Yeah, and if he left her here, any one of these other poor bastards was going to take his seat. For reasons he didn’t care to evaluate, that made his blood simmer.
Sighing and cursing himself for a damn fool, he reclaimed his spot next to her. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s just… Forget it. I don’t mean to be rude. I’ll buy you whatever you want.” He waved for the bartender.
“Oh, hell no. Not if I have to practically beg for it.” She intercepted the girl behind the bar before he could open his mouth. “Double Stoli and tonic.” Then she did a fair job of ignoring him while the bartender made it for her.
“Are you just fucking with me, or are you really pissed?” he asked, watching the TV screen in front of them as Kinsler grounded out to a chorus of groans from the other patrons.
“I’m not pissed. You’d know if I were pissed.”
Somehow he didn’t doubt that. “So this is…what for you? Vaguely annoyed?”
She cut him a look. “This is…‘whatever’.”
Ian raked a hand through his hair and began to wonder if he was starting to see what the guys at Dermamania had been talking about. Even Ghost had been wary of this woman, and not much rattled that guy. Hell, his girlfriend was a little scary in her own right.
“Look, I didn’t mean to offend you. It would be my pleasure to buy you a drink, but…I work for your brother and—”
“Please. Do not worry about my little brother.”
“Your little brother is my boss. You’re my client. And—”
“You never mix business with pleasure,” she supplied. “Got it.”
The way she purred that sentence in between sips of her drink, focusing on the “pleasure”… Oh goddamn, he wanted to mix it. He wanted to mix it hard. “It’s not…a hard-and-fast rule or anything.”
“Not hard and fast?”
Shit. He felt like a fucking mouse being batted back and forth between the paws of a very svelte, very cunning feline, and given that he’d spent all damn day thinking about her, he wasn’t sure he liked it. There was a certain perverse curiosity in wondering when she was going to stick her claws in, though, and maybe it was best to hurry her plan along. Whatever it was.
“What the hell are you doing?”
That got her attention, and her musical laughter surfaced again. “I’m not doing anything, Ian. Hey, look, I appreciate what you did for me today. Stepping up the way you did, and then calming me down when…things got weird. Seriously. Thank you. I should buy you a drink.”
“Nah…I’m good,” he muttered, still off balance from the delicate floral notes of her perfume and her sheer allure. “It’s my job. Nothing more.”
“Oh?”
“Well…” It had been more than that. He was a damn liar if he said otherwise. But he didn’t want her to know that. He needed to stay clear of this one. At all costs.
But this was a woman who knew her own power. She knew it so well that she could call bullshit on any pitiful excuse he tried to make up as to why he didn’t want her. Every man in this building wanted her, and she wore that knowledge. It shrouded her as surely as her dark curtain of lustrous hair. Whatever humiliation had befallen her a few months ago damn sure hadn’t affected her self-esteem.
“Yeah, it’s my job,” he finished lamely.
“You’re very good at your job, then. I see why Brian has such faith in you.”
“I appreciate that.”
Onscreen, Beltre took that moment to slam one out of the park, giving the Rangers the edge over the Blue Jays, and the room erupted in boisterous approval. Gabriella even joined in. “So you like baseball?” Ian asked once the shouts died down.
“I love it. Me and Mar—um, yeah, I used to go to Rangers games whenever I had a chance. Not often, but I loved it.”
“Me too. Kinda wish I were there right now.”
“Right? So if you wish you were there, why are you here?”
“Needed a fresh start. I knew Brian from some mutual friends we have in Dallas. Kara and Marco?”
“Sorry, I don’t know anything about many of Brian’s friends.”
“Oh. Well, they taught him—and me—everything we know. I worked in their studio, but they were saying he needed help here, so I came.”
“Just like that?”
“Like I said, I needed a new start.”
“Why?”
He sucked a breath in through his teeth. “I have my reasons.”
“Ooh, mystery.” She gave him a nudge with her elbow. “I like a mystery.”
She wouldn’t like this one. He damn sure didn’t. “What about you?” he asked. “You’re here, wishing you were there too.”
Gabriella sighed, twirling her glass on the polished bar. “Don’t be too sure about that. At the ballgame, sure. Otherwise…not so much.”
He began to relax a bit, though it occurred to him that maybe it was a huge mistake to go off his guard around her. She was far more disarming like this. “I’ll be honest,” he said. “I knew a little about what happened to you before you came in. Brian didn’t tell me much, so don’t get mad at him. But I started working for him around the time it all went down, so yeah. He was so pissed about it.”
“It’s okay. The entire town and all of the Dallas medical community know, so why should you have been any different?”
What the hell did he say to that? How did someone go through something like that and come out on the other side as this fierce creature? He could see now, though, beneath the veneer of the seductress who had slithered up to him tonight, real pain. The same pain he’d glimpsed earlier today. “I can see how it would be hard to go back home and face everyone after something like that.”
“I’ll be going back. I just figured I’d wait out the summer, let a few more scandals erupt, and by the time I head back in the fall, no one will really care about my stupid wedding.” She chuckled without much humor.
“Non-wedding,” he reminded her.
This time, her laugh had humor, and he couldn’t help joining in. “I call it The Wedding That Wasn’t.”
“Fuck weddings. Be anti-wedding.”
“Oh my God, right? Be damned before I go through that stupid shit again. My other brother and his wife got married on the beach in Hawaii. I could do that. But the whole big-church, hundreds-of-guests, fairy-tale thing…yeah. Fuck that.” She held up her glass, and he clinked his bottle against it.
“In fact…we’ll go picket against all weddings now,” he said.
“It just makes me want to go speak out at every one, and not hold my peace.”
“Right on. They’re all making a terrible mistake anyway.”
She seemed to consider a moment and finally shrugged. “I don’t know so much about that. I mean, I can look to my own parents—they made it. Both my little brothers seem to be madly in love. I’m surrounded by so much freaking happiness, while being deprived of my own, and it’s sickening.”
“Hmm.”
She killed her drink and turned to face him fully. “So how about you? Was I making a play for a taken man or something?”
A prickle of warning crept up his spine. He drank his beer, not meeting her eyes. Because then he would be doomed. “Making a play, huh?”
“Wouldn’t be much use in denying it.”
Yep, just keep staring at the bar. Don’t look at her. Eyes down. “No, not taken. No wife, no girlfriend.”
She nodded, then pulled her purse around and dug inside for her wallet. He looked at her only when he was certain he wouldn’t meet the magnetic pull of her eyes.
“Hey, I’ll get your drink. Really, let me. I want to,” he said.