late yesterday afternoon, but Ted hadn’t actually asked her for a date. Ted had asked her if she planned to join their group of mutual friends at their usual Friday-evening get-together at the tavern. Tina had told him she was. Knowing her car was in the shop for repairs, Ted had then offered to stop by her place and give her a lift to the tavern. Fully aware that he had his own agenda, that of convincing her to regard him in the role of prospective suitor, Tina had nevertheless accepted his offer with gratitude.
End of date business; she still had no intention of expanding their friendship into a more intimate relationship. She wasn’t interested in any kind of male-female relationship other than friendship. She’d been that route; it had a lot of potholes and detours.
No, thoughts of the coming evening were not the cause of her state of mind, Tina acknowledged, jabbing the long, pearl-tipped pin through a stem on the elegant corsage—this time correctly. The root cause of her distraction stood six foot four, and possessed a lean, mean sexiness that wouldn’t quit.
Wolfe.
Tina sighed.
What else?
* * *
Eric was bored. Bored and itchy. There wasn’t a damn thing happening in the house across the street.
Deserting his position behind the lacy curtain at the solitary window in the minuscule living room of the bachelor flat, Eric prowled to the even tinier kitchen and pulled open the door of the compact apartment-size refrigerator.
“And when he got there, the fridge was bare,” he paraphrased in a disgusted mutter.
Heaving a sigh, Eric inventoried the contents of the small unit. A quarter of a loaf of bread, a week past the sell-by date on the wrapper; one slice of lunch meat, curl dried around the edges because he hadn’t rewrapped it properly; a small jar containing two olives, sans pimentos; a carton of milk; and a package of butterscotch Tastykakes.
Hardly the ingredients of a well-balanced dinner, he allowed, sighing once more as he shut the door. He really should have stopped at the supermarket on his way back from the city this morning...but then, Eric conceded, he really hadn’t been concerned with his stomach this morning. His concern had centered on a lower portion of his anatomy.
Tooling a powerful bike through a city the size of Philly required concentration...plus the ability to sit comfortably in the saddle. And, with Tina’s thighs pressed to his rump, Eric had lacked both requirements.
Would she be going to the tavern tonight?
The question had skipped in and out of his mind all through that boring day. From the detailed information he had received on her, compliments of his older brother, Cameron, an FBI agent, Eric knew that Tina generally met her friends at a neighborhood tavern on Fridays, for an evening of fun and frivolity.
Eric likewise knew that the tavern served up a decent charbroiled steak with side orders of tossed salad and Texas fries. He had heard, as well, that the pizza was first-rate. He loved charbroiled steak and Texas fries. Good pizza, too, come to that.
Should he?
His stomach grumbled.
Eric’s smile was slow and feral.
Why the hell not?
Two
He stood out in the human crush like a fiery beacon on a fog-shrouded beach. The indirect amber lighting sparked bronze glints off his gold-streaked mane of tawny hair.
Tina spotted Eric Wolfe the instant she crossed the threshold into the dimly lit taproom. A frisson of shocked surprise rippled the length of her small frame; her step faltered; her thighs quivered with remembered warmth.
Appearing casual, as though her hesitation were deliberate, she studied him while making a show of glancing around the spacious room.
Eric stood propped against one end of the horseshoe-curved bar, his back to the wall. He was dressed casually, quite the same as that morning, but in newer tight jeans and a different, brown-and-white patterned sweater. His right hand was wrapped around a long-necked bottle of beer, which he intermittently sipped as he lazily surveyed the laughing, chattering patrons crowded into the noisy, smoky tavern.
“Do you see them?”
Tina’s body reacted with a slight jolt to the intrusive sound of Ted’s voice too close behind her. Them? She frowned. Oh, them! Reminded of her friends, Tina dragged her riveted gaze from the alluring form at the end of the bar and transferred it to the far corner of the room, where she and her friends usually congregated at two tables shoved together.
They were there, in force, all eight of them. Two of the women and one of the men had arms raised, hands waving, to catch her attention.
“Yes,” she finally answered. “There in the back, at the same old stand.”
“Here, let me go ahead,” he said, moving in front of her. “I’ll clear the way.”
Following in Ted’s footsteps, weaving in and out and around tables and the press of bodies standing by, reminded Tina of the ride that morning, and the man in command of the bike. She slid a sidelong glance at the bar, blinked when she saw the empty spot at the end of it, then crashed into a beefy man who had just shoved his chair away from a table and was half in, half out of his seat.
Yelping, the man stumbled backward. His shoulder collided with Tina’s chest, knocking the breath from her body and sending her reeling. Oblivious to the mishap behind him, Ted plowed on toward the corner and their friends. Backpedaling, Tina careered off another patron and emitted a muffled shriek as she felt herself begin to go down.
A hard arm snaked around her waist, breaking her fall, steadying her, shooting fingers of heat from her midsection to her thighs. She knew who her rescuer was an instant before his low voice caressed her ears.
“Don’t panic, thistle toes.” His voice was low; his arm was strong, firm. “You’re all right.”
Tina didn’t know if she felt insulted or amused by Eric’s drawled remark; she did know she felt suddenly overwarm within the circle of his arm—overwarm, yet strangely protected and completely safe.
“Thank...you,” she said, between restorative gulps of breath. “A person could get trampled in this herd.”
Eric’s smile stole her renewed breath. The laughter gleaming in his crystal blue eyes played hell with her still-wobbly equilibrium. A muscle in his arm flexed, sending rivulets of sensation dancing up her spine.
“You’re welcome.” Keeping his arm firmly in place around her waist, he turned his head to make a swift perusal of the room. When his glance came back to her, he arched his eyebrows promptingly. “Where were you heading?”
“Over there,” Tina answered, indicating the front corner with a vague hand motion.
“What happened to your escort?” Eric’s voice conveyed censure for the man’s dereliction of duty in caring for her. “Did he desert you in this zoo?”
“He was clearing the way for me.” Tina’s smile was both faint and wry. Looking at the table, she saw that most of her
