LITMIR.BIZ

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would’ve put him off-limits. Now he wasn’t, which was going to make it hard to say no—to him, to herself…especially with Alan’s comment about her needing to get laid echoing with more veracity than she liked.

      She pushed aside the noise of that echo, focusing on Caleb’s hand that rested flat on the bar. His fingers were long, thick, the backs broad and dusted with golden hair. She closed her eyes, opened them slowly, hoped he couldn’t read her mind because, oh, there were so many places she wanted his touch.

      “Alone? Really?” She cleared her throat. “I’m surprised.”

      He glanced over, arching a brow, questioning, curious. “Surely you get the occasional single up here.”

      She stared at him, studied him, liked too much what she was seeing…his stylishly mussed hair, a warm brown toasted with highlights…his eyes that were a gorgeous blend of gold and bronze…his mouth that she was certain did more things than kiss well.

      Good. Not good. She didn’t know the difference anymore. “I don’t mingle enough with the guests to be sure, but I can’t say I’ve seen anyone not part of a couple.”

      “Well, now you have,” he told her, teased her. “Seen someone who’s not, and mingled.”

      She looked down, went back to picking at the bar. “I’m just breaking all sorts of rules tonight.”

      “Must be the company you’re keeping.”

      “I can’t think of any other reason.” It was hard to think of anything with her heart in her throat, choking her, cutting off her ability to breathe.

      He watched her hands, then looked up, his eyes saying more than his words, saying that he knew what she was feeling, the extreme pull she was fighting. That he was fighting the same. “Can you think of one that would keep us from getting a drink?”

      She nodded. “The bar’s closed.”

      “That’s a hard one to get around,” he said, adding, “though I can think of one solution.”

      “No,” she told him. Absolutely not. “I won’t come up to your room for a nightcap.”

      “Rules?”

      “Rules,” she said, and nodded again.

      “Too bad about the rules,” he said, and she laughed. And then she stopped because he leaned close to say, “You’re a hell of a kisser.”

      Well. She’d been hoping to hear him tell her goodbye. Or hear that he wasn’t much for obeying the rules. He seemed the sort, a bit brash, a bit dangerous. He’d obviously convinced Alan to let him hang out long after closing.

      “It was all part of the act,” was what she finally said, ignoring the flutter of her pulse as he breathed her in and sighed, and the tongue of flame in her belly when he came back with, “The hell it was,” a response that begged the question, Where do we go from here?

      Alan clearing his throat pushed her to answer. “If you can stomach the mess, I have a bottle of Drambuie in my dressing room.”

      He didn’t respond right away, looking her over, staring into her eyes. His were hard to read in this light, but that didn’t lessen the impact of his gaze, or the heat simmering in the air around them.

      She wasn’t sure if she should take back the offer, if she’d been too forward in making it. If he had wanted nothing from her. Or had just wanted an acknowledgment that the kiss had been way out of line.

      That wasn’t how she’d read him, but she was so out of practice with men—

      “A man in your dressing room. That’s not against the rules?”

      “I don’t know,” she said, sliding from her stool, unable to stop herself from giving in to this very big wrong that had her nape tingling, other places doing the same. “You’re the first one I’ve ever invited to join me.”

      4

      CALEB COULDN’T BELIEVE his good fortune. First, that the bartender had told him to take his time with the coffee. Second, that Candy Cane had so easily fallen prey to his charms.

      Especially when he had so few.

      If what he did have qualified as charming at all.

      Not many people thought so.

      As she’d gestured in the direction of her dressing room and turned for him to follow, he’d watched the subtle exchange that had passed between the redheaded siren and the bartender.

      The man who’d served Caleb the coffee he’d so desperately needed hadn’t seemed insulted or injured that she’d invited him back for a drink. Neither had he gone into protective, big-brother, hurt-her-and-I’ll-kick-your-ass mode.

      So far, so good.

      Having witnessed the conversation the two had shared earlier, Caleb assumed the bartender and Candy were good friends. Not that he’d heard any of what they’d said, but he had noticed the casual nature of their exchange and the comfortable intimacy between them.

      All that was to say…either the man behind the bar with the ski-bum look knew Candy could take care of herself, or knew Caleb was the one heading into trouble. Judging by the sway of her hips as she walked through the club and his body’s primal reaction, Caleb heading into trouble was true either way.

      He told himself to look up, to look away, over her shoulders, above her head, down at the floor. But her hips had been in his lap at the same time her tongue had been in his mouth, and that was all he could think about. That, and wanting more.

      Or so it was until he reminded himself of why he was here, why he’d wanted the coffee in the first place. The recognition he’d needed to be sober enough to place. Yes, he was getting out of the biz, but he couldn’t give up his curiosity any more than he could cut off a leg. If he figured her out and found her story worth telling, well…he’d cross the bridge of what to do when he got to it.

      She led him through the bar, across the stage and to a door down the hallway behind the wings.

      There was no name, no star, nothing to indicate where they were. It could just as easily have been a broom closet for the lack of signage. But she opened the door, and like a beast in rut, he followed her in.

      “Like I said,” she reminded him as she flipped on the lights. “A mess.”

      It didn’t look any worse than his place, he mused, walking inside as she shut the door behind him. The floor was covered with the same red carpeting as the rest of the club. The walls were painted off-white with a pink tinge—or else the semigloss was reflecting the floor.

      A closet with a six-foot rod took up the wall opposite one with six feet worth of mirrors. The accordion doors were open, showing red tops and bottoms on and off hangers, dresses draped over the pole, other items of clothing puddled on the floor and covering dozens of shoes flung here and there.

      He turned toward the mirror, and she pushed in behind him, closing the doors as if to hide her shame. He wondered if her house was in the same disarray, and how she could look so put together when she dressed in a danger zone.

      “I promise, I’m much neater than this in the rest of my life. For some reason when I’m here, I tend to let down my hair—as it were,” she tacked on, nodding to a shelf of wigs he hadn’t yet noticed.

      “You didn’t fool me for a minute,” he told her, reaching for the strawberry strands where they caressed her bare shoulder. He allowed his fingers to linger on her skin, her soft skin that in this light was obviously freckled, leaving them there, tempting himself. Testing himself.

      She was warm, smooth, and he couldn’t help but think about the rest of her that was still covered, wondering how soft she’d be elsewhere, thinking, too, about her mouth and the touch of her tongue to his, wanting that again, wanting her taste, wanting another jolt of that unexpected heat.

      It

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