fact was, he admired Blondie’s gumption. An old-fashioned, down-home word, gumption, but it was eminently suitable.
That face, that body, that dress … she’d probably been hit on a dozen times tonight until she’d finally thought, enough!
He wasn’t foolish enough to think she could have avoided the problem by wearing something else.
Caleb had worked his way through law school, rather than touch his father’s money or the money he’d inherited from his mother.
He’d delivered pizza, waited tables at Friendly’s, worked at an off-campus bar.
There’d been a dress code for the wait staff at the bar.
For the men: white shirts, black bow ties, black trousers, black shoes.
For the women: black ribbons around their throats, low-cut white T-shirts a size too small, swingy black skirts that barely covered their asses and black stiletto heels.
Or they were fired.
Sexual discrimination was alive and well in twenty-first century America. As a lawyer, as a man, Caleb knew that.
Still, he figured he deserved better than being treated like some kind of predator.
He told that to Blondie.
She raised her chin.
“Is that a ‘no’ to another drink?” she said coldly.
“That’s exactly what it is,” he said. Then he turned his back to her, drank a little more of what remained of his Scotch and settled in to observe the scene for the next fifteen or twenty minutes.
It was pretty much the same as it had been since he’d arrived. The only thing that had changed was that the dancing had grown faster. Maybe hotter was a better word.
Lots of bodies rubbing. Lots of moves that were almost as much fun done vertically as they’d have been if done horizontally.
The crowd was really in to it.
The wait staff, too.
He hadn’t noticed them before. Now, his eye picked them up without trying. Good-looking guys, shirtless, wearing tight black trousers, laughing with the customers who were obviously joking with them, accommodating the women who flirted with them.
Good-looking women, in duplicates of Blondie’s outfit—tight, low-cut, short, glittery dresses that left bare long, long legs made even longer by sky-high stilettos.
None of the women were as good-looking as Blondie.
Or maybe none of them carried themselves the same way.
She was easy to spot, even in the crowd. She had her hair piled up on top of her head in a mass of curls. Plus, there was the way she held herself. Tall. Proud. Her posture almost rigid.
Forget what she was wearing, that I’m-too-sexy-for-this-dress thing.
It was her bearing that spoke loudest, and what it said was, Keep Away.
Caleb found his eyes glued to her.
He saw what happened when she approached one of the tiny tables ringed around the dance floor and one of the bozos seated at it laughed up at her, said something, and put a hand on her hip.
She pulled back as if that hand was a scorpion.
He saw what happened when she fought her way through the mobbed dance floor with a small silver tray of drinks in her hands and another bozo cupped her bottom.
Somehow, she managed to take a step in just the right direction and sink her spiked heel into his instep.
Without spilling a drop.
Caleb smiled.
The lady could handle herself …
At least, she could until the same bozo followed her, crowded her into a small, miraculously vacant corner, and said something to her.
She shook her head.
The guy said something again. And touched her. One fast, quick grope at her breasts.
Caleb’s smile faded. He stood straighter, tried to see more of what was happening but people walked by, got in the way …
Okay.
Blondie had slipped free. She was moving as fast as she could, heading for what had to be a service door.
The guy went after her.
He got to the door at the same second she did. Caught her by the shoulders. Yanked her back against him. Ground his body against hers.
She fought back.
It was useless.
The man was too big, too determined, probably too high or too drunk. Now he had one hand on her breast, the other, dammit, the other between her thighs …
Anger flashed through Caleb’s blood.
Didn’t anybody see what was happening? Was he the only one who understood that this wasn’t a man making a fool of himself, that it was—hell, it was attempted rape?
He swung away from the balcony railing, dropped his glass on the first table he passed, went through the crowd and down the nearest staircase pretty much the same way he’d gone through linebackers in his days as a tight end on his high-school and college football teams.
Where was she?
He was tall, six foot three, but it was almost impossible to see past this mob.
The service door had been in the back of the room. On the left. He headed in that direction, not bothering with “sorry” or “excuse me” as he shoved his way across the dance floor, just doing whatever it took to get where he needed to be.
It seemed to take a lifetime but finally he broke through the crowd.
Saw the door.
But that was it.
Blondie was gone. So was the guy.
Caleb looked all around him. Nothing.
Okay.
He drew a couple of deep breaths. Some good Samaritan must have seen what was happening and put a stop to it.
Or the guy had figured he’d had his fun and given up.
Or …
Holy hell!
Somebody opened the service door, stepped back fast and let it swing shut. Elapsed time, maybe three seconds … but long enough for him to see everything he needed.
The door didn’t lead to the kitchen. It led to some kind of big, dimly lit closet.
