Heart's a Mess (2 page)

Oh, holy fucking shit.

Alex closed his eyes as his world crashed
around him.

The board was covered in Duncan’s scribble,
but still perfectly, horribly legible. The woman cocked her head and stepped
closer. Of course she did. Alex could just feel the lawsuit creeping up on him
like a sucker punch waiting to happen. All those years of hard work, undone in
one stupid moment. He couldn’t bear to watch.

“Please don’t look at that,” he said
softly.

“And a bar graph too,” she noted.

“Please. Violet…” What could he possibly
say? He braved opening his eyes. Damn it, she was still looking.

“Huh,” she said. “That’s really detailed.”

“What?” Marie turned, taking in all of it,
no doubt. “You idiots.”

Their restaurant manager of ten years gave
them a sweeping, scalding glance. Marie had been with them so long, she’d
become a part of the family, a sister almost. Well, to him and Duncan. How John
felt about her, who knew? John often had all the emotional responses of a rock.

Marie swept out without further word.
Violet, sadly, stayed in place, staring at all the damning evidence. “Well, at
least my name’s not on there.”

“It’s kind of a funny story.” Duncan rolled
to his feet, one hand covering his burgeoning black eye. “A-actually.”

“Don’t,” Alex warned, climbing back into
the upright position a little more slowly. He hurt in more ways than one. His
whole world had filled with pain. No hangover could compare.

“Fix this,” his brother John ground out,
then left.

Duncan wandered out after him. “I’m gonna
go get some ice.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Alex muttered,
wandering over to stand beside the stunned woman. What the hell must she think?
He cleared his throat and gathered his excuses. They didn’t come easy. “I’m so
sorry about all this, Violet. You should never have been exposed to such
unprofessional behavior, let alone this.”

He waved a hand at the whiteboard. Fuck. It
got worse every time he saw it, especially considering how it must seem from
her perspective. The jazzy little doodle of lacy lingerie Duncan had done in
the corner just compounded the issue. His brother had quite the artistic streak.
“Umm, listen, you’re new here so you don’t know us very well yet. But we would
never—”

“It’s fine.” Green eyes stared back at him,
wide and unblinking. She had the strangest expression on her face. He couldn’t
read her at all. In her high heels they stood almost eye to eye, but it didn’t
help one iota. It felt as if she looked right through him. “Really, Alex.”

“It is?” he asked.

“Yep.” Her smile had sharp edges. “Boys
will be boys. Let’s pretend this never happened.”

“But—”

“I really should get to work. You should
probably mop up your face. Your lip’s bleeding a little there, in the corner.”
The woman started backing away as though she couldn’t get out of there fast
enough. As if he were poison. “And we’ll just forget this ever happened. Okay?
Great.”

“Great?”

“Great,” she confirmed with that uneasy
smile. Then she left. Warp speed couldn’t compare.

For minutes he watched the doorway,
waiting. Nothing happened. He was too stunned to be relieved. That and he hurt.
His knuckles ached and his lip, as told, was indeed bleeding from one corner.
But the major catastrophe had been diverted, somehow. Everything had turned out
fine. Huh.

Excellent. Great.

Alex put his hands on his hips and took a
deep breath, first one and then another, searching for some calm. Yep, a nice,
big inhalation, straight through his nose…

It sent the faint floral scent rushing
through him. Pouring in and filling every atom of his being, better than any
drug.

His head shot up. “Fuck me.”

* * * * *

Violet limped to the staff room at the end
of her shift, more Band-Aids than she’d ever imagined possible adhered to her
feet. Damn those sexy, confidence-enhancing shoes. Kill them in a fire. Being
sacked would have been preferable to spending ten hours standing up in them.
Never, ever again.

“Hey, Violet,” a voice said from behind
her.

A truly lovely male voice with just the
right amount of rough dwelling in its seductive depths. The things that voice
had said to her last night.
Take it off. Touch me here. Don’t stop. You feel
soooo damn good, sweetheart.
Her temperature spiked at the memory, as if
she were baking beneath the summer sun. Alex apparently loved to talk and she
definitely loved to listen.

But this was bad. What she needed was to
remove her shoes. Remove her shoes, get a drink and then to bed. But not with
him, never ever, ever again with him. Because that would be asking for trouble.
She’d had enough of that in her life.

“Hi, Alex,” she said without turning. The
visual stimulus wasn’t required. Nor was him catching sight of her suddenly all-too-obvious
straining nipples. Stupid, perky pricks. “I thought you were behind the bar
until closing.”

Sunday through Thursday the restaurant
closed at nine and the bar at eleven. Her hopes and dreams of a smooth and
speedy getaway had rested upon it. Her need to get the hell away from him sat
right up there with her need to remove her shoes. Escape couldn’t be more than
nine, ten meters away at most. She only had to get out into the hallway and
then through the back door. Her car couldn’t be another five or six meters
after that. Fifteen meters say, and she’d be home free. She could do it. She
could and she would, whilst keeping her job, because he didn’t remember.

On one level, his drink-induced amnesia
niggled. But on a hundred more she felt profoundly grateful for the fact. All
night she’d taken her drink orders to Duncan, doing her best to avoid Alex. Her
eyes, however, had strayed toward the man every chance they got. He’d given her
a few bland smiles. Comforting, impersonal nods and nothing more. She’d felt
safe, up until now.

“No,” he said. “Duncan and I take turns
closing up. Tonight’s my night off. Normally I’d have been out of here an hour
ago. But I was waiting.”

“Yeah?” Violet threw open the locker to
grab her handbag, doing her best to listen.

And stopped. There was her bra. Neatly
folded and sitting atop her bag.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice coming closer.
“I thought we could talk.”

Motherfucker.

She’d forgotten all about the stupid thing.
Getting away had been her priority the night before. Forgetting it ever
happened had featured predominately throughout the day. Evidence of their
sexual escapades had skipped her mind entirely.

The bra wasn’t one she wore often. It had
been a gift from a friend and the band was a bit tight. Losing it hadn’t worried
her anywhere near as much as it should have, clearly. When she’d gotten home,
she’d torn off her clothes and dumped them in the laundry basket, doing her
best to forget what she’d been up to. Who she’d been all over. Worry about the
possible repercussions had filled her mind. Missing lingerie had been the least
of her concerns.

“How?” she asked, dry-mouthed.

“I remembered your perfume.”

Violet closed her eyes, shutting it all
out. It didn’t work. He stood close enough now that she could feel the warmth
of his body, the weight of his stare. And her job, her beautiful job, it was
slipping away like sand through the hourglass. Shit.

“I think it might be best if we talk at
your place, yeah?” he said.

“Not in the office?”

“No,” he said. “This is personal. I don’t
want this affecting work.”

Her eyes shot open. “You’re not going to
fire me?”

“Absolutely not,” he said. “No, Vi. I
wouldn’t…look, whatever happened or happens in the future stays between us,
outside of this place. It doesn’t impact your job. We can both be professional
about this, right? We’re both adults.”

Her heart had a mini seizure. Just in case.
“It’s really okay?” she asked.

“It’s perfectly fine. I promise.”

Her ribs loosened their pincer grip on her
chest and she took a full, happy breath. It felt like her very first for the
day. “Oh. Good.”

Alex smiled back at her, blue eyes warm.
Really warm, bordering on smoking, smoldering hot. They were packed full of
affection and the promise of good times ahead. And holy shit, reverse
thrusters, because there wasn’t a single chance of that happening. She couldn’t
let it.

“In that case, we have nothing to talk
about,” she announced. “I think it’s best if we just pretend this never
happened.”

“Wait—”

“It was a mistake, a huge mistake that will
never be repeated.” Violet grabbed her handbag and stuffed the bra deep inside.
“I’m really glad we could sort this out.”

“No,” he said. “We haven’t sorted anything
out. We need to talk.”

“This definitely doesn’t affect my job?”
she asked.

“Definitely not.”

She nodded. “Then that wasn’t an order from
my boss. This never happened. None of it. Good night, Alex.”

Like hell she’d get away from him that
easy.

Alex stood behind the bar staring at Violet.
Chillingly cold, foamy beer gushed over his hand, startling the crap out of him
as the glass overfilled. “Damn it.”

“That’s the sixth time you’ve done that,”
said Duncan helpfully.

“Shut up.”

“This hour.”

Alex gave his smirking customer, luckily one
of the regulars, an apologetic smile. “Sorry about that. Let me get you a clean
one.”

“I gave up keeping count for the day,”
Duncan told the customer.

“He would have had to take off his shoes.
Math was never his strong suit,” said Alex, finishing up with the fresh drink
and placing it on the bar. “That one’s on me, Reg.”

Reg nodded and smirked some more, moving
back to his table.

“Why don’t you just go talk to her and put
us all out of our misery?” his brother asked, throwing him a towel to mop up
the mess. “Go on. They’re finished serving dinner. It’s a quiet night.”

“Didn’t ask for your opinion.”

“Think of it as a gift. Catch her before
she heads out the door.”

Alex shook his head. “No.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Duncan moaned
melodramatically. “If I have to spend another day with you making cow eyes at
her it’s not going to end well.”

Alex ignored him.

“She looks hot in that low-cut top
tonight.”

His hackles rose. “Don’t.”

“Maybe I’ll go talk to her. Since you don’t
have the balls, and all.” Duncan grinned at him, amusement lighting his eyes.
Though Alex could only see the one. His brother had plastered his fringe down
over half his face to cover the black eye from two days back. “She looks like a
lot of woman to handle, if you know what I mean. Might be best if I take charge
of this particular staff situation.”

Alex had advanced on the little prick,
fists clenched tight, before he even knew what he was doing. “You want another
black eye?” he growled, loudly enough to make the closest pub patrons cast
curious looks in their direction.
Shit.

“No, numbnuts. I want you to grow a pair
and go woo the girl already.”

“She wants to be left alone.”

“Right. That’s why she’s sneaking looks at
you every time you’re not looking at her.”

That stopped him. “She is?”

Hope grabbed him by the throat.

Until John rapped his knuckles on the other
side of the bar. “Service.”

“What do you want?” Duncan barked at him.

With one raised brow, John leaned across
the bar. “You two idiots are making a scene. Again. Cut it out. And give me a
bottle of the ‘01 Mount Cooma. I’ve got some truffles that I want to try it out
with.”

“He won’t go talk to her,” Duncan said,
reaching for the requested bottle of wine.

“That’s coming out of your pay,” Alex
informed his older brother.

John just shrugged. “It’s worth it. Who
won’t he go talk to?”

“Are you kidding me?” Dunc asked. “How
could you possibly not have noticed him drooling over Violet?”

“Violet?” John accepted the bottle,
checking the label with care. “That the new girl?”

“Yes,” said Dunc. “The one Marie’s training
up to manage the restaurant so she can have time off. You might recall we had a
meeting about it?”

His brother just looked at them blankly.
Which shouldn’t have surprised Alex but did. John’s range of focus was
amazingly narrow. If it didn’t directly involve him or his kitchen then the man
remained oblivious.

“You know, Johnny. Your world is a small,
pathetic place,” said Dunc.

“Wherein I am God.” John’s smile was all
teeth. “Marie doesn’t need help running the restaurant. What would she even
want nights off for? This place is her life.”

“I guess she wants more of a life,” said
Alex.

“Yeah. Right.” His older brother scoffed
and wandered away, bottle of wine in hand. “Bye.”

“You really want to end up like him?” asked
Duncan. “Spending your free time alone, jerking off to a bottle of wine and
some fungus?”

“Are truffles fungus?”

“Fucked if I know.” Duncan shrugged. “Go
talk to the girl. Please.”

His gaze zoomed straight to where she stood
wiping down a table. Didn’t matter where in the room she might be, he could
feel her whereabouts and immediately put his eyes on her. It was a hell of a
super power and a little scary, to be frank. Since when had he been so tuned in
to any woman?

Tonight she had on a plain black dress that
fit her just right, and as Duncan said, gave him amazing glimpses of an expanse
of creamy cleavage. It had short sleeves and the flowers tattooed on her arm
peeked out from underneath. Her hair was up in some fifties-style ’do and her
cherry-red lips shone like the sweetest ripe fruit. He had no idea how the
woman had gotten beneath his skin so fast but he wanted beneath hers,
constantly.

Marie said something and Vi threw her head
back, laughing raucously, completely unselfconscious. Something low in his guts
tightened. His dick knew exactly what it wanted and no one else would do. Fuck
she was pretty and what a gorgeous laugh. But as if conscious of his voyeurism,
she quickly stifled the sound and pinned her lips shut. Then she picked up the
cash bag and some paperwork, and headed toward the staff exit.

“Go get her, tiger,” Duncan said before
moving down the bar to serve a customer.

His feet were already moving.

Not following her was out of the question.

The office door clicked closed and she
heard the lock turn.

Violet wasn’t particularly surprised. What
with all the hot-and-heavy glances of the last few days, she’d known this had
to be coming. Unwise as it was, a part of her had even yearned for it.

She closed the safe door and spun the dial,
tugged once to test it. Then she got the hell off her knees and stood,
smoothing down her dress. “I was just finishing up for the night.”

“Hey,” said the tall, beautiful man.

“Boss.”

“Cute.” Alex chuckled and sat himself down
on the long leather couch pushed up against a wall. “See, the thing is, Vi.
It’s driving me crazy, not knowing what happened between us.”

“Nothing happened between us.”

“Now that’s a lie.”

“All right, we fornicated.”

He licked his lips and gave her a halfway
smile. “I get that. But I’m going to need more detail from you.”

“Oh, no…” She demurred, a hand rising in
protest.

“Please.”

“Such as?”

“Why don’t you come sit down so we can talk
about it?” He patted the seat beside him in invitation. “You’ve been on your
feet for hours.”

“True.” Vi grabbed the back of one of the
chairs situated in front of the big old desk, turned it to face him and sat
down. Her hands wrapped around the chair arms, fingers holding on as if she
expected takeoff to be imminent. Letting them roam free would be far too risky.
She wanted to touch him again too much.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

Another small smile from the man. “How did
we end up in bed together,
fornicating
, Vi?”

Meeting his eyes seemed impossible. She
studied the wall over his left shoulder, the whiteboard to his right. It had
been wiped perfectly clean, not so surprisingly. All mention of women’s breast
sizes and the lovely rendition of lingerie was gone. “Duncan invited me
upstairs along with everyone else for a drink after work,” she said, an
innocuous enough place to start. “But I was tired, so I was just going to say
good night and go. There were heaps of people and he was in the middle of a
conversation with some guy, so I decided not to disturb him.”

Alex nodded and stretched his muscular arms
out across the back of the lounge. Damn a hot man in a fitted t-shirt. He wore
it far too well.

“Go on,” he said.

“I was leaving when I saw you sitting on
the end of your bed. The door was wide open. Obviously.” Her thumbs rubbed at
the smooth polished wood of the chair. For days she’d done her best to wipe all
of it from her memory but now there it sat in full color, filling up her mind.
“You were just kind of staring into space, lost in your own thoughts. I knew
you’d obviously had a few but you were perfectly coherent when you spoke.”

“What did I say?”

Vi swallowed and studied her shoes.
Confessions had never been her strong point. “You just kind of looked at me.
Then you asked me to come in and shut the door.”

“And you did,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Because I was your boss?”

Her gaze shot to him as embarrassment and
anger rolled about inside her. And a good amount of mortification. “No! Shit,
Alex. I wouldn’t do that.”

“Okay. Okay. I’m sorry. But I had to know.”

“And now you do.” It took all her willpower
not to peg one of her shoes at the jerk’s head. Version two-point-oh, the good
girl, was less than impressed. Her heart bounced about inside her chest. “You
didn’t order it, as if things would be all doom and gloom if I didn’t comply.
You just asked me. All right?”

“Yes. I’m sorry,” Alex said. “So why did
you do it?”

“Well, you looked so lost. So alone.”

His brows pulled tight and he gave her a
pained look. “Please don’t tell me it was a mercy fuck.”

A startled laugh escaped her. “No. It
wasn’t a mercy fuck. Unless it was a two-way mercy fuck, I suppose. I just…”

“You just what?”

She felt horribly exposed. This was too big
a revelation, especially when she barely knew him. Her knees were pressed so
tightly together there’d be bruises later.

Alex didn’t move. He just watched her, waiting
her out. His short brown hair stuck up and his five o’clock shadow had kicked
in. The man had the most sublime face. Not classically handsome but stunning
just the same, long with a lovely jawline, the sort that beckoned to fingers
and lips. In her head she had a hundred and one reasons for why it had
happened.

No, a million.

“Tell me,” he ordered softly.

And it
was
an order, not a
suggestion. She felt it clear through to her bones. Her sex certainly knew the
difference. She crossed one leg over the other, all the better to rub her
thighs together. “I couldn’t walk away from you.”

“So what did you do, Vi?” he asked.

Damn it, she was completely under his
spell. Her mouth fell open and out it all came, beyond her control. “I closed
the door and I walked over to you. You were sitting with your legs spread, like
you are now. But you weren’t leaning back.”

“What was I doing?”

“You were looking at me.”

Alex’s eyes narrowed on her mouth. “Where?”

“My face. My breasts.”

He shifted slightly, widening his legs a
little more. “Did that bother you?”

She shook her head. “No. You didn’t look
lonely anymore. You, ahh…you looked hungry, I guess. It was a rush.”

His gaze fell from her face to the twin
areas of her anatomy in question. But that was okay, hers had glued to the
growing state of his groin. Something serious had happened behind the zip of
his jeans. Something that made breathing an issue.

“What happened next?” he asked.

Vi licked her lips, her mouth impossibly
dry. “You ran your hands up the back of my legs. From my ankles up to just
below the hem of my skirt.”

“You were wearing a skirt?”

“Yes. A skirt and a blouse.”

His gaze dropped to her legs. “Did you have
stockings or pantyhose on, or nothing?”

Her cheeks heated. They couldn’t do this.
They shouldn’t do this. Also, a hell of a time to have to admit to
control-brief pantyhose. Maybe a lie would do. But no, version two-point-oh
didn’t approve. And screw him, again, he could take her as he found her. This
hadn’t been her idea.

“Pantyhose,” she blurted out.

“Pantyhose, so they went all the way up.
Okay. What happened next, Vi?”

“I pulled my blouse out of the waist of the
skirt and I undid the buttons. You just…you kept your hands around the back of
my knees. You watched.”

“You took off your top?”

Vi nodded. “Yes, I took off my top.”

Her eyes were locked on his groin. His cock
looked huge, trapped inside his pants. The ridge made a stark contrast to the
flat of his belly and hips, the curves of his thighs. Her words had done that
to him. Nothing else. Knowing he’d gotten so hard eroded her mind. She had no
other excuse for what came out of her mouth next.

“Take it out.”

He held perfectly still. “Take what out?”

“Your cock. Take it out. I want to see,”
she said, her pride demanding she brazen it out. “If you want me to keep going,
then I want to see.”

Holy hell, the smile that curved his lips
had her stomach dropping from four floors up. She had the worst feeling she’d
just lost the battle.

But not the war, damn him.

“Keep talking,” he said, and his hands went
to his waist. Belt, unbuckled. Button, undone. Zip, lowered. He raised his hips
and shuffled his jeans down. Dark boxer briefs strained to cover him. The
woman’s eyes were all over him, exactly how he wanted. Damned if she would keep
him at a distance. He’d seduce Violet if it was the last thing he did.

“You’re not talking,” he said.

She licked her lips. “I took off my top and
you undid the zip on the back of my skirt. You pulled the skirt down over my
hips. And the pantyhose.”

“Did I say anything?”

“You told me I was beautiful.”

He slipped his hand beneath the waist of
his underwear. Taking it slow and putting on a show for her. He’d never done
anything like this before. But with her pretty face full of focus, and all of
it for him, it was kind of fun. “You
are
beautiful. Did you feel
beautiful?”

She nodded, her eyes tracking his hand’s
progress. “Yes, when you looked at me that way.”