Free One Night by Emma King Page B

good day.”
    I recognized the silky voice and my hand tightened around the glass. “You have a knack for witnessing my finest moments,” I said. I didn’t look up as I took a long drink.
    “Do you have a name, or should I just call you ma’am?” He turned to the bartender. “Scotch neat, please.”
    “You can call me ma’am, but you’ll be wearing my drink if you do.” I turned to him with a sweet smile on my face. “If you’d prefer to stay dry, you can call me Livy.”
    “Connor.”
    “Huh,” I said as I took his outstretched hand. The silver watch around his wrist probably cost more than my car.
    “Huh?” Connor cocked his attractive head and gave me a taunting smile.
    “Sorry. Nothing.” Internally I was thinking how surprising it was that Lana and Valerie had actually been right. Connor was disgustingly attractive, from his smoldering eyes to his come-hither smile. We would certainly have beautiful babies, assuming they were blessed with his genes. “Connor? Just one name? Like Cher or Madonna?”
    Connor’s smile tilted higher. “I’m more like Madonna than Cher, I’d say.” As he lifted his scotch to his lips, I tried not to think about what they would feel like against my skin. As if he could read my mind, one eyebrow raised ever so slightly. “Most people call me Connor. You can call me by my first name if you’d like. William.”
    “How about Will or Liam? I think I might prefer Willy actually.” As soon as the last one passed my lips I realized the double entendre. I couldn’t stop the flush from spreading across my cheeks.
    “Well that’s useful information.”
    “So you’re a friend of Trevor’s?” I tried to remember if the girls had told me anything else useful about William. Besides the fact that he was rich and attractive. Both of those things were blatantly obvious from one glance at his tailored suit and the toned body underneath.
    “We’re friendly.” William frowned. “I invested in his business.”
    “That technology startup that failed?”
    “I didn’t say it was a good investment.” William glanced toward the dance floor which was now beginning to fill with people. Trevor and Lana stood in the very center, staring dreamily into one another’s eyes. “We were in the same fraternity in college and I was trying to help him out.”
    “That was nice of you.” Somehow I felt there must be more to the story that William wasn’t tell me. On the other hand, it really wasn’t any of my business. “Are you just in Florida for the wedding or do you live down here?”
    “I have a place in the Keys. But my home is in Chicago.” William pointed to my now empty glass. “Another?”
    “Please.”
    He ordered us another round and then slipped the bartender a twenty dollar tip. “Lana mentioned that you live in Chicago as well.”
    “I do.” This was beginning to feel more and more like a setup. Not that I was complaining. “I moved there after college.”
    “And you’re a lawyer?”
    “Yes. You sure do know a lot about me.” I was beginning to feel self-conscious. I wondered just exactly how much Lana had told him about my past.
    “I asked Lana for information.” William wasn’t at all embarrassed by his confession. “You intrigued me.”
    “And what did she say?” Lana was hard to predict. One day I was her best friend and she did nothing but sing my praises; the next day she would lecture me about my selfish, immature ways and how I needed to get my act together and settle down. In many ways she was just like my mom.
    William’s eyes flicked away from my face as he answered. “Oldest friend. Lawyer. Smart. Available.” His eyes locked back onto mine. “Beautiful. But I already knew that the second I saw you.”
    I shrank a little under his intense stare. He had a way of saying more with his eyes than he said with his lips. “Is that all?”
    “Something about an ugly breakup and shitty boyfriend. I honestly stopped listening after she said