Free Four Dukes and a Devil by Jeaniene Frost, Cathy Maxwell, Tracy Anne Warren, Sophia Nash, Elaine Fox

breath.

    Across the bar, Sam Gregory eyed the young woman with great curiosity. She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in this bar. Which was saying nothing. But she might also be the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in Wellfleet. Or in Massachusetts. Hell, maybe anywhere.
    In the light from the neon Budweiser sign over the bar, her skin glowed like a white sand beach in moonlight. Her wide eyes shone like sea glass under elegantly lean brows. Add to that her thick wavy hair and ballerina bearing, and he was turning into a poet trying to justify why he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
    Then there was that demure little smile with the upraised lashes she’d given Roy. Roy, who’d thought she’d ordered “some Grecian formula” when she’d said “Pinot Grigio.”
    He chuckled to himself. She was a fish out of water, all right. Though not as out of water as she had been that morning.
    For unless he missed his bet, he was certain this was his Schwinn-riding Lady Godiva. And he’d be a fool not to come to her aid now that he’d been given a second chance.
    The question was, how did you go about mentioning to a woman you’d never met that you had her clothes?

    Gray sipped her wine fast, eyes darting around the bar, trying to pick out who wouldn’t scare her to death if they came over to talk. Or who, if it came to it, she might consider going to talk to herself. She hadn’t really considered what to do once she’d braved the door, and was wondering if perhaps throwing out one’s entire personality was really the route to take to become someone new.
    But really, didn’t she owe it to her commitment to change to give it everything she had? Surely riding naked through town on a bicycle had been the start of something momentous.
    Then again, it might have been enough for one day.
    A stringy-haired woman in the corner nursed a brown drink in a short glass, but she looked glassy-eyed and despondent, and seemed already to be talking to someone despite the fact that no one was near. It seemed naïve to think she might be wearing a Bluetooth when her shoes didn’t match.
    There were two men drinking and watching ESPN on the TV, but neither of them looked particularly friendly. In fact they both looked a little tough, with their thin hard faces and sinewy tattooed arms.
    There was a guy playing a pinball game, and another playing video poker, and then there was the sumo-wrestler bartender, who had not indicated any sort of interest in a conversation with her beyond “red or white.”
    Finally, there was a tall thin guy in worn khaki shorts and a faded red tee shirt coming around the bar with a beer in his hand. A Budweiser, of course.
    Where had he been? she wondered. She hadn’t noticed him before, but then half the bar was so badly lit it was hard to see beyond the glare of the oversized TV hanging in the corner of the well where the liquor bottles were.
    He was normal-looking, she thought, eyeing him covertly. Which was a good thing because it looked as if he were coming toward her.
    Sure enough he sat down next to her, straddle-legged on the stool, facing her.
    “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a dump like this?” he asked pleasantly. His voice was low and had a husky quality to it that made the cheesy come-on seem more intimate than it would have otherwise.
    Make up that line yourself? she wanted to ask, but that would have been rude. And despite the fact that Rachel would have said it, Gray smiled, and said, “Do you think this is a dump?”
    His eyes, light-colored and sharp in a face that was otherwise friendly, made a slow loop around their surroundings and lit back on her. “I think it defines ‘dump.’ Don’t you?”
    People were awfully blunt here. Must be a northern thing, she guessed, and chalked it up as something else she needed to try. Bluntness.
    “I suppose I do,” she said, her tone emerging primly.
    She picked up her wineglass. The beverage was more