Free Trading Down (Winner Takes All, #1) by PJ Adams Page A

had walked here. On a night like this! His patent leather shoes were scuffed and dirty, there was mud around the cuffs of his pants; his shirt was untucked, his undone bow tie hanging loose. His jacket hung heavy with the rain, and his black hair was plastered to his skull. Maybe there had been an accident, or his car had broken down back on the highway.
    Then, with a cheeky grin that cracked his face and put a sparkle in his eyes, he reached into his pocket, produced a fat roll of hundred dollar bills, and casually thumbed one free of the sodden mass of paper.
    “So tell me, what does a guy have to do to get a drink around here?” he asked in an accent somewhere between Boston and genuine Irish, and then he stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind him and shutting the wild storm out.
    §
    A pause, and then the slight raising of one eyebrow was the stranger’s response to the six pairs of eyes trained on him – even Lou had emerged from the kitchen to see who had let the storm in.
    “A bourbon and ice, no water,” the guy said, when it became clear that the silence and the hillbilly stares weren’t going to break so easily. “And a towel would be grand, if you have such a thing.”
    Cassie reached for a glass, clanking it loudly, finally breaking the spell. The poor guy was standing there, water dripping from him, and staring eyes weren’t going to dry him or warm him. She poured him a generous measure of nine year-old Knob Creek. It was that or Jack Daniel’s and he didn’t look like a JD kind of a guy.
    He came up to the bar, but Cassie didn’t hand him the drink. Instead she turned, stepped into the back room, what Lou liked to call his den, and then glanced back. She’d decided to spare him trying to get dry in the washrooms.
    The stranger followed her. She didn’t know how someone as wet as he was could still move the way he did, like a big cat, muscles and joints rolling smoothly as he walked.
    Gray eyes with a hint of blue... steel eyes that still had that smile in them.
    The guy had quite a presence, she’d give him that.
    She found a fresh hand-towel and tossed it to him. “You’ll have to go to Blue Rise Inn about half a mile up the highway if you want anything bigger to dry yourself with,” she said.
    He laughed, and started to scrub at his hair. “That’s about the kindest offer I’ve had all night,” he said. He pulled at one end of his bow-tie and it slid around his neck and then was free. When he started to unbutton his white dress shirt, Cassie turned away to place his drink on the desk.
    “I could see if Lou has any spare pants...?”
    His shirt hung open as he toweled at his torso and then under his arms. He was a leanly muscled man, not an ounce of spare fat, a belly that was flat and hard, with just the hint of a ripple as he flexed and turned. A fuzz of dark hair followed the contours of pecs, breastbone and down across his abs.
    “Thanks, but no,” he said. “Just a towel, a drink and some distraction’s all I’m after.”
    Distraction...
    Cassie realized she was staring at that abdominal ripple, the dark hair thickening down to where he’d freed his belt and the top button of his pants.
    Jesus, but what had gotten into her? You’d think she’d never seen a man’s body before. She tore her eyes away, looked up to meet those steely eyes, and said, “You want anything I’ll be just outside, you hear?”
    §
    “Did you see that roll of Benjamins?” Bub said to her, leaning across the bar and talking in a stage whisper. “I thought when you went back there with him you were going to give the guy a good time for a one or two of those notes. Hell, I’d give the guy a good time for a one of those!”
    “How d’you know she didn’t?” said Finn, coming across to join them. “She sure wasn’t smilin’ like that before!”
    Cassie laughed at the two old-timers. “I was there half a minute,” she said, “I’m good, but I’m not that good.”
    She turned away, and