Down London Road (On Dublin Street 2)

‘No overbearing brothers or sisters?’ Joss continued her interrogation. ‘No car crashes or drug addicts or medical problems?’

I tried to contain my snort.

Cam shrugged good-naturedly. ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

Looking nonplussed, Joss eyed him warily. ‘Are you telling me you’re actually a well-adjusted individual?’

He threw her his hot grin and I succumbed to another heated flare of sexual attraction. ‘I like to think so.’

Joss shot me a look that said, Well, at least I’ve got you before she shook her head at Cam as though she were disappointed in him. ‘And here I thought we could be friends.’

Cam laughed. ‘I could invent a tragic past if that helps?’

‘Or unearth some deep, dark family secret I can turn into a book.’

‘I’ll get back to you on that.’ He smiled and then looked at me carefully, his gaze lowering a little under his eyelashes. He had sickeningly long eyelashes for a man. ‘I made the mistake of telling Becca I had this Saturday off and I hear she’s booked a table for four at Martin Wishart.’

Yeah, I’m sure the last thing you want to do is sit down for a meal with me. ‘Malcolm told me.’

‘So I guess we’re having dinner together.’

Joss chuckled, and as she turned to serve a customer she rather unhelpfully advised, ‘Try not to kill each other.’

I smirked and shot a look at Cam, then immediately wished I hadn’t. He appeared to be trying to work me out, as though I was this mysterious puzzle he was drawn to solving.

My body flushed with pleasure at his attention, but my brain screamed at me to run as far away from him as possible.

8

As much as Joss acted as a buffer between me and Cam, the tension between us refused to dissipate. Friday night I danced around him like an idiot, desperate not to have a repeat of the previous evening. Joss kept eyeing me as if expecting me to hatch an alien at any moment, I was acting so strangely.

When Malcolm had phoned me during the day I’d felt this whoosh of guilt at the sound of his voice, as though I had cheated on him in a way with my impure thoughts about Cam. I wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t been ruthless when going after men. I tried not to think about the girls who had been hurt by their defection, and I tried to rationalize that somehow it was okay to have been party to such a betrayal because Cole needed me to marry someone like Malcolm. There was no truth in that. That somehow suggested there hadn’t been a choice for me, but of course there was a choice. I had chosen. And I had chosen selfishly.

I drew the line at physically cheating on someone, though. I particularly drew the line at being the direct betrayer.

Lusting after Cam seemed like one step too close towards that.

Thankfully, as always, Friday was really too busy to make much conversation with my colleagues. Cam cracked a few jokes, made us laugh, and Joss, as always, was her witty self. I, on the other hand, decided to try to diminish my awareness of Cam by focusing on filling up the tips jar.

I flirted my ass off and ignored the way Joss rolled her eyes at my girlish giggling. She’d once told me I had a fake giggle and a real giggle. My real giggle was apparently ‘adorable’, but my fake giggle – the one I used to convince a guy that I thought he was the funniest man I’d ever met – drove her up the wall.

If only she knew that just made me want to do it more.

I was serving drinks to three guys who weren’t mind-blowingly attractive but were charming and sexy in their own way, and I was enjoying their attention.

‘Seriously, you should just jump over the bar and come spend the rest of the night with us,’ one of them insisted, flashing me a crooked smile. I could usually read when a guy was being lascivious, but these guys were just having fun.

I leaned my elbow on the bar, handing the shortest guy his change with one hand while resting my chin thoughtfully in the palm of my other. ‘Hmm, where would you take me?’

‘I heard Fire is a pretty good nightclub,’ the one in the middle suggested, his eyes glinting with hope.

I snorted and gestured around the bar. ‘Leave one club for another. No, you’ll have to do better than that.’ I smiled slowly and watched the three of them lean in closer, their eyes dipping to my mouth.

‘The Voodoo Rooms.’ The short one nodded at his mates as if it was a great idea.

I shook my head sadly in response. ‘Expand your horizons, boys.’

The one with the crooked and very hot smile leaned on the bar so that our faces were only an inch apart. My eyes smiled into his as he stared at me intensely. I suddenly realized he’d stopped playing and was serious, and my smile wilted a little. His gaze dropped to my lips. ‘I’ll take you anywhere, darling, anywhere in the world, if you’ll give me your number.’

I heard the clearing of a deep throat before a warm hand pressed against my belly. I jolted in shock and twisted my head around to see Cam leaning into me.

It was his large, warm hand pressed to my belly.

He put pressure on me and eased me back off the bar. ‘Excuse me,’ he muttered, his expression blank except for the muscle jumping in his jaw. Cam’s touch set off sparks in my body, my skin prickling with excited heat, and in my dumbfounded reaction I let him push me back from the bar, his body curling into mine as he reached past me. His hand slid around to my waist, nudging my tank top up so his callused hand gripped my bare skin, holding me in place as he bent down for a bottle of liqueur. When he straightened, our eyes met, and it took everything in me not to reach for him too.