“I am not the kind of guy you want to get experience with.”

Nicole stood on tiptoe, stretching a little to make a better fit. “How will we know if we don’t even try?”

She was going to kiss him. And, God forgive him, he was going to let her.

He stood there like a dummy, like a stone, with his heart doing a hundred and forty in his chest while Nicole kissed him. Her soft mouth caressed his upper lip and tugged gently at his lower one. He angled his head and kissed her back, sucked on her soft, plump lips and explored her mouth.

She separated from him by a breath and smiled into his eyes. “Well,” she said. “That was different.”

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “The first time I kissed you, I was trying to scare you off.”

She blinked. “And now?”

“Now you’re scaring me,” he said.

Dear Reader,

This month we have something really special in store for you. We open with Letters to Kelly by award-winning author Suzanne Brockmann. In it, a couple of young lovers, separated for years, are suddenly reunited. But she has no idea that he’s spent many of their years apart in a Central American prison. And now that he’s home again, he’s determined to win back the girl whose memory kept him going all this time. What a wonderful treat from this bestselling author!

And the excitement doesn’t stop there. In The Impossible Alliance by Candace Irvin, the last of our three FAMILY SECRETS prequels, the search for missing agent Dr. Alex Morrow is finally over. And coming next month in the FAMILY SECRETS series: Broken Silence, our anthology, which will lead directly to a 12-book stand-alone FAMILY SECRETS continuity, beginning in June. In Virginia Kantra’s All a Man Can Be, TROUBLE IN EDEN continues as a rough-around-the-edges ex-military man inherits a surprise son—and seeks help in the daddy department from his beautiful boss. Ingrid Weaver continues her military miniseries, EAGLE SQUADRON, in Seven Days to Forever, in which an innocent schoolteacher seeks protection—for starters—from a handsome soldier when she mistakenly picks up a ransom on a school trip. In Clint’s Wild Ride by Linda Winstead Jones, a female FBI agent going undercover in the rodeo relies on a sinfully sexy cowboy as her teacher. And in The Quiet Storm by RaeAnne Thayne, a beautiful speech-disabled heiress has to force herself to speak up to seek help from a devastatingly attractive detective in order to solve a murder.

So enjoy, and of course we hope to see you next month, when Silhouette Intimate Moments once again brings you six of the best and most exciting romance novels around.

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

All a Man Can Be
Virginia Kantra

www.millsandboon.co.uk

VIRGINIA KANTRA

credits her enthusiasm for strong heroes and courageous heroines to a childhood spent devouring fairy tales. A three-time Romance Writers of America RITA® Award finalist, she has won numerous writing awards, including the Golden Heart, Maggie Award, Holt Medallion and Romantic Times W.I.S.H. Hero Award.

Virginia is married to her college sweetheart, a musician disguised as the owner of a coffeehouse. They live in Raleigh, North Carolina, with three teenagers, two cats, a dog and various blue-tailed lizards that live under the siding of their home. Her favorite thing to make for dinner? Reservations.

She loves to hear from readers. You can reach her at VirginiaKantra@aol.com or c/o Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017.

To Jean, Andrew and Mark,

who taught me a lot about unconditional love,

and to Michael, who knows everything.

Special thanks to Jane Langdell

for insights on the law and losers;

and to Colleen Blake-Calvert of the DNA Testing Centre.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Chapter 1

Both the babe and her ride gleamed, high maintenance and fully loaded.

Bartender Mark DeLucca stepped closer to the window to get a better look. Yeah.

The ride was a Lexus SUV, a cashmere-beige LX470.

The woman had to be Nicole Reed. The new owner of the Blue Moon wore a you-can’t-afford-this tailored shirt and a you-can’t-touch-me attitude.

Rich, Mark judged. Blond, to match the car. And late.

Three strikes, sweetheart, and you’re out.

He gave the bar a last swipe with a rag and crossed the planked floor to let her in. She was sorting through the keys in her hand when he unlocked the door.

“Looking for someone?” he asked.

She blushed. In embarrassment? Nah. Irritation. Recovering, she offered him a polished smile and a smooth hand. She wore thin gold rings on her fingers and neat pearl studs in her ears. Classy. Feminine. Very sexy. A pale, tiny scar on her upper lip emphasized the perfection of her face.

It was his rotten luck she turned him on.

“How do you do?” she said. “I’m Nicole Reed.”

“Mark DeLucca.”

Her hand was cool and firm. He held it a heartbeat too long, just to see if he could make her blush again. She didn’t. She looked…blank, Mark decided. Not disapproving or flirtatious. Not hopeful. Not intrigued. Not any of the things a woman usually put on her face when she thought she had his attention.

He was annoyed to find his ego was pricked.

“It was nice of you to meet me like this,” Nicole said politely.

Mark shrugged. “Not really. You’re paying for my time.”

She met his gaze straight-on. “Yes. I am.”

It was a line drawn in the sand. Mark almost smiled. He ate girls like little Miss Michigan Avenue for breakfast.

He opened the door wider. “Then I better offer you a drink.”

She frowned. “It’s only ten o’clock.”

“Ten-twenty,” he said.

Her composure flickered. “Yes, I…I know. I’m sorry.”

“Traffic?” he asked easily.

She lifted her chin. “No.”

No more explanation than that.

“You are late,” he said.

“But still too early for a drink,” she countered.

Great. Carry Nation had just bought herself a bar.

Mark walked toward the gleaming wooden length of it, saying over his shoulder, “I’ve got seltzer. Soda. Orange juice. Or I could make you coffee, if you want.”

“Oh. I would like a diet cola. Please.” She followed him, her tasteful leather pumps clicking on his hardwood floor.

Her hardwood floor, Mark reminded himself. He grabbed her Pepsi and shoveled ice into a glass. She didn’t strike him as the kind of girl who drank from a can.

He put the drink on a napkin and slid it across the bar. “You want me to ring that up?”

A gleam appeared in her cool blue eyes. So maybe she had a sense of humor after all. But all she said was, “That won’t be necessary, thank you.”

She sipped her drink and looked around the bar. He knew it all already: the dark booths, the clustered tables, the stuffed pike and the lineup of neon signs on the walls. So he watched her instead.

She swiveled gently back and forth on her stool, back straight, long slim legs in tailored khakis crossed. “Isn’t it a little dark in here?”

It was a bright, clear September morning. The sun, slanting through the shutters, glinted off the bottles behind the bar and the glassy eyes of the stag’s head mounted above the pool table.

Mark raised an eyebrow. “This can’t be the first time you’ve seen the place.”

“No,” she acknowledged. “Kathy Webber showed me the plans.”

Kathy Webber was the real estate agent who had handled the sale of the bar. Mark had met her. New in town, red-haired and hungry. She’d offered to show him the plans, too. Along with some other things.

“She give you the tour, too?”

“Yes. But it’s not the same as actually sitting here like a customer.”

“Most of our customers come at night.”

“It just seems a shame to shut out that wonderful lake view.”

“There is no view at night.”

“The lights from the hotel? The moonlight on the water?”

Mark shrugged and didn’t answer. If she wanted to romanticize the place, that was her business. But the bar’s patrons didn’t come for the view.

She set her drink on the center of her napkin. “We’ll have to do a use study, tracking our sales by the hour.”

A use study, hell. He’d just told her the bar did most of its business at night.

“I’m surprised you didn’t do one already,” he said.

She twisted the pretty gold rings on her fingers. “I should have. I would have. But the owner was in a hurry to sell.”

“Yeah, I heard that.”

If Heather Brown hadn’t been so anxious to sell up and leave town after her husband went to prison, Mark might have had time to scrape up more money.

Nicole left off fiddling with her rings and smiled at him. “I guess I was impulsive.”

She sounded almost pleased, as if “impulsive” was a big deal for her. It made him almost like her.

“I guess you got lucky,” he said.

“That, too. Fortunately, the only other offer for the bar wasn’t serious.”

Mark felt his shoulders tense. “How do you know that?”

“Insufficient capital.” She sipped her diet soda, unaware she’d said anything to offend him. “And from what I understand, the prospective buyer had an inadequate business plan and no background to obtain the necessary bank funding.”

“And you do,” he said flatly.

“Well, yes. I was chief financial officer for Connections.com.”

She didn’t look old enough to be CFO of her own lemonade stand. “Which is what? A dating service?”

“Internet service provider,” she corrected him. “Connections provided immediate hookups and excellent customer service for a low basic rate.”

“Why aren’t you still doing that, then?”

Her gaze dropped back to her rings. “The founder sold the company to a larger provider.”

Mark leaned against the bar. “You agreed with his decision?”

“I profited from it.”

“And decided to sink your profits into running a bar.”

“I decided to invest in providing real goods and services to people with whom I would have a warm, live, human connection, yes.”

Mark thought of inviting Blondie up to his place for some one-on-one, warm, live, human connection and then dismissed the idea. He was past the point where he got off being anybody’s walk on the wild side.

Besides, he didn’t want to get fired that fast.

“You got any experience running a bar?” he asked.

“I’ve read extensively.”

“But you don’t have experience.”

Her lips tightened. “I have a strong work ethic, a business degree from the University of Chicago, sufficient working capital and excellent ideas. I can hire people with experience.”

She sounded like a walking textbook. Small Business Management for Dummies, maybe. Resentment licked along his nerves like a match set to brandy. He lifted an eyebrow. “People like me.”

“It was my understanding you came with the Blue Moon.”

“You mean, like the tables and chairs or the leftover scotch?” He shook his head. “Sorry, babe. I agreed to manage this place while they found a buyer, but I’m not for sale. Whether I stick around or not depends.”

“On what?”

“On you.”

She leaned forward earnestly. “I’m more than willing to keep you on while I complete a needs assessment and determine what changes should be made.”

The flicker of resentment flared into a blaze. He wanted to shock her. He wanted to shake her privileged poise, her cool self-possession. He wanted…a lot of things he could never have.

Awareness of those unattainable things kindled his temper. And his judgment went up in smoke.

Deliberately he let his gaze drift down her slender throat to the first button of her blouse, where the pale-blue silk parted to reveal pale, smooth skin. She stiffened. He looked back at her face, enjoying the flush that stained her cheeks and the widening of her clear blue eyes.

“Big of you,” he said. “But I wasn’t talking about whether you can stomach me. I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll work for you.”

Nicole flipped the dead bolt closed behind lean, dark and dangerous Mark DeLucca and then sagged against the cool, varnished panel of the door. Her heart thudded. Her head pounded.

Things could be worse, she told herself. Things had been worse and she had survived. But clearly, her luck with men wasn’t about to change anytime soon.

And even if her luck did change—if the Fates smiled or her fairy godmother waved her magic wand or the bluebird of happiness decided to poop on Nicole’s head—even then it sure wasn’t going to start with the man who’d just walked out her door.

She closed her eyes. That was the old, bad thinking, she told herself. This was the new, improved Nicole. Her life wasn’t subject to luck. It was about control. She was in control here.

Sure she was. Except her heart still hammered. Her face was flushed.

Sighing, she threaded her way through the empty tables. The problem was she’d always been susceptible to sexy, self-absorbed men. It was a curse.

Nicole shook her head. No, it wasn’t. It was bad judgment and the need for approval.

But all that was about to change.

She was about to change.

After Connections was sold out from under her three months ago, Nicole had decided she wasn’t going to let her need to be needed or her yearning for affection betray her into bad choices anymore. When Kathy called to tell her about her new commercial property, it seemed like a sign. It felt like a second chance.

Nicole made a face at the dark shutters that covered the windows. Okay, maybe a fourth or fifth chance. But she was going to make the most of it. She’d read up on bartending. She’d studied retail business. She’d bought an entire shelf of self-help and psychology guides and highlighted her copy of Losing the Losers in Your Life until half the pages were brilliant yellow. Finally she sank her severance package into buying the Blue Moon, put her furniture into storage and moved in with Kathy until the space over the bar could be converted into a snug apartment of her own.

Maybe the last decision had been a little precipitous, Nicole acknowledged. But she hadn’t wanted to waste her capital on a short-term lease, and Kathy was eager to clinch the sale. The two women had roomed together their freshman year at college. Really, the situation was ideal. The Blue Moon was perfect.

Until this morning, when Nicole had run smack into the snake in her personal paradise. Mark DeLucca.

She unlocked the shutters over the first set of windows and folded them back. Dust grimed her fingers and tickled her nose.

She sniffed. Lead us not into temptation…

Tempting, yes. DeLucca had the brooding appeal of a Real Man fantasy who wore riding boots and an open-necked white shirt. Or motorcycle boots and a black leather jacket. He had flat black eyes and wavy dark hair and a face so hard and perfect it belonged on a coin. He looked like every mistake she’d ever made…only better.

She crossed the tiny square dance floor to the bar, her low heels echoing in the empty room. Maybe she had managed to get through this first meeting without throwing herself at his feet and begging him to use her. But she was pretty sure that continued exposure to Mark DeLucca’s lethal good looks would be bad for her nerves, wearing on her resolution and dangerous to her heart.

She wiped her hands on a bar rag and reached for the phone. Riffling through her day planner, she found Kathy’s work number and dialed. She stood, staring out the window, as the line rang on the other end. Behind the cold, dusty glass, the ruffled lake threw shards of light.

“Paradise Commercial Realtors. This is Kathy.”

Nicole wedged the phone between her shoulder and jaw and said, “Tell me again why I need Mark DeLucca.”

Kathy—clever, confident, divorced—laughed. “You weren’t impressed with our local heartthrob?”

Nicole scrubbed at the faint black streaks on her fingers. “I was impressed all right. Is he like that with customers?”

“Like what?”

Arrogant. Intimidating. Sexy.

“Rude,” Nicole said.

“We-ell, I’m fairly new in town myself, but the real estate office hasn’t had any complaints. He knows his drinks. He knows the regulars. He seems pretty popular with the summer people.” Kathy gave another knowing laugh. “Especially the teenage daughters of the summer people.”

Nicole frowned. “He doesn’t serve drinks to minors, does he?”

“Not that I’m aware of.” Kathy paused before adding, “Of course, his sister’s engaged to the chief of police, so I don’t think you’re in danger of losing your license. But I think DeLucca just flirts with them.”

“Wonderful. Does his future brother-in-law, the police chief, bend the laws about sexual harassment and statutory rape, too?”

“From what I saw last Saturday night, I’d say your bartender’s on the receiving end of the harassment.” Kathy sounded amused.

“So you don’t blame him,” Nicole said.

“I don’t blame him or them. I’ve been tempted to harass the man myself. He can handle it. And he can handle the Monday-night football crowd, which is saying something around here. That’s why we kept him, really, despite his background. He did a good job for the previous owner. She couldn’t run the place, and she needed the income.”

Nicole might be a dupe where men were concerned, but she wasn’t that naive about business. “Not to mention that an active operation is more attractive to purchasers than a closed one,” she said dryly.

“That, too,” Kathy admitted. “I showed you the numbers. So, what did DeLucca do to upset your apple cart?”

Nicole couldn’t say. Didn’t want to say, not when her confession would make it painfully clear how susceptible she was to the wrong kind of guy.

“Nothing much. He was a little aggressive. And I was late,” she added, trying to keep the accusation from her tone.

“Oh, I forgot to wake you, didn’t I?”

“That’s all right,” Nicole said, although it wasn’t, really. “I should buy myself a new alarm clock.”

“Put your old one in storage?”

No. Her clock had been missing ever since Kevin had packed his things and a selection of hers and moved out of her apartment—right before he fired her. And in the three months since, Nicole had kept an irregular schedule, reading until all hours of the morning and then sleeping through the day. But she didn’t feel like confiding that to Kathy, either.

“Something like that,” she said.

“Well, another good thing about Mark DeLucca is he shows up when he says he will. He’s reliable.”

Nicole eased her death grip on the receiver. Reliable was good.

And then Kathy went and spoiled it all by adding, “It’s remarkable, really, given his background.”

“What background?” Nicole asked.

“Well, remember, I’m not a local, so I can’t tell you everything,” the real estate agent said. Though she seemed to be doing a mighty thorough job to Nicole. “But that whole family has issues. I know the mother has a drinking problem.”

Nicole closed her eyes. No new business owner wanted to hear that her key employee came from a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic gene pool.

In Nicole’s own personal rogues gallery, that résumé put Mark DeLucca somewhere between Charles the self-absorbed graduate student and Yuri the vodka-prone cellist. Some women fell for tall, dark and handsome. She was a sucker for tall, dark and misunderstood.

Not anymore, she reminded herself. She opened her eyes to the light streaking through the window.

Never again.

She would not allow herself to be used, and she would keep Mark DeLucca around only as long as he was useful to her.

The memory of his smooth, flat voice mocked her resolution.

I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll work for you.

There was a woman waiting upstairs in Mark’s apartment.

He recognized the signs: the car parked in the marina’s lot below, a light in the window above. But this car, a battered compact, belonged to his sister. And since his sister was also the only woman who currently possessed a key to his apartment, it was a good bet she was the one waiting inside.

Too bad. Mark pulled his Jeep into a space by the boathouse steps. He wondered what Tess wanted this time.

Or—since this was Tess, after all, who had bullied and mothered him since they were both old enough to stand—what it was she thought he needed now.

He smiled as he climbed the stairs. He was sure she would tell him.

She was already in his kitchen when he opened his door, a pretty dark-haired woman in tight jeans and a red sweater, standing in front of his refrigerator.

“You’ve got cold pizza and three different kinds of mustard in here,” she said without turning around. “What kind of a diet is that?”

Mark grinned. “Jarek got you on some kind of health food kick now?”

Jarek Denko, Eden’s chief of police, was Tess’s fiancé. They were getting married in three weeks.

Tess snorted. “Hardly. I brought hazelnut crescents.” She pulled a white bakery box from the fridge, dangling it by its string. “From Palermo’s. I thought I’d have to leave them for you.”

Mark raised his eyebrows. “Palermo’s, huh? That’s some kind of bribe. What do you want, Tess?”

“Aren’t you home early?”

Ah, hell. As if being his big sister wasn’t bad enough, Tess was also a reporter. She was both perceptive and damnably hard to shake. “Joe’s opening the bar today,” Mark said. “My shift doesn’t start till four.”

“Which hasn’t stopped you from being there at eleven every other day this week.”

He shrugged, not denying it.

“It didn’t go well, did it?” Tess’s golden gaze was concerned. “Your meeting with the new owner.”

Not well. Now, there was an understatement.

Mark cut the string on the bakery box. “She hasn’t fired me yet, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Of course she didn’t fire you,” Tess said. “She’d be a fool to fire you. You’re all that’s kept that place running.”

His sister’s quick loyalty was both touching and more than he could bear right now.

“I don’t know if I want the job.”

Tess frowned. “What else would you do?”

That was the problem, Mark acknowledged. Despite his stint in the marines, he didn’t like taking orders. He had enjoyed running the bar. Calling the shots. But Nicole Reed, with her silk blouses and dot-com fortune, had nixed his dream of making the place his own.

Since he came back to Eden a year ago, he was just drifting through civilian life. So far he’d avoided repeating his old mistakes. He wasn’t drinking, and he hadn’t been arrested. Not yet, anyway. He’d come close a couple of months ago. But he couldn’t blame his sister for looking at him like a loose boat cruising toward an accident.

He regarded her with affection. “Is that why you’re here? To stand over my shoulder like you did when I had that paper due in Mrs. Williams’s English class?”

“Of course not,” Tess said. But her cheeks turned dull red. “I came to tell you you’ve got a tux fitting tomorrow at ten-thirty.”

“You could have called.”

“And to bring you dessert.”

“You could have waited.”

“And to deliver your mail.”

She must have collected it from his mat when she let herself into his apartment.

He stuck out his palm. “Fine. Hand it over.”

She marched around him, scooped a sheaf of envelopes and circulars from the mess on the coffee table, and thrust it at him. “There. Special delivery.”

“Gee, thanks. But you shouldn’t have.” He started to thumb through the stack. “There’s nothing here that can’t—”

A heavy cream envelope with an embossed return address snagged his attention. Johnson, Neil and Younger. Since when did high-priced Gold Coast law firms troll for business in tiny Eden?

“What?” Tess said. “What is it?”

Mark slit the flap and unfolded the letter inside.

Dear Mr. Delucca, I am writing to you, blah blah, guardian ad litem— What the hell was that? —for Daniel Wainscott. More blah, inform you of the passing of Elizabeth Jane Wainscott—

His eye caught. His mind stumbled. Betsy? Betsy was dead?

—will suggested that you are Daniel’s father and requested that you become his guardian.

The news slammed his chest like a swinging boom. The air left his lungs. The room tilted.

“Mark? What’s the matter?”

He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t think. He could only read while his world capsized around him.

Phrases leaped off the page. The words were jumbled and his vision blurred, but the meaning seemed horribly clear.

…no legally binding effect.

Daniel’s grandparents, Robert and Helen Wainscott, have expressed interest in adopting Daniel and appear ready to pursue all legal avenues to do so.

…advise you……choose to prove paternity……seek custody of Daniel…

“Mark!” Tess touched his arm.

The letter in his grip quivered like the edge of a sail. Mark folded it and tucked it back into the stack. But the words still burned and swirled in his brain.

…possibility that you are, indeed, Daniel’s father……act quickly to avoid losing your rights…

“It’s nothing,” he lied. “A mistake. Want a pastry?”

Chapter 2

She was pretty when she smiled.

Mark paused in the dark entryway. Behind the bar, chubby Joe Scholz was trying to explain the idiosyncrasies of the Blue Moon’s cash register to Nicole Reed. Her blond head was bowed. Her pink lips curved in a secret smile. And with the suddenness of a squall, swift, blind, animal lust took Mark by the throat and shook him at the root.

He sucked in his breath and waited in the dark, his blood roaring, until his eyes adjusted fully to the dim room and his body recovered from the impact of that smile.

Nicole glanced toward the entrance and saw him. Just for a second, surprise and relief shone in those blue eyes. And then her slim shoulders squared, and her smile disappeared as if it had never been.

Mark took another breath. Good.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said in her precise, private school voice.

He forced himself to move forward; summoned a shrug. “Then I guess you didn’t look at the work schedule.”

Her lips firmed. “I looked.”

“Then you should have known I was on at four.”

“I thought you hadn’t decided yet whether you would continue to work here.”

He liked the way she took the battle to him, instead of dithering around. But he couldn’t afford to like her too much. He couldn’t afford to say too much, either.

The problem was, he hadn’t decided what to do yet. Nobody in town would believe it—the Delucca men weren’t exactly known for sticking around—but Mark’s pride wouldn’t let him walk away without at least giving notice.

Not to mention that as long as there was the slightest chance there was a kid out there somewhere with the Wainscott name and Delucca genes, this could be a really bad time for Mark to find himself unemployed.

Mark’s jaw tightened. No, he wouldn’t mention that.

He wouldn’t even think about it.

Much.

He lifted up a section of the counter and slid behind the bar. “You need a bartender.”

Nicole slipped out of his way, watching him with her too-cool, too-perceptive blue eyes. In the cigarette-and-beer-tinged air, her scent lingered, expensive and out of place. “Joe is here.”

Joe was doing his best to fade into the bottles behind the bar. “Joe’s off now.”

“I would have managed.”

“They teach you how to mix drinks in business school?”

“No,” she admitted. “But I pour a mean glass of chardonnay.”

Mark stopped inventorying the glassware for the evening rush to stare at her. Little Miss Michigan Avenue wasn’t actually poking fun at herself, was she?

She offered him a small smile. It didn’t transform her face the way the other one did, but it was still very, very nice. “Thank you for coming in,” she said. Like she meant it.

He lifted one shoulder. “Don’t thank me. That’s what you pay me for.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

Uh-oh. Another minute, and he might start liking this chick. And that would be as big a mistake as mixing beer and brandy.

“Try staying out of my way,” he suggested, not caring if he sounded like a jerk. Hell, hoping he sounded like a jerk, like somebody she wouldn’t in a million years want to get to know better. The last thing he needed was another sweet-smelling, spoiled blonde complicating his life.

…need to consider the possibility that you are, indeed, Daniel’s father.

Damn.

A couple of regulars dragged in—the eight-to-four shift was ending at the nearby paper plant—and Mark greeted them with smiles and relief.

“Hey, Tom, Ed. How’s it going?” He moved smoothly to pull a beer and pour a whiskey, comfortable with the demands of his job, easy in the world he’d created.

A world where he knew almost everybody by name and could give them what they wanted without having to think about it too much.

Okay, he was good, Nicole admitted several hours into Mark’s shift.

Good to look at, too, she thought as he turned to set a drink at the other end of the bar and she had the chance to admire his hard, lean back and the fit of his Rough Rider jeans.

Not that his appearance mattered, she reminded herself. She was here to evaluate his job performance, not his butt. She stole another surreptitious glance. Although at the moment she had no complaint with either one.

He didn’t spin or flip or juggle bottles. Unlike Joe, who had kept up an unthreatening stream of jokes and small talk through the afternoon, he didn’t try to entertain the customers. Surely he could offer them more than, “What can I get you?” and “Be with you in a sec.”

But he never got an order wrong, Nicole noticed. He never asked a customer to repeat one, either. His memory—and his patience—astounded her.

It wavered only once, when an older man in a well-cut suit and ill-fitting hairpiece gulped half his drink and then demanded a new one.

Mark raised an eyebrow. “Can I ask you what’s wrong with what you’ve got?”

The older man scowled. “I ordered a Manhattan, damn it. I can’t even taste the scotch in this.”

Mark whisked the offending drink away. “Let me take care of that for you.”

Nicole shifted on her stool at the other end of the bar. Maybe the University of Chicago didn’t offer courses in mixology, but…

“What’s in a Manhattan?” she asked as Mark approached her perch.

“Vermouth, bourbon. Bitters.” He barely glanced at her. His eyes and hands were busy on his bottles. Below his turned-back sleeves, he had long, lean hands and muscled forearms and—heavens, was that a tattoo riding the curve of his biceps, peeking below the cuff? “But our guy doesn’t want that,” he continued. “He wants a Rob Roy.”

Nicole tore her attention from his arm. Liquor was expensive. She wasn’t giving away free drinks because Mr. Hairpiece didn’t know his ingredients. “I’m sure if you explained to him that he ordered the wrong drink—”

“—I’d be wasting my breath.” Mark added a twist of lemon peel to the fresh drink. “The customer’s always right, boss. I’m surprised they didn’t teach you that in business school,” he added over his shoulder.

Cocky, conceited, know-it-all jerk. Nicole twisted her rings in her lap.

“Well, hel-lo, pretty lady.” A warm, male, lookee-what-we-got-here voice swam up on her other side. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

Nicole squeezed her eyes briefly shut. She was a loser magnet, that’s what she was. She took a quick peek through her lashes at the man crowding her bar stool. Not quite young, not exactly good-looking, and married. She would bet on it. She sighed.

“That’s because I haven’t been here before.”

He laughed as if she’d said something funny. “Guess it’s up to me to make you feel welcome, then.”

“No, thank you, I—”

He leaned into her, his stomach nudging the back of her arm, his face earnest and too close. “What’ll you have?”

“Miss Reed doesn’t need you to buy her a drink, Carl.” Mark DeLucca’s voice was edged with amusement and something else. “She owns the bar.”

The pressure on her arm eased as the man—Carl—took a step back. “This bar?”

“This very one. And if you want to come back, I suggest you take your beer and go join your pals.”

“Well, excuse me,” Carl blustered.

“You bet,” Mark said.

Nicole was grateful. Embarrassed. Defensive. The author of Losing the Losers in Your Life was adamant that a successful life plan did not include waiting for rescue.

As soon as her new admirer was out of earshot, Nicole snapped, “I could have handled him.”

Mark removed a couple of glasses from the bar and gave the surface a quick wipe down. “Old Carl would have liked that.”

Her face flamed. “I meant, I can look after myself.”

Mark paused in the act of emptying an ashtray. He gave her a quick, black, unreadable look that scanned her from the top of her smooth blond head to the glittering rings on her fingers and nodded once. “Yeah, I can see that. My mistake.”

And after that he pretty much treated her as if she wasn’t there.

Nicole squirmed on her wooden bar stool. Well, she squirmed on the inside. On the outside, she sat with perfect poise, her spine straight, her knees crossed, typing her observations into the slim-line laptop she’d set up on the bar.

Men and women on their way home from work were replaced by young people out to have a good time. Couples pressed together in the booths in the back. Singles hooked up at tables or swayed by the jukebox. Nicole sipped her Diet Pepsi and let it all wash over her, the raucous music and the flickering TV, the drifts of cigarette smoke, the bursts of laughter. It was louder, looser, more exciting than she’d imagined.

Thrilling, because now it was hers.

She typed a note about the music. The jukebox selection needed updating. She couldn’t imagine her clientele playing “Takin’ Care of Business” that often if they had an adequate choice.

Mark greeted most of his customers—her customers—by name, took their orders, poured their drinks. No one had to wait more than forty-five seconds. No one was neglected.

Well, except for Nicole. Mark kept her supplied with Pepsi and otherwise ignored her.

He did a good job for the previous owner.

Maybe. He certainly collected his fair share of tips, Nicole thought, with an eye on the beer mug beside the register. And more than his fair share of interested glances.

A sultry brunette in big hoop earrings leaned her cleavage on the bar. A giggling group of teenage girls, shrink-wrapped in skinny tops and hip-hugging jeans, bumped and nudged each other by the pool table.

Nicole watched as Mark filled their drinks and returned their smiles. 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.

She had let him intimidate her, Nicole thought grimly, meeting her own serious blue gaze in the bathroom mirror. She knew it.

And she knew better.

It was all covered in chapter six of Losing the Losers in Your Life. You couldn’t always control the people around you, but you could control your reactions to them. And her pulse-pounding, breath-catching reaction to Mark DeLucca—which had to be apprehension, it would just be too awful it if were lust—well, anyway, that would have to stop.

She nodded decisively at her reflection and got an encouraging nod in reply. Yanking open the bathroom door, she marched into the hall and collided with her exquisitely turned-out roommate.

“Ouch,” the redhead said. “You’re in a hurry this morning.”

Nicole felt the hot sweep of blood in her cheeks. She didn’t care what the author of Losers said, it was impossible to control a blush. “Sorry. I don’t want to be late.”

Kathy lifted a penciled eyebrow. “Got a hot date with Delicious DeLucca?”

“Yes. No. Sort of. I don’t want to be at a disadvantage when I see him again.”

“Sweetie, a guy that gorgeous puts every woman at a disadvantage.” Kathy peered past her at the mirror, tweaking at her hair. “Well, almost every woman. The man’s a menace.”

“Yes,” Nicole said dryly. “So I heard.”

Kathy’s hand froze. “Who told you?”

“He did.” Nicole swallowed the lump of betrayal that burned in her windpipe. “You should have said something.”

Her roommate continued to fuss at her reflection in the mirror, still not quite meeting Nicole’s eyes. “What was I supposed to say? It happened months ago. Before I came to town. Besides, the paper said he didn’t do it.”

“I know.” She had checked the on-line archives of the McHenry County papers last night. “I also noticed that at least two of the articles were written by someone named DeLucca. Any relation, would you guess?”

“His sister,” Kathy said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that the guy is innocent.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because they locked up somebody else.”

Nicole drew a deep breath. She hated confrontation. Which was one of the reasons her boyfriends had a tendency to wipe their feet on her before they walked away. But all that was changing now. She was changing. “That’s another thing. Why didn’t you tell me the former owner of the bar was convicted of murder?”

“Why should I? His wife was handling the sale.”

Okay. Still…

“You should have told me,” Nicole said stubbornly. “I might have been interested to learn that I was buying the business of a convicted killer and employing the other main suspect in the case.”

“See? That’s exactly why I didn’t say anything. I knew you’d blow things out of proportion. This was a good deal, Nicole.”

Kathy’s voice awoke the echo of other voices, other accusations. Her mother’s. Charles’s. Kevin’s.

Don’t make a fuss, Nicole.

I only kissed her. You’re overreacting.

Why do you always have to make such a big deal out of everything?

“A good deal for you,” Nicole said.

Kathy rolled her eyes. “Well, sure. This was my first big commercial property sale on the new job. What do you want me to say? I appreciate your business?”

Nicole was shaken. “No. I just—”

“Fine. Because I do. And thank you. But you were the one who couldn’t wait to get out of Chicago.”

“Yes,” Nicole said. “You’re right.”

But Kathy was on a roll. “You were the one who lost your job.”

“The owner sold the company,” Nicole corrected her.

“After he broke up with you.”

Nicole flinched. “Yes.”

“And didn’t you say you wanted to move further away from your parents?”

Nicole felt herself visibly shrinking, like Alice at the bottom of the rabbit hole, drinking from a bottle she never should have opened. “You’re right,” she said again. “I’m sorry.”

Kathy shrugged. “I just don’t like you thinking you’re doing me any favors. You were as eager to clinch that sale as I was. An established business in a great location with available living space doesn’t come along every day.”

“It’s a wonderful property,” Nicole said truthfully.

And wondered, as she drove carefully to work along unfamiliar streets, how soon she could renovate the upstairs apartment and move in.

With a sigh, she saw that Mark DeLucca had managed to get to the Blue Moon before her. His black Jeep Cherokee occupied the parking space closest to the entrance.

Nicole wasn’t upset. Really. It wasn’t like the space had a big sign on it that read Owner.

She tugged on the door. Locked.

Well, of course he would lock it while he was alone inside. Hadn’t she told him last night that she appreciated his concern for security?

She fished in her bag for her new keys, trying not to twitch with irritation. Her hand closed on her keyring just as the door opened, and Mark DeLucca stood framed against the shadows, every bit as lean, dark and dangerous as he’d looked last night.

He wore a navy work shirt with the cuffs rolled back, exposing his muscled forearms. His hair clung damply to his temples. A tiny bead of sweat streaked the harsh plane of his face.

Oh, my.

She wanted him the way a nicotine addict craves a last cigarette, wanted to breathe him in and hold him inside her.

Bad idea. Get with the program, Nicole.

He frowned. “Sorry I didn’t answer right away. I was in back cleaning up.”

“Oh.” Because that didn’t seem to be sufficient response, she added, “Thank you. I noticed last night that the place could use a thorough cleaning.”

His expression became shuttered. “I can get you a mop and bucket from the closet, if you want.”

Nicole blinked. Was he teasing? “I thought I would hire a cleaning service.”

He shrugged, already moving away from her toward the bar. “It’s your money.”

It was her bar. Still, she expected to operate it at a profit.

She nibbled her lip. “Do you think that would be too expensive?”

“Depends on what you call expensive.” He began to restock his work station with coasters and napkins, his movements so quick and practiced she had to wonder if he were even aware of what his hands were doing. “Commercial cleaning a place this size, including the degreasing, will run about fifteen hundred dollars. More, if you don’t want to close for the day and have to pay the crew to come in at night.”

She nodded. She would check his figures later, but what he said sounded reasonable. “I’d rather not close if I can help it. There will be enough disruptions with the remodel.”

“Hold the train. What remodel?”

Oh, dear. This was not how she had planned to introduce the topic.

“Well…” She would talk about her plans for the lunch room later, she decided. “There’s that empty storage space upstairs. That could be converted into an apartment.”

“Sure it could. If you could find somebody willing to rent rooms over a bar.”

“I wasn’t planning on renting. I want to live there.”

“What about the noise?”

She shifted on her stool. “Soundproofing would of course be part of the renovation.” God, she sounded stuffy.

“What about the inconvenience?”

“What inconvenience? I’m used to immersing myself in my work. I’ve had enough of hour-long commutes. And this way I’d always be available to keep an eye on things.”

“Swell. The next time I have to break up a bar fight at one in the morning, it’ll be a real comfort to me, knowing you’re on hand to keep an eye on things.”

She stuck out her chin. “I’m not really concerned about your comfort level.”

He muttered something that sounded like, “No kidding.”

“This is a business decision,” she said firmly.

Which was a lie. It was intensely personal, this need to have a place that was wholly hers. She was tired of making room in her heart and her life and her closets for men who moved in, made a mess and moved on. The Blue Moon was hers.

“Anyway, it’s my decision,” she said, which was true and made her feel better.

“Well, that puts me in my place.”

Heat swept her cheeks. “I didn’t mean—”

His lips twisted in a smile. If he hadn’t looked like Lucifer rejoicing over the fall of mankind, she might have thought he was teasing. Or even sympathetic.

“Forget it,” he said. “If you don’t see any problem with a young, single, attractive woman living alone over a bar, it’s not my job to educate you.”

Pleasure spurted through her. He thought she was attractive.

No. He thought she was dumb as a rock.

Keeping her voice cool, she said, “Actually, it is your job. To educate me, I mean.”

He leaned against the bar. “Now that could get interesting.”

She ignored the little jump of her pulse. “Why don’t we start with a review of the employee schedules,” she suggested.

He went very still. And then he nodded once, in a brief gesture of…acquiescence? Respect? “You’re the boss.”

Or was he mocking her?

For over an hour, they discussed schedules and procedures and suppliers. Nicole took notes on her laptop. Mark showed her the work schedule pinned to a bulletin board in the back and the contact numbers taped by the phone, but most of the information he seemed to keep in his head.

It was inefficient, she decided. And intimidating.

“Deanna’s the only waitress with the hours to get benefits,” he was saying. “Then you’ve got Joe on days, and me on nights. Both full-time. And Louis, who runs the kitchen. You meet Louis yet?”

A slightly built, softly spoken black man with a bald head and a dry handshake. She nodded.

“Everybody else is part-time,” Mark continued. “You’ll meet them all eventually.”

She wanted to hold a staff meeting and meet them all at once. “Actually—”

“Payroll’s done by a service,” he went on. “I’ll give you—”

Nicole cleared her throat. She was getting tired of interruptions. It was time to take control. “Wouldn’t it be cheaper to calculate the deductions and write the checks ourselves?”

“Yeah. If you have time for that kind of thing. Which I don’t.”

She smiled, pleased to have discovered an area where she could make an immediate and positive difference. “But I do. Have the time. And the software.”

“You want me to give you a gold star?”

He didn’t sound jeering, she decided. More…amused.

“How about a cherry in my drink?”

He grinned suddenly, and the shock of it ran through her system like a computer virus. “You don’t strike me as the fruit-and-paper-umbrella type.”

“I don’t?”

“Nope.”

Drop it, her new, improved self ordered. You are not a healthy woman. You are a relationship addict. You cannot indulge in a flirtation, even a tiny one, without going on a love binge.

She moistened her lips with her tongue. “What type am I?” she asked.

Her better self groaned and threatened to call their mother.

Mark DeLucca studied her with his flat, black eyes. “Hard to say. Yesterday I had you pegged as a chardonnay girl.”

“And…today?”

“Today I think that’s too ordinary.”

He thought she wasn’t ordinary. Excitement licked along her nerves like flame set to paper.

The phone behind the bar rang.

They both reached for it.

Mark’s hand, hard and lean, closed over Nicole’s. She felt her cheeks color, but held on. This was her establishment. It was her phone.

After a moment he let go.

“Good morning, Blue Moon,” she said breathlessly into the receiver.

“Good morning.” The woman’s voice was pure Gold Coast, warm and rich as melted butter over lobster. “Is Mark DeLucca in?”

Nicole’s insides congealed. “One moment, please.” She thrust the phone at Mark. “It’s for you.”

He took the receiver from her cold hand. “Thanks. Mind if I—”

“Please, take the call. I think we’re done here.”

She was looking at him funny, like he’d said or done something on purpose to upset her, instead of just flirting with her a little.

But Mark didn’t have time to figure it out.

He didn’t have time to figure her out, not if this was the call he was expecting.

He held the receiver to his ear. “DeLucca here.”

“Mr. DeLucca, this is Jane Gilbert. What can I do for you?”

He turned his back on Nicole Reed, with her too-blue, too-interested eyes. “Isn’t that supposed to be my line? You wrote to me.”

“Yes.”

“So, what do you want?”

“I want whatever is in the best interests of six-year-old Daniel Wainscott. It remains to be seen if you can help me there.”

He didn’t bother to take offense at her tone. Hell, he agreed with her.

“Have you—” His heart was beating harder than it had on the airstrip at Kabul. His palm was sweaty on the receiver. “Have you said anything to him about me?”

“No. I see no point in raising the child’s hopes unless and until it is established that you are indeed his father. Are you?”

He was dimly aware of Nicole behind him, moving away to the other end of the bar. To give him more privacy?

“I don’t know,” he said.

He sure hadn’t thought about becoming a father seven years ago when he was making it with shy blond Betsy every chance they could both sneak away. Or when her mother figured out what they were up to and her daddy put a stop to it. Or at the end of that summer, when he’d joined up and shipped out, or in any of the intervening years since. But he’d given it plenty of thought in the last twenty-four hours.

“I could be,” he said.

“Then your first step should be a paternity test,” Jane Gilbert said briskly. “There are home kits, of course, but it would be better if you had the test done at a collection center, to establish a proper chain of custody. In case your claim to Daniel were to be questioned in court.”

His only previous court experience had been as a defendant. He wondered what her lawyership, this Gilbert woman, would make of that.

Daniel’s grandparents have expressed interest in adopting Daniel and appear ready to pursue all legal avenues to do so.

Hell.

“What do you need?” he asked. “Blood?”

“No. The technician will take a buccal swab—a sample of skin cells from the inside of your cheek.”

“How much?”

“How large a sample? I’m afraid I—”

“No. How much is this going to set me back?”

The lawyer’s voice chilled like vodka over ice. “The cost can probably be recovered from Elizabeth Wainscott’s estate. However, a test of the child and alleged father can run anywhere from $450 to nearly $800.”

“Why the difference?”

“I haven’t decided yet whether to subject Danny to the normal testing procedure or to collect a special sample.”

It was too much to take in.

He should have suggested he call her back, this afternoon, maybe, when he had more time to think.

And fewer distractions. Even with the length of the bar between them, he could still smell the light, expensive scent of Nicole’s perfume, could still hear the soft click of her computer keyboard, rappity-tap-tap behind him. He so did not want her getting the drift of this conversation. Which was dumb, since it wasn’t like he was going to make it with her anyway.

He pulled his mind back. “What kind of sample?”

“Chewing gum,” Jane Gilbert said simply and unexpectedly. “The lab can extract Danny’s DNA from well-chewed chewing gum. I’m told Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit works best.”

“So then he wouldn’t know what was going on.”

There was a little pause. “In a case such as this, when a child may already be feeling upset or abandoned by one parent’s death—”

Mark didn’t need a lawyer to tell him about children’s feelings of abandonment.

“Do it,” he ordered.

“Excuse me?”

“Get the special thing. I’ll pay for it.”

“It will take a week longer to process,” the lawyer warned.

Mark had already spent—what, six years? seven?—without knowing that he was a father. If he was a father.

“I can wait,” he said.

“Very well.” Did he imagine it, or had the lawyer’s voice warmed ever so slightly? “There’s probably a lab or doctor’s office near you that could take the sample. However, if you choose to have the test done in Chicago, we could meet. To discuss Daniel.”

To see if getting him mixed up in the kid’s life would be in the best interests of the child, she meant.

“Yeah,” he said. Rappity-tap-tap, went Nicole’s fingers behind him. “Yeah, that would be good. When?”

“Next week sometime?”

“Sure.”

“Thursday? Four o’clock?”

“Fine.”

He hung up the receiver, annoyed to note that his hand wasn’t steady. When he turned, Nicole was watching him with narrowed blue eyes.

“You got a problem?” he asked.

Swell, DeLucca. Make it a perfect day. Pick a fight with the boss.

Her slim shoulders squared. “Not necessarily. Do you?”

He could almost like the way she didn’t back down. Almost.

“Not necessarily,” he said, mocking her. “I need next Thursday off.”

“All right. I—did you say Thursday?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry. I have a previous commitment that night.”

Mark shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll switch hours with Joe.”

“And if he’s not available?”

“I’ll work something out.”

“I need someone who can close the register.”

He was unwillingly pleased that she trusted him with her money. But that didn’t give her the right to command his time.

“So, you do it.”

“I told you, I have plans for that evening.”

He might have just dismissed her as a spoiled rich girl. But her voice was stiff with distress. Her shoulders were rigid.

He frowned. “What kind of plans?”

“If you must know, I’m attending a party with my parents.”

Any temptation to feel sorry for her died. “A party is that important to you?”

She sighed. Some of the starch left her shoulders, like the wind abandoning a sail. “No. My parents are important to me. Their good opinion is important to me.”

Betsy had cared about her parents’ opinion, too, Mark remembered.

More than she’d cared about him.

More than she’d cared about…their son?

Pain stabbed an old wound, making him snarl. “Sorry. I’m not going to give up my plans so you can make nice with your parents.”

Nicole glared. “Well, I’m not giving up my evening so you can make time with your married lover!”

Chapter 4

She was wacko.

“What are you talking about?” Mark demanded.

Nicole’s face turned fiery red. He could almost—almost—feel sorry for her.

“I’m not judging you,” she said painfully. “But it’s unwise to form a relationship with someone who isn’t free to commit to you fully.”

Mark lifted an eyebrow. She was so earnest it was funny. “You speaking from experience here?”

Her face got even redder. He wouldn’t have believed it.

“I’m not trying to get personal,” she said. “I’m simply saying it’s a mistake.”

He could go for the direct approach. Sometimes that worked. “He really did a number on you, huh? What was his name?”

“Ted,” she said, surprised into a reply. She looked down at her rings. “He had three children. Boys.”

Her lips pressed closed, as if she’d let something precious escape. Interesting.

“You got a problem with boys?”

She didn’t smile. “No. I liked them. I liked spending time with them. I never minded going over on the weekends so that he could meet with customers or go into the office. Only—” She broke off.

“Let me guess. It wasn’t only customers he was meeting.”

Her blue eyes widened. “How did you know?”

“I hear it all the time, babe. It happens all the time.”

“He wasn’t even divorced,” she said. “Only separated.”

He heard that, too. But it didn’t make sense. She was rich. Blond. A looker. “Why’d you put up with it?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

He shrugged. Her love life wasn’t his problem. “Okay.”

“And you don’t have any right to sound so superior.”

“Hey,” he said, genuinely startled. “You don’t need to get so defensive.”

But she went on as if she hadn’t heard him. “You can’t tell me you’ve never gotten involved with a married woman.”

“No. I can’t tell you that,” Mark said grimly. “But I can tell you that’s one mistake I don’t plan on repeating.”

Nicole sniffed. “Why did you agree to meet with her, then?”

“Meet who?”

“The woman on the phone.”

He almost goggled at her. The lawyer?

He turned to check the liquor levels in the bottles behind the bar. Not that anyone in Eden was likely to order a lunchtime grappa, but it bought him some time to figure out how to deal with her accusation.

“You shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” he said.

Nicole lowered her voice to a wickedly deep imitation of his. “‘Have you told him about me?’” She shook her head and said in her normal voice, “Big leap.”

He wanted to shake her. He wanted to laugh. She was funny and concerned and totally wrong.

Mark was getting pretty damn tired of being accused of things he hadn’t done.

“You don’t know the situation,” he said.

You don’t know me.

“So tell me.” Her voice was bright and sympathetic. So were her eyes.

“No.”

She stiffened. “I can’t let you have Thursday night off without some kind of explanation. Staffing is a problem.”

“Your problem,” he said. “You’re the boss.”

“Yes, I am. And since I am—” she took a deep breath and straightened on her bar stool “—I want you back by eleven that night to close the register.”

She was drawing her line in the sand.

He could do what he wanted. Let her call the shots. His business with the Gilbert woman would be over by five. Six, tops.

Or he could tell her to go to hell.

Yeah, and then he could explain to the guardian-ad-whatever, at their first meeting, that not only was he the kind of loser scum who lost track of a seventeen-year-old girl and their baby, he was an unemployed loser scum incapable of supporting said child.

Oh, yeah. That would go over well.

He looked at Nicole, sitting at the end of his bar in her don’t-touch-me blouse with her don’t-mess-with-me face, nervously twisting those pretty gold rings on her fingers. What would she do if he walked on her? She’d be screwed. They both knew it.

“Eleven?” he asked.

She tried hard to keep the hope from her expression, but it shone in those incredible blue eyes.

“In time to close,” she said.

“Fine. I can manage that.”

He didn’t know what he expected. Not gratitude, exactly, but… Well, okay, gratitude would have been nice.

Instead she nodded, like his capitulation was never in doubt, and started grilling him about the menu.

Okey-damn-dokey. He wasn’t trying to make points with her. From now on, he would just do his job and hope she didn’t interfere too much.

She was taking him line by line through the appetizer listing, with him explaining which items Louis prepared in the kitchen and what he purchased from their wholesaler in Chicago, when a horn blared in the parking lot.

Nicole jumped. “What’s that?”

Mark shrugged. “Beats me.”

The horn sounded again, a quick, impatient tattoo.

Nicole nibbled her lip. “Well, don’t you want to go see?”

“Nope. It’s probably some kid with a new car.”

Whoever it was decided hitting the horn wasn’t working and starting banging on the door instead. Nicole slid from her seat.

“Or a drunk,” Mark added, “who can’t wait for opening hour.” In which case he couldn’t very well let Blondie answer the door alone now, could he? He strolled from behind the bar. “Or it could be—”

Nicole threw the bolt and opened the door on a very attractive, very ticked-off brunette wearing gold jewelry and sunglasses.

His sister, Tess.

Oh, hell.

He had a tux fitting at ten-thirty which he had just totally blown off.

Of the two women, Tess looked more surprised. But she also recovered faster. Growing up with an alcoholic mother and an abusive father did that for you. Both DeLucca kids had plenty of practice in hiding their feelings and thinking fast on their feet.

His sister stuck out her hand. “You must be Nicole. I’m Tess. Is Mark here?”

Nicole froze like one of those ice sculptures they set on the buffet tables in the Algonquin Hotel dining room. “Yes, he is. Is he expecting you?”

“He should be,” Tess said. “The rat.” She looked over Nicole’s shoulder at Mark. “You are not getting out of this. I don’t care how uncomfortable it makes you or what you think of this marriage. If you hurry, they can still squeeze us in.”

Oh, yeah. Tess was one tough cookie, all right. Only he knew what a softie, what a sucker she was.

He owed her. Always had.

And maybe now was a good time to prove to his blond boss—hell, to prove to himself—that he could walk away at any time.

“Okay,” he said to his sister. “I’m gone,” he told Nicole.

“But—”

Looking into those wide blue eyes, he felt a very unfamiliar and totally unwelcome need to explain. To apologize. To reassure.

He squashed it.

Nicole Reed didn’t need him or his explanations.

Besides, Joe would be along in a few minutes to help her open.

“I work four until close,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see you then.”

“It was nice meeting you,” Tess added.

He followed her out to her car.

Nicole folded back the grimy shutters, watching through the window as Mark drove off with the gorgeous brunette with red nails and attitude.

Things could be worse. At least this time she knew what kind of man he was before her heart got involved.

Mark DeLucca was not the type of guy who could make her happy. He was a player. Like Charles. Like Zack. Like every other guy who had ever strung her along and used her. Only this guy wasn’t even bothering to string her along. He had enough women on his line already. That Kathleen Turner wannabe on the phone. The exotic-looking brunette in the car.

Nicole couldn’t compete.

She shouldn’t want to compete.

Her relationship with Mark was strictly professional, employer to employee.

She slid into a booth, kneeling on the bench seat to unlatch the heavy shutters.

Employee. Right.

Only she hadn’t been in the kitchen flirting with Louis. She hadn’t quizzed Joe about his personal life or blurted out the pathetic story of married-Ted-the-insurance-sales-man-and-his-three-children to Deanna.

Oh, no. Nicole tugged at the dirty shutters. Because that wouldn’t be humiliating enough. No, she had to go and expose herself to Mark DeLucca instead.

Outside the windows, the sky was overcast. The lake reflected shards of light like an open drawer of tarnished flatware. Nicole closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the cool glass.

She was such a loser.

“Miss Reed? Nicole?” It was Joe, coming through the open front door. She’d forgotten to lock up. “Is Mark here?”

Strictly professional, Nicole reminded herself. She scrambled around on the seat.

“No, he, um, left.” Oh, that was smooth.

Joe’s cheerful, chubby face creased. “His car’s our front.”

“Yes. He got a ride.” She gritted her teeth. “From Tess somebody.”

“Oh, yeah?” Joe grinned. “Wonder if she roped him into helping with the wedding.”

Oh, God. It hurt. Nicole hadn’t expected it to hurt. Not this soon. Not this much. She barely knew the man. She didn’t even like him.

“I think so. Yes,” she said stiffly.

Joe moved behind the bar. “Hard to believe they’re getting married in just three weeks.”

“Very hard,” Nicole agreed.

Mark didn’t look like a soon-to-be-married man. He didn’t act like an engaged man.

All her instincts rejected the possibility that he belonged to another woman.

Of course, her instincts generally sucked.

“I’m sure they’ll be very happy together,” she said. “They seem very—” sexy, careless, confident, all the things she was not and never would be “—well suited.”

“You know Chief Denko?”

Nicole blinked. “Who?”

“Jarek Denko. The chief of police. Tess’s fiancé.”

“Wait. I thought—” she took a careful breath “—I thought Mark was her fiancé.”

Joe laughed. “Mark? Nah. Mark is Tess’s brother. She’s making him give her away at the wedding.”

Relief bloomed in Nicole’s chest. She was almost dizzy with it.

The brunette was Mark’s sister. Mark wasn’t engaged.

Maybe just this once her instincts weren’t entirely wrong.

Tess pulled into the lot beside Mark’s Jeep Cherokee. Her wiper blades shuddered and streaked against the windshield.

“Thanks,” she said. “I hope your boss isn’t going to be too upset with you for taking off.”

Mark grinned. “Maybe you should write me a note.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Tess said tartly. “When are you going to get married and let some other woman take care of you?”

His last experience with a married woman hadn’t left him feeling cared for at all. But Mark didn’t tell his sister that. He never talked to anybody about that.

He teased, instead. “Don’t you love me anymore?”

But she replied seriously, “I love you. That’s why I want you to be happy.”

“Uh-huh. And tying myself down to one woman is going to make me happy.”

“It would. If she were the right woman.”

This was what came of being disgustingly crazy in love. Tess was a bright girl. But her engagement to Jarek Denko had obviously shorted out a few brain cells.

“Yeah, well, the right woman isn’t going to want to have anything to do with me. Not if she’s in her right mind.”

Tess rolled her eyes. But he noticed she didn’t argue with him. She gave him a kiss on the cheek and told him to stay out of trouble.

Yeah, like that had ever worked.

He hunched his shoulders against the rain and stomped up the plank walk to the entrance, vaguely surprised to see Nicole’s gold-toned Lexus still in the parking lot. The new owner was putting in some long hours. Either she was really conscientious, or she’d decided to stick around long enough to bust his butt.

But when Mark opened the door, it wasn’t his butt that occupied his attention.

It was hers.

Nicole was leaning over a table in one of the booths, her knees on the seat and her khaki-covered behind in the air. And she had, without question, one of the finest female rear ends he had seen in his life. Lush. Heart-shaped. Hot.

It wiggled. She turned. And—oh, jeez—caught him staring.

Only she didn’t seem to notice.

At least, she didn’t seem to mind.

She smiled, her face all sunshine despite the gray day outside, and asked cheerfully, “Like it?”

Surprise almost made him laugh.

“Love it,” he told her solemnly.

“Good. I know you can’t see it too well now, but you’ll have a much better view tomorrow.”

Okay, he was confused. Or she was. Not that he would object or anything, but it didn’t seem real likely that she was inviting him to ogle her butt.

“Why tomorrow?” he asked.

“Well, obviously clean windows are more noticeable on a clear day.”

Windows. She was talking about windows. And now that he didn’t have her cute rear end burning into his eyeballs like the sun at noon, he could see that the glass behind her shone. Even the wooden shutters gleamed, free of their usual coat of crud. A pile of crumpled rags lay on the floor beside a bucket. Nicole’s sleeves were pushed back, water spotted her left breast, and a smudge decorated her forehead.

She looked damp and untidy and very pleased with herself.

“Looks…good,” Mark said.

She beamed. “Thank you. Do you want to move those chairs, and I’ll get the windows by the—”

He hated to snuff her enthusiasm. But—

“No,” he said.

Her shoulders squared. “Is this the part where you tell me you don’t do windows? Moving furniture is not in your job description?”

He had to admire her spunk, even if she was wrong. “No. This is when I tell you the eight-to-four shift just ended at the plant and the four-to-seven rush is starting here. You need me behind the bar pushing drinks right now. Not out front pushing tables.”

“All right. I can do it myself.”

“Bad idea.”

Her voice rose in frustration. “For heaven’s sake, why? I won’t be in the way. The tables don’t fill up that quickly.”

“Because, babe, the guys who stop in here for a beer after work don’t care about clean windows. They don’t want to be reminded that they have chores and wives waiting at home. They want to relax, not watch you rearrange the furniture.”

To his surprise she nodded. “Selling atmosphere.”

“What?”

“It’s in one of my books on restaurant management. We’re not simply providing drinks, we are selling a total ambiance.”

“You aren’t going to be selling much of anything if I don’t get behind the bar.”

She wiped her hands on a rag and folded it in precise quarters. “Well then, you’d better get started, hadn’t you?”

He didn’t know whether to laugh or go smack his head with a bottle.

He did neither. It wouldn’t be cool, and cool was something Mark had cultivated since he was a scabby six-year-old trying desperately to find his place in the first-grade pecking order. He’d never been smart like Tess. He wasn’t well dressed like the kids from the big houses across the lake. He didn’t have the kind of mother who baked cupcakes for the class on his birthday or the kind of home you invited friends to after school. But he was cool. Man, was he cool.

He got behind the bar and pulled a draft for one of the regulars. Jimmy Greene was just off his shift at the paper plant, looking for a beer to wash away the taste of wood pulp and his general dissatisfaction with his life.

Right there with you, Jimmy boy.

When Nicole bent over to pick up her bucket and rags, Mark let himself look. She was just a hot body with a snotty attitude, no different from any other blonde who’d done a hit-and-run on his life.

He didn’t want her to be any different, because then he would want her, and wanting her wouldn’t get him anywhere.

Jimmy nudged him. “Nice, huh?”

The son of a bitch was leering at Nicole’s butt.

“Watch it,” Mark warned. “That’s my boss.”

“Oh, I’m watching,” Jimmy said. “And I bet you’re doing more than that, you lucky bastard. She any good?”

“She’s my boss, Jimmy,” Mark said quietly. “So put your eyes in your head and your tongue in your mouth before I have to knock your teeth down your throat.”

Jimmy slumped on his bar stool and sulked in his beer. So much for selling atmosphere.

But over the next week, Mark was forced to watch as Nicole did her damnedest to create ambiance—whatever the hell that was—in his bar. She attacked dirt like it was her personal enemy, coming in, Joe had reported, before the bar opened and working sometimes through the quiet hours of early afternoon.

Her ideas weren’t bad. Not all bad, anyway. Mark had had some ideas himself, back when he’d thought he had a chance of buying the place. But…

“What are these? Handkerchiefs? Doilies?” Mark asked on Thursday, brandishing a little white square with a stylized cobalt moon rocking over a purple wave.

Nicole didn’t miss a beat. “New cocktail napkins. They match the new menus,” she explained, and went out to plant flowers in the tub outside the front door.

New menus?

Strange sandwiches appeared from the kitchen and on the chalkboard that listed the daily specials, grilled sandwiches with tasty ingredients and stupid names.

“What the hell is a Tuscany Twosome?” Mark grumbled to Louis.

Nicole overheard. “Capicolla and provolone with pesto aioli on focaccia,” she said. “And before you start getting negative, you might as well know I’m not adding them to the permanent menu. They haven’t sold very well.”

“There’s a surprise,” Mark said.

“When I want your opinion, DeLucca, I’ll ask for it,” Nicole snapped, but she didn’t sound so tough. Just tired.

And there was that sad baby droop to her lip when she thought no one was looking that made him long to…do something for her.

Mark rubbed his jaw. It was kind of too bad about the sandwiches. The one he’d wolfed down when he came to work today had actually tasted pretty good. And Louis seemed okay with the idea of occasionally cooking something besides chicken wings and loaded fries.

Maybe Mark didn’t know food. Dinner in the DeLucca household had mostly been a matter of Tess opening cans. And neither the chow at the mess or the MREs he’d bolted down in the field were exactly dining at the Algonquin.

But he did know the Blue Moon’s clientele.

“Try changing the name,” he suggested.

“Excuse me?”

“Call it Italian ham-and-cheese,” he said.

“Thank you. I’ll consider that,” she said stiffly.

Like she didn’t gave a rat’s ass for him or his opinions or anything. But then he walked into the kitchen at the end of the night and caught her packing the unused sandwiches into a big white box.

“What are you doing?”

Nicole blushed like he’d spotted her adding water to the vodka bottles over the bar. “I’m packing a carton for the interfaith food shuttle.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Are you giving food away?”

She tossed her blond hair over her shoulders. “Better than throwing it away.”

But he wasn’t fooled by her snippy attitude this time.

“Yeah,” he agreed slowly. “I guess you’re right.”

And when some of the guys wandered in after league night at the Thunder Bowl, he gave out a couple of the new sandwiches for them to try.

“We sold out of ham-and-cheese,” Nicole announced three nights later. “And it’s not even seven o’clock.”

Mark set up the drink order for table five—two Millers and a seven-and-seven—and slid it over the counter for Deanna.

“Congratulations.”

But Nicole didn’t look very happy. “Do you think Palermo’s is still open? Because I need to pick up more focaccia, and—”

“Hey,” he interrupted her. “Relax. This place isn’t going to close down because we ran out of one sandwich.”

“But—”

“Erase the specials board, and increase the bakery order for tomorrow.”

“Yes. All right.” She flushed. “I suppose you think I’m pretty silly, getting all worked up over a sandwich.”

“I think you’re—”

Sweet. Special. And trying too hard.

Uh-huh. Like he could say any of those things to his boss.

“—anxious to see things succeed.”

Nicole beamed at him as if he’d said something really deep. “I am.” She laid her slim hand gleaming with golden rings on his arm and squeezed gently. His tongue dried to the roof of his mouth. “I want you to know I realize it wouldn’t have happened without your support. I really need you here.”

He almost fell for it. Staring into her baby blues, feeling the warmth that stole through him at her words, he almost fell for her.

Was anything more seductive than those whispers?

Betsy, her eyes swimming with easy tears. I need you, Mark.

Hayley, her voice trembling with well-assumed anguish. Mark, I need you.

Was anything more painful than those memories?

Mark’s jaw clenched. He so did not need this. Not again. Not with her. Not ever.

And so he did the one thing guaranteed to end it, made the one move sure to drive her away. Or get him fired.

“Not here, babe.” He turned to set up the drinks for another ticket, checking to make sure no one was near enough to overhear. Grateful he wouldn’t have to watch her face as he said the words. “We’re kind of busy, you know? But after we close, maybe we can get naked.”

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