LITMIR.BIZ

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to her. “Mrs. Leighton.”

      Olivia chanced a look around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “I thought I told you not to call me that.” She groaned as she crossed the few feet between them.

      Gerald raised a brow. “Did you?”

      She thought about it, then frowned. “Well, I’m asking now. So...stop. Before someone hears you.”

      “I was thinking of making an announcement, actually,” Gerald said with a good-natured grin even as her face drained of color. “Every man in this room has taken a wayward glance at you in the short space of time since I walked through the door tonight. And while I can’t blame them for admiring your many attributes, its best they not get their hopes up.”

      Olivia’s frown deepened. He missed the light in her eyes he’d seen earlier when she was with her family. Glancing over her shoulder, she caught the eye of a tall and well-built man leaning against the bar. “Deck,” she called and crooked two fingers in invitation. “Would you come here for a moment?”

      Deck stood instantly at the summons and strolled over in three quick gaits. Nodding a hurried greeting to Gerald, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and bent over to Olivia’s level. “Something you need, Liv baby?”

      She gripped him by the collar of his striped, polo shirt and pressed her lips to his cheek, leaving a smudge of red from her lipstick. “Why don’t you come upstairs later for a drink? I want to know all about that new contracting job you and the guys were celebrating yesterday afternoon.”

      Deck lit up like a theme park at the suggestion. His shoulders straightened and his eyes gleamed as he grinned at her. “You mean it?”

      “Of course, I mean it,” she said easily, rubbing a hand over his large biceps. “Stick around?”

      “You bet I will,” Deck replied, clutching her around the waist. “Let me just tell the guys I won’t need a ride back home.”

      When Deck loped happily back to the bar to relay the happy news, Olivia crossed her arms and gave Gerald a pointed look.

      He pressed his lips together. Not normally the jealous type, he was surprised by his reaction to seeing Olivia’s lipstick smudge on Deck’s cheek, her hand on his arm, his arm low on her waist. She’d fired her weapon, straight and true. And Gerald felt the impact of envy down to the bone. It took more time and effort than he would have liked to school his expression into one of indifference. It was harder still to wrangle another good-natured smile onto his lips. “Well played,” he admitted finally.

      She lifted a coy shoulder, the smirk touching her lips again. “Decker and I go way back. We met in high school. It wasn’t until I moved in upstairs alone, though, that we started things up. Just the occasional hayride. You know how those things go, don’t you, Gerald?”

      “You might be surprised to know that one-night stands are of no interest to me,” Gerald said. There was a gravelly base note in his voice he’d never really heard before. He had difficulty accepting the fact that it was the jealousy talking.

      Her brows came down over her eyes. “Then what the hell was I?”

      Considering her, he took his time tracing his gaze across her fair, heart-shaped face, down the blond curls tumbling over her shoulders and the shapely form she kept well in tune from the look of her. Words, man. You usually have a way with them. Settling on her searing, emerald eyes, he said, “That’s what I’m trying to figure out, Mrs. Leighton.”

      “Lucky for me,” she muttered.

      After a moment’s tension, Gerald asked, “By any chance, is Clint one of your many admirers, as well?”

      She wrinkled her nose back toward the corner where the large ginger was currently trying to win his money back with an arm-wrestling match. “Just because I bring tavern men back to my place doesn’t mean I don’t have standards.” Scowling, she looked back at Gerald and added, “Believe it or not, I haven’t slept with every man you see in this bar tonight.”

      He cleared his throat and shifted his feet. “I’ll offer my apologies, then, since mine was perhaps an unfair question.”

      She jerked her head in a terse nod. “Perhaps you’re right.”

      Gerald reached up to scrape his knuckles over the small growth of stubble along his jawline. “I was sent here with a message.”

      Lifting a pitcher of beer and a small tray of chips from the bar, she took it to a nearby table. “Let me guess,” she said. “From Briar?”

      “She said something about the music being too loud,” Gerald relayed, though he gleaned from the canny look on her face she’d already figured that out.

      “What do you think?”

      “Pardon?”

      “The music,” Olivia prompted, planting an impatient hand on her hip as she turned back to him. “Think it’s too loud?”

      How had she managed to turn this around on him? Gerald shifted his feet, glancing over at the blazing red, brightly lit jukebox in the corner. “Happen to have any Queen in there?”

      She brushed by him on a wave of vanilla fragrance that toggled all those teasing memories of their time in Las Vegas.

      He closed his eyes. If her outfit didn’t drive him to insanity, her scent definitely would.

      He watched as she leaned over the jukebox, scanning titles, flipping pages behind the glass with the buttons of the console as she wiggled her foot absently behind her. He couldn’t help but admire the way the denim hugged her bum.

       Many attributes, indeed.

      She popped a coin in the slot and peered over her shoulder, pinning him with a very effective how-’bout-now? look as the first base notes of “Under Pressure” began to play.

      She might as well have hit him over the head with a hammer.

      “That just happens to be a personal favorite,” Gerald told her when she crossed back to him.

      “Then that makes us all happy,” she said, spreading her hands. When he only looked at her, that wary shadow shifted back into her eyes. She moved her hands to her hips again and looked around. “I’m sure you’re more accustomed to fancier drinking establishments than this.”

      “This is all pretty familiar actually,” he said. “Cozy taverns and pubs have always suited me. It certainly suits you,” he said with a knowing smile.

      Olivia blinked. “Was that a compliment?”

      “Indeed.” He lifted a hand to the walls. “The woodwork is fantastic.”

      “My grandfather did it all,” she explained after a beat of breath. “He was a carpenter, the best in the area. When it slows down, I guess I’ll have to give you the verbal tour.”

      “Yes, you will,” Gerald asserted. Especially if it meant delaying her having drinks with that Decker chap upstairs.

      “I have to get back behind the bar....”

      Gerald grinned, looking in the direction of the polished wood counter and the waitress behind it. “Take me with you.”

      Olivia’s eyes snagged once again with a frown on his face. “Where?”

      “Behind the bar,” he expounded. When she only stared, he chuckled. “I worked at a pub while I was at university.”

      “You don’t say,” she said. “What was that, like fifteen years ago?”

      Now he laughed wholeheartedly, reaching out to wrap an arm around her shoulders. “Was that a dig at me, love?”

      A wry expression crossed her face. “What if it was? You couldn’t keep up with the after-work rush if you tried, Shakespeare.”

      “You think not?” He reached

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