Ingenue's Choice (4 page)

Keir swallowed the urge to say what he was thinking and instead asked,

“We have a birthday boy present? This calls for a free drink.”

“I’m not…” Dharma’s friend cut himself off as his glance found Keir’s.

Keir didn’t know what the cutie had been about to say. He was only glad to get a look at the most stunning jade eyes he had ever seen in his life. Keir swallowed when Dharma’s friend bit his full bottom lip. He shook his head as if to gather his senses, and asked, “You’re not going to turn down my offer and hurt my feelings are you?”

“You don’t want to hurt the bartender’s feelings, do you?” Dharma chimed in.

“I’ll have whatever she’s having.”

Keir shook his head. “Special occasion calls for a special drink. I’ll mix you something off-menu you’ll love. Trust me.” His heart pounded as he left the pair at the bar to mix one of his specialties that had made him a favorite at another bar and had the owner putting the drink on the menu.

He didn’t regret leaving that other establishment. Keir had brought in a lot of business, and the man wouldn’t pay him what he was worth. On the other side of the spectrum,
Zara’s
paid him almost twice the average bartender’s salary.

Even at only part-time and with tips, he made enough now to pay the rent and to stay home and paint the rest of the time if he wanted and had the option of quitting his second job at the restaurant.

Keir hurried his mixing on the off-chance Dharma wasn’t able to talk her cute little friend into staying, His dick throbbed as he brought his concoction back to the bar.

“Mmmm, that looks tasty.” Dharma licked her lips at the whipped cream garnishing the top of the glass. “Do I get a free one too when it’s my birthday?”

she asked.

“Of course.” Keir smiled and hungrily eyed Dharma’s friend as he reached for the shot glass.

“What’s it called?” Dharma asked.

Ingenue’s Choice

27

“Blow Job #3. Oh, and one thing…” He caught Dharma’s friend’s wrist and stopped him from lifting the glass. “No hands allowed.”

Dharma’s friend frowned, looked from Dharma to Keir, then shrugged before clasping his hands behind his back and lowering his head to the shot glass.

Keir’s cock pressed against his zipper, painfully hard and erect as he watched him bend over, widening his mouth over the shot glass rim before throwing back his head and gulping down the drink in one swallow.

Shit, he almost came just watching that!

Dharma giggled and raucously clapped and bounced up and down in her seat like a cheerleader on speed.

Keir reached for the shot glass and eased it out of Dharma’s friend’s mouth, then leaned over the bar and licked a smear of whipped cream from the corner of his full lips before gently planting a kiss in the same spot. “That was some show,” he murmured.

“Did I do it right?”

“Oh yeah, you did it right.” Right and so damn good that if he’d done it any more right and good Keir would have been sporting a nice wet spot on the front of his jeans, and he hadn’t come in his pants since eighth grade.

The man hadn’t even touched him! But Keir
had
gotten a little taste of those luscious lips. It seemed this was all it took. “Dharma mentioned you would tell me your name when you reached the bar. So, are you going to tell me or are you going to make me guess?”

“Um…Patryk with a
y
and no
c
.”

“I’m glad you didn’t make me guess, even though I’m a very good guesser.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Keir followed Patryk’s tongue as Patryk slowly licked his lips.

He dragged his glance from Patryk’s mouth to his glittering jade eyes, almost gasping as if he’d been punched. He didn’t think he would ever get enough of the man’s innocent, wide-eyed gaze.

Was it possible Patryk was as innocent as he looked? Even with the way he had downed that drink he still came off as an ingénue, a naturally carnal ingénue, but an ingénue nonetheless.

28

Gracie C. McKeever

Keir just barely held in a growl at the memory of Patryk taking the shot glass into his mouth and managed not to leap across the bar to take Patryk’s freshly moistened mouth with his own. He cleared his throat to say, “Well, Patryk-with-a-y-and-no-c, I’m Keir.”

“Nice to meet you, Keir.”

Keir took the offered hand, liked Patryk’s grip. It was firm, but not too firm, leaving just enough room for Keir to tighten his own grip and command.

“Nice to meet you too.” He raised his free hand, buried it in Patryk’s luxurious waves, and almost moaned at the thought of how the silken strands would feel against his stomach when Patryk went down on him.

“A-hem.”

Patryk broke away and looked at Dharma.

“You still want to leave?”

Patryk looked from Dharma to Keir then glanced behind him and damned if Keir didn’t see the female Zack look alike again, smiling back at Patryk.

Did Patryk see her too or was
he
the only one going crazy?

“I have to go,” Patryk said, and before Dharma or Keir could stop him, he stumbled away from the bar and made a beeline for the exit.

Dharma threw some bills on the bar for her drink and a tip and rushed after her friend.

“Hey, wait!” Fuck, they were going to make it out of the bar without leaving a phone number and he didn’t even know Patryk’s last name!

Keir rushed over to Gio, the other bartender, and said he was taking a quick break and could Gio cover. He ran from behind the bar before Gio could respond and followed Dharma and Patryk’s path. At least he thought he had followed it, but by the time he made it downstairs and outside, there was no sign of either of them anywhere.

How many ghosts was he seeing tonight?

Shaking his head, Keir went back into the building and waited a few minutes at the elevator, thinking he might have made it down before them or somehow missed them en route.

Ingenue’s Choice

29

After a while, no one else came down—either out of the elevator or the emergency stairwell—and Keir headed back upstairs where he showed his ID

before he recognized Ramsey Logan, the bouncer on duty.

Ramsey was one of the first friends he’d made since he’d started the job a week ago. They had a lot of the same interests and same tastes, and often competed for the attentions of the same guys who visited the club.

Ramsey also didn’t miss a trick, his keen eyes and observational skills making him perfect for his bouncer-slash-security job.

Keir was just about to ask him about the couple who had left right before him when Ramsey held a folded paper napkin out to him.

“Lady left this for you on her way out.”

“The tall blonde that left here with the suit?”

“Nah. This girl was alone, caramel hair, blue eyes…kind of looked like Zack.”

Frowning, Keir took the napkin and almost jumped in ecstasy when he saw the first and last name and the phone number printed in bold caps on the napkin. “Looked like Zack, huh?”

Ramsey shrugged. “I said kind of looked like Zack. In this light, it’s hard to tell.”

Keir just grinned, knew that Ramsey had recorded every detail of the woman who’d given him the napkin down to the shade of fingernail polish she’d been wearing.

Either he was in denial or didn’t want anyone else to know that he had seen a ghost.

There are no such things as ghosts, man. There aren’t!

Keir shook his head as if this could make his denial truth.

Fuck it. He would worry about the mysterious woman, and whether he and Ramsey were going crazy, later.

For now, he would just focus on the name and number she had so graciously left behind and plan his strategy to lure the shy hotty to a night out away from the bar.

30

Gracie C. McKeever

“You do realize we just left Chaz,” Dharma said once they got outside and had walked a few blocks in search of the subway.

Patryk realized better than anyone that he had left his soul mate, is what he realized.

“Are you listening to me?” Even at five-foot-ten, Dharma struggled to keep up with Patryk’s long-legged gait. He knew it would have helped her cause if he wasn’t practically running down the street, but he just couldn’t manage to slow down until he felt he had put a safe distance between him and the breathing, walking, talking aphrodisiac back at the bar.

“What’s wrong with you?” Breathless, Dharma finally caught up with him and put a firm hand on his shoulder to stop him in his tracks.

Patryk turned to look at her.

“We left Chaz, and I’d like to know why.”

“Chaz is a big boy. I’m sure he’s not even missing us.” From what Patryk had seen on the dance floor, Chaz wouldn’t remember who he’d come to the club with, much less miss Dharma and him, at least not until Monday morning anyway.

“That’s not the point. We all came together, and it was rude to just leave without giving him a heads-up and the option to leave with us, whether he was open to it or not.”

“All right, Miss Manners. You’re right, and I’m sorry. I just…” He couldn’t bring himself to tell her, not just about his encounter in the bathroom with Zara, but his encounter at the bar with Keir.

Ingenue’s Choice

31

Looking into the man’s dark chocolate eyes made him feel as if he were falling into a bottomless, inky pool when he didn’t know how to swim. The man left him anxious and shaky and…hungry for any sexual foray Keir wanted to act out on his body.

He shuddered now at how naked he’d felt beneath Keir’s gaze, how vulnerable.

Patryk couldn’t decide which experience had rocked his foundation more—meeting Zara or having Keir lick excess whipped cream from his mouth.

He thought he should have been somewhat prepared for Zara. He’d seen and talked to a ghost before with his grandfather and was pretty well-versed in communicating with someone who wasn’t there as far as anyone else was concerned.

Zara was an angel, though, just a little different from a ghost. But wasn’t it the same principle? No one could see Zara but him. He’d be considered just as crazy if he mentioned his sighting to anyone whether she was a ghost or an angel.

Now Keir presented a whole other host of problems to Patryk’s psyche.

He was solid, all-real, flesh-and-blood man and couldn’t just be dismissed as a figment of Patryk’s imagination. Not that Patryk had to deal with him now. Keir didn’t have his last name or phone number, so there wasn’t really any way he could contact Patryk.

Unless some meddlesome angel intervened.

Patryk bit his bottom lip and wondered if Zara would do anything so underhanded. He wondered if she
could
. She knew his first name, so it would stand to reason that she knew his last and probably his phone number and…

“Damn it.”

“Patryk, are you okay?” Dharma stepped closer to put a palm on his forehead, and Patryk flashed back to Zara doing the same thing to him in the bathroom. He had to stop himself from laughing in her face and instead caught her wrist to lower her hand. “I’m fine, really.”

“You’re not acting fine.”

You wouldn’t either if you saw what I did.
“It was getting a little claustrophobic in there. I needed some air.”

Dharma’s frown turned to a smile. “You’re not fooling anyone, birthday boy.”

32

Gracie C. McKeever

“What are you talking about?”

“I saw how you reacted to Keir. It wasn’t claustrophobia. It was chemistry.”

More like spontaneous combustion if you asked Patryk, but since no one asked him, he decided to forever hold his peace.

Patryk shrugged, tried to play down his attraction, and get Dharma off the subject. “He’s a nice guy. How was I supposed to react?”

“Hmph. He’s nice all right.” Dharma smirked. “So, do his lips feel as good as they look?”

“I’m not answering that.”

“Don’t want to incriminate yourself or are you trying not to turn yourself on until you’re in private and can enjoy the fantasy more thoroughly?”

Patryk hooked an arm through Dharma’s and led her toward the subway a block ahead of them. “What does Miss Manners say about kissing and telling?”

“Okay, I’m being gauche. But give a girl a little something to work with here.”

“What, for when you go home to get busy with your vibrator?”

“You got it.”

“I hate to break it to you, Dharma, but I don’t think your Jack Rabbit can compare to or compete with Keir’s lips.”

“That good, huh?”

“You have no idea.”

“Well, aren’t you the lucky guy?”

Patryk wished he felt lucky instead of totally doomed.

* * * *

Zara hung behind at the club for several hours after Patryk’s abrupt departure, watching as the club’s employees went about the business of closing up shop.

Ingenue’s Choice

33

Everyone worked in sync and moved with the precision of a line-drive to the outfield.

Watching them all made her feel like a proud mama. She actually felt the sting of tears welling in her eyes at the thought that this club was born of her ideas.

Zara swiped the back of a hand across her eyes and sniffed, tried to get a hold of herself as she watched Quincy and Zack come from the back room, each with an arm around the other’s waist as they looked into each other’s eyes as if no one else existed.

She smiled, glad to see them happy together.

In a way, they had been her first assignment, her first match. Granted, she’d handled their case all wrong, had been a little too self-absorbed and selfish, to be sure, but she was here now to work on her modus operandi. She was in training, like she had told Patryk.

After only one meeting, she already liked him. There was something so sweet and wholesome about him, not jaded like she used to be, or like some of her friends still were.

She liked Keir, too, for totally different reasons. He was self-assured and confident, a born boss and leader, someone she would have admired in her former life, someone like Quincy.

Zara choked up again when she remembered all she had lost and what she had been willing to do to claim what she thought was hers.