Free A Little Harmless Lie 4 by Melissa Schroeder Page A

skittish.
    “A bartender who doesn’t keep alcohol at home. I’ll take a glass of water.”
    She looked back over her shoulder and made a face. “By the time I was twenty- one, I was working in bars. And some of them make dives look good. There were a few with chicken wire to protect the band. Drinking alcohol had lost its thrill by then.”
    She handed him his glass of water and then poured one for herself.
    “I’ve got a nice lanai if you’d like to go sit outside.”
    What he’d liked to do was toss her over his shoulder and take her to her bedroom. But that wouldn’t be possible, and the back porch was probably the safest place at the moment. He nodded and followed her out. As he stepped out, the simplicity of it matched the interior. She had a small table, enough for two people, cheery red cushions on the black wire chairs. He waited for her to shut the door and settle in a chair before taking his.
    She took a deep breath. “God, I love nighttime here. The air is so sweet.”
    He licked his lips and then caught himself. He was starting to act like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood . “You said you worked in bars by the time you were twenty- one. I take it you lied about your age.”
    She laughed and glanced at him. “Most of those places paid under the table.”
    He studied her for a second. “Yeah? How old were you when you started working at them?”
    She rolled her shoulders and he hid his smile behind his glass. That was definitely one of her tells. When a customer was irritating her, Dee tended to do that with her shoulders. It was nice to know that he was getting to her.
    “Eighteen.”
    She glanced at him again when he said nothing, just sipped his water.
    “What, you have nothing to say against that?”
    He shrugged. “What am I going to say about that?”
    She relaxed against the chair. “People always seem to have an opinion about it, like I should have done something else.”
    “I can’t talk. I was working the tables with a fake ID in Vegas when I was sixteen.”
    Her eyes widened at that. “Sixteen? I could have never gotten away with that. Especially in Vegas.”
    “Vegas isn’t any different than anywhere else. Just have to know the right people.”
    She paused and then looked at him. “Yeah, I guess, but with my stature, most people questioned my age up until a couple years ago.”
    “That’s not something that I had to worry about. Not at my height.”
    “You were this tall at sixteen?”
    He nodded. “I was over six feet by fourteen.”
    Her eyes widened. “Wow.”
    “So, you worked dives. How did you end up here?”
    It was her turn to shrug. “I just needed a change of place.”
    The vague answer irritated him. Granted, he had talked to the man she had worked for in Seattle and he had told Micah how much he’d hated to let her go. So apparently there hadn’t been a problem with the work situation. He wanted to press, more than was good for him. The woman intrigued him on so many levels, but he had learned too many questions would have her closing up.
    He let the silence stretch as they enjoyed the Hawaiian night. It was hard, because he wanted her. Her spicy scent mingled with the Hawaiian air. Every fiber of his being was telling him to take her, to pull her up out of that chair and lay her across the table, strip her naked—
    “Micah?”
    “What?” He bit out the word, his fantasy dissolving as he looked at the woman who had been the featured star of every one of his fevered dreams for the past six months.
    “Did you say something?”
    He pulled in a deep breath and shoved his hand through his hair. “No.”
    She lapsed into silence. Great way to seduce her, Ross. It didn’t escape his notice that he’d always been the one in control of the seduction, the way he liked it, and he was damned good at it. With Dee, he felt like a bumbling seventeen- year- old.
    By the time she led him back into the house he could feel the evening slipping away... along with his