The brunette licked salt from the rim of her glass. The gum-snapping cocktail waitress—Diana? Debbie?—unloaded a tray of diet sodas by the giggling girls.
Nicole’s shoulders relaxed slightly. At least her liquor license was safe for another night. Her investment was safe. Everything was going to be fine. She hadn’t made another monumental life mistake, the way her mother said and her father feared.
Nicole glanced again from the hair-flipping teenagers to the brunette laying it all out on the bar. Right. Everything was fine. Unless, of course, a fight broke out over her bartender.
Or he stole from the till.
Nicole watched Mark DeLucca unload a stack of bills from the cash register and start riffling through them. It was late. She consulted her Givenchy watch. After midnight. The front lights were out, the front door was locked, and she was alone with a man who made every tiny hair on her body stand at attention.
“What are you doing?” She hated the way her voice sounded, sharp with suspicion.
He barely glanced at her. “Daily register report.”
That sounded reassuring. He was the bar manager, she reminded herself. He had a responsibility to count the cash and figure the day’s net sales.
Correction. Had had the responsibility.
She shifted on her perch. “I can do that. Since I’m here.”
His lean back stiffened. And then he shrugged and moved away easily from the register. So easily she wondered if she’d imagined that moment of resistance.
“Be my guest,” he said.
She wasn’t his guest. She was his employer, a fact she didn’t need to remind him of. Or apologize for.
Nicole raised her chin and slid off her bar stool.
At least he could take orders, she thought, as she checked his total for the day. And he could add. Apparently he wasn’t dipping into the cash register, either. There was no reason for her to feel so gosh darn uncomfortable around the man.
No reason except he looked like an invitation to be bad.
She watched him prowl around the room, collecting glasses, emptying ashtrays. Maybe it was the hard, long body, the jet-black hair, the take-no-prisoners face. Maybe it was the wicked dark brows over those I’ve-got-a-secret eyes. Maybe it was—
—her problem. She rubbed the space between her eyebrows, as if she could massage her tension away. Her fault. The man couldn’t help the way he looked, for goodness’s sake.
He swung a chair up onto a table, the muscles flexing in his back and arms, and her stomach actually fluttered.
She frowned.
“You want to lock up, too?” Mark asked, his voice flat.
Oh, dear. She didn’t want him to think she didn’t trust him.
Although that had been one of Zack’s favorite ploys, pretending injury at her lack of trust. Don’t you trust me? he’d demanded, making her feel horrible, while he boinked every film student and wannabe actress who would lie down for his camera.
She swallowed hard. That was personal, she told herself. This was business.
She looked at Mark’s hard, expressionless face.
“You can do it,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound as strained as she felt. “I’ll see you in the morning, and we can talk about procedures then. Eight o’clock.”
“Nine,” he said. At least he didn’t make a crack about her being late. “Let me walk you to your car.”
“That’s not necessary, thanks.”
He strolled closer. Her pulse jumped. She made an effort not to retreat. “Because you can take care of yourself.”
“I can, you know.” Suddenly it was important that he see her as a competent, confident individual, and not another bar bunny. “I’ve taken self-defense classes.”
“Great. So you don’t need an escort. Maybe I need to see you to your car anyway.”
That was clever of him, Nicole decided. And rather sweet. As they walked to the entrance, she tried to find a way to say so that wouldn’t sound like a come-on.
“I appreciate your concern for security.”
He slanted a look at her as he opened the door. “Security, hell. I can’t afford to let anything happen to you.”
She was immediately flattered. And suspicious. “Why not?”
“Didn’t you ever ask why the owners were in such a hurry to sell?”
The parking lot was very dark. And isolated. The wind rustled the trees and ruffled the water. High overhead, the pale moon rode the cloudy sky. At this hour all the other Front Street businesses were closed. The other buildings were dark and faraway. The only light came from a bait-and-convenience store at the far end of the marina.
Nicole took a deep breath. She would have to investigate the cost of more lights. “I—no. Kathy never said.”
“Never mind, then.”
She dug her heels into the gravel of the parking lot. “Tell me.”
He shrugged. “Last spring three women were followed or attacked after leaving the Blue Moon. One of them was murdered. The police chief, Denko, finally figured it was the owner who did it. Tim Brown. He was convicted, and his wife put the bar up for sale.”
Nicole was shaken. “That’s terrible. But if the man who did it is locked up—”
“Yeah, if. Some folks still think the police got the wrong guy.”
He slouched beside her car. She couldn’t read his expression in the dark. There was just this general impression of black hair, broad shoulders and male menace.
Her heart pounded. “Who do they think did it?”
His smile gleamed like a knife in the shadows. “Me.”
Chapter 3
He had pulled some boneheaded, shortsighted stunts in the past, Mark thought as he polished off the last Palermo’s crescent for breakfast. School fights. Petty vandalism.
He snagged a quart of milk from the fridge, sniffed and drank from the carton.
Scaring his new boss in the parking lot didn’t rank up there with the time he’d liberated a powerboat to go joyriding at the age of twenty or his career-ending screwup in punching out an officer. But it was still dumb.
He’d be lucky if Blondie didn’t fire him.
Unless… He lowered the milk carton. Unless that had been his aim all along. Piss her off enough, and he wouldn’t even have to take responsibility for quitting.
Self-sabotage, his sister would call it, with the authority of a woman who had gotten her start editing the “Ask Irma” column in the Eden Town Gazette. Mark didn’t believe in that psychobabble self-help bull. He replaced the empty carton in the fridge and closed the door. Anyway, he took responsibility.
When he had to.
Which, admittedly, wasn’t very often.
He shuffled through the bright stack of advertising flyers until he uncovered the cream-colored letterhead from the lawyer.
“Jane Gilbert” was typed below the nearly illegible signature. The phone number was printed above. His gut tightened.
He glanced at his watch. Eight-twenty. He wasn’t due to meet Blondie at the bar for another forty minutes. Plenty of time to call this Gilbert broad and find out what the hell she expected him to do about the bombshell she’d lobbed into his life.
Hell. He picked up the phone.