Eve ignored that. “He took the job. Send him up when you leave. I need to get him the paperwork.”
A few moments later a knock sounded at the open door. Even with her back turned as she put the deposit in the safe and spun the dial to lock it, Eve knew it was Chad because the firm rap of knuckles against wood made her heart speed up. “Just a second and I’ll get you an application and a W-4,” she said.
Seconds passed, then all the little hairs on the nape of her neck rose in unison. She peeked over her shoulder to find him staring at her. When she caught him looking, his gaze flicked around her office, pausing momentarily on the door leading to her apartment.
Then he looked back at her. A strange silence, thrumming with anticipation, stretched taut between them. In the wee hours of the morning the city was shrouded in a quiet that rang in her ears. Inside the brick bar, inside the cocoon of an office with no windows or doors to the outside world, she had a sudden, off-kilter sense they were the only two people awake, maybe even alive, in the world.
“Your paperwork,” she said as she held out the W-4 and the job application. “Welcome to Eye Candy.”
He closed the distance between them, took the paperwork and folded it lengthwise, slid it into his back pocket, and turned to go.
“Wait,” she said, flattening her hand in the middle of a broad expanse of chest covered in soft, skin-hot cotton. “Don’t forget your shirt.”
He stopped moving, but not because she was holding him in place, or because she’d startled him into a reaction. His reserve and discipline went deep inside, a dark well of restraint that, in the vibrating, late-night silence of her office, she wondered if she could ever fathom. Her breath halted in her lungs when his fingers wrapped around her wrist.
“I’m officially your employee now?” he asked, doing nothing more than encircling her wrist with his fingers. When she nodded, he added, “Not worried about a sexual harassment lawsuit?”
A hint of seriousness lingered under the teasing, testing note in his voice, so she left her hand where it was, smack in the middle of his broad, hard chest. “First, I’m dead broke, so suing me will get you nothing. Second, like I said, tell me you’re not interested and we’re done. Third, you’re harassing me. You ought to be illegal.”
A startled smile flashed across his face, then disappeared when she pressed her fingertips against the firmly muscled wall of his chest. His heart thumped steadily through muscle, bone, and skin. The temperature around them shot up ten degrees, and he brushed his thumb over her pulse, then removed her hand from his chest, turning it palm up in his firm grip. Cool air licked against flesh warmed by his body heat.
“I won’t lie,” he said, quiet and firm. “I’m interested. But that doesn’t mean we have to act on it immediately.”
“We’ll have to work on your up-selling techniques,” she said.
Another smile quirked the corners of his mouth while he circled two fingers in the hollow of her palm. Nerves fired and came alive under his slow, steady touch, somehow both soothing and tantalizing. Her eyes slid closed as she exhaled the breath she’d been holding since the first touch of his fingers on her skin then drew in fresh oxygen.
When she opened her eyes, she saw he was studying her, his gaze intent, his mouth soft with arousal. “You get a lot of fast and furious.”
“Comes with the territory,” she said.
“Twenty minutes of conversation, then your place or mine.”
He was still thinking? “Twenty’s on the high side,” she said, her voice breathy from the steady touch of his fingers.
“Let’s try something different. Let’s try slow.”
“Slow,” she repeated, as if he were speaking a foreign language. Which he was. The language not of impulse but of seduction.
“Conversations. Meals.”
Eight years in bars and nightclubs left her jaded to all but the most inventive lines, but this one gave her pause. “I work five nights a week. You want a meal, it’s breakfast at one in the afternoon or dinner at three a.m.”
“Any time,” he said, the words rumbling deep in his throat.
Chad had snared her attention, something curious flickering behind her newest bartender’s tall, dark, and mysterious surface. She let her hand slip free from his and put a couple of feet between them. “Good night, Chad.”
“Sleep well.” The words would have been friendly if not for the look in his heavy-lidded hazel eyes. Desire flashed through her like lightning, trapping her breath in the charged aftermath.
He stepped back and disappeared through the office door. Moments later she heard the front door open, then swing shut.