to me like your native friends are getting restless,” Eric observed.
“Yes...er, I’d better join them.” Tina took a step, fully expecting him to remove his arm; it not only remained in place, it tightened, like a steel coil anchoring her to his side. He began to move, drawing her with him.
“This time, I’ll run interference.”
Turned out there was no interference to run; Eric’s intimidating size, coupled with his air of self-confidence and determination, had the patrons clogging the spaces between the tables in their haste to get out of his way.
“Tina, what happened?” Ted demanded, eying Eric warily when they reached the table.
“It was nothing,” she replied, trying to make light of the embarrassing incident.
“She could have been injured.”
Tina shivered at the hard condemnation in Eric’s tone, and saw Ted visibly flinch in reaction to the piercing stare from the taller man’s laser-bright eyes. “But I wasn’t,” she quickly inserted. “So let’s forget it.” Forcing a carefree-sounding laugh, she swept her friends with an encompassing look and rushed on, changing the subject. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m starving.”
“Relief’s on the way.” The assurance came from one of the men. “The pizza’s been ordered and should be coming any minute now.”
“Good.” Smile in place, Tina turned back to Eric. “Thank you again. I...” she began, intending to gently but decisively dismiss him.
“We ordered plenty,” a female voice piped in. “Would you care to join us, Mr.—?”
“Eric Wolfe,” he supplied, extending a smile and his right hand to the man closest to him.
“Bill Devine.” Bill grasped Eric’s hand and jerked his head to indicate the woman next to him, the one who had initiated the introductions. “This is Nancy Wagner.”
Nancy...supposedly her best friend! Tina fumed in silent frustration as the round-robin continued.
“Wayne Fritz.”
“Georgine Cutler.”
“Mike Konopelski.”
“Vincent Forlini.”
“Helen Elliot.”
“Louise Parsons.”
“Ted Saunders.”
Eric’s smile vanished as the circle was completed with Ted. His voice took on a hint of disdain; his handshake was insultingly brief. “Saunders.”
A strained silence descended on the group around the table. A red tide rose from Ted’s neck to his cheeks. Tina felt a stab of compassion at his obvious abashment, and a sense of astonishment at Eric’s powerful effect on her friends. Eric had merely repeated Ted’s name, and yet his tone, the look of him, had held the force of a hard body blow.
Tina’s sense of compassion, and her underlying unease, lasted a moment, then dissolved into impatience and annoyance. With his attitude, by his very presence, Eric had thrown a pall over the congenial atmosphere, stifling the fun of the group’s weekly get-together. Growing angry, determined to send him on his way, she opened her mouth to issue polite but pointed marching orders to him. The first word never cleared her lips.
“Heads up, folks!” The warning came from the waiter, who was bearing down on their combined tables, a large tray balanced on the fingertips of both upraised hands. “Pizza!”
The aroma wafting from the steam rising from the pies brought a wash of water into Tina’s mouth. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she had skipped lunch. Tilting her head to look directly at Eric, she managed a parody of a smile, and attempted once more to send him packing.
“Ah...thanks again, I...” And once again she found herself unable to accomplish her goal.
“What do you say, Eric?” Mike—the rat—called from the far end of the table. “There’s plenty of room, and pizza. Wanna join us?”
Apparently the moment of embarrassed silence was over.... Of course, Tina knew too well that her friends were never silenced for very long. They were too exuberant, bursting with youth and the joy of life. Staring into Eric’s alert, watchful eyes, she narrowed her own in a bid to convey her reluctance to have him invade their clannish circle. Her empty stomach lurched at the smile that began in the depths of his eyes an instant before it was reflected in his lazy smile.
“Sure. Why not?” Eric shrugged, setting the muscles in his shoulders and chest into an impressive rippling motion beneath his sweater. “Thanks.”
Ted moved forward to hold a chair for Tina.
Eric moved faster. With a casual-looking, smooth turn of his body, he blocked Ted’s movement. Pulling one chair aside, he kept a firm hold on it while sliding another one out for Tina. The moment she was seated, he dropped into the one he was holding and drew it into the table next to hers. Ted was relegated to the only remaining chair...between Mike and Helen, at the far end of the other table.
“Hope you like your pizza loaded, Eric,” Bill said, grinning. “We ordered the works on both.”
“I like it any way I can get it,” Eric drawled, slanting a hooded, sultry look at Tina that implied something other and much more intimate than pizza. “But I like it best spicy and sizzling hot.”
Denying the flare of response that leapt to life deep inside her, Tina glared a warning at him before turning away.
“So what are we waiting for?” Helen wailed from the end of the table. “Serve it up!”
In between bursts of conversation and laughter, the pies were parceled out and demolished. When it became clear that appetites were still unsatisfied, more pizza and fresh drinks were ordered. It was a normal Friday night.
Not quite normal, Tina mused, squirming in the allotted space afforded her between Eric on one side and Vincent on the other. On a normal Friday night, she could relax away the tensions of the workday, not have the tension increased by the sensations instilled by a hard thigh pressing against her leg, a muscled shoulder nudging her arm, a pair of crystalline blue eyes probing into her thoughts.
Tina’s appetite for pizza deserted her, replaced by a different, sharper hunger below her stomach. Forcing herself to chew and swallow the food she no longer desired, and refusing to acknowledge the sensual craving, Tina managed to consume two slices of the pie without choking.
Next to her, Wolfe wolfed down half a dozen slices between pulls on another beer. Nothing wrong with his appetite, she thought, sliding a wry look at him.
Correctly interpreting her expression, Eric grinned, and once again set his shoulder and chest muscles into action with a careless shrug.
Tina shot an arched look back at him.
“I was hungry,” he said, pressing his hard thigh more firmly against hers. “Still am,” he went on, in a lower, breathy murmur. “But not for pizza.”
Shock—or
