Bending the Rules (23 page)

Then the couple dancing next to her moved together in some sort of dirty dance move and he saw Poppy.

Jesus. He backed up until his butt bumped against a stool at the bar. Wrenching his attention away from her, he saw that the seat was unoccupied, which was lucky since he sure as hell hadn’t been paying attention. Hitching a hip onto it, he braced one foot on the floor and hooked the other over the stool’s lower rung. His gaze went straight back to Poppy.

He was accustomed to seeing her in one of her midcalf, flowing skirts or the occasional pair of jeans or sweats. But she’d dressed to kill tonight, wearing a short, tight bronze-colored dress and skyscraper fuck-me shoes, with stiletto thin heels, open toes and skinny little straps that circled her ankles. Her hair looked somehow even curlier than usual and she was wearing more makeup than he’d ever seen on her, her eyes lined in smoky black and her lips painted a gleaming near-red. Guys all over the bar were checking her out.

He didn’t like it.

Not that it was any of his goddamn business, but ask him if he cared. She had no business looking like that in a joint like this without someone packing a 9 mm, minimum, to stand guard. You asked him—hell, asked any cop—she should be wearing something more sensible, say one of those granny dresses. Or, hey, maybe a nice, loose burka.

“Get you something to drink?”

Tearing his gaze away once more, he glanced over his shoulder at the bartender. “Give me a glass of whatever you got on draft.”

“You got it.”

He turned his attention back to the dance floor. Poppy had disappeared from view, but now that he knew her general location on the floor, it was easy enough to find her again. And once he had, he settled back to sip the beer the bartender brought him and wait for the dance to end. As soon as she came off the floor, he’d have a short, succinct talk with her, then get the hell out of here so he could start his own evening.

Great plan—except it never occurred to him that she might not come off the floor. When the first song ended she simply talked to some of the other people milling around, then started dancing again when the band launched into the next number.

Well…shit. He took another slug of beer. Okay, the end of this song should bring her to wherever it was the women were sitting. He looked around for an empty table holding at least three purses, but that was about every other one.

He rolled his shoulders. Okay, what the hell. He’d just enjoy this number, which really was good.

Four songs later, he had finished his beer and she was still on the freaking dance floor. He’d swear her dress was getting tighter, too, as perspiration from her exertions shrink-wrapped the damn thing to her body. That same humidity seemed to make her hair grow fuller and fuller.

Two men suddenly sandwiched her between them, moving in concert with her rhythm. The dark-browed redhead looked familiar but Jase couldn’t place him off the top of his head. The dark-haired man with him looked like some damn nun-debauching priest or something, and Jase slammed his empty glass on the bar and surged to his feet when the guy wrapped long hands around Poppy’s hips and rocked them side to side while he all but dry-humped her round butt.

Stalking over to the floor, Jase wove between dancers without much regard and the minimum of apologies to those whose space he invaded. He didn’t have the entire goddamn night to wait on Poppy and her friends—he had a social life of his own.

By the time he reached her where she’d moved deeper into the crush of dancers, the men had moved on and she was once again dancing on her own. He stepped in front of her and leaned down to yell over the music, “We gotta talk.”

He wasn’t prepared for her to act as if he wasn’t even there, but she looked through him as if he were a pane of glass before boogying in a half turn that left him staring at her right profile. He maneuvered to face her again. “Did you hear me? I said we need to talk.”

“Is one of my kids in trouble?” she asked, without looking at him.

“No.”

“Somebody burn down one of the buildings they worked on?”

He scowled. “No.”

“Then we’ve got nothing to talk about.” And she swiveled around in a complicated undulation of hips and arms that this time left her back to him.

“What the hell?” He moved around her until they were nearly chest-to-chest again. “What’s your problem?”

“Got no problems, copper. It’s Friday night and I’m copasetic. A little buzzed, perhaps, but, hey, that’s all right. I’m not driving.” She shooed him away with a languid sweep of her hand. “Move along.”

“Not until I know you’ve made arrangements for a safe ride home.” He stared at her, puzzled and frustrated by her attitude. When a dancer behind him knocked him into her, he gritted his teeth at the warm, plush press of her body.

“Didn’t I just say I wasn’t driving?” Stepping back out of touching range, she stopped dancing for just a second, then picked up the rhythm again. “What the hell do you care how I get home? Isn’t involving yourself in my transportation arrangements against your precious professional code of ethics?”

Shitfuckhell. It’s what he had said to her the day Murph interrupted them making out against the fridge: that getting involved with her was against his and the city’s code of ethics. And wasn’t he just one hell of a detective, though? Every time he’d freed up a half hour to drop by the project to check on the kids this past week, he’d been so busy trying to avoid spending one minute more in Poppy’s company than was absolutely necessary that it had entirely skipped his attention she hadn’t exactly been tripping all over herself to catch his interest.

On the contrary, given the way she’d just thrown his words back in his face, he’d take a wild stab here and guess she had been avoiding him with a diligence that rivaled his own. A fact that shouldn’t be catching him by surprise now, given the way she had slammed out of his apartment without a word that day.

She opened her mouth—no doubt to lambast him—just as the music segued into something slow and bluesy. A man strode toward her with clear intentions, but before he could ask her to dance, Jase grasped her wrists and pulled her into his arms, giving the other guy his best back-off! cop eyes.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, staring up at him.

“We’re going to finish this conversation.”

She stood rigid in his arms, but he pulled her hands around his neck and started to sway in time to the music, expecting her to shove him away at any second. After a moment, however, she loosened up enough to follow his less than Dancing With the Stars– worthy lead. But she angled her chin up as if to say, You’re here, so I’ll dance with you—same as I would do with any guy. His hands tightened around her wrists for a second.

Then, exhaling a quiet breath, he loosened his grip and wrapped his arms around her, splaying his hands against her back. Resting his cheek against her hair, he inhaled the scent of her shampoo.

And for a moment he felt almost…peaceful.

In tacit détente, they slow-danced without speaking. Then, just as the song was winding to a close, he felt her lips move against his collarbone as she said something he couldn’t hear over the music. He tucked his chin to gaze down at her and a strand of blond hair clung like spider silk to his stubble for a second before pulling free to drift back to her temple. “What?”

“You should go home, Jason.”

His jaw tightened, the peaceful feeling slip-sliding away as if it had never been. “Yeah. And I will. As soon as you assure me you’ve got a plan in place for getting home safely when this place closes down.”

Her brows snapped together over stormy eyes. “What are you, my daddy?”

“No, dammit, I’m a cop who knows too much about what can happen after dark in this neighborhood!”

There was a scramble at a nearby table, and he glanced over to see a young woman retract a fistful of bills while the man sitting opposite her slid what looked like a quarter gram of weed out of sight. On an ordinary night he’d have had a little talk with them, but he was a bit preoccupied here and his attention immediately snapped back to Poppy when she poked him in the chest.

“Fine,” she said. “Then you can trot off contented in knowing I have a plan in place for exactly that.”

Which should have been sufficient, considering the way he was still smarting over the daddy crack. Yet he heard himself demanding, “What is it?”

“I’ve enlisted the help of a couple of fine strapping Irish lads to see us to Jane’s car.” The band announced a break and she disengaged herself from his arms and stepped back. “In fact, here comes one now.”

She was looking past him and he turned to see the guy who’d had his hands all over her hips.

The jerk had the stones to look at him in return as if he was the lowlife, then transferred his attention to Poppy. “This joker giving you trouble?” he demanded. Then he studied Jase more closely. “Do I know you?”

“This is Detective de Sanges, Finn. He was just leaving.” She turned to him. “I’m not stupid, you know. We realized this wasn’t the best neighborhood to be out and about in at night. Ava, of course, was all for renting us a door-to-door limo. But Jane and I opted to go the cheaper route and enlist Jane’s husband, Dev, and Finn here. They’re twice as effective as any chauffeur and they work for beer.”

“And close contact with hot babes,” Finn put in, slinging an arm around Poppy’s shoulder and staring at Jase, daring him to say something.

He felt his blood pressure rising.

Poppy nodded. “And the occasional dance,” she agreed. “They’re also Kavanaghs—as in the construction company remodeling the Wolcott mansion? I think you met them when you came out last fall.”

Kavanagh didn’t offer to shake and neither did he. “I talked to Devlin, I think it was,” he said stiffly. Who, of course, was the redhead he’d thought had looked familiar. “I didn’t meet Finn.”

“Yeah, I remember now.” Finn’s expression didn’t grow any friendlier. “I saw you arriving as I was leaving the day Jane was attacked.”

“So, good,” Jase said, turning back to Poppy, who had stepped out from under the drape of Kavanagh’s arm. “That’s all I wanted—to make sure you got home safely. I’ve got plans of my own, so I’ll let you get back to your evening and I’ll get on with mine.”

“Have a good one,” she said as if she couldn’t care less whether he did or not, then turned away without another glance to start weaving through the tightly packed tables toward one back in the corner where her girlfriends sat with the redheaded construction worker. The guy named Finn raised a dark brow at him, then ambled off in her wake.

Leaving Jase, stringing obscenities together beneath his breath, to head for the door.

P
OPPY COULDN’T
catch her breath. For several long moments after arriving back at the table, she simply sat as her friends’ conversation swirled around her. She didn’t absorb more than one word in ten.

Damn him.

Damn him, damn him, damn him!

What was it about Jason de Sanges, anyway? She reacted to him in ways that never in a gajillion years could anyone else make her do. She couldn’t think of one circumstance in which she’d ever have allowed another man to pull that macho bullshit on her—she would have chopped him off at the knees so fast, he’d be four foot two before he ever felt the blade.

But had she done anything even remotely like that with Jason?

Oh, no.

Instead, like little Miss Wishy-washy, she’d let him pull her into his arms after she had sworn—sworn!— to herself that he would never get another opportunity to mess with her head, her ego, her libido that way. She should have pushed him away, had fully intended to push him away, when he so high-handedly drafted her into that dance.

Then she’d smelled the clean scent of his skin, felt the warmth and firmness of his body through his soft navy cashmere sweater and charcoal slacks, and had simply…yielded.

Which was so, so, so not her usual M.O.

Dammit, she’d been in love before, had had her heart broken before—what thirty-year-old woman hadn’t? She’d wanted men, had experienced wanting them with what she’d always assumed was every fiber of her being.

Except, it hadn’t been. Every fiber of her being was what she’d felt the two times Jason had kissed her—crazy with wanting him, so out of control she’d barely recognized herself.

And she’d liked it. Right up until the moment he’d shoved her away and to all intents and purposes told her she was a mistake.

Twice.

“I should’ve pushed him away,” she muttered.

Jane leaned over the table, her slippery brown hair sweeping her collarbone as it slid forward over her shoulder. “What’s that?”

“I said I should have, um, grabbed the waitress.” She nodded at the young woman working the tables a short distance away. “I could really use another drink.”

“Sure, that’s what you said.” Finn gave her a remember-me-I-saw-you-clinging-to-that-clown look. “But I’ll get her for you.” And, tipping his chair back on two legs, he waited until the waitress moved closer, then reached out to run a single callused fingertip down her arm as she leaned in to take an order at the table behind him.

The young woman immediately straightened and turned to him.