it was obvious he didn’t want to go to Fever.
“No,” he said. “I’d need more than an almost handshake for you to take me home.”
Did he just make a joke? Mella blinked at Victor.
“I’ll come with you to the day party,” he said. “As Kingsley is quick to say, I need to get out of the house, anyway.”
Oh.
“Okay.” Mella rolled her eyes as her friends high-fived each other. She hoped Victor Raphael knew what he was getting himself into.
They left the party in two separate cars, with Victor and Kingsley agreeing to meet them at Fever. The men already knew where the place was, or at least Kingsley did.
“I don’t know what you guys were thinking inviting them to the party. Victor didn’t look like he was in the mood.” Mella was a big fan of doing what she wanted instead of what other people expected. Life just tended to be happier that way.
From the small backseat of Mella’s green Fiat convertible, Corinne giggled. “We would have been happy just hanging with Kingsley. He seemed fun, at least.”
Mella glared at her in the rearview mirror, annoyed that she would think of leaving Victor behind, even if that meant Mella would get the chance to take him home. She didn’t dwell too long on how that sounded in her head. “But what would Kingsley look like, leaving his friend for some random chicks he just met?”
“Spontaneous, Mella. He’d look spontaneous.”
Mella shook her head. She was all for spontaneous, but she was about loyalty, too. And she liked that, though it was a small thing, Kingsley had stuck by his friend even when it seemed he could have gotten lucky, twice, on his own. Mella knew her friends weren’t above the occasional threesome. They may have been on the marriage hunt, but she knew they saw nothing wrong with having a little fun along the way.
“You all are dead wrong,” she muttered.
At Fever, the music was loud and bass-heavy, women and men in tight designer clothes, the liquor flowing freely on the wide rooftop. The three women headed for the bar for their usual drinks before looking for Victor and Kingsley. When they found them, Kingsley was dancing in the middle of the crowded floor with a woman Mella was fairly certain he’d never met before.
Victor, though, was nowhere to be seen. Her friends flocked to Kingsley, ready to fend off the Jenny-come-lately who was hanging on to his hips for dear life as they grooved to the hip-hop pounding from the speakers.
She saw some people she already knew and joined them, leaving her husband-hunting friends to make their move on Kingsley. The afternoon was fun and the music and energy all that Mella hoped for. She drank her cocktails, shared gossip with old friends and danced until the sweat ran down her back and she had to take off her blazer and leave it hanging on the back of a chair.
It wasn’t long before she finished her second drink and wanted another one, but the main bar had a line from hell. She excused herself from her friends and made her way to the other side of Fever and downstairs to the hidden bar very few people knew about. Mella gripped the chrome handrails and nearly stumbled down the stairs in her high heels, her thighs trembling faintly from dancing for nearly two hours straight in her stilettos.
The lower level of Fever was smaller than the rooftop space, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows letting in the bright Miami sunlight. But the bar, hanging as it was beneath dark beams and sheltered from much of the brightness, was partially in shadows.
Barely a half dozen people sat at the stools surrounding the bar. The patrons that sat on the stools were spread out, little islands to themselves. One man and woman were practically sitting in each other’s laps, an impressive feat considering the small size of the bar stools, a trio of businessmen and a lone man dressed in black who sat with his back to the room. Mella went up to the bar, fitting herself between the businessmen and the man in black. She signaled the bartender, who had been talking amicably with the lone man.
The bartender turned. “Hey, Mella.” His bright smile lit up his entire face.
“Hey yourself, Greg. How have you been?” She gave him her order, a Blood and Sand, and propped her hip against one of the bar stools.
“I’m doing great now that you’re at my bar.” He amped up his smile.
“You say the loveliest things, Gregory.” She batted her eyes at him while he made her drink, a mixture of Scotch, orange juice, sweet vermouth and cherry liqueur. Light on the orange juice.
“Sweet for the sweet.”
She laughed, knowing that he only flirted as a matter of course, part of the job. Greg was happily married with twin girls in kindergarten. He exchanged the drink for her ten-dollar bill, and she turned with the chilled glass in her hand, getting ready to head back upstairs and to the dance floor. But a pair of intense eyes pinned her where she stood. Victor Raphael.
He sat at the bar, drinking something from a cocktail glass and looking pleasantly relaxed on the stool. His strong forearms rested easily on the edge of the bar while his eyes held her with the strength of a leash in an iron grip. She forced a casual smile, although butterflies had started a small rebellion in her stomach.
“Mr. Raphael.” She nodded in his direction.
“Ms. Davis.”
Greg, who had been making his way back to Victor, looked between him and Mella, then abruptly turned to check on his other customers. Victor’s attentions, still fierce and predatory, didn’t stray from her.
Then the ridiculousness of it all forced her to laugh. They were in a club. She was covered in sweat from dancing the afternoon away, and he was sitting at the bar cool as could be, with what was probably some sort of manly whiskey drink. Their differences couldn’t be more apparent.
“You should call me Mella after all this,” she said and moved closer to him, despite instincts that screamed at her to run the other way. He wasn’t like other men. She couldn’t tease him and walk away and dismiss him from her mind as if he’d never been there.
Victor Raphael nodded. The unforgiving lines of his face and most of his body were wreathed in shadow, but she couldn’t mistake the way he stared at her. He didn’t say anything, but she forged ahead, anyway.
“And I’ll call you Victor.”
“If you like.” His voice brushed like the finest silk over her skin. Mella shivered.
“I do like.”
In the half light of the bar, he was even more fierce than at the fund-raiser. All remaining trappings of civility stripped away to leave this brooding shadow man who seemed to have a lot on his mind and wasn’t about to change his demeanor simply because someone had wandered into his cave. Because Mella was sometimes foolish, she went further into the beast’s lair.
“Why are you drinking alone?” she asked.
“Because I want to.” The words should have pushed her away, but she only leaned closer to hear his voice. “The alternative—” he waved vaguely to the party happening above them “—is not much of one.”
“Do you want me to leave?”
He tipped his head, appeared to consider it. Appeared to consider many things in that one charged moment. “No. Stay. And let me pay for your next round if you’re having one.”
The words were so uncharacteristic of the man she’d met at the fund-raiser that she looked down at his glass, wondering at his welcome and just how much he’d had to drink that he was inviting her to stay with him at the bar. Wasn’t he the one who’d wanted to get down to business and then go home? Had his drink changed his personality? Although she couldn’t talk. This was her third drink, and her blood was just warm enough that she was looser than usual, feeling so good about life that having another drink would take her from nice to naughty. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to act that much of a fool with this magnetic