LITMIR.BIZ

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a little in a spiral of booze and meaningless hookups. Anything to take the edge off the turmoil simmering in his system.

      And then thanks to a job opportunity with a fellow expat, he’d finally begun to climb out of his self-destructive streak and had gone the opposite way, giving up booze and women for almost a year, concentrating on his work.

      Since then...he’d settled somewhere in the middle. He still wasn’t remotely interested in anything serious romantically. He’d left his own family behind for crap’s sake, so women were fleeting diversions to him. He didn’t need to be responsible for hurting anyone else.

      But when a woman came along and she was happy to take what he could offer, then he took full advantage. It had been a while, though, since anyone had piqued his interest the way this woman was...

      He watched her bend and twist to put glasses in a dishwasher. He wanted to know how long her hair would be if left down. Would it look wild? Like her? Because she looked wild, and knowing. As if she’d seen a little too much of the world, too. It was in the directness of that blue gaze.

      She was relatively tall, about five foot seven. Slender with delicate curves, yet a surprisingly lush ass in tight black jeans. And those tantalizing breasts under a snug Sullivan’s Bar and Eatery V-neck T-shirt. He was already wondering what they’d be like naked—firm, and tip-tilted with small berrylike nipples? He had to shift again on the stool at that visual.

      She turned away now to reach up and get a bottle of liquor from the shelf along the wall at the back of the bar, and Johnny’s gaze was riveted on the juncture between her legs where the shape of her ass was like an upside-down heart.

      His mouth went dry and his dick strained against denim. Shite. All he could think about was cupping that ass and spreading his fingers along her cleft to see if she felt as hot as she looked. He imagined slick folds of flesh, wet with arousal, pushing against the gusset of her panties, slipping a finger inside, easing those plump lips apart, spreading her juices, then slipping two fingers—

      It took him a second to realize that she was standing in front of him and looking at him with a raised brow. Clearly she’d just asked if he wanted another drink. Feeling seriously disoriented and turned on in a way that he couldn’t remember feeling in...ever, Johnny knew he had to get out fast. He shook his head abruptly, throwing down a couple of bills before getting off the stool and adjusting himself discreetly, so he wouldn’t make a complete ass of himself walking out of the bar. Damn her.

      The last thing he needed was to be lusting after a relative of his sister’s boyfriend! He took the long walk home over the Brooklyn Bridge, keen to get some air to his overheated brain cells. He’d take a taxi on the other side. It was only when he’d reached his apartment that he realized he hadn’t even asked where Caitlin was.

      Shite.

Chapter Two

      “Who was that?”

      I looked at my oldest and best friend, Jenna MacAuley, who had just arrived and perched herself, wide-eyed, on the other side of the bar. I didn’t need to ask who she meant because her arrival had coincided with the brooding sexy stranger’s departure. I didn’t like that I was smarting because he’d just looked at me as if I’d grown two heads before he’d left. As if I cared! I was officially a man-free zone. Just call me Sister Ashling.

      I forced myself to look blank. “Who? What?”

      She snorted. “Nice try, Ash. The tall, lean drink of water who just walked out of here.” She leaned forward and said lasciviously, “I’d like a drink of that.”

      I scowled. “Don’t know. Never seen him before. He was rude.”

      Jenna sighed. “He can be rude with me anytime. Seriously, those eyes. I mean, did you see those eyes? And those arms?”

      Yes I had, and I could imagine them all too well right now, eyes and arms and broad shoulders. I was annoyed that he’d apparently had the same effect on Jenna. Under her narrow-eyed look, I forced myself to smile. “We’re nearly closing up... Want to wait and I’ll have a drink with you?”

      She nodded, her green-eyed gaze far too assessing. “Sure. Give me a beer while I’m waiting.”

      About half an hour later I was locking up behind the last customer, and as I came back to Jenna, she swiveled around on the stool and grinned. I took her cue. “Cosmos? For old times’ sake?” We were still celebrating my return to New York after fifteen years in LA.

      Her grin got wider. “Line ’em up, baby.”

      We’d both been obsessed with Sex and the City in our teens and had loved Samantha the most, rewinding her many sex scenes, and pausing to ask, “Wow, do you think we’ll ever have sex like that?”

      We were sisters from another mother: best friends since the moment in kindergarten when Noah Goldberg had said Jenna’s hair looked like dirty, squiggly carrots and I’d kicked sand in his face in her defense. We were both the younger sisters of annoyingly protective older brothers, and both from staunchly Irish-American backgrounds. Although mine was a little more diluted on my mother’s side.

      We’d suffered together under the tutelage of the nuns and used to spend most of our time separated for bad behavior. And we’d both been through the acrimonious divorce of our parents within years of each other.

      Except where Jenna’s folks had stayed just blocks away from each other in New York, my mom had moved to LA and taken me with her, leaving my older brother behind, so I’d only ever come home for the holidays.

      As I mixed the cocktails, Jenna said carefully, “So, how are you doing?”

      I smiled brightly. “Great! As long as you’re not referring to a lying, cheating bastard by the name of Steve.”

      Jenna winced and looked at me with sympathy. “You had no idea, sweetie. How could you? He was from New Zealand! How would you have ever found out that he had a wife and baby if they hadn’t come to surprise him on the last day of the movie?”

      “I can’t believe I let him move in with me.” Even now my skin crawled to think of it. I’d never even usually let a guy sleep over. The betrayal and humiliation was still painful. After a lifetime of trusting my instincts not to let guys get too close, my defenses had come crashing down spectacularly. And all because Steve the Rat had seen me as a challenge because I wasn’t giving in as easily as every other girl.

      It had been a red rag to a bull for a man who refused to take no for an answer. His single-minded seduction had taken me off guard, and it was still galling that his zeal had had more to do with his ego than any great passion for me. The fact that his family hadn’t been on the same continent had given him plenty of room to maneuver.

      Film shoots were notorious hotbeds of extramarital affairs, but I never thought I’d get caught like that. Considering my own scars from being the product of a broken home, the fact that I might have contributed to someone else’s misery, even unwittingly, was excruciating.

      “Look,” Jenna said stoutly. “He was a gorgeous stunt guy with a cute Kiwi accent, and your job was to draw freaking tattoos on his practically naked body every day.” She rolled her eyes. “You’d have to have been Mother Attracta to avoid that kind of temptation, and even she probably would have gone down on him.”

      The thought of the very strict Mother Superior of our primary school getting on her knees to give a blow job made me convulse inelegantly. Thank God for Jenna; she could always made me laugh. When I got myself under control again, I put the cosmos on the bar counter and came around to perch on a stool beside her. She picked hers up. “Here’s to giving up men to concentrate on us and our fabulous new business, and your homecoming!”

      “Amen!” I said with feeling. Jenna had just been through a pretty brutal breakup of her own, demonstrating once again how our lives always seemed to freakishly sync up. We clinked

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