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So instead, she chose a friend, her best friend. He and Madelyn shared a love for jogging and naturalistic art, and they both appreciated old buildings—she saved them, he sold them. They also had a mutual desire to marry for reasons other than love.
Max had nothing against love. In fact, he admired the emotion. Revered it, even. His parents loved each other, and they loved his footloose brother, Ford, and Max unconditionally and with all their hearts. But love hadn’t paid the rent on their tired Oakland apartment. Love hadn’t kept his father from working twenty-hour days driving a cab. Love had only marginally helped his mother endure the frustrations of teaching six-year-olds how to read and write when most of them were more concerned with getting their one, state-subsidized lunch, usually their only decent meal all day.
Love hadn’t been enough to keep his family together when his father was shot on the job. Unable to work, John and Rhonda Forrester had shuttled their sons from resentful relative to resentful relative. Eventually, the family had reunited, but the result was Max’s single-minded pursuit of wealth and, over time, power, which had led him directly to the eve of a marriage that had nothing to do with love at all.
And he wouldn’t even go into the havoc the emotion caused his brother. Ford was the most easygoing, likable man on the face of the planet, but he fell in and out of love quicker than Max unloaded a waterfront foreclosure. His younger brother had absolutely no idea what real love was about, and this was one lesson his big brother wasn’t qualified to teach.
He was certain of only one immutable fact—love was fine and good for people willing to sacrifice and suffer for it, but Max preferred to pursue success and financial satisfaction. Romance was a distraction. Until he’d met Maddie in college, he’d considered dating an unnecessary expense. Then she’d introduced him to her friends, girls with rich fathers and boundless connections. He’d dated the ones he liked, but drew the line at emotional involvement. So after graduate school, when Madelyn had suggested they “date” to keep her parents from fixing her up with another son of the country-club set like P. Howell Matthews, Max agreed. The ruse was born and had lasted all these years.
Madelyn was a pal. She understood his desire to make all of San Francisco forget that he was once a poor kid from Oakland—that now he was a force to be reckoned with in the lucrative business of buying and selling the most valuable properties in northern California. The marriage thing was more than he had bargained for, but Madelyn insisted the deal would work out for both of them.
Married to a Burrows, Max would have every door in San Francisco opened wide to him. Her father, her grandfather and her great-grandfather before him had all been prominent bankers with ties to every section of the diverse San Francisco community.
For Madelyn, the trade-off wasn’t so clear—at least, not to Max. She claimed that marrying him would not only appease her parents, but the union would give her more clout with the wealthy matrons who financed her building restorations. Personally, he thought Madelyn deserved better—a man who loved her like a wife and would give her the passion she deserved. And he’d told her so on more than one occasion. But he owed her so much, cared about her so much, that when she begged him not to worry and to trust her decision, he’d gone along.
Like Charlie, he wasn’t so sure he was doing the right thing. But he’d made his choice and he couldn’t betray Madelyn now because of a bout of uncertainty.
“You’re a real pal, Charlie, but Madelyn and I have discussed this over and over. I won’t back out.”
Charlie ordered two beers and shook his head. “You and Maddie are so blind. Neither one of you knows what you’re missing. Lust, passion, desire. Marrying a friend is all well and good, but without the fire…” Charlie’s words trailed off, his blue eyes glazed over.
Recently wed in Las Vegas to a woman he’d met in a suspicious jogging accident at Pier 39, Charlie was still high on the thrill of pure passion and uninhibited lust. Max paid the young bartender when he slid the beers in front of them, shaking his head at his friend, then glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone had overheard this unusual prewedding conversation.
That’s when he saw her.
She entered through the front door between a departing party of four, stopping to shake hands with satisfied customers while Stefano Karas, the host for the evening, grabbed her backpack, shoved it at a nearby waiter and then ushered her into the bar.
Max turned aside. The last woman he needed to see tonight was Ariana Karas, with all her long, jet hair, ebony eyes and curves even her slimming black turtleneck, jeans and boots couldn’t hide. She was exotic sensuality and alluring confidence all molded and sculpted into a compact package that made him fantasize about endless nights of sex. Nights that turned into days. And weeks. Maybe months.
Nothing but sex. No work, no money. No troubles.
He downed half his beer without taking a breath.
“Sex isn’t everything, Charlie.”
Charlie took a generous slurp of amber brew. “Oh, yeah? Says who? And I’m not just talking about sex, anyway. I’m talking about true love.”
He sang the last two words as if he was joking, but Max knew Charlie well enough to realize his friend was a hopeless romantic. He was a free spirit who’d finally found some level ground with a job he was damn good at and a woman who obviously adored him, and vice versa.
“Yeah, well, if marrying your true love is so highly rated, what the hell are you doing here with me?” Max asked. “You should be home in bed with Sheri, not keeping me out till dawn.”
Charlie chuckled, then quieted when Ariana grabbed a black apron from the coatrack behind the bar.
“Sheri could use a little time to herself and you need me to talk some sense into you.”
Max barely heard Charlie’s explanation, more intrigued with watching Ariana flip the apron over her head before freeing her dark hair from beneath the pretied knot around her neck and fanning the luxurious length of it over her back. While wrapping the tie around her slim waist, she instructed the young guy who’d served their beer to cover the tables while she took over behind the bar. She tilted her hat at that jaunty angle that grabbed Max right at the center of his groin, and before he could look away, she captured his stare with a questioning glance.
“Something I can get you?” she asked.
Max sipped his beer, trying not to wince when the brew suddenly tasted strangely flat. “I’m fine, thanks.”
She smiled, then made her way from one end of the bar to the other, checking on her customers, making small talk, replacing empty glasses and refilling snack bowls—all done with a quiet animation that made her both friendly and mysterious at the same time.
Max decided then and there that he was an idiot. He knew all about the lust Charlie lectured about. He’d been feeling the pull with growing intensity ever since he jogged into Athens by the Bay a little over two years ago and caught sight of the owner’s niece helping a crew unload boxes from a delivery truck.
If he’d simply flirted with her and gotten to know her, he’d probably be long over this intense interest. Instead, he’d played cool, ignored the attraction, turned away from her not-quite-shy, not-quite-inviting smiles that haunted him long after he’d run from the restaurant to the office, showered and parked himself behind his desk.
Now he was less than a day away from marriage, and the woman of his dreams was only an arm’s length away.
“Hey, Ari,” Charlie called, “how ‘bout one of your specialty drinks for the road?”
“You driving?” she asked, grabbing a cone-shaped glass from beneath the bar.
Charlie grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, guess I am. Then how about making one for my old friend here?” He slapped Max on the shoulder. “He needs it more than I do anyway.”
Ariana didn’t laugh as Max expected, or as perhaps Charlie expected as well. Instead, she grabbed a collection of exotic liqueurs, one blue, one green, one amber, pouring the jewel-toned liquids into the glass on the edge of a knife, skillfully layering them with a clear, unidentified libation, so the colors barely mixed. After floating a layer of ruby-red grenadine on top, she moved toward them.
With confident grace, she lifted the drink in one hand and a bottle of ouzo in the other. She set the glass down in front of Max and without a word, swirled the ouzo over the grenadine. Focused on the glass, Ariana shielded her eyes from Max behind thick lashes, pressing the lips of her generous mouth into a pout that was focused and sexy as hell. When she finally looked up, meeting his thirsty stare straight on, he caught the glimmer of a smile twinkling in her night-black eyes.
He slid his hand forward, brushing his fingers over the base of the glass. She crooked her finger around the stem. “Not so fast,” she instructed, her voice breathy and low, but compelling all the same.
He questioned her with raised eyebrows.
She stepped up on the lower shelf behind the bar so she could lean forward and keep their exchange private. Max wanted to glance aside to see if Charlie or anyone else was watching, but he was slowly, surely, losing himself in the depths of her fathomless eyes. To hell with everyone else. She was just offering him a drink, not her body.
“This is my most special specialty.” She skimmed her finger on the top layer of ouzo, careful not to disturb the rainbow of liqueurs underneath, then dampened the rim of the glass—precisely where his mouth would be when he took a drink. “I don’t make it for just anyone.”
Max’s mouth dried. He moistened his lips with a thickening tongue. “I’m flattered.”
“You should be. But you have to do your part, too.” She dampened her finger again, but this time she touched the taste of ouzo to her lips. “This drink is called a Flaming Eros. Just like good loving, it takes two to make it hot.”
Hot? Oh, yeah. Max was learning about heat very, very quickly. His collar grew tight around his neck. His body dampened with sweat. The perfectly starched shirt beneath his perfectly pressed jacket was starting to buckle.
“Makes sense,” he managed to say.
Her fingers dipped into the pocket of her apron, then she slid her hand toward his, something small hidden beneath her palm.
Her phone number maybe? The key to her apartment?
He glanced down. A box of matches?
“So,” she said, slightly louder, but still in a voice meant entirely for him, “care to light my fire?”
2
ARIANA SWALLOWED, savoring the ouzo she’d boldly stolen from his drink. She didn’t know where the seductive move had come from; she wasn’t exactly experienced with this sort of thing. But she’d spent enough time tending bar to watch some real pros work the room. Judging by the way Max Forrester’s pupils expanded and darkened his eyes from pale jade to pine green, she wasn’t doing half bad.
One week of freedom was all she had and, dammit, she wanted to spend at least one night with the man she’d lusted for since the first time she’d seen him. She’d never had an indiscriminate affair and, quite honestly, she wasn’t starting now. Hell, since her divorce, she’d become the most discriminating woman in San Francisco. But Max Forrester exceeded even her high standards. He was gorgeous, had not just a steady job, but a full-fledged career and, according to Charlie, wasn’t in the market for a wife.
She’d made the mistake of marrying her first lover and ended up waylaying her own goals and dreams in favor of his. Charlie claimed Max was a man of strong ethics, but he wasn’t interested in long-term entanglements. And according to her own personal observation, he was potently sexy, inherently classy and, most important, he was undeniably interested.
Max took the box of matches from her, fumbling slightly wile sliding it open, and extracted a single match without spilling the others. She couldn’t help but be impressed. She, being incredibly clumsy, had long ago taken to inviting her customers to remove a match rather than risk her sending them flying across the polished teak countertop. But she’d never made the offer with such a libidinous double entendre as “Care to light my fire?” Or if she had, the second meaning simply hadn’t occurred to her before. That invitation to fire her personal hot spot belonged to Max and Max alone.
He shut the box, then poised the red-tipped end of the match against the flint. “My mother told me never to play with matches.”
She leaned forward a little closer, unable to stop herself. Once she’d made the decision to seduce Charlie’s best man, she wouldn’t back down. Couldn’t. The tide tugging her toward Max Forrester was more treacherous than the waves outside Alcatraz, and just as invigorating.
“She told you that when you were a little boy, right? Well, you’re not a little boy anymore. Are you?”
He struck the match, inflaming the head, emitting a burst of smoke and sulfur that tickled her nose. She listed closer to him like a boat following the command of the waves. Amid the wispy scent of fire, she caught wind of his cologne. A musky blend of spices and citrus flared her nostrils and rocked her equilibrium.
He held the match toward her and she blinked, knowing she’d better get a hold of herself before she lit her Flaming Eros. She was already hot enough without adding third-degree burns.
She skimmed her fingers beneath his, brushing his hand briefly as she took the match away. The warmth of his skin was soothing. The look in his eyes was not.
She slid the glass back and skimmed the fire over the alcohol until the drink ignited in an impressive blue and orange flame. The bar erupted in applause and Stefano shouted last call. Ariana couldn’t wait around to watch Max drink her concoction. She immediately had orders for three more. After sliding a small plate from beneath the bar to help him extinguish the flame and instructing him to do so before the fire burned through the grenadine, she grabbed his half-empty beer and her bottle of ouzo and moved farther down the bar.
She needed space. She’d probably only imagined the increase in her body heat the moment he’d stroked the match against the box, but she hadn’t imagined the look of utter fascination in his eyes. How long had it been since a man looked at her that way? Since she’d let a man look at her that way without extinguishing his interest with a sharp phrase or quip?
Since her marriage? If she took the time, she could count it down to the minute. But she wouldn’t. For the life of her, she was going to make sure that her marriage and divorce would cease to be a milestone in her life. Tonight would be the turning point.
She mixed the three flaming aperitifs, each more quickly than the last, letting the customer remove the match, but doing so much more silently and efficiently than she had with Max.
Care to light my fire? she’d asked. Trouble was, he’d done that a hell of a long time ago without even trying—simply by coming into her tiny wharfside restaurant one evening, ordering his beer with cool politeness and leaving a big tip—and then disappearing into the night. But he’d come back, nearly every weeknight. Never saying more than a few words, but speaking to her nonetheless—in sidelong glances, clandestine stares. Perhaps saying things she wasn’t ready to hear.
Until tonight.
Little by little, the crowd thinned. The dining rooms were emptied, vacuumed and reset for the final breakfast crowd. Uncle Stefano stuffed the night’s receipts into a vinyl bag then disappeared in the office to secure them in the safe so Ari could tally them later. In couples and trios, the customers went home. Waiters called good-night after scooping their tips from their pockets and tossing their aprons into the laundry basket by the kitchen.
But Max Forrester didn’t move.
Ariana stuffed dirty glasses in the dishwasher, replaced all the bottles she’d used, stacked the mixers in the small refrigerator and wiped down the bar—all the while aware that Max hadn’t left. Charlie had, sometime when Ariana hadn’t noticed, and he’d done so without saying goodbye or thanking her for her help with his rehearsal dinner, which she thought odd but not surprising. The man was getting married in the morning. She was more than likely the last thing he had on his mind.
But obviously she was of interest to Max. Never before had he stayed late. Why else but for her? She was flattered. Terrified. Excited. He’d never flirted with her in the past, never so much as attempted to strike up a conversation beyond the day’s specials. At the same time, he’d never been cold or dismissive. Just standoffish, controlled. As if he chose to ignore their mutual attraction just as she did.
And yet, he’d lagged behind tonight. That had to mean something.
Ariana poured ouzo into a short shot glass and downed the fiery liqueur in one gulp. The licorice-tasting essence of anise coated her mouth, burned her eyes and her throat, but she needed the fortification. If Max hadn’t left, it was, perhaps, because he’d read the subtle invitation in her eyes earlier, understood the hidden meaning in her question. Possibly she was about to be granted the wish she’d made while riding that cable car down Russian Hill, the bright moon shining just over the Bay Bridge, casting a hypnotic glow over the dark waters of San Francisco Bay.
She wanted to have an affair. This week and this week only. With Max Forrester and Max Forrester only.
She smoothed her damp cloth closer and closer to him at the bar. He didn’t turn toward her. He sat, staring straight ahead, his gaze lost in the rows of bottles behind the bar. His Flaming Eros had barely been touched.
She glanced at the collection of whiskeys and bourbons and vodkas, wondering what held his attention so raptly.
“Hey, Max? You all right?”
Cautiously, she walked directly in his line of vision. There was a distinct pause before his eyes focused on her.
“Yeah. I’m great.”
He blinked once, then twice. She saw him sway on his bar stool.
She shot forward and grabbed his hand. “No, you’re not.”
She glanced down at his drink again. He’d sipped maybe a quarter of the concoction and though her mixture was potent, she’d never seen anyone get drunk on just one. Maybe a little silly, but not ready to pass out.
“What did you drink tonight?”
She remembered clearing away a half-empty beer, but she had no idea what he’d had before she returned from her appointment with the architect.
She waited for him to answer and when he didn’t, she asked again.
“What? Oh.” He glanced down at his drink. “You made me this.”
“No, I mean before. At dinner?”
He squinted as he thought. Remembering took more effort than it should have. He was drunk. Ariana rolled her eyes. Great. Just great! I finally decide to have an affair with a guy and he’s three sheets to the wind. She recalled the distinctly forgettable experience of making love to her husband when he’d had more than his share of tequila after a gig in the Castro. Not an experience she’d ever want to repeat.
“Max, what did you drink at dinner?” she asked once more, losing her patience with the same speed as her attraction.
“Tea,” he answered finally, nodding as the memory apparently became clearer and clearer. “We had tea.”
“Long Island Iced Teas?”
Ariana hated that drink. She’d seen more than her share of inexperienced drinkers get sloshed thanks to the innocent-sounding name. Too bad there wasn’t a drop of tea in the thing. Just vodka, gin, tequila, rum, Collins mix and an ounce of cola for color. “Great, just…”
“No, iced tea. Unsweetened. With lemon.”
As the truth of his claim registered, she stepped up on the lower shelf behind the bar again to look directly into his eyes. His pupils were huge—and passion had nothing to do with it. He was sweating more than he should have been. His jaw was slightly lax.
“You’re sure? You’ve had nothing to drink but iced tea, half a beer and a few sips of my Flaming Eros?”
For a moment she thought she’d given him way too much to think about, but he managed to nod. “I feel kind of weird,” he admitted. “I think I should…”
He pushed off his stool slowly, his hands firmly gripping the bar. If she hadn’t been watching so closely, she might not even have seen him waver when his feet were firmly on the floor.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
Ariana scurried around the bar and caught him before he’d taken a single step toward the door.
“I can walk home,” he reminded her, though he didn’t pull away from the supportive brace of her shoulder beneath his arm.
“Oh, really? You make it to the door without my help and maybe, just maybe, I’ll let you go.” She had absolutely no intention of allowing him to go anywhere by himself, though her idea of seducing him was a great big bust. “You’re not drunk, Max. Someone…someone in my establishment,” she added with increasing anger, “slipped you a Mickey.”
“A Mickey?”
She ignored his question, knowing that after a brief time delay, he’d understand. Someone had drugged him and it certainly hadn’t been her. However, since the event had happened in her place, she could only imagine the trouble that could come just as she was about to break into the international restaurant scene. She’d heard about people using such deception at college parties. She’d read about the practice at raves and in dance clubs. But in a family-style restaurant? A neighborhood bar?
“Why?” he finally asked.
She shifted beneath his weight and guided him toward the door. “I have no idea.” She called to the kitchen, which she suddenly noticed was quiet. She shouted twice more, than leaned Max against the hostess stand and ordered him not to move.
“Uncle Stefano? Paulie?”
The kitchen was empty. The floors were damp and the dishwashers steamed, but no one was around and the back door was bolted tight. She checked the office. Empty. Uncle Stefano and her chef, Paulie, never left without saying goodbye and making sure she had a ride home. It was nearly one o’clock and the last cable car left the turnaround at 12:59.
As she grabbed her backpack from behind her desk, removing the architectural plans and placing them atop the file cabinet, she wondered if Uncle Stefano had seen Max lingering in the bar and assumed she had plans for the night. She didn’t know why he’d make such a ridiculous assumption except that, this time, he might have been right. And he had been hounding her about dating again, even agreeing with Charlie that Max made a good potential suitor. Perhaps Stefano thought she’d finally taken him up on his advice.
“Looks like it’s up to me to take you home.” She closed the office light and grabbed the keys.
Max shook his head, staggered then steadied himself to catch his balance. “Just call me a cab.”
Ariana glanced at the phone, frowning. Yeah, a cab could get him home—he supposedly lived only a few blocks away. But what would happen in the morning when Maxwell Forrester, San Francisco real estate and power broker, woke up with a severe headache, possible memory loss and other unpleasant side effects? What would happen when he realized that she could be held culpable for his condition, even if no one who worked for her was involved? She didn’t know how mad he’d be, but she imagined herself in his place and didn’t like the picture that came into focus.
Negative word of mouth would be the least of her worries. He could call the press, file a lawsuit. If she lost her liquor license, even for the briefest time during an investigation, her business would be dead in the water. She’d invested in the reopening every asset she and her uncle held. She couldn’t risk what had happened to Max—though through no fault of her own—jeopardizing her future.
She’d planned to take Max home tonight. No sense in changing the blueprint of her original plan this late in the construction.