He chuckled. “You sure the hell aren’t, baby girl.”
I sat, still taking it all in—and thinking about my words, and the lie hidden within them. Because even though I’d never been any place like this before, the truth was I found the whole environment rather intoxicating. I looked at the girls doing their moves around the pole, and I could imagine myself up there. All eyes on me. My leg hooked around that hard length of steel, and all the while that I was shimmying against the pole, it was Evan that I imagined I was touching.
I swallowed, looking down at the tabletop until I was certain that my face revealed nothing. I looked up just as the waitress arrived. She wore a top made of gauzy scarves crisscrossed over her breasts. An equally transparent scarf was tied around her waist in what resembled a bathing suit cover with no bathing suit beneath it. She slid a drink in front of Cole and a glass of red wine in front of me. “Shiraz,” she said. “I hope that’s okay?”
“Perfect. How did you—”
“Beth knows everything,” Cole said.
Beth smiled. “I even know that the liquor delivery is here. Since Mr. Sharp already left—”
“Yeah, yeah. Have Frankie check the invoice. Tell him I’ll be there in a minute.”
She nodded and hurried toward the far side of the room.
I leaned back in my chair. “So what’s the deal? You three work out of your downtown office during the week and come here for a little R&R on the weekends?”
“Fuck that,” he said. “Evan’s the one with the hard-on for a high rise. Tyler and me? We go in when we have to, but we work mostly out of the back.”
I cocked my head. “So this isn’t Evan’s kind of place?”
Cole’s eyes narrowed, but I just smiled innocently. “I didn’t say that, baby girl. But our Evan’s a man of many vices—and many virtues. I guess that makes him multifaceted.”
“I guess it does.”
Cole swallowed the rest of his drink, then thrust his legs out as he leaned back in his chair. “You gonna tell me why you’re here? What exactly does Evan owe you?”
“Cole, I love you to death, but you’re completely fucked if you think I’m telling you my personal business.”
He laughed. “You have more of your uncle in you than any of us gave you credit for.”
“I mean it. All I want to do is see Evan. When’s he going to get here?”
“I just wanna help, baby girl. And I get that there’s some shit between you and Evan right now. He told me what happened.”
“About the Da Vinci?” I asked, because I couldn’t imagine that Evan would have told his friend what went down in the alley.
It may have been my imagination, but I thought Cole sat up straighter. “The Da Vinci? You mean the Creature Notebook? What about it?”
I frowned, wondering why Cole was so keyed up about the notebook. Then again, Evan had been in a snit about it, too. “Jahn left it to me, and that didn’t make Evan a happy camper.” I peered at his face. “Or you, either, I’m guessing. But this is all news to you, which means it’s not what Evan told you about. So what did he say?”
For a moment I had the impression that he was going to force us to stay on the topic of ancient manuscripts. But then he seemed to change his mind. He shrugged casually. “The alley.”
I’m not sure what he saw on my face, but it made him laugh. “The Poodle on Wednesday, my fine establishment tonight. You’re certainly expanding your horizons, Dragonbait.”
I’d never until that moment fully understood what it meant to get your feathers ruffled. But mine were very ruffly indeed. “Fine,” I said snippily. “You win. I am expanding my horizons, and I want Evan to expand them even further. I want him to finish what he started. And I came here to convince him that he should.”