“Uh, that’s why they call it touch.”
She angled her head in concession. “You did make my nipple hard.”
“And you made everything hard.” He winked at her. “We can have a rematch anytime you want.”
She rolled her eyes. “What’s your pleasure, other than your bartender?”
“O’Doul’s,” he said, automatically ordering his usual, but wondering…why was she his bartender? He’d never seen her back there before. “So, uh, when did you start gracing the poor schmucks at the Pelican with all that hotness?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Both guys who work are out and…” She turned to the fridge. “I’m helping.”
Helping who? Law inched forward, and not merely to get a view of the flip side of Libby as she dug into the cooler for a beer. Although the back was as appealing as the front with faded denim shorts hugging a heart-shaped ass with threads skimming tight, toned thighs.
“Why would you help out here?” he asked.
“Just for something to do.”
Bartending at a dive? He’d talked to her a bit at the reunion a few months ago and had discovered that Libby drove a nice car, wore quality clothes, and the rumor mill said she’d taken her last husband to the cleaners in divorce court. And he was almost positive she worked as an aerobics teacher or something. Whatever, she was smart and beautiful and belonged in a place better than this.
But here she was, so maybe she could give him the one thing he wanted most from her, at least right this minute…information.
“Libby, I’ve been in and out of this fine establishment on a regular basis for the better part of my life,” he told her. “And I’ve seen you in here exactly once, about a month ago.” He remembered it well, though. What he remembered were the sprayed-on black pants that could make a grown man weep. “You were on your way to some girlie exercise class,” he recalled.
She snorted softly as she placed a cocktail napkin in front of him. “It’s called yoga, and I’d suggest you try it, but it’s really a practice for people seeking balance and wisdom.” She took a look at his body, her gaze lingering on the biceps on full display under the tight short sleeves of his T-shirt. “Obviously, you’d rather throw iron around a gym and grunt like a caveman.”
“Cavemen get a bad rap.”
She put the drink down with the tiniest spark of appreciation in eyes that weren’t quite blue or gray but a haunting mix of both, when a couple took the last two seats at the bar. “Nurse that one for a while, Law. I have to work.”
“You really work here?” Since when?
But she’d slipped away to the newcomers, giving them a much friendlier smile than the sassy one he got. He heard the woman order a margarita and could have sworn Libby stiffened at the order.
While she made it, Law figured out in a few scant seconds of observation that Libby Chesterfield didn’t know squat about mixing a drink or navigating her way behind the bar. So what was she doing here?
Law sat up straighter and looked around. Something was definitely up at the Pelican. It was damn near empty. The staff was thin at best. That ugly collection of battered Florida license plates had been taken off the wall.
And Libby was bartending.
Okay, then. The first slow burn of hope he’d felt all day—hell, in the fifty weeks since Jake died—sizzled in his gut like cast iron on high heat. If change was in the air at the Pelican and Libby was behind the bar, she had to know who’d assumed ownership of the establishment that had been willed to him.
And Law would use every tool in his arsenal to get the information out of her.
Chapter Two
How the hell was she supposed to know how to make a margarita? Libby didn’t even drink them. The whole place was making her skin crawl with the foul stench of booze and fried dough and lost souls.
Oh, the occasional sexy customer.
She slid a glance at Lawson Monroe, a man she was determined to keep at arm’s length. A dangerous man. The wrong man. A man with alluring green eyes and incredibly broad shoulders and a full head of sexy, silver hair, which, even though he’d cut it short since the reunion five months ago, was still tousled and inviting to the touch. Of course, he had just enough of a salt-and-pepper five o’clock shadow to make her wonder how those whiskers would feel against her cheeks…and thighs.
Oh boy. Those were not the thoughts of a stable, balanced woman who’d sworn off sex.
But self-imposed celibacy wasn’t why she kept Law at a safe distance ever since they’d connected at the reunion and discovered their fiery chemistry hadn’t died over the years. She could handle flirting with him, and honestly, she liked his wit and dry humor.
No, she needed to avoid Law because he asked way too many questions about this wretched-smelling hellhole that she had to keep running for two more weeks before it was officially and legally and finally hers.
She took another secret peek at him as she turned to grab a bottle of beer for one of the tables. He was looking down at his phone, giving her a chance to study him longer. Study and, okay, admire.
His body wasn’t like the lean rubber-band men who took the yoga classes she taught. Law was chiseled in stone with well-defined muscles under that tight T-shirt, ripped arms decorated with well-placed and subtle tattoos. Not normally a look that appealed to her, but there was something about him that made her unsteady.
And if there was anything in the world Libby Chesterfield hated, it was the loss of balance.
He caught her looking, so she didn’t bother to try to pretend she wasn’t. She continued to stare without, she hoped, too much admiration in her eyes. But then, she’d always looked at him with a little lust in her gaze, so why change now?
Because he attracted her like a freaking magnet, and she had to stay quiet and avoid his probing questions for two more endless weeks. She didn’t dare ask him why he cared, because she had to stay on the DL.
Then, when the papers were signed and sealed, this dump would be gutted, cleaned, and completely renovated into Mimosa Key’s first and only yoga studio for wholeness and well-being. It would be called, quite simply, Balance, as a testimony to the one thing Libby treasured the most.
He gave a half smile that actually made her stomach flutter. Great. Just what she needed. A stomach flutterer asking questions she didn’t want to answer.
“Talk to me, Lib.”
She shifted from one leg to the other, pretending that getting any closer to him would be downright painful. “I’m busy.”
“Yeah, the place is packed.” He pushed his drink aside and crooked a finger. “C’mere. I want to talk to you.”
“You never want to talk, Law.” But still, she stepped closer because…how could she not? “As long as I’ve known you, talking wasn’t what you wanted from me.” And that had been mutual, she thought, resisting the urge to remind him of that and fuel his fire.
He grinned. “We do go way back, don’t we?”
Settling a hip against the bar, she eyed him again, looking for evidence of his hard life and forty-six years. Okay, there were a few crinkles around eyes the color of the ripe green olives she’d dropped into a few martinis that night. Of course, the gray in his hair was unfairly gorgeous, even more beautiful than the thick brown locks he’d worn way too long back in the eighties.
“You were a pretty bad boy in high school,” she mused.
“And you were a pretty bad girl, as I recall. A very pretty bad girl. Still are pretty. Are you bad?”
“Not bad enough to do what you’re thinking about.” Although…
“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
“I can guess.” And her guess would be that he was on the hunt for information, not sex. Maybe both. “You had your shot, Lawless. That game of Seven Minutes in Heaven at Keith Hellerman’s house, remember?”
“Oof.” He dropped his head back as if the memory hit him hard. “I was so damn happy to pull your name.”
She laughed, remembering the party very
well. She’d been a spitfire of a troubled junior, and he was a hot and dangerous senior. Talk about a match made in hell. “I was totally ready to let you up my bra right then and there.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Whiskey breath turns me off,” she said honestly. “And drunk boys in closets scared me.”
His whole face changed, the flirt and fun erased and replaced by remorse and shame. “Sorry,” he murmured, but kept her gaze with the steadiness of a man who’d made that apology before.
The word was so genuine and came from a place so deep, she almost reached out and touched him. Instead, she rooted around for a lighter memory. “How about that night of the Spring Fling when we slow danced? Do you remember that?”
“I don’t remember the song,” he said with that same sadness. “But I remember holding you very close.”
“I remember the song.” She remembered it all. The slow song, the bad boy, the dark gym. “It was Blown Away by Eddie James and the Lost Boys.”
He drew back an inch, clearly surprised. “It was? You remember that?”
“I remember everything about that night,” she admitted. “I especially remember that I wasn’t sure if that was, uh, your belt buckle pressing against me or not.”
He grinned. “Definitely not.”
“It was…impressive.” She grinned right back, enjoying the warmth of talking about something exciting and poignant that time had faded into a sweet moment. “Enough that I said yes to a date the next night, as you recall. But…”
“I never showed.”
She studied him for a long moment. “Booze?”
“Most likely.” He looked down at the bar, and she felt his embarrassment, but it wasn’t shame in his eyes when he met her gaze. It was…regret. “You were probably better off I stood you up.”
It didn’t feel that way at the time. It stung. But she lifted a shoulder as if she couldn’t possibly have cared less. “Your loss. I had big plans and a box of Trojans at the ready. I was a pretty bad girl.”
He muttered a curse and pushed the O’Doul’s away. “I’ve changed, you know.”
Yes. He was sober. “I know.”
“But I still give good belt buckle, Lib.” His lip lifted in a half smile that had the same effect on her today as it had with Eddie James crooning about a storm of love.
An hour alone with Law, and she’d be toast. Celibacy would seem like the stupidest decision she ever made, and her need to stay absolutely silent about the property? Just as much at risk.
She had to remember that, at the reunion, Law had been asking if anyone knew who owned the Toasted Pelican now that Jake Peterson was dead. When he wasn’t busy working on the reunion held at the Casa Blanca Resort & Spa up in Barefoot Bay that week, he’d been in town sniffing around the Pelican. She had spies on staff; she knew who was in and out of here.
Most of the spies were gone now, since they’d found other jobs on her recommendation, which was why she was stuck behind the bar tonight.
“I have to ask you a question, Chesty.”
She shot him a look at the use of her high school nickname, determined to take everything back to playful flirtation. “Yes, they’re real.”
“Oh, I’m aware. I’m a connoisseur, you know.”
“Is that so? Oh, ladies and gentlemen,” she said to no one in particular. “We have ourselves a breast specialist. A regular nipple know-it-all. The champion of the chest.”
“A ‘brexpert,’ if you will,” he added. “A devotee of the double D’s.”
“Triple.” She winked back, feeling her balance return with the harmless sex talk. That was the safest place with Law Monroe. “Which, if you were such a discerning judge, you would know.”
“I am discerning, and I believe that what we have is the rare ‘high-and-mighty’ triple D, which frankly belongs in the Victoria’s Secret Hall of Fame.”
She laughed easily. “Actually, I cheated there. Had a lift, thanks to my rich but unfaithful ex-husband number two, so they’re higher and mightier than ever.” She arched her back just enough to show off the goods.
Law took another lusty look at her breasts and lifted his glass in a toast. “That rack is a thing of beauty, Lib.”
“Rack. Now there’s a term that makes women weak with desire.” She crossed her arms under that chest to plump the pillows. “Right up there with titties, ta-tas, jugs, melons, hooters, squeezers, beamers, cupcakes, sweater stretchers, and my personal favorite, mama’s mammies.”
He lowered the glass. “What do you call them?”
“My secret weapon.” She leaned over the bar to torture him. “Because they have a power I’ll never understand.”
“But will gladly use, I imagine.”
Not as often as he’d think. Not ever, really. “Don’t you use that sexy smile to your advantage, Law?” she asked.
He showed off his straight white teeth and hella cute dimples. “Use what you got, my friend Ja…” He hesitated like he realized he was about to say something he shouldn’t. “My friend used to say.”
“Then I use my Deadly D’s. They make certain yoga poses impossible, but that’s a small price to pay for their potent power. Are we done talking about them?”
“You brought them up,” he replied. “I wanted to ask you a serious question, and you shot a round of rapid-fire pet boob names.”
“Because I already know the question.” She sighed with pretend disdain, sensing he wanted to get back to a serious topic and she didn’t want to go there. “The question is always the same with guys like you, Law. And my answer hasn’t changed. I’m not sleeping with you.”
“But you are thinking about it.”
Why lie? “How could I think about anything else?”
He looked pleased with that.
“When it’s all you ever talk about?” she finished.
“Not true. I talk about other things. Like…” He gestured toward the rest of the bar. “This place. Who brought you in to tend bar tonight?”
Knew it. “I told you, the bartender.”
“Billy or Dan?”
Dang it, he knew them, too. He could call one of those guys and find out the entire staff had been told they should look for other jobs by the new owners…who were nothing but a name on an email.
“Libby.” He leaned forward and put a hand over hers. “You know who owns this place, don’t you?”
Be careful, Lib. Watch every word and commit to nothing. She could hear Sam’s words in her head. But Law’s touch was warm and light. It sent a shiver up her spine, making every cell scream in warning.
“Why do you want to know so badly?” she asked, since the question prevented an out-and-out lie. “Why have you spent months trying to find out, anyway?”
“Much longer than that, and I didn’t realize you were noticing everything about me. Color me happy.”
“Answer my question,” she demanded.
He blew out a slow breath. “Jake Peterson was a friend of mine.”
“Oh.” She drew her hand away. “You have my sympathies.”
“Thanks. Did you know him?”
“I knew…of him.” Actually, she hadn’t ever met him, but she knew enough. “Heard he was a real…piece of work,” she added, because what she’d really heard wasn’t something she’d repeat to anyone.
Law shook his head, smiling. “You know, Jake got a kick out of people assuming the worst about him, and it was his private game to not correct them.”
It was a game to him? He got a kick out of it? She let all expression leave her face as she stared at the man who called that sorry sack of shit a friend. “Do you need anything else, Mr. Monroe?”
He leaned closer, his strong jaw clenched, the muscles in his neck corded with tense determination. “You know exactly who’s running this restaurant and bar, don’t you, Libby?”
She shook her head, wishing she could get the subject back on boobs and off the bar. But he wasn’t going there—she could tell as Law’s features har
dened and he formulated his next question that would probably require her to think of another creative way not to lie but avoid the truth.
“Do you know this guy, this Sam guy who sends money and instructions on behalf of some shell company?” he asked.
Forget lying. She had to work to keep from reacting at all. No flash of surprise, no open mouth of shock. “Sam?”
“The guy paying people to work here.”
Only for two more weeks. “Well, like I said, I’m just helping out Dan tonight. I don’t know…everyone.” She turned to busy herself with wiping down the bar, because there was a reason Sam was a lawyer and a damn good poker player. He could bluff and Libby couldn’t.
“And he works for this Liberty Management company?” Law pressed.
Oh, damn it all. Law knew way more than he should. How long before he put two and two together and came up with…exactly who Liberty Management really was?
“If you say so,” she said, casually pulling out a phone as if she were far more interested in checking her messages than talking about this.
“How can I reach him?” Law demanded.
“Hmm. I think that company is in…” She tried to think of a location that would send him on a wild-goose chase.
“Miami,” he supplied.
Except he’d already found that goose. Automatically, her finger found Sam’s name. Was he here yet? Or was he still driving over from Miami?
“Have you met anyone who works for Liberty Management?” Law practically climbed over the bar. “Do you have a phone number? Address? Anything for that company?”
“No phone number for that company.” Just that man, and she was texting to it now. She tried to type, hating that her thumb quivered a little.
Need to talk to you. ASAP. Impt.
“How about a last name?” Law asked, all the lightness in their exchange gone as his questions became more demanding. “Does Sam have a last name?”
Yeah…the same as hers.
She looked up at Law, just as casual as she could be. “All I’ve ever heard the employees say is a guy named Sam.”
“Can I see a paycheck stub?”