unreadable. “Yet?”
That one word sent a spark through her. She didn’t know whether it was her calling him honey, the talk of copping feels, or maybe the detail that she knew what he smelled like because of their hug, but suddenly, he wasn’t looking at his drink anymore. He was looking at her.
She regarded him for a long moment and realized she was making him nervous. But not in a bad way.
So. Not uninterested, then. Just restrained.
She knew that type, too. They were the ones who got dragged into the club by boorish friends. They actually dressed up or at least put on a shirt with buttons. And when they got peer-pressured into going into the Champagne Room with her (which, in all her time working at Femme Fatale, had never once featured champagne), they wanted to know her name, where she was from, how her day had been, instead of just attempting to dry hump her. Choir boys, the other girls called them. She thought of them as men whose mamas raised them right. And of all the men she’d had to wade through in a night working at that awful place, they had been the ones she’d disliked the least.
She took another sip of her drink, aware that on her empty stomach it was going straight to her head. “So. You married?”
He said nothing for a long time, and she thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he cleared his throat and said, “I was. Long time ago.”
Hmm. There’s definitely a story there, she thought. “Got anyone back home in Memphis?”
“No.”
“See, that surprises me,” she said, tilting her glass at him. “I figured someone like you would be beating women off with a stick.”
He shifted in his seat, looking for all the world like someone who’d rather not be having this conversation. But she knew he was a little intrigued because he said, ‘Someone like me?’
“Oh, yeah,” she said, warming to her topic. “You’ve got this whole inscrutable thing going on. Taciturn and mysterious. Alpha, but not assholey with it.”
“Right,” he said, getting three syllables out of the word. His accent was getting thicker with every sip he took.
“Women love that shit.” She surveyed him some more over the rim of her glass. She was flirting with a federal marshal. Flirting hard. Was that even legal? “Plus, there’s your face. And what I can assume is a fair amount going on underneath your shirt.” She propped an elbow on the table. “I mean, I wouldn’t kick you out of bed. Unless you were better on the floor.”
He choked on his drink.
She hid a smile. Teasing this guy could keep her entertained for hours.
When he recovered, looking a lot pinker than he had before, she held one hand in surrender. “I’m sorry. I will keep it in my pants, I promise.”
He cleared his throat but didn’t reply. Neither of them spoke for a long moment. All her shameless flirting had thickened the air between them. She’d only been joking, but now it felt… real.
And the way he was looking at her? Like maybe he wasn’t planning to run either.
It was her turn to clear her throat a little nervously. And it was then she realized that the room was silent. There was no constant drill of rain on the roof. No incessant howling of the wind. She didn’t know how long it had been quiet, but now that she was aware of it, the silence was deafening.
Her ears popped, and the low pressure made her feel breathless. The air smelt like salt.
Inglis cast his eyes upward, noticing it, too. “Means the back half of the storm’s still coming our way,” he said.
She got up, went through to the living room. Stood in front of the one clear window, surveyed the new, calm world. There were stars overhead. They glinted off the water that now lapped gently against the side of the house.
