The CRO leader was standing near the door, surrounded by about fifteen of his disciples.
She’d had no warning, no time to prepare, but then again, she’d taken off her apron—and in it, her pager—at least five songs ago.
“That was just beautiful,” Vincent said. “Just beautiful.”
She gave a sweeping bow. “Thank you.”
“Someone want to give her a hand down from there?”
“Yeah, I’d love to.”
Jake.
He pushed his way out of the crowd and stood smiling at her.
She didn’t faint with relief, didn’t gasp, didn’t reveal in any way that she recognized him. Instead she looked at him very deliberately, as if she were checking out the new man, the handsome stranger in town.
He was dressed the same as the rest of the men, in blue jeans and a worn denim work shirt. But the faded jeans hugged his thighs, and the shirt fit perfectly over his very broad shoulders. He was heart-stoppingly, impossibly beautiful, his eyes an incredible shade of molten hot blue.
During the past four and a half weeks, she’d forgotten just how amazingly blue his eyes were.
He’d been looking her over as thoroughly as she had been looking at him, and now he smiled.
Jake Robinson had a vast collection of smiles in his repertoire, but this one was very different from any she’d seen in the past. This one was as confident and self-assured as all the rest, but instead of promising friendship or protection, this smile promised complete, mind-blowing ecstasy. This smile promised heaven.
Damn, he was good. He almost had her believing that she’d lit some kind of fire inside of him.
Christopher Vincent noticed it, too. Noticed it, and recognized it. And wasn’t entirely thrilled by it.
Zoe held Jake’s gaze, lifting an eyebrow in acknowledgment of the attraction that simmered between them and giving him an answering smile that promised maybe. A very definite maybe.
“Zoe.” Gus was completely overwhelmed behind the bar.
Jake reached for her, and she leaned down to give the microphone to Lonnie before bracing her hands on Jake’s shoulders. He held her by the waist and swung her lightly to the floor, making sure that before her feet touched the ground, every possible inch of her that could touch every possible inch of him was, indeed, doing so.
And oh, God, it felt so incredibly good. She wanted to hold him tightly, to close her eyes and press her cheek against his shoulder, hear the steady beating of his heart beneath the soft cotton of his shirt. He was safe, he was whole, he was finally here. Thank God, thank God, thank God.
She wanted to hold on to him for at least an hour. Maybe two. Instead she touched the side of his face and held his gaze for just a second longer, hoping he could read her mind and know how very glad she was to see him.
His arms tightened around her for just a second in an answering embrace before he, too, let her go.
“I’m Jake,” he told her, with another of those killer smiles.
“And I’m Zoe,” she said as she went behind the bar. “Welcome to Mel’s. I’ll be your waitress tonight.” She slipped her apron around her waist, and sure enough—inside the pocket, her pager was silently shaking. She quickly shut it off. “What can I get you?”
He sat on the bar stool directly in front of her. “What kind of beer do you have on tap, Zoe?”
He said her name in a way that called up all kinds of erotic images, in a way that made her mouth go dry.
She leaned toward him, gesturing for him to come closer, and she felt his gaze slip down her shirt, nearly as palpable as a touch. “I recommend bottled beer,” she told him. They had a little problem with roaches. She didn’t know how they got into the tap hoses, but they did, and … yuck.
“Then definitely make it bottled,” Jake said. He was close enough so his breath moved her hair. “Whatever you bring me will be fine.”
As she turned around and reached into the cooler, she could feel him watching her. Make-believe, she told herself. It was all part of an act. Jake Robinson wasn’t really drooling over her rear end. He was just pretending to.
She opened the beer—a Canadian import—and set it down in front of him. “Glass?”
“I don’t need one, no.”
“Zoe, two pitchers, one light, one regular!” Gus called.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Zoe told Jake.
She could feel his eyes on her as she filled both pitchers.
He was still watching as she carried them with a stack of plastic cups to the tables where Christopher Vincent and most of his men were sitting.
“What brings you boys out on a Tuesday night?” she asked.
“My friend Jake’s been going a little stir-crazy,” Christopher told her. “He’s been … keeping a low profile. You don’t recognize him from anywhere, do you?”
Zoe glanced at the bar where Jake was sitting, still watching her. “He looks like a movie star. Is he a movie star?”
“Not exactly.” Chris looked around. “Where’s Carol? I wanted to introduce him to Carol. I thought they would hit it off.”
“She’s off tonight,” Zoe said. “Some kind of program going on over at her daughter’s school.”
“Maybe tomorrow then.”
“Tomorrow will definitely be too late,” Zoe told him. “Finders keepers, and all that—because I definitely saw him first. He’s adorable.”
Chris didn’t look happy. But Chris rarely looked happy.
Considering he was the leader of the so-called chosen race, Christopher Vincent was not a particularly attractive man, mostly due to the grim expression he wore on his face nearly all the time, and partly due to his thick, dark eyebrows, which grew almost completely together in the middle. He was tall and beefy with long dark hair, which he wore pulled back into a ponytail. He kept his face hidden behind a thick, graying beard, and he usually wore tinted glasses over his dark brown eyes. He looked over the tops of them as he gazed at Zoe.
They were definitely the eyes of a fanatic—the eyes of a man who wouldn’t hesitate to use the Triple X he’d stolen if he thought it would further his cause.
He was volatile, with a very short fuse.
“I saw you first,” he pointed out.
Oh, brother, this was a complication she hadn’t anticipated. Somehow over the past few weeks, she’d managed to catch Christopher Vincent’s eye. “You’re married,” she told him, trying to sound apologetic and even regretful. “I have a personal rule about
