Lucas

Some asshole snaps his fingers in front of my face to get my attention. Okay, not just any asshole. Grant Lincoln, partner-asshole.

“Where the fuck are you, Wright? You’ve been walking around like a zombie all evening.”

It’s Sunday, and we’re settling in for quiz night at the Frog & Footman. I flew in from London this afternoon and I didn’t really feel like going out, yet here I am. My transatlantic trips usually leave me in a funk, and I’m not the only one in a mood. While Max is with us in body, he may as well be on another planet mentally, because he’s having problems with his girl, Charlie. The man’s not fit company for anyone.

When Grant’s the cheerful one of our trio, you know we have fucking problems.

“Is this about Trinity?” Max asks.

Grant squints, par for the course when he’s gearing up for an interrogation. He has a slow, methodical, southern style that belies the sharpest legal mind in the city. “Trinity? Why is that familiar?”

“She’s the whiskey sommelier from James’s bachelor party.” The mention of this makes Max scowl because it forces his brain to Charlie, who has his balls in a vise.

“Wait. Sadie said something,” Grant says, his brain churning through the details of my pain and plucking out the salient ones. “About wanting representation, but we already represent her brother-in-law?”

Max explains the situation fully. Perks up with the retelling, too. He especially enjoys the part where she was heard telling me to enjoy my blue balls.

Grant’s shaking his head. “Only you, Lucas.”

“Nothing happened.”

“You don’t sound too sure.”

I stab fingers through my hair. “Nothing happened, but now all I can think about is the nothing that happened.”

“It’ll pass.”

I narrow eyes at him. “Like it did for you?”

Immediately I regret my glibness, because it’s clear that it didn’t for Grant. He’s been divorced for a year from Aubrey Gates—the woman I sent Trinity’s contact information to for the whiskey tastings—and we all know he’s not moved on. Law school sweethearts and Chicago’s golden couple, they were separated by something catastrophic, something neither of them will share with Max or me. Me I can understand—I’m the (relatively) new kid on the block, and while Grant and I have known each other for seven years, there are still areas he won’t open up to me about. But Max? He’s known them since uni and they’re clamlike on the topic of their relationship’s demise.

“I have a date tomorrow night,” Grant says.

Max and I unslump. “With who?” Said in unison, which makes us both smile. This is what we need to get us out of our funk. Some vicarious bonking.

“Woman I met at Gina’s bachelorette party.” That’s James’s bride-to-be. “Kelly or Callie or something.”

“You don’t know her name?” Max asks, incredulous.

“She put her number in my phone and told me her name. And it was really noisy with fucking Abba playing and she was very, very drunk. Anyway, I called her and she just said hello when she answered.”

“Like you do,” I interject.

A Grant glower ensues. “No name. Not a clue. So we’re going out to dinner and I have to figure it out. Secretly.”

“You going to rifle through her purse when she’s at the loo?”

“That seems…” It takes a moment for him to pronounce. “Invasive.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” I grin, because it’s kind of funny and I’m happy to see him making the effort. “Glad to see you getting your wang back in the game, Lincoln.”

He looks uncomfortable. “It’s just dinner.”

“With a mystery woman!”

“I just—fuck, I have to move on. I’ve been in this holding pattern for over a year and I’m tired of it. When you told Max he had to be ripped out of his rut, it made me think. I wasn’t going to even call her—whoever she is—but I figured you were right. We need to have our lives shaken up.”

Three days ago, Max found out that I might have been fucking with his life. The Twitter version: I convinced his ex to dump a puppy on him in Lincoln Park while he was flirting with another woman with the aim of making Max mix up his routine, and maybe apply this freewheeling ’tude to the rest of his life. One of my finest pieces of work, I have to say. The evil plan hasn’t quite come to fruition just yet—the fair lady has not been won—but it’ll happen. And I’m proud to hear my wisdom might have had an impact on Grant, who’s not really the advice-taking type.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Quizmaster Steve’s voice rings out over our heads, telling us the festivities are about to begin. “Make sure your entry fee is in the pot and your drinks are on your table. Phones off. The first round of questions will be the classic ‘dead or Canadian.’ ”

Love it when they ease us in gently.

I stand and stretch, trying to shake off my jet lag. “Okay, I’ll get the drinks in…” Max looks at me expectantly, so I add: “And how about I pay our entry fee, too, Mr. Fucking Trust Fund, even though I paid it the last three times?”

“I donated that trust fund to charity, asshole. Besides I don’t carry cash. Like your queen.”

“Very convenient.”

I head up to the quizmaster and fork over the entry fee. It’s only twenty bucks, but I like taking the piss out of Max because even sans trust fund he’s still very, very rich.

“Team name?”

“Beyond a Reasonable Stout.”

“Lawyers?”

“How’d you guess?”

Quizmaster Steve looks unimpressed as he writes it on the chalkboard. Fuck off, it’s cute.

I turn to head to the bar to get the next round in and bump into the person behind me.

“Oh, sorry,” I say to a rumpus of wild, beautiful hair shot through with red and gold. My gaze dips to full, kissable lips, then raises to the chocolate-drop magnets staring back at me.

“Trinity!”

“Oh, you.”

“Here for the quiz?”

“Yeah, with my crew.” She thumbs over her shoulder to a table where I spot her coworker, the arsemonger barman I wanted to punch before he wanted to punch me, and a black guy in specs and a Doctor Who shirt. He must be their geek. Every team has one.

“You guys any good?” I probe.

She folds her arms, immediately cagey. It hikes up her lovely breasts, amplifying some stellar cleavage peeking out of a black tank top, so the joke’s on her. “We hold our own. How about you?”

“Maxie’s good for movies, Grant covers American sports, while I’m our authority on science, history, pop culture, international sports, and politics.”

“Is that all?”

I raise my hands in acceptance. “Yeah, you’re right, I’m holding the bloody team together. They’re fucking useless.”

She wants to laugh, but she doesn’t like me—or what I’m doing to her sister. I lean in close. “Can’t we put aside who we are to each other and marinate in a bubble of mutual attraction for a while?”

She takes a deep breath, her eyes lit by the fires of indignation. “I can’t ignore reality. You’re trying to destroy someone I love.”

“I’m trying to keep the playing field level. Everyone deserves legal representation.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You get paid and don’t have to witness the mess. I’m left behind to pick it up. You can’t seriously think I could forget about that.”

I seriously thought we could. I seriously thought she wouldn’t take what I’m doing so personally.

I put one of my investigators on the case so I know more about where Trinity’s coming from. Her mom and stepdad died when she was nineteen, leaving Trinity as her seventeen-year-old sister’s guardian. Emily married Brian a year later, but Trinity is obviously incredibly protective of her. There’s more here, a collection of jagged puzzle pieces I can’t yet visualize as a single image.

“Two minutes, ladies and gentlemen!”

“I need to pay my entry fee,” she mutters, looking away. Sighing, I step aside, order another round in, and when I turn back, she’s at her table talking to Treebeard. He shoots a dagger of a look in my direction. I smile back, because after getting wins for my clients, fucking with twats like this joker is my next favorite thing.

I glance at the team name board as I walk by, seeking out Trinity’s, and laugh hard, drawing a few weird looks.

Just the Tip, they’re called. Lucas likey.

All right, all right, time to see how far I can get with the quiz—and the fair Ms. Jones.

Trinity

Oh Lord in heaven, you have got to be kidding me…

Despite my chipper attitude on leaving Lucas’s office, for the last three days I’ve felt like a balloon that’s been slowly deflating. I was determined that our last encounter would be the end of any and all communication between us. Lucas Wright is Trinity Enemy No. 1 (okay, No. 2 after Brian), and there’s a snowball’s chance in Scottsdale that he’ll ever get inside my panties.

This should be easy. It was merely an almost-kiss. And while he’s good-looking, he’s not exactly Idris Elba or Chris Hemsworth levels. (That I defaulted to guys with accents there is merely a coincidence. Quit judging me!)

I’ve no doubt I’ll survive not getting it on with Lucas Wright. Don’t have to see him. But the “don’t have to see him” stratagem only works if I truly don’t have to see him.

Working in a bar means that I usually choose not to spend all my spare time in other people’s bars, but I haven’t been out with the boys for a while. We used to attend the Frog & Footman’s quiz on a regular basis before my spare time was hijacked with first, comforting Emily, and second, The Incident a couple of months back that shook me to my core.

I want to get back to the person I know I am: the good friend, the bon vivant, the woman who might actually have a chance at sex with a guy. Not that quiz night is a magnet for talent, but at least I’m putting myself out there with two of my besties as my wingmen.

Gideon glowers as I take my seat. “Is that—”

“Yes,” I say before he can finish.

“Universe must be telling you something.”

“That it hates me.”

Pete raises an eyebrow, then a pint to his lips. “What’s the problem?”

“Thought you liked Hottie Brit.” Gideon again, slightly accusing.

“Hottie Brit?” Pete cranes his head and immediately hones in on Lucas despite the fact there are approximately one zillion adult males here. “Guy with the cheekbones that could cut a tomato can?”

“The very one,” I say with a glare at Gideon. I had shared the HB nickname with him in confidence. Of course I should realize that anything I say to Gid will be immediately passed on to his boyfriend. If I had a man I could trust, I’d probably tell him deep, dark secret stuff, too—like how I confided in Lucas the other day in his office. About my mom’s neglect and how responsible I feel for Emily.

Annoyed with where my thoughts have strayed, I rush on to explain to Pete. “He was in the Library last week with a bachelor party and then—”

“Round one!” the quizmaster’s voice booms to all four corners of the bar. “Dead, Canadian, both, or neither. An easy one to get you started. Alec Guinness!”

I jot down dead on our answer card. “He’s Brian’s lawyer.”

“Who?” Pete asks. “Alec Guinness?”

“Hottie Brit,” Gideon says, as if Pete’s query was serious.

“Question two: funnyman John Candy!”

I make the annotation for dead. Pete takes the quiz sheet from me, crosses it out, and writes both.

“He’s kind of hot.”

“John Candy?” I ask, knowing we’re not talking about him. Sorry, John Candy, wherever you are.

“So now she can’t—” Gideon locks his two index fingers together to make a chain link.

“She can’t what?” I say.

“Bang him.”

Both Pete and I stare at Gideon.

“Honey, I know you’re gay, but that’s not how the hets do it,” Pete says. “It should be—” He jabs a finger into his rounded finger and thumb on his other hand.

“You know what I mean,” Gideon says, annoyed. “She thought he was a perv, poured a beer on his head, flirted her ass off. Some quality meet-cute stuff there. Now she’s ready to get busy except they’ve got a Pride and Prejudice crossed with legal ethics thing going on.”

The legal ethics thing I understand. The rest…“What?”

“Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson! Dead, Canadian, both, or neither?”

I squint at Pete, who makes the call. “One of our neighbors to the north. Citizenship through his grandfather.”

Impressive. “Where are you getting the P and P thing from?” I ask Gideon.

“Well, Darcy is pretty much responsible for destroying Elizabeth’s sister’s happiness. That’s your main gripe—his impact on Emily’s future. And he’s British.”

Gid might be onto something here. I’m not sure why I care anyway—it’s just a guy. There are tons of guys and plenty who can service my sex-deprived body. It doesn’t have to be that guy, and it won’t be because he’s the enemy. Capisce?

As luck would have it, Lucas is currently wearing an outfit designed to ensure he won’t be getting any himself—as in sex. Green and blue plaid pants, or as he’d probably say—tartan trousers—that even fashion-challenged golfers would spurn, paired with red, bordering on pink tennis shoes. His well-defined chest muscles are undergoing a containment situation in a gray tee with the slogan: Show Me Your Torts. Really? Who’s the audience for that?

He catches me checking him out and wiggles his eyebrows. Tingles shiver-shock across my body, making my skin tight and my belly loose. Apparently, I’m the audience for that.

Hunkering down, I devote the next few minutes to the rest of the questions.

“So endeth round one. Hold up your cards for collection!”

I can’t help taking a quick glance in Lucas’s direction. He’s smiling back at me, smugly gorgeous. I scowl and look away.

Pete gives a slow clap. “Nicely done.”

“Oh, shut it.”

The powers that be count up the scores in the first round and make announcements.

“Who the hell is Without a Reasonable Stout?” Pete asks, immediately miffed that we’re in third behind Blood, Sweat, and Beers and this interloper.

Again I glance over. Again I find a response, though this time it isn’t a smirk, it’s an all-knowing grin.

“Fucking lawyers,” I mutter. Lucas Wright and his posse are going down.

After two more rounds—finish the lyrics (my specialty) and sports (Gideon’s), we’re in joint second behind Lucas’s team. I can’t believe those legal bastards are doing so well. Look at how one of them is dressed!

A ten-minute break halfway through facilitates visits to the smallest rooms and liquid replenishment. I run into Lucas outside the women’s restroom because of course I do. He’s leaning against the opposite wall, texting. I think he might be waiting for me and there’s that flutter again behind my rib cage.

He raises his gaze. “Having fun yet, Ms. Jones?”

“I assume you guys are cheating.”

He clutches his chest, wounded. “Care to make it interesting?”

My pulse skyrockets as the air’s molecules start to whir around me. “What did you have in mind? We win, you tank my brother-in-law’s case?”

“We win, you have to go on a date with me.”

“You just said you can’t. That we can’t.” And there I go sounding disappointed again.

“I said we would have to get permission from my client.”

I scoff, imagining how Brian would love to lord that over me. No, thanks.

“Not interested in sleeping with the enemy.”

“I can assure you there wouldn’t be much sleeping.”

He still hasn’t moved from the opposite wall, but I sense the weight of him as if he was hovering over me. In his stifling presence, I feel drugged, a limp noodle of lethargic lust.

“As soon as you give me the green light, we can resolve all this unresolved sexual tension,” he murmurs. Still not moving. Still projecting that tractor beam of raw magnetism.

“Don’t worry. I can take care of it all by myself.”

And that sounded like an admission that the UST exists.

“Are we talking toys here? Or are you thinking you can use some sort of placeholder to ease some of that pressure?” He shakes his head like I’m a fool who doesn’t understand what’s happening. Like I don’t understand the science of it.

“Don’t worry yourself so much with what I’m thinking.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking what our first kiss would be like.”

Every part of me clenches in lust. It’s just science, I insist. Chemistry.

“I’m thinking I’ll back you up against a wall.” Like the wall that’s currently, barely, holding me up. “And I might grip your wrists and put them behind your back because I suspect you’re kind of handsy.”

I snort my disagreement. He can’t possibly know I’d love to fill my hands with that most excellent ass…

He continues. Relentlessly. Cruelly, even. “Yeah, you’ll want to grab my arse or run your fingers through my hair, but I’ll need to put my foot down that first time. I’ll need to impose my will, make sure you know I intend to kiss you thoroughly and professionally.”

A pause makes the air around me sigh.

“My mouth will hover near yours, and our noses might kiss first, because noses usually like first dibs. But it won’t happen until…”

Another pause. It’s excruciating. I refuse to participate verbally. Meanwhile, my pussy is lining up to volunteer as tribute.

“You close your eyes, Trinity. And when you do, my lips will brush yours so fucking gently that you’ll gasp. Your lips will part and your tongue—Jesus, that sweet, sweet tongue—will dart out to wet your lips and mine. An invite. And then I’ll know I can go all in. Move my lips over yours. Love that sweet mouth until you’re moaning. Until it’s mine.”

He stops talking and the silence is worse. The silence is unbearable.

“Not happening,” I croak, willing myself to walk away, one heavy, lust-poisoned foot at a time. Behind me I hear—oh, God—singing. Instantly recognizable, it’s that Billy Paul classic from the seventies. Remember it?

“ ‘Me-ee aa-and Mrs., Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Jones!’ ”

“Stop that!” I hiss over my shoulder.

He does not. “ ‘We got a thing…goin’ on…’ ”

I pick up the pace as I walk back into the bar. He doesn’t follow, but the words of the song do.

“ ‘We both know that it’s wrong, but it’s much too strong, to let it go now.’ ”

“Whatcha smiling about?” Pete asks when I sit down with a new round of beers. (I don’t spend money on top-shelf whiskey in other people’s establishments.)

I wipe that smile clear off, realizing that it stayed on my face all through that drinks order.

“Nothing.” What is Lucas Wright’s game? He knows zilch can happen—him for his ethics reasons, me for my own. I can’t possibly be with a man whose aim is to inflict catastrophic damage on my sister. Yet he’s doing his utmost to charm me and forge a connection between us.

I renew my commitment to the quiz. After three more rounds, we’ve caught up to the lawyers and are now running neck and neck. I had an especially good round on history (Sir Edmund Hillary, first man to climb Everest, was from New Zealand, not the UK—take that, colonial imperialists!).

I don’t bother to be sneaky about my glance toward the lawyers as we head into the final round. I’m happy for them to know that they are about to be crushed in the hellfire of pub quizzery.

Max greets me with a cheerful wave. The other guy—Grant?—gives a subtle nod of respect. As for Lucas, he does a two-finger prong to first his eyes, then mine, and finishes with a thumbs-down gesture. All with a cheeky—and yes, sexy—grin.

How can I stay mad at this guy?

“Ladies and gentlemen, the final round!”

“Please don’t let it be Harry Potter. Please don’t let it be Harry Potter,” Pete chants.

“Harry Potter!”

“Fuck!”

So inevitably your average pub quiz hosted in your average British pub will offer a question or two on the works of J. K. Rowling. And while our team is of an age where we should have read Harry Potter, none of us have ever quite gotten around to doing the deed. Those books are thick! And there are seven of them! I’ve seen the movies, because awesome aunt here, but the questions are usually a touch too esoteric to be covered by those.

I recall that jigsaw in Lucas’s office and another look his way tells me all I need to know: We’re screwed. He’s wearing that smile I despise that also happens to do things to me. Wicked, wanton things.

The quizmaster continues. “On which street would you find Borgin and Burkes?”

Lucas and Co. get busy scribbling, while Trinity and Co. get busy grumbling.

We lose. Badly.

Flush with the pot for the evening, Lucas hops up on a wobbly bar table, does a dance that highlights his trim hips and amazing ass—even in those ridiculous plaid pants—and launches into a tuneless “We Are the Champions.” Subtle he is not.

Max wanders over, Grant trailing him. Lucas is too busy signing beer mats no one asked for.

“How about we buy you a drink?” Max asks. “Show you we’re not all sore winners.”

“Sure you should be consorting with the enemy?”

He smiles kindly. “I think we can be adults about this.”

Problem is I want to do very adult things to Lucas Wright. Absent that, I’ll plunder him in other ways. “I’ll have a glass of Glenmorangie eighteen year.”

Max’s smile stretches wide. “Why do I get the impression you’re about to relieve us of our winnings in one round?”

“The hazards of drinking with whiskey experts.”

Five minutes later, Max is in a deep debate with Pete over the damage someone called Steven Moffat has or has not done to Doctor Who. Grant and Gideon are talking about baseball. I’m on the periphery of both these conversations, wanting to contribute but having too little expertise, when I’m nudged by an elbow.

“Bad luck there, Ms. Jones,” Lucas says. Whispers, really, which makes it all seem so much naughtier.

“I wouldn’t say that. You won fair and square with your oddly encyclopedic knowledge about a children’s book. Not weird. Not weird at all.”

Something flashes across his face, a shadow that disappears as quickly as it came. “Can I help it if I’m a master of all trades?”

“Hmm, not the phrase.”

“It is when we’re talking about me. I’m very good. At most everything.”

“Modest, too.”

He tilts his head. “You have problems with self-confidence?”

“Just braggarts.”

“Don’t you consider yourself an expert in whiskey? Don’t you advertise yourself as such? What’s the point in pretending you’re only somewhat knowledgeable at something when you’re the best there is?”

I seek to unpack that. “People are put off by overconfidence,” I say carefully.

“Should I substitute men for people in that sentence?”

A foreign heat warms my chest while Lucas’s blue-on-blue eyes cut through me. My friends don’t condescend about my ambitions, but my family—my sister—has never really understood why I chose my profession (So manly! Unless it’s a strategy to find a man? Is it?).

I respond with, “A whiskey sommelier isn’t a traditional job for a woman.”

“Harry Potter’s not the traditional reading material for a divorce lawyer,” he shoots back.

“So why do you love it?”

“Why do you love whiskey?”

I think of my granddad and the time when I felt safe and secure. “Nostalgia. Longing. Soothes the senses and feeds the soul. It also feels good to…understand an entire world of taste. Of sensation. It’s a world I can dive into and control.” I shake my head. “I’m not making much sense.”

But I am to Lucas. I can tell what I’ve said has struck a chord somewhere deep inside him. A private place I’d like to visit. I curl my hand into a fist to stop from touching him.

“You, too?” I whisper, the intimacy of the moment shocking me. “With Harry Potter?”

Now his smile is tinged with sadness. “Me, too.”

My heart contracts. Behind the clown in the ridiculous plaid pants is a man in pain. Worse, I want to know him.

Lusting after him was safer. Despising him after discovering his mission was logical. But this? Peeling back a layer in Lucas’s good-time-lad façade gives me chills.

“I should go,” I say, which conveniently coincides with Gid and Pete offering me a ride home.

Lucas nods, pulls away. Something shudders between us, and I tell myself it’s for the best. “Yes, you should. See you around, Trinity.”

Not if I can help it. I’m starting to realize that Lucas Wright is a hundred times more dangerous than I previously thought.