a word when I tooled all over the five boroughs. Tonight you’ve changed a flat and your girlfriend of some indeterminate amount of time dumped you, all of which happened when you should be getting well laid at the hotel. If there’s anybody in the world that needs a drink, it’s you. Maybe a shot of tequila, or ouzo. I know this Greek bar….”
“I don’t want to go to a Greek bar,” he told her, shifting uncomfortably, finding an exposed spring in the seat, feeling it cut into his thigh. Probably severing the femoral artery, thereby letting him bleed out a quick and painless death. In which case, Cynthia would have to feel bad since she had dumped him in a text message.
“How about an American bar?” Edie suggested, as if all his immediate pains could be solved with alcohol.
A bar was a recipe for disaster, but since Tyler had apparently not severed his femoral artery and was going to live, alcohol now seemed like a good idea.
“If I let you buy me a drink, one drink—will you drive me directly to the hotel?” There was a roughness in his voice that worried him. This wasn’t about a drink. He should’ve been fantasizing about a shower, a bed. No, there were darker forces at work. Darker forces that were visualizing her. Naked in his shower. In his bed. Even naked proudly offering him one drink.
“I’ll drive you straight back to the hotel. I swear,” she promised, but Tyler knew when disaster lurked around the corner. He didn’t like to think it was a premonition because that implied his subconscious was guiding his decision—or worse, his penis.
Tonight Cynthia had dumped him. Texas’s number-four-ranked cardiothoracic surgeon with a net worth of over four million, who had saved her father’s life, not once, but three times, not that anyone was counting. If there was a woman in the world who owed him the simple courtesy of a proper goodbye, it was Cynthia.
So what if he wanted to be a jackass? If he wanted to have a drink or wild sex with a woman who felt some deep-seated desire to make him feel better, then by God, he should. If he wanted to do something spontaneous and hair-raising, then he had a premeditated right to go for it.
It was because of such elaborate rationalizations that his father called him Shit-For-Brains Sophocles, but Tyler always shrugged it off. Although now he did wonder if Sophocles ever created meaningless justifications in pursuit of wild sex. Probably not. Probably Sophocles never had shit for brains. Only Tyler.
“One drink. An American bar,” he agreed, resigned to his decision.
“A friend of mine works in a strip club.”
He smiled at her, mud-splattered and grimy with an agenda that was just as black.
THE CLUB WAS LIKE AN underground cavern with rotating lights, an abundance of surgically enhanced body parts and a low heavy rhythm that could have aroused a dead eunuch. Identifying all the cheap marketing tactics designed to titillate him did not erase the fact that the place was getting to him.
Or maybe it was her.
Edie Higgins.
A woman with a four-hour repertoire of dirty jokes, and a body that had never been under a scalpel. The body in question had sultry curves and a rosebud tattoo that rode high on her left breast—regrettably a little too high. Yes, he was feeling shallow and a bit debauched, but in his own defense, he also acknowledged her curiously appealing joie de vivre.
The club’s whiskey was overpriced and probably watered down, but it didn’t matter. He hadn’t touched his glass, and already he could feel himself loosening up. Her smile was infectious—in the manner of avian flu or staphylococcus, he added as an afterthought. Dr. Tyler Hart was ready to take this woman every way, any way, she’d let him.
Edie slipped an orange slice into her mouth, the juice dribbling down one side of her lip. She had luscious lips. Not collagen-full, not schoolmarm-thin. Juicy, he thought with a stupid grin, his mind wondering what her mouth tasted like. He was allergic to citrus, but was anaphylactic shock so bad? He hadn’t been tested for allergies in years, and people outgrew them all the time, so theoretically, he had probably outgrown his. Tyler leaned closer, taking a deep whiff of orange and Edie, which promptly sent him into the first throes of sexual dysphoria.
“What was her name?” she asked, and he had to blink twice in order to focus on the words. Words.
Slowly his mind formed a suitable answer. “Cynthia.” At the name, some of the sexual dysphoria evaporated.
“Cynthia,” she repeated in a snotty voice and then giggled.
It made him want to smile, or maybe it was the way her eyes tracked his face, as if he were the most fascinating man ever. His med school roommate, Ryan, had called him an alcoholic lightweight. Because of that, Tyler was usually careful when it came to drinking. Tyler lifted his full glass and took a hesitant sip.
“Was Cynthia blonde?”
“You’re blonde,” he pointed out, but then worried that he had a type. What if he was fatally attracted to toxic blondes? Quickly he slammed the last of his whiskey.
“I’m not a natural blonde.”
“Neither was Cynthia,” he volunteered in unchilvarious fashion.
Edie giggled again. This time, Tyler smiled back.
“I could buy you a lap dance,” she offered, sounding so sympathetic it should have touched his heart.
You could give me a lap dance, he thought, and decided he wouldn’t drink anymore. Someone needed to stay in charge. God forbid that it was her.
“Do you know why she dumped you?”
“She didn’t dump me,” he protested, although why he was lying he didn’t know. Cynthia had dumped him. Rejected him. Humiliated him. And if he were smarter, he’d be milking this for all the sympathy points that he could get. As a specialist in coronary bypass, Tyler understood how easily the heart could be manipulated.
He lowered his head, the very picture of dejection. “You’re right.”
At his words, Edie put a comforting arm around his shoulders, and Tyler shamelessly moved in closer, drawn to her warmth, her generous nature, the feel of her warm and generous breasts brushing against him. Unsurprisingly, some of the sting of rejection disappeared.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and once again he heard the tenderness in her voice. He was a virtual stranger, and an unchivalarous stranger at that. Before meeting Edie, he had thought that New Yorkers were hard-hearted and cynical, unmoved by the pathos of human suffering…
Except for this one.
He met her eyes. “Thank you,” he told her, feeling sincere, grateful and yes, still painfully aroused.
“Do you want to meet paradise?”
“I’d love to,” he agreed, his mind already transported to a lurid paradise where there was no dirt, no naked gyrating dancers…unless it was Edie. He’d let her dance. As long as she was naked. Paradise sounded perfect.
However, instead of taking his hand and leading him away from this chaos, she stood and waved her hand, gesturing wildly to one of the dancers.
Enlightenment shouldn’t hurt so much.
“Is that paradise?” he guessed, as the buxom redhead bounced and buoyed her way toward him. Painful enlightenment rolled in his gut.
“What do you think?” asked Edie, looking extraordinarily pleased with herself as she started on the introductions.
“Tyler, meet Paradise, aka Anita.”
Anita held out her hand, and politely Tyler shook it, not wanting to stare at what had to be 42 Double D, but somehow he knew that laws of nature and gravity had both been violated in the altering of her breasts.
“You have to be nice to Ty. I put him through crap tonight. Girlfriend dumped him, then I had a flat, which he changed in the rain by the way, and didn’t even complain.