In his wildest dreams, he’d never imagined taking Jess there. Even when he’d suggested the partnership and invited her to Vegas, he never conceived of the two of them spending time together in a dive bar away from the security cameras. Now, he may have daydreamed about the two of them off the cameras and naked in her hotel room. But not this. This was more like a...date?
She walked in the bar and every single muscle in his body tensed. Dressed simply in cut-off jeans and a faded red shirt, she outshone every other woman in the city. Tonight was the first time he’d ever seen her with her hair down. Dark and long, it lay down her back, falling just below her shoulder blades. The ends had brushed his knees when he sat behind her in the auditorium. He’d literally sat on his hands to keep from touching it.
“You’re not wearing your disguise.” He liked how her eyes raked over his face and chest. He wondered how low her eyes would have gone if the bottom half of him hadn’t been hidden by the high-boy table.
“Nope.”
“Just Jess and Adam tonight then?” His breath caught at the simple intertwining of their names. Jess and Adam.
He cleared his throat. “It’s a novelty,” he agreed.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said. “There was a long cab line.”
He handed her a bourbon. “I’m good at waiting,” he said. “I do a lot of waiting in my line of work.” Ugh. He wanted to kick himself. She might have admitted to the physical attraction between them, but that didn’t mean she was ready for an open conversation about his day-to-day criminal activities.
She surprised him again. “Tell me about your work.” When he gave her a skeptical glance, she said, “Really. I promise to never repeat a word. I just want to know you a little.”
There was no guile in her gaze, and Adam’s chest started to ache. When was the last time he’d had an entirely honest conversation with a woman he was interested in? Never.
“Tell me about golf first,” he asked.
Jess rolled her eyes, but nodded. “Well, when you’re the only girl in a large family with no mom, you’ll do anything to get Daddy’s attention.” Her tone was bright and carefree, but her eyes looked sad. “My dad and most of my brothers were sports-crazy. They played baseball, soccer, basketball—everything. So, I did too, hoping that my dad would spend time with me after school or on weekends like he did with my older brothers. But I sucked at everything, so it didn’t work.”
She paused to take a gulp of bourbon, and Adam blinked away a mental picture of a skinny, brown-eyed little girl desperate for some attention.
“My dad has always loved golf. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, but in Chicago there are a ton of park district courses that you can play for cheap. One Saturday, when I was about nine, my Dad and brothers were about to leave for the golf course when my babysitter canceled. They had no choice but to take me.”
Jess looked off in the distance with a small smile on her full lips. “I can still remember my first tee shot. I watched my Dad and brothers go...and then it was my turn. I wanted to hit the ball so well, so hard, so far. And I did. My first tee shot outdrove all of my brothers’. Honestly, I think I did it by sheer force of will. My dad turned around with his mouth wide open. It felt like the first time he ever really saw me.”
She shrugged, meeting his eyes again. “So, golf became my thing. I had finally found something my dad would pay attention to.”
“Did you even like it?”
She grinned. “I liked winning. And it’s how I got my scholarship to college. Plus, it was good for me. If I didn’t have golf, I probably would have spent my entire life in my bedroom playing on the computer. I spent plenty of time doing that already.”
Something about her combination of words here—her spark of competitive toughness along with the mention of computers—reminded him of the question he’d wanted to ask since reading the first newspaper article. “You’re such a fighter, Jess,” he said. “When Davies made those unfounded accusations against you, why didn’t you attack with a lawyer? Why didn’t you sue Ignatius for wrongful termination and slander?”
She jerked backward a little, almost as though he’d physically hit her. For a moment, he thought she would deflect. But
instead, she looked at him straight in the eye and took a deep breath. “I started to. But... I told you about my dad and golf. That was one of two things that ever made him proud of me. The second was working at Ignatius.” She sighed. “My dad is a salt of the earth guy. He worked in construction for years and he’s a devout Catholic—goes to church twice a week. So when I was a rising star at the biggest Jesuit University in the country, he was as happy as I’ve seen him.”
Adam closed his eyes, briefly. “Your dad asked you to drop it.”
She squirmed on her chair before giving him such a sad smile he felt it in his chest. “I want to defend my father, but I’m just still so hurt. Yeah, he asked me to drop it. So I did.” She drained the small amount of bourbon still in her glass.
He hesitated, but then went ahead and said what was on his mind. “No mom?”
Jess gave a slow shake of the head. “She died when I was four. Right after she had Andrew, my younger brother. I don’t really remember her.”
“I don’t remember mine either.” The words just popped out. He couldn’t fucking believe it.
“Did you live with your uncle?” She asked. He froze. How the hell did she know about Tony? Oh, that’s right. She had found his arrest record and done a background check. His entire body tensed; this was enough of this line of questioning. He never discussed Tony. Not with anyone.
Which made it bewildering when his mouth opened and his lips moved. “My parents died when I was five, and after a few weeks in foster care, I went to live with my mother’s brother, Tony. I’d never even met him before.”
But he’d idolized him immediately. “He was so cool,” he said to Jess, smiling at her. “He didn’t care if I went to school. We ate McDonald’s whenever I wanted. He had the most interesting group of friends who came by the apartment at all hours of the night.” Plus, Tony was unexpectedly affectionate. “He hugged me, all the time,” he said softly. “For a traumatized orphan who’d seen what foster care was like, he was a godsend.”
Jess’s face went soft and her eyes blurred. Enough of that; he cleared his throat. “He wasn’t a saint, of course. I think the actual term for him is ‘career criminal.’”