She glanced out the front plate-glass windows to the cobblestone street outside. A few people walked past, laughing and tossing snow at each other. Night had fallen, hard and dark and deep.
“It’s still snowing,” she murmured.
“Good thing we don’t have any place to go, huh?”
“Why did you let me stay, Jesse?”
His smile faded for a moment, just long enough for him to blink. Then he leaned a little closer. “Because...I thought you needed to.”
She remembered him giving her the chocolate mousse, and how it had rubbed her the wrong way. Yet he’d done so many things for her over the past few months since he’d started here at The Fallen Angel. He’d come to know her preferences so easily and had made it so easy for her to come back, week after week.
“I told you how I feel about people assuming they know what I need.”
He nodded and turned to press a button on the small remote that controlled the pub’s sound system. In seconds the slow, distinctive beat of “Cry to Me” filtered through the speakers. It had been one of her favorites for years, first as a cut on a vinyl album she’d found as a teenager scouring thrift stores and then later, as an adult, an iTunes track. How had he known?
Like the whiskey and onion rings and mousse and everything else, Colleen thought, he just had.
Chapter Four
Jesse moved before he could second-guess himself. He went around the bar, one hand out. He didn’t ask her to dance. He waited for her to take his hand.
She waited long enough that he was certain she wasn’t going to, but then her fingers eased into his and squeezed. Colleen slipped off the stool, a little unsteady but catching herself so that she didn’t stumble. She was in his arms half a minute after that, the two of them pressed close on the splintery wooden floor that wasn’t really meant for dancing. On one of The Fallen Angel’s good nights, when the crowds of Fell’s Point filled this bar cheek to cheek and hip to hip, there would have been no been room for them to do this, but now he spun her out slowly and back in again to dip her.
She laughed as he pulled her up, and damn, that smile, that gorgeous chuckle, made him understand why men had claimed they’d die for their lady loves. Everything about this woman made him want to make her happy. Keep her safe. When she allowed him to pull her in close again, he took a long, deep breath against the fall of her pale hair.
She shivered, tensing, but he kept his grip steady so she didn’t pull away. He’d have let her go, of course. He wasn’t grabbing her. Wouldn’t force himself on her. But in another second she relaxed against him, her face in the curve of his shoulder. And yes, oh, shit, yes, her hand cupping the back of his neck.
They danced.
Someone had been messing with the controls for the sound system, and when the song ended, there were two beats of silence before the same one started again. He waited for her to pull away from him, but she didn’t. They moved to that old song as though it was the first time they’d ever heard it, and Jesse let himself get lost in the heat of her body. The scent of her. The smoothness of her cheek against his.
She murmured something under her breath as the song came to an end for the second time, but he couldn’t catch what she said. He paused, not wanting to ruin the mood. “Hmm?”
Colleen pulled away enough to look into his eyes. “I do like chocolate mousse. I like it a lot.”
“I know you do,” he told her.
“I’ve never ordered it here.”
“I just...guessed,” Jesse said.
Colleen’s eyes flashed bright for a moment before she shook her head and gave a small, embarrassed laugh. “I was such a bitch to you that day, Jesse. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He settled his hands on her hips, fingertips just brushing the swell of her butt. He wanted to slide them lower, but didn’t dare. Not when this was going so well.
She linked her hands behind his neck. The song had started a third time, and both of them moved in a small circle. With every step, her body rubbed his. It was going to get embarrassing in a few minutes, but he didn’t stop.
“Do you think I’m pretty, Jesse?”
He didn’t hesitate for a second. “I think you’re beautiful.”
She laughed.
It seemed impossible that he could pull her closer, but somehow he managed. “What? You don’t think so?”
“If enough people tell you that you’re beautiful, you can easily start to believe it, right?” Colleen’s mouth twisted wryly. “And yet it only takes one person to tell you that you’re ugly to make anything anyone else ever said feel like a lie.”
“Did he tell you that you were ugly?” The ex-husband, the asshole.
“No.” She shook her head. “He never had to say it out loud. He just made me feel that way.”
“He’s—”
“An asshole,” she cut in. “I know.”
It was the perfect time to kiss her, so he did. He could tell himself he meant it as a sweet gesture, only friendly, but the moment his mouth pressed hers, it was all he could do not to crush her against him. And when her lips parted, opening for him, and her tongue slid along his, Jesse broke the kiss with a small, mortifying groan.
Colleen shuddered. The brightness had gone out of her gray eyes, replaced by something hazier. Heavy-lidded. She slipped her tongue along her lower lip the way she’d done a few times already tonight, each time sexier than the last. She hadn’t moved away from him, and now his cock was definitely making itself known. She had to feel it against her. She had to.
The song ended and began again. She looked toward the bar. He didn’t want to let her go long enough to change the song, but as he started to, she turned to him.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Jesse paused, an unwelcome but also relieving space between their bodies, his hands still on her hips. “Where do you want to go?”
“I live two blocks away.” She let her hands slide down his arms to entwine his fingers with hers and squeezed them.
Everything inside him knotted and tangled. Jesse studied her, searching for signs that the whiskey had made her too drunk to be rational. It wouldn’t have been the first time a woman invited him back to her place. Drunk twentysomethings on a pub crawl, tipsy cougars out to prove to their friends they still had what it took, bachelorette party beauties trying to be memorable and make memories. Colleen wasn’t like any of them.
Maybe she was messing with him. Revenge for pissing her off? Playing a game?
She looked into his eyes. Shadows shifted there. Something dark, but definitely aware. She knew what she was doing and what she wanted, yet still he hesitated until she spoke again.
“Come home with me, Jesse.” If it had been a question, his common sense might’ve taken over and let him decline, but she hadn’t said it that way. No hesitation, no question.
A command.
* * *
They’d run the last half block, laughing and grabbing up snow to toss at each other. No plows had passed, which would make the morning an infinite pain in the ass for anyone trying to get in or out of any of the narrow, cobblestoned Fell’s Point streets. With the snow still coming down at an inch or so an hour, already more than the weather forecasters had predicted, they’d be lucky if they got shoveled out by Monday.
She was going to get lucky, Colleen thought as her key chattered in the lock because her numbed fingers couldn’t quite fit it on the first try. With Jesse on her heels, she shoved open the front door, which stuck as