Free Luke by Jennifer Blake Page A

mellow light from antique Venetian silk chandeliers, up stone steps to the bar backed by Gothic arches, and through to the patio dining room. The area was nicely atmospheric, with wide windows through which could be seen a pool surrounded by palmtrees and illuminated by flickering gaslights. Watching over them was a trompe l’oeil painting of a castle doorway topped by the watchful face of old Bacchus himself.
    They ordered two bottles of wine, a white and a red, then selected calamari and cannelloni for appetizers. After that substantial beginning, the ladies seemed in no mood for anything heavy. Bypassing the more elite menu items, they settled for something they could all share, the house specialty of wood-fired pizzas topped with grilled shrimp and andouille, Louisiana crawfish tails and Calabrese hot salami.
    By the time the wine made its second round, the romance authors were feeling no pain. They flirted with the waiter, traded suggestive innuendoes with the wine steward, and told bawdy jokes with gusto. Luke might have suspected them of testing him as the only man in the group, except that none of them seemed in the least self-conscious. He thought, rather, that as a group they had lost most of their inhibitions during the process of writing about love and physical attraction—or it might have been that they wrote about these things simply because they had so little embarrassment about them. Whichever it was, they had an open and natural appreciation for the dynamics of sex combined with unusual tolerance toward most subjects. It was a combination of attitudes he could get used to without much effort, he thought. He couldn’t remember when he’d had more fun with a bunch of women.
    April joined in, though she wasn’t quite as boisterous. He was seated across from her in the centerof the long table, so had plenty of opportunity to hear whatever she said in her low, musical tones. He wondered briefly about her more intimate inhibitions, or lack of them, now. She’d once been a little shy, yet had responded to the right encouragement with a naturalness that it hurt him to remember.
    As his thoughts drifted, he watched the candlelight gleam across the crown of her hair when she turned her head, noted the softness of her mouth in repose and the warmth that rose in her eyes for everyone except him. Slowly there grew inside him an errant need to be alone with her there in that semisecluded back dining room, just the two of them. It was so strong that he felt almost feverish with it.
    Perhaps the table of women picked up on that mental defection. Shortly afterward, they turned on him.
    â€œSo, you’re the hero of April’s next book,” a cute little redhead with traces of white at her temples said. “How did you wind up with the role?”
    â€œLord, what a question,” another one said before he could answer. “I mean, look at him! Those shoulders, and the long legs, the dark hair, the bedroom eyes…”
    â€œI know,” the first said with a sigh. “Even the white teeth in the tanned face.” She turned to April. “Where on earth did you find him?”
    â€œI just looked around and there he was,” April answered dryly.
    â€œNobody like that is ever lying around when I need him.” That droll comment came from an attractive silver-haired woman with a smoke-roughened voice.
    â€œI never said he was lying around,” April replied in laughing protest. “I just needed dark and devilish and there he was next door.”
    â€œHow convenient!” the redhead drawled.
    â€œWasn’t it?” April acted as if she hadn’t caught the sly insinuation.
    Luke leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. He thought of answering for himself, but decided not to risk it. Of course, he could put a stop to the teasing whenever he chose, but he wanted to see how far April would go.
    â€œDoes he fit the rest of the mold?