Her New Boss: A Rouge Erotic Romance (3 page)

‘The five of us bar-hopping in the middle of December does not count as a Halloween party,’ Ryan protested, slipping the strap over his shoulder.

Zoe chuckled. ‘That’s probably why your oestrogen levels were up. It had nothing to do with us women and everything to do with being bare-assed in winter.’

Ryan gave a dramatic shiver. ‘I wasn’t completely naked and still my balls nearly froze. I had never been so glad in my life that I didn’t listen to Megan. She told me real Scotsmen don’t wear anything under their kilts and I should do the same.’ Winking, he lifted his hand in farewell.

‘Tell Megs hi for us,’ Sasha said.

‘Tell her to call me,’ Kat added.

‘Will do.’ Ryan nodded once as he headed toward the door, weaving his way through the thick crowd.

‘Why can’t I find a guy like that?’ Sasha sighed heavily. ‘Only one that doesn’t feel like a brother.’

Sasha wore her bobbed brown hair in two small pigtails right behind her ears. The lightweight, classic black button-down
shirt
had pleats along the sides, causing it to fit snugly along her waist. After gaining twenty pounds her first two years in college, Sasha had become an exercise fanatic. It showed. She looked fantastic. Split cuffs on the three-quarter-length sleeves showed off a new, small tattoo on the inside of her forearm. Whenever her sisters asked her about it, though, she’d just laugh nervously and say it was some stupid college night.

‘Mom would be thrilled if you did,’ Zoe teased. ‘Why don’t you bring home that college boy of yours and let us meet him and get mom off my back for once. She seems to think that I’m next in line. Though, it does occur to me that this might be why you keep switching majors. Tell the truth, do you do it so mom doesn’t pressure you to get married?’

Sasha grinned mischievously, only to take a long drink of her beer by way of an answer.

‘I think dad would be happy if you just found a major and stuck with it,’ Kat said. Sasha had turned into a career college student, or at least that’s what it seemed like to her family.

‘Have you noticed that she’s gotten much sassier since becoming a wife and mother?’ Sasha asked Zoe. ‘A little too know-it-all?’

‘Don’t bring me into that one.’ Zoe lifted her hands, seeing a couple of expectant eyes looking at her from the other side of the bar. One of the men waved his hand impatiently and the bleached-blonde woman with too much make-up next to him frowned before turning up her nose. One of the waitresses hadn’t showed and Pete, the second bartender on staff, was out in the crowd helping out with orders.

‘Hey, Zoe, feed us when you’re done!’ Kat hollered as she
walked
to the waiting couple near the front door.

Zoe lifted her hand, not turning to look at her sisters as she made her way down to the end of the bar. Kat must have been getting tipsy. There wasn’t really anything worth eating in the place, beyond nachos with an unpalatable processed-cheese sauce, oversized pickles and shelled peanuts. ‘What’ll it be?’

‘Cosmopolitan,’ the blonde said, her voice as nasal as could be expected. Zoe leant forward, having a hard time hearing her. ‘And he’ll have a dry Martini.’

‘We have beer,’ Zoe answered evenly, placing her hands on the bar top.

‘I want,’ the woman said louder, ‘a Cosmopolitan and a dry Martini.’

‘We have beer,’ Zoe repeated, jerking her thumb to point at the wall of beer bottles behind her. ‘Over three hundred flavours. Which can I get you?’

Behind the couple, the door opened and Zoe glanced to see who came in. She smiled out of habit, only to stop in mild shock at the dark eyes that met hers. Silky lashes swept down, leading her gaze to a crooked grin. Sexy men weren’t lacking in New York, but there was something about the way his eyes glanced around only to land back on hers that held her notice. Most men either looked with a piercing intensity that revealed their true primal designs or didn’t look at all, using the city dwellers’ innate habit of minding one’s own business.

A fine, dark stubble shadowed his chin. Zoe shivered to see the small detail in the glow from the streetlights outside as the door slowly closed behind him. She wondered what it would feel like scratching against her skin. The thought was fleeting, an instant sensation so real it left her body tingling and her pussy wet.

The blonde’s whiny voice instantly drew Zoe back to her job and she didn’t dwell on the new customer. ‘… get you fired. I want a Cosmopolitan.’

‘It’s the owner that picks the beers from around the world. It’s the owner who makes the menus and it’s the owner who says Cosmopolitans are for whining sissy girls trying to act more sophisticated than they really are.’ Zoe forced a fake smile to her lips, only to add sarcastically, ‘Should I get you his number? He likes nothing more than to be woken up late at night by drunks.’

‘Ah! I heard the help at this bar was rude.’ The woman made an awful, high-pitched noise of displeasure. ‘I’m going to tell everyone I know
not
to come here.’ Her nose scrunched as she grabbed her boyfriend by the arm and forcibly dragged him with her toward the door. The man glanced back before leaving, winking at her. Zoe rolled her eyes heavenward, really not in the mood.

‘Don’t worry, ma’am, I just came for a beer.’ A loud voice drew her attention, mostly because the Southern inflection seemed out of place. It wasn’t so heavy as to be Deep South, but enough to be far away from New York.

When she turned, she saw it was the man with dark eyes. Her heart skittered a little in her chest. His medium-blue dress shirt lay open at the collar and was rolled up at the cuffs. Tan arms rested on the bar top, but when she looked at his face, she didn’t see the telltale white around his eyes that people got from wearing protective glasses in a tanning bed. As she studied him, something in the curve of his mouth reminded her of a romance-novel hero. It was a small thing, a fleeting passage in some book she couldn’t quote, recalling a flutter she got in her stomach when reading.

‘What flavour?’ Her strained voice came out breathy. Zoe
didn’t
move, couldn’t force a smile, so instead she just stared rudely at him. Inside, she trembled with a desire she’d not felt outside of a fantasy. Part of her wanted to flirt, to bat her eyelashes and secure a date for after the bar closed. She’d never picked up a man at work, but the idea of being with this one after hours caused her stomach to tighten. The more she wanted him, the more her face tightened in what would appear like irritation. It was a reaction she couldn’t seem to control.

The sudden surge of rock music made it hard to hear the exact tone of his voice beyond the drawl, so she watched his full mouth. ‘You pick.’

Zoe nodded once, turned, pulled open a standing cooler and grabbed the first beer her hand touched. She thought about pressing it to her flushed skin to cool the sudden flame of heat that rushed over her neck and face. She refrained. Opening it without thought, she slid it toward him. ‘That’ll be eight dollars.’

‘Keep the change.’ The man tossed down a folded ten-dollar bill. She picked it up and moved on to the next customer, refusing to look at him even as her knees tried to wobble. After a few more orders, she was back beside her two sisters.

‘You know him?’ Sasha asked instantly, as if the question had been burning on her tongue for quite a while.

‘Who?’ Zoe didn’t bother to follow her sister’s gaze. She’d been pointedly ignoring the handsome stranger. Talking to him would only bring disappointment and she really couldn’t use any more disappointment right now. Surely that was all that would come from a relationship.

‘Mr Tall, Dark and Delicious,’ Sasha said. ‘If you don’t know him, then I think it’s obvious that he wants to know
you
. He’s been staring at your ass like a man ready to jump onboard for a ride.’

‘I don’t want to know him.’ Zoe ignored Sasha’s crudeness. The woman always got a little crass when she drank. And her answer wasn’t a complete lie. Some animalistic part of her did want to know him, but the logical part knew better. She had to get her life on track first. Didn’t all the experts say that a person couldn’t be happy in a relationship until they were happy with themselves? Still, it didn’t stop the fantasy of straddling his lap as he sat on the barstool from entering her thoughts. In her mind, everyone disappeared from the bar, leaving them to their sexual devices. Her lips tingled. How would he kiss? Gentle and soft? Hard and desperate? Warm and probing? She knew the beer she’d given him would flavour his tongue if she were to suck it. Hearing one of her sisters clearing their throat, Zoe shook the images from her mind.

‘At least Contiello isn’t here again,’ Zoe continued. Other lurid thoughts about the handsome man tried to surface, but she pushed them away. ‘I swear I could kill the person who told him I work here. He’s been here twice this week for drinks, once with a big-name chef and another time with a publicist that has a lot of connections.’ At her sisters’ looks, Zoe nodded. ‘Oh yeah, he made sure to point that out. He also made sure to introduce me as “that one who did that thing I was telling you about.”’

‘What do you think he told them?’ Sasha asked.

‘Who the hell knows? Whatever it is, it’s not the truth. If I didn’t need this job so badly, I’d have told him off … again.’ Zoe sighed, rushing off to take more drink orders as a new group came to the bar. Pete had come back from working the floor and was filling the waitresses’ drink
orders
along with his own. An unkempt college dropout, Pete had a habit of quoting old writers while he worked, often answering questions with some line only the literarily inclined patrons could understand.

‘“Lord, what fools these mortals be,”’ Pete said to Kendra, the waitress.

‘Lord Byron?’ Kendra asked, tilting her head to the side. Her soft curls bounced, as if an extension of her energetic frame.

‘That’s right, love.’ Pete nodded, grinning. The woman giggled and walked off.

‘Byron?’ Zoe arched a brow. ‘Don’t you mean Shakespeare?’

‘Zoe, baby, I’ve learnt never to contradict a woman you’re trying to get into the sack. It hurts the odds.’

Zoe gave a small laugh, before drawling sarcastically, ‘You truly are a poetic soul.’

He wiggled his eyebrows, picked up a tray full of beers and disappeared into the crowd.

‘Guys like you, Pete, are the reason I don’t date,’ she muttered under her breath.

Obviously hearing her, Sasha laughed. ‘Zoe, you don’t date because you don’t take chances. I say you give Mr Fine over there a shot and don’t give him one of those snobby looks you get around cute guys. What is the worst that could happen? You get a little action? Maybe have a little fun? A free meal at the very least?’

Zoe glanced down the bar to where the handsome stranger still sat. His eyes were on her and he smiled. Could she take a chance like him? She thought about apologizing, of seeing where things led, of a one-night stand. The thoughts only made her tense. She quickly diverted her attention, ignoring whatever attraction tried to form inside
her
. ‘You go for it. I’m not interested. By the sound of his fake accent, he’s an actor. You wouldn’t believe how many men come in here with fake accents trying to pick up women. I hate people who aren’t real.’

‘How’s it not real? They’re just doing a job,’ Kat pointed out. ‘Besides, actors can be fun.’

‘Ah, forget it.’ Zoe swiped her hands through the air. ‘Let’s talk about something besides men.’

Jackson Levy tapped his foot in time with the music. ‘Take It Easy’ by the Eagles played. The song was much better than some of the other music that had been blaring over the bar. Back home in South Carolina, in the small town where his family still lived, they played nothing but country music and a few rock classics. This song reminded him of home and how terribly he missed it.

As a young boy, he could dream of nothing more than getting out. It was a generic dream, a dream had by all young boys who grew up in small towns. Places like New York seemed so exotic. But what reality made clear, and dreams never touched upon, was how rude and busy everyone was in big cities. Everything was impersonal, everything had a time and a schedule. That’s why he hated coming here, hated coming to all big cities. But with work he had little choice. When it came to his job, whatever he did, he succeeded. Too bad his love life wasn’t so golden.

Jackson glanced down the bar to where the bartender spoke with a couple of women. When he had first walked in and seen her brief smile, he had hoped that maybe she would be different from the others he’d met each time he came to New York. Her wide, dark-blue eyes captivated him. Straight blonde hair framed her face, the bangs long but tapered. Normally, he liked a woman with flowing long
hair
, but the cut suited her slender face and small, energetic frame.

His initial hopes for a pleasant conversation were crushed when she merely stared at him, like he was another drone in her long line of customers. Well, his momma hadn’t raised a quitter. Maybe he needed to try a different approach. Wasn’t his family always on him to try harder in the female department?

With that in mind, he hurried and finished his beer. The deep ale had an orange and ginger aftertaste he didn’t care for. Where he came from beer tasted like beer. It was just one more thing separating this world from his. After a dinner meeting filled with scotch and sodas, he felt himself entering a pleasant alcohol haze – not so much to impair judgment but enough to loosen his tongue so he could make small talk with a pretty woman.

Jackson lifted his empty bottle as soon as the male bartender disappeared into the crowd. For all the people in the place, the woman didn’t look too busy. It took her a moment to see him. She said something to her friends, causing them to laugh before she walked toward him.

‘Another of the same?’ Even before he answered, she started reaching for the bottle.

‘No, actually, I didn’t like this one.’ He gave her a small smile, one he hoped appeared charming. For some reason, he really wanted this woman to notice him. It was more than the stirring of carnal interest between his legs, but a desire to connect, to know who she was.