recommend the sliders. And by the way, this is my treat.”
His smile had gone a bit crooked. “I’ll have a Blue Moon in the bottle, thanks. And I’ll open it at the table.”
She mirrored his expression, glad that he hadn’t objected to her buying the round. And impressed he was being careful about his drink. She’d never gone out with a policeman before, and she’d assumed he’d want to be all macho. “We’re the fourth booth down, the one with the hat and purse on the seat.”
“You walked over here without your purse?”
“It’s underneath the hat.” Turning away, she kept her shoulders straight, her head high. She waited until she was leaning against the bar to exhale a half dozen breaths at once. Paulo, her favorite bartender, showed up and she had him put Liam’s beer and her double vodka rocks on her tab. Drinks in almost-steady hands, she started back to the booth, but didn’t get far.
Lily, a friend from Pratt, body blocked her. “Who is that?”
Aubrey smirked, but in a nice way. “He’s kinda cute, isn’t he?”
“Please. I’d stab my own brother to have a night with him.”
“I happen to know you dislike your brother intensely.”
“What’s your point?”
Aubrey stepped to the left. “Too bad he’s taken,” she said, and yeah, that sounded bitchy.
No one else interrupted, thankfully, so she slid into the booth across from the heart-stopping cop.
“Thanks,” he said as she handed him his drink, but before she’d settled in, he hit her with a very different kind of stare. “Where’d you really get the card?”
She wasn’t shocked. Well, maybe at the timing, but not the question. “Did you call Mary?”
“I left a message, but it didn’t matter. I knew you were lying.”
“I kind of figured, but hey, it worked because you’re here and I’m here…. Besides, this isn’t what it looks like.”
“It looks like you somehow got hold of something that doesn’t belong to you and lied to me about it.” He unscrewed the cap on his beer and took a sip.
“Okay, it is what it looks like, but there’s more to it.”
He took another drink, but his wryly cocked left eyebrow signaled some serious doubt.
“Let me explain.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” he said, his voice dipping into a register that made her toes curl. Sadly, his earlier amusement had left the building. She had a feeling his grip was already on his handcuffs.
Hmm. Handcuffs.
Not the point. She sipped her vodka and faced him with all the innocent earnestness she could muster. “It fell out of the sky.”
His expression changed again, this time to confusion peppered liberally with suspicion.
“The card,” she said. “It actually drifted out of the sky.”
He finally nodded. Took another drink, then said, “Um, are you off your meds, Aubrey?”
She laughed. Which didn’t illuminate the situation at all. As a cop he’d had plenty of strange encounters, everything from getting spit on by a guy in a Sponge Bob costume to talking down a hysterical woman who was about to step in front of the M train. But Aubrey, with her dark mass of unruly curls, too-wide mouth and cherubic cheeks, was something new.
Maybe it was her confidence that had drawn him in, or her smile, or the way she gleefully challenged him with her gaze. But he’d felt the pull the moment their eyes met. Weird how he’d known she was the one who had his card. Even weirder that he’d actually hoped it was her despite how obvious it was that she was nuts. But then he’d watched her walk to the bar in those towering red heels and tight black dress that was inches away from becoming a public indecency violation. He’d swallowed hard at her very womanly hips and a pair of shapely legs that he could all too easily imagine wrapped around his waist.
Admittedly, it had been a while for him, but he’d had more opportunities than most to take care of business if he’d just wanted to get laid. Sex had never been a problem. He was grateful for that, absolutely. But now that he was approaching thirty, he was trying to avoid letting his dick call the shots.
It wasn’t only his dick that found Aubrey intriguing, however.
“Look, I was at work,” she said, leaning toward him, her deep purple fingernails clicking on her shot glass. “I’m doing this Christmas window display for a lingerie store. It’s a major deal because I’m a nobody and you know what happens with Christmas windows in this city. For God’s sake, did you know that the window at Lord & Taylor is on a hydraulic lift so the whole thing can be moved to the basement? That the big players like Macy’s and Barney’s can spend over a million dollars on their displays?
“Anyway, my boss is kind of the Tina Brown of lingerie and the store was supposed to have opened ages ago, but there were all sorts of delays, so it didn’t open until October, but she needs the store to kill at Christmas, so I’m supposed to debut the window live on Christmas Eve Eve in front of reporters and bloggers from the New York Times to PopSugar…pretty much everyone who’s anyone, so you can imagine the pressure, right?”
Her hand slid across the table to land on his, which gave him a jolt that went straight to his cock. He nodded, although he’d barely understood half of what she’d said.
“I’ve done a hundred or more sketches and I’ve got nothing. Seriously, nothing. Nada. Zippo. And it’s almost three weeks until Christmas! There aren’t words to describe how freaked out I am.”
She paused, but only to knock back more of her drink. After squishing her face up into an award-winning wince, she took a deep breath and dove back in, her hand still on his.
“So tonight I walk outside, and this freaky wind almost blows my hat across the street. That’s when I see it. I had no idea what it was or where it came from until it fell, I bullshit you not, into my hand. No exaggeration. Literally into my hand.”
She held up said hand as a visual aid. He let out a surprisingly big breath as he pulled his own to his lap. “My trading card,” he said.
Pointing her finger at him as if she’d unequivocally made her case, she said, “Exactly. That doesn’t just happen.” She leaned back against the booth, her deep scarlet lips set in a firm line while her eyes danced.
Danced? He’d never had a thought like that before in his life. He grabbed his beer, somehow knowing things were only going to get worse.
“Okay, so, what I haven’t told you is the name of the store where I work.”
That was evidently his cue. “No. No you haven’t.”
She grinned, and leaned in again. “Le Muse,” she said, going full French accent on him. The way her eyebrows rose and her sly grin indicated that the name was significant. He had no idea why. “Uh-huh.”
“Le
