“Hey. There are only two good purposes for a man. One of them is liquor.”
“That sounds sexist.” He stepped out of the alcove and behind the bar. “What’s the other?”
“Lawn work,” she said, a saucy glint in her eye. Hell, anything she said was provocative. Saks suspected that she could read him the phone book, and he’d get hard at the sound of her voice.
“What do you like? Craft or domestic?”
“Anything wet.”
Oh, damn.
Come over here, baby, said his cock. I got something for you here.
Shut up and act like a grown man.
I am. Why aren’t you?
Saks popped the top on a high-end craft beer and poured it into a glass.
“You’ve got those bartending skills down,” she said.
“I should. I’ve helped at the Red Bull enough times. Family business.”
She took a pull on the amber liquid. Chrissy wore red lipstick, a sexier color than she usually wore, and her flesh pressed the outline of her lips onto the clear glass. He swallowed hard as his prior fantasy of her lips wrapping around his cock filled his head.
“How have you been?” Chrissy asked. “I mean, after the shooting.”
And the entire month you abandoned me? Chrissy’s perfume wafted to his nose, sophisticated and sexy, and thinking became difficult.
“Fine,” he said. Words weren’t coming easily. “And you?” he managed to ease out.
“Great,” she said. But her voice didn’t carry the enthusiasm her word implied. So, things weren’t “great” in James Pearson land?
“How’s your boss?” he pressed.
Chrissy looked away. “It’s a temporary job. My contract is only for a year. I’m earning enough money that I don’t have worry about anything until I find a new one.”
This Saks hadn’t known. It gave his besotted heart a smidgeon of hope. “And then?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been too busy to think about it.”
“Oh.” Saks, on the other hand, had been saddled with way too much extra time that had left him consumed with thoughts of her.
“Have you learned anything about who sent those goombahs to shoot you?”
Saks shook his head. “The leads have grown cold. The guys the police arrested bonded out and disappeared. My cousin’s still working on it, though.”
“Your cousin?”
“Louis Anglotti, one of Westfield’s finest, detective division.”
“Oh. That guy?”
“Yeah. You’ve met him?”
She nodded. “Let’s just say he didn’t leave a favorable impression.”
Saks’ brow pinched. He wondered where she could’ve met him, but by the way she was staring into her beer it didn’t seem there was a chance she was going to explain. “Might explain why he’s still single. Too much ‘on the job’ even when he isn’t.”