The Care and Feeding of Unmarried Men (20 page)

N
ot until she stood across from the new man seated at the bar did she recognize him. The Boy Scout SEC agent who had accompanied Sandy Dailey that day at Denny's. She couldn't remember his name.

Maybe it would be better to pretend she didn't remember him at all, she decided. She put on a polite smile and placed a cocktail napkin in front of him. “What can I get for you?”

His pale skin, thin dark hair, and slight physique hadn't changed in the days since they'd first met. But he smiled with a confidence he hadn't revealed that afternoon. “Hello, Eve. I'll take a whiskey-and-Seven and some of your time.”

A little chill tickled the base of her spine as she busied herself making the drink. She didn't like this guy. She didn't like the way he was looking at her.

But the rocks glass was steady as she set it on his napkin without spilling a drop.

As she made to move off, though, SEC-Boy caught her wrist. Eve didn't jerk away; instead, she stared down at his hand and then back up at his face.

“Excuse me?” Her voice was icier than the cubes she'd dumped in his drink.

“You forgot what else I asked for.”

That cold tickle grew stronger. She raised her brow, giving him her pointed me-Amazon, you-peon look. It had felled bigger men than this one.

“That time I wanted,” the peon said.

“I'm busy.”

He let go of her wrist as he took a deliberate glance around the deserted room. “You don't look all that busy to me.”

“We close in ten minutes. I have a list of things that need to be done.”

“Apparently cooperating with the SEC isn't one of them.”

Eve crossed her arms over her chest. Obviously a bad memory wasn't going to get her off the hook. “Did Sandy send you?”

His thin smile came and went. “She doesn't know I'm here.”

“Well then maybe
you
don't know that I phoned her a few days ago and explained that Vince Standish made an unexpected business trip out of the country. His secretary called with the news and didn't say when he might return. There's nothing I can do about that.”

“You seem like the kind of woman he'd be rushing back to see.”

Eve pretended she didn't want to smack the
presumptuous blockhead right across the face. Instead, she smiled with as much saccharine as she could muster. “Thank you, a girl always likes to hear a compliment.”

She
didn't. She much preferred Nash's brand of outrageous insults. Her gaze flicked to the French doors that he would come through if he did decide to visit tonight.
Please God, he won't
. Minutes ago she'd been looking forward to breaking off with him in a neutral location, but now she didn't want to risk his running into SEC-Boy.

Nash, let me introduce you to the federal agent trying to shake me down as payback for my little felonious lapse a few weeks ago
. Something told her The Preacher—a self-avowed, flag-waving, law-and-order man—wouldn't shrug off her illegal activity just because she had that genetic excuse for her crime.

“You're a beautiful woman,” SEC-Boy said, drawing her attention back to him. He patted the seat of the stool beside his. “Why don't you join me in a drink?”

Eve didn't want to. She didn't want to make nice to the blockhead, she didn't want to spend another second in his company, she didn't want to do anything but go back to her bedroom and pull the covers over her head.

Better yet, pull the covers over her head and Nash's.

But no! She was going to end that, she was, and the blockhead being here made that just more imperative.

She smiled at him again, because she had to. “I'm sorry, but I'm not supposed to imbibe on the job.”

He took a sip of his drink. “That's right. You wouldn't want to get fired, now that you're flat broke.”

How kind of you to point that out.
“I'm watching my pennies.”
Saving up for that attorney that I can't afford and would do just about anything not to need
.

“Just as closely as we're watching you, I'm sure.”

“I'm sure.” She gave him the last polite smile she had and half-turned to go about her business.

But again, SEC-Boy stopped her, catching hold of her hand this time. “I could ease things for you.”

“Ease things?” Her heartbeat thumped against her breastbone. “You'd do that?”
And why?

“If you cooperated with
me
.”

There was the catch. There always was one when it came to men, even boy-men, like the blockhead still holding her hand. But while she'd love to give the twit a piece of her mind and dump his drink in his lap, that wouldn't help her case with the SEC. She was going to have to let him down the nice and easy way.

Eve searched her memory for his name. Jerry? Tim? No. Terry. His name was Terry.

She widened her eyes like the dumb blonde he most likely considered her. “I'm not sure what you're getting at, Terry.” Often men couldn't bring themselves to flat-out proposition her in plain English. If she acted as if she didn't understand their innuendo, they'd slink away before coming straight out with it.

“I want sex. You and me, in bed.” Terry rubbed his middle finger against her palm.

Yuck. Ick. Bleah
. Eve pictured her sister Joey's repulsed response as behind her back she used her free hand to give him
her
middle finger. She wished her purse weren't so far away, under the counter beneath the cash register. If she could reach it, she'd switch on her mini-recorder and get this little weasel's blackmail on tape.

Then she'd use it to get him off her case and maybe even out of a job.

Without that, though, she couldn't afford to make an
enemy out of him. “Oh, I'm sorry, Terry.” How did one look contrite when one really wanted to kick? “I have a boyfriend.”

She didn't let herself think of Nash. He wasn't her boyfriend. He never would be.

“I don't mind sharing,” SEC-Boy said, smiling again. “I'm not looking for a future, Eve, just some fun.”

No duh.

“Well, um, Terry…I don't think that will, um, work.” She fumbled around, going for dumb again even as her mind was racing. She needed to wrap this up before she lost her patience and her chance to extricate herself from this mess with the SEC. “I hope I haven't led you on in any way.”

“But you have, Eve.”

She blinked. “I have?”

He did that revolting finger-to-palm rub again. “A woman who looks like you…”

“Here's a dollar, just for being pretty.”

“What a pretty girl. I'd never hurt you.”

Red edged Eve's vision. Her looks weren't anything she'd asked for. And yes, at times she enjoyed the power they gave her. But they weren't an open invitation. And she was sick, damn sick, of people seeing them as that, or worse, as a commodity to be bought or bargained for.

She narrowed her eyes at the little weasel. “Listen, S—”

An unexpected movement cut her off. Not through the French doors, where she'd expected him, but through the doorway to the Kona Kai's small lobby came Nash. He halted, his gaze taking in Eve, the back of SEC-Boy, their linked hands.

She couldn't tell what he thought about any of it.

And then she thought that this might be the perfect way to break things off between them.

It came to her in the single
ka-thump
of an unsteady heartbeat. If she could make Nash believe that she had solicited or was encouraging this…this flirtation with weasel Terry, then he'd back away from her. For good. She knew it.

SEC-Boy remained unaware of Nash's presence and she pretended she was too, even as she flicked a final glance at him from under her lashes. His big body was still, his expression unreadable. All she had to do was play up to the federal agent who was holding her hand and she'd rid herself of the man who was holding her—no, not her heart. Not that. The man who was holding her interest.

“Well, Eve?” Terry-the-weasel asked.

“I…” This wouldn't be hard. Nash would stride away, disgusted with her, and after that she'd find some way to put off SEC-Boy. It was a sensible plan. “I…”

But then she couldn't go through with it. Eve Caruso, who'd been taught from childhood to look out for #1, who had done just that many times, from the day she'd let her little sister be dragged away by federal agents, to the day she'd taken an insider stock tip and run with it, couldn't push out the words that would save her from Nash Cargill.

Their time together would end, and soon, but she didn't want his last memory of her to be the sight of her coming on to another man.

“I want you to let go of me,” she told SEC-Boy.

“Now, Eve.” There was a
tsk-tsk
in the agent's voice,
and he walked the fingers of the hand not holding hers across her shoulder to the button at her throat.

She jerked back, but his hold tightened and the button popped free.

“I want to see all that you're hiding underneath there.”

Her breath was coming fast, and her heart seemed to be ricocheting around her chest. There was something ugly, something ugly and dirty, in Terry's eyes, and she felt the skin along her spine go damp.

“No.” Her voice sounded too high. Almost afraid. “Please let go of me.”

The agent didn't loosen his grip. “I want to see,” he insisted.

“The lady said let go of her.”

Nash. For a second she'd forgotten him in that nasty light in SEC-Boy's eyes. “I'm all right, Nash,” she hurried to say. “I can handle it.”

“Tell him to leave us alone, Eve.” SEC-Boy was smiling now. Apparently his little federal badge lent him a lot of confidence, because he didn't even glance at the much bigger man behind him. “Tell him we have a date tonight.”

“We don't have a date, tonight or any other time.” She tried to tug away from him again, but his grip was like a vise.

Then he pulled her forward, and her hip bones thunked against the bar. She cried out, more surprised than hurt, and then cried out with more surprise as SEC-Boy's drink was suddenly knocked to the ground, shattering the glass.

By Nash.

“Get your hands off Eve
.
”
Her monster-truck driver loomed over the other man like an avenging angel, his
face hard, sparks shooting from his all-seeing, almost-clear eyes.

Whether in shock, fear, or just plain stupidity, the blockhead didn't let go, even as he stared up at Nash.

“Don't make me ask again.” Nash spit out each word like a bullet. “Don't make me hurt you.”

Terry's hand dropped. Eve stumbled back, and her elbow knocked into a bottle on the counter. It fell to the floor with another crash.

His hands curled into fists at his sides, Nash stepped closer to Terry. Eve almost felt sorry for the little weasel, who went pale. “Leave,” Nash ordered.

Terry slid off his stool, though his knees must have been rubbery, because he swayed. His hand clutched the stool.

Nash's expression tightened, his eyes emitting more sparks.
“Leave!”
he roared.

And Terry did, scuttling off without another word or glance behind him.

The sound of the shattered glass and Nash's furious voice seemed to linger in the empty confines of the bar. His breathing heavy, he glanced at her, then glanced away. “Are you okay?” His voice sounded as if it had been grated.

“I'm fine.” There was a short broom and a dustpan tucked in a corner at the end of the bar and she walked toward them, the soles of her shoes crunching over the broken bottle. She didn't know where to look or what else to do. “Thank you.”

“Don't thank me,” he snapped. The fury was back in his voice, and it froze her in her tracks.

What was making him so angry now? Was he mad at
her
? She stared at him. “Nash?”

“Don't goddamn thank me!” His steps jerky, he
strode toward the French doors. As he passed one of the small cocktail tables, he lashed out at it with his foot. It screeched across the marble floor, and one of the pair of used wine goblets sitting on top of it toppled. With a rough swipe of his hand, Nash sent the other dashing to the floor.

He exited to the sound of more breaking glass.

F
ifteen minutes after the scene in the bar, Nash swung open the door of his suite to find Eve on his doorstep. It was late, and though he couldn't think of anyone else who would come knocking at one in the morning, it was still a surprise. After all those angry voices—correction,
his
angry voice—and shattered glass, he'd figured she would stay well clear of him.

He'd been glad about that.

“Can I come in?” she asked.

“Not a good idea,” he said, forking his hand through his hair. His blood was still hot and his heart heavily pounding. Why the hell was she here? She should be running the other way as fast as her long legs could carry her.

“Look,” he said, forking his hand through his hair again, even as he guessed now that he looked as much
like a beast as he'd acted. “I don't think we should see each other any more.”

She froze, then nodded. “All right.”

Cowabunga
. He swung the door to shut it, but her foot was in the way. His gaze jerked to hers.

“Well, you don't think I'm going to take it just at that, do you?” she asked, pushing the rest of her inside the suite and closing the door behind her. “This is a first for me.”

Now frustrated and still no calmer than a few minutes before, he followed her into the living area. The couch was littered with reports and industry magazines, the day's newspaper and his cell phone. Unlike hers, his place wasn't two actual rooms but a small sitting area unseparated from a bedroom. So she plopped down on the bed, the white comforter poufing up around her like a cloud.

He crossed his arms and tucked his hands underneath them so he wouldn't give in to temptation and touch her. “A first for you how?”

“No one has ever broken up with me before.”

He raised an eyebrow, going for that cool that she always did so well, even though his pulse was still pumping too fast and his skin was still heated by anger. “Were we going steady or something?”

“‘Or something' will do. And I've always been the one who does the brushing off. So in honor of this inaugural event, you need to give me a little more about your reasoning.”

Jesus Christ, why? She'd been witness to the scene he'd just made in the bar. She'd had a firsthand view of his explosive temper, which, until tonight, he'd mistakenly thought was under better control. “I want to break things off.” Before someone gets hurt.

She didn't move.

Dropping his clenched fists to his sides, Nash tried again to hold in his frustration. She wanted an explanation. A breakup excuse. Fine. What did men usually say? “Babe, I'm afraid I'm one of those clichéd commitment-phobes.”

She shrugged. “I'm not looking for a commitment.”

Oh, shit. There was that.

And there was Eve, still waiting for him to say the right words before she would go away and leave him and his uncivilized tendencies be.

“Maybe I can make it easier for you,” she said, crossing one leg over the other and letting her foot swing. “What did you tell the final Farrah?”

He stared Eve straight in the eyes. “Now that I've paid your outstanding Visa bill, booted your ex out of the apartment over the garage, and fixed your kid's bicycle, I think it's time I move on.”

“Oh. Guess that one won't suffice either,” she said. “Anything more appropriate?”

“Damn it, Eve.” He curled his fingers tighter, done with playing around. It was time to get her out, get him back alone. “Why are you being deliberately obtuse? You know you'd be better away from me, better away from someone who…” Shit, he hated thinking of himself like this, but there was no way around it.

“I'm listening. Someone who?…”

He dug his fingernails into his palms. “Someone who went crazy when he saw that sonofabitch manhandling you. Someone who heard you cry out in pain and then wanted to pummel the one who caused it.”

“Nash—”

“It was fucking ugly, all right?” He stalked to the couch and shoved a pile of papers to the floor, then
slammed his ass onto the emptied space. “
I'm
fucking ugly!”

“Nash—”

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I saw the way you looked at me, Eve.” That had been the final straw. The instant he'd known that Mr. Hyde was loose again and he'd lost the power to hold him back.

“And how was that?”

“The same way I used to look at my old man.”

“I was startled—”

“You were
scared
. I know how that is. Watching the rage explode and the glassware hit the ground and wondering if the next flying fist is going to hit you.”

“Your father was violent.”

“Yeah.” Nash choked out a laugh. There was no question about that. “On a good day. On a bad day, a drinking day, he was homicidal.”

“What are you saying?” Hers was a soft, quiet voice that only made the echo of his own bellow in the bar seem louder, more shameful. “Are you saying your father killed someone?”

“Himself.” He let his head drop back, clunking against the wall, and the beefy, brutal man who had been Stu Cargill stomped across the black screen of Nash's closed eyelids. “He killed himself with the booze, with the anger. You can imagine.”

“Nash.” Suddenly she was there, beside him. He smelled her fresh, clean scent and opened his eyes to watch her transfer a stack of reports to the coffee table so she could take a seat on the cushions beside him. Her eyes were so big and blue and her mouth a soft, warm pink. “I'm imagining he hurt you. Am I right?”

Party girl. Good-time girl. She was so effing beautiful to look at that his chest ached with it.

“Did he hurt you, Nash?”

Her beauty was still mesmerizing him. “Only until I got big enough to hurt back.” He hadn't been ashamed of standing up to his father, though. “The first time I caught that swinging fist of his, he stopped going after me.”

“But when you were not yet big enough?”

He gave her a ghost of a grin. “I was quick. I had to stay home from school only a few times.”

Now she closed
her
eyes.

“Ah, Party Girl.” His hand reached for her face, but he forced it back to his thigh. “I told you it was ugly.”

“But you're not, Nash.” She opened her eyes, and in their true blue he knew she believed every word that she was saying with such sudden fierceness. But she was wrong. “You can't believe that his actions tainted you. You're not like him.”

“Oh, Eve.” He wished she would leave, but the adrenaline in his blood was seeping away and he was suddenly too tired to pick her up and push her out the door, so he would have to do the next best thing. “I'm very much like him.”

He hesitated and called himself a coward for it. It was time for the truth. “Ten years ago I put a man in the ER.”

She opened those very blue eyes very wide.

Yeah, honey, see me clearly now.

“Broke his collarbone, his arm, his jaw.”

Her body twitched. “Were you drunk?”

“I was enraged. One of the Farrahs had a kid, a little kid with long blonde hair.” His hand reached toward hers, but again he dropped it. “I walked in on a visitation with her daddy to find him slapping his child around. One eye was swollen, and her mouth was
bleeding.” And then he'd seen more red. “I pulled the guy off her, slammed him into a wall, and the rest is a rap sheet with the Dallas P.D.”

“You were arrested?”

“Taken into custody. Not a proud moment for a man like me who believes to the bone in respecting the law. They let me go because the guy I whupped had a restraining order to keep him away from another ex-wife and kid.”

Her hands were clasped together in her lap. “Any, uh, incidents since then?”

“No. I've been doing okay at keeping things light and easy. Been keeping myself under control—until tonight.” It had been her little gasp of pain that had snapped his leash.

“Then Nash—”

“I don't like the man who sends people to the hospital, okay? I don't like my emotions taking over. Making me do things”—
feel things
—“that cause trouble.”

“You didn't cause me any trouble.” She put her hand on his thigh, but he jerked away from her touch.

“Look, Eve, something—the situation with Jemima, maybe—has put me on edge. I'm not a good person to be around right now.”

“Why don't you let me be the judge of that?”

Because he wanted her to go away. He wanted his old pre–Party Girl life back, when he could resist blonde superbeauties with one hand tied behind his back. When he didn't remember the vulnerable look on her face when she'd looked out onto that endless desert vista that had made his heart twist, and then twist again as it had tonight at the idea that she was vulnerable to some man.

Some other man.

He didn't want to care about Eve that much.

“Nash.” She slid off the couch and onto her knees, gathering his too-big hands in her slender ones. “Listen.”

He looked down at their combined fingers and saw his knuckles as they'd looked ten years ago, swollen and scraped and dirtied with another man's blood and his own. With a yank, he jerked away from her. “Don't touch me.” She was too clean, too fresh, too vulnerable to be this close to his savage tendencies.

Instead of obeying, she pressed closer, coming between his bent legs to grab his hands again and hold on. She sat back on her heels and looked him straight in the eye. “I know men. I'm the daughter and the granddaughter of a Mafia boss, so believe me, I know violent men. And you, Nash Cargill, you are not one of them.”

He pulled away from her grasp, and her hands fell to his thighs. “You don't know me.”

“Maybe I know you best of all.” She rose onto her knees and moved in, so that her belly was pressed against the cushions of the couch. His legs were on either side of her arms, and he told himself to move.
Get up,
he commanded himself.
Walk past her. Get away from the warmth of her hands and that warm look in her eyes
.

“And I trust you, Nash.” Her hands moved to mold the half-erection beneath them.

He groaned and pressed back against the cushions. “What the hell are you doing? Eve…Damn it, Eve. No fair.”

Her hot palms traced his length, half-hard going to
whole-hard in that single stroke. “Let me show you what a good man you are. Let me show you how much I trust you.”

The new, sultry purr in her voice sent a shiver down his back. And, God help him, he couldn't look away as her nimble fingers unsnapped his jeans and loosened his fly.

What kind of man would let her do this now? But he seemed stapled to the couch, unable to do anything but watch her next move. The skin of her palms was hot, hotter than even his, as she pulled him free.

Get up,
he commanded himself again.
Walk past her. Get away from the warmth of her hands and that warm look in her eyes and
—

Her thumb rolled over the crown, massaging into his skin the drop of moisture already waiting there. Groaning, he dropped his head back again and watched her through half-closed eyes, weakened by her touch, weakened by the sight of Eve Caruso on her knees, his flesh in her hands.

He was a strong man. He had a violent streak. But the sight, the sensation of Eve's ministrations, weakened his resolve. He was at her mercy.

And then she bent her mouth to him.

His hand shot out, tangled in her hair. Her breath blew against his wet tip as she looked up. “I want this, Nash.”

“You don't do this.” At first, he'd thought it was a coy game on her part, but as he'd spent more time in her bed, he'd learned she hadn't been playing around about that. “You don't
need
to do this.”

“Oh, but I think I do.”

He shook his head. “Not for me, damn it.”

“Not for you,” she agreed. “But you said it yourself more than once, I have a thing about you and sex.”

“No.”

Her mouth closed over him.

And if she knew men, then she knew that he was no longer capable of protesting. A man could only be noble for so long when there was blonde hair drifting against his thighs and a valentine of a mouth servicing his cock. His hand slid out of her hair. He was weak. So damn weak when it came to her.

Teeth clenched, Nash sucked in a breath of air. His fingers drew into fists again as he forced his hips to stay down, to let her do what she wanted and not what instinct wanted him to demand. Her tongue swirled around him, and she looked up at his face through her lashes.

Miss America starring in XXX-porn.

Except it wasn't porn, it was Eve, sending him a message, telling him something with the heat and wet of her mouth. He lifted his hand to her hair and held it away from her face, watching as color infused her cheeks. Even her lips were rosier as she continued pleasuring him.

His breath was tight in his chest. Eve, going against her rules. Eve going against her rules for him. To make him feel good and to forget what had happened that night.

But…but he didn't think it was just for him—or maybe that's what all men wanted to think. Except then her hands circled the base, he jerked at the new contact, and she hummed in satisfaction.

“You make me so hot. You always make me so hot,” he murmured, tucking her hair behind her ear.

The flat of her tongue trailed from head to her hand.
She looked up. “Making you hot makes me hot too.” Her free hand slid beneath his shirt. “I never knew…” Her fingernails bit into his ab muscles, kitten claws kneading his skin.

Again, he fought the urge to lift his hips to that wet and waiting mouth. “You never knew what, honey?”

A little cat smile tilted the corners of that pink mouth hovering over him. “I never knew that it only took touching you to make
my
honey.”