Ally Blake - The Rules of Engagement

‘Hey, brother! Don’t tell me you’re off.’

‘I’m afraid I must. I have a conference call at six.’

‘So stay ’til then. Get your dancing feet on.’ She did a solo tango to illustrate.

‘Alas I left my tap shoes in my other car.’

Tango done, she levelled him with a stare. ‘At least promise me you had fun?’

‘More than I can possibly say.’ Having a nubile redhead wrapped about him a definite highlight, though he knew better than to let Lauren in on that score.

‘Fine,’ she said, sighing dramatically. ‘Go. Get your beauty sleep. It wouldn’t behove you, or the foundation, if you appeared anything less than implacable.’

After blowing him a kiss, she shimmied and boogied away into the crowd. Whatever things he might wish to change about his past, bringing her up wasn’t one of them.

Dax resisted the urge to look towards the bar one last time and turned towards the exit.

Something slithered down his neck. It felt as if it had legs long enough to belong to a bird-eating spider, so he flapped his suit jacket madly ’til whatever it was either flew away or was summarily squished.

He took a step, only to feel his foot slipping out from under him. He caught himself just in time, took a moment to find his breath, then lifted his shoe to find something twinkling at him from the dark wooden floor.

Braving the possibility of disease by letting his fingers stray that close to the layer of sticky ooze, Dax bent to pick it up.

It was long. It was shiny. And it was no bird-eating

spider.

* * *

‘What are you doing?’ Franny asked. ‘The cab’s waiting.’

Caitlyn, who was at that moment on her hands and knees—with paper napkins keeping all four from actually touching the precarious Sand Bar floor—blew a strand of hair from her mouth. ‘I’ve lost an earring.’

Franny threw out her hands in supplication. ‘It could be anywhere by now!’

‘Which is why I need to get a move on looking for it.’ With a shiver Caitlyn flicked a stray piece of random cocktail fruit from her wrist. ‘They were Gran’s. The chandeliers with the little flowers at the clasp.’

‘Oh,’ Franny said, looking suitably understanding. She knew the history those earrings had. Still she glanced longingly towards the door where the guy she’d spent half the last hour dirty dancing with was waiting to take her to heaven and back.

They’d promised to drop Caitlyn home on the way as her lift had evaporated once Cutey Patootey was no longer around to escort her. He’d disappeared into the wee hours after Caitlyn had made it clear, by not letting him stick his tongue in her ear, that she wasn’t going home with him that evening.

Caitlyn wasn’t all that disappointed. Not about that. Her gran’s earrings on the other hand... They meant something deeply. Her heart clenched hard at the thought of losing them for ever.

‘You go,’ she said, giving Franny a shove on the ankle, which was the only part she could reach from the floor. ‘I could be a while.’

Franny bit her lip, looked from Caitlyn’s no doubt pathetic position and back to the brooding blond in the leather jacket lounging mysteriously by the door.

‘Go!’

‘All right!’ Franny blushed furiously, then leant over the bar, getting the attention of the bartender. ‘Ivan! See to it our mate Cait makes it safely to a cab all right? And if anyone hands in an earring, it’s hers.’

Ivan peered at Caitlyn, grinned and nodded.

Franny said, ‘I won’t be home tonight. Usual place tomorrow for a warm down?’

‘If I must.’

Franny grinned, and took off at a sprint.

Caitlyn spent the next ten minutes peering at the floor and getting nowhere. Every minute down there had felt like an hour and the further she got, the more concerned she became.

She and her dad had picked out those earrings for her gran when she was eleven years old. No matter how short a stay he’d had at home between tours, he’d always made time for just the two of them, but she remembered that trip to the shops with him with such clarity. The next time he’d gone on tour he’d never come back.

Something glinted at her under a barstool! She pulled to a crouch, tucked herself into ball, peered underneath and—

‘Cait?’

At Ivan’s unexpected call, Caitlyn looked up so fast she bumped her head on the underside of the stool. Biting her lip to keep from swearing like a sailor, she rubbed her head and frowned up at him, only to find him holding a long glinting earring made of a dozen pieces of cut glass with a flower at the clasp.

She scrambled most ungracefully to her feet and grabbed the earring and held it to her chest, spinning around so that her hair slapped her in the face, but she didn’t care. ‘Oh, Ivan! My dear darling Ivan! I love you more than you could ever know!’

‘Love him,’ Ivan said with a grin, cocking his head to the right. ‘He found it.’

Caitlyn spun to a halt, spat a clump of hair from her mouth, and found herself looking into a pair of familiar dark eyes.

‘Dax,’ she said, his name a breathy sigh upon her lips.

Up close and personal he’d been impressive. At enough distance to get a load of the whole lot of him in one go he was...breathtaking. Dark, serious, cool, and with a face that got a girl to thinking she was wearing far too many clothes for comfort.

He seemed not to notice the feminine tremblings she’d resorted to, thank goodness. He just leaned comfortably against the bar, looking as if he’d been standing there watching her shuffle about on her hands and knees for some time and had been perfectly happy to do so.

‘You found it?’ she asked, somewhat redundantly. Though she was pretty impressed she’d been able to get any intelligible words out at all, considering the loudness of the pounding of her pulse in her ears.

‘I stood on it,’ he said, his deep voice reverberating inside her so that she might as well have been hollow. ‘If not for my natural grace you and your earring might have single-handedly laid me flat on my back.’

Dax, flat on his back. The image that created was a keeper. One she knew she’d be trotting out on long, cold, lonely winter nights.

‘It must have come loose when we...met.’ The guy made the word ‘met’ sound like a dirty word. Good dirty. Behind-closed-doors dirty.

Dax nodded to Ivan, who seemed to understand whatever signal he’d sent and moved away.

Something made Caitlyn almost call out for Ivan to stay. As if being left alone with this man without the aid of loud music, a tightly packed crowd, and low lighting was a kind of peril she knew she couldn’t withstand alone.

Dax pushed away from the bar and moved closer. Caitlyn curled her toes so as not to sway away. Even in her high heels she had to tilt her head to maintain eye contact.

He reached out and took her hand. Caitlyn’s breath caught in her throat. Then he turned her hand over and uncurled her fingers one by one.

Her gran’s gorgeously gaudy earring glinted back at her.

Relief poured through her, partly because she remembered why he was really there; not for some random seduction scene, but to return her lost property.

She took a deep breath, centred herself as best she could with his warm male scent curling about her, and turned the earring over in her now moist palm.

‘Is it okay?’ he asked.

The bar at the back was slightly bent, but other than that it was in perfect nick. ‘You’re light on your feet for a guy of your size. You could have mashed it completely. She’s barely bruised and with a little TLC she’ll be as good as gold.’

She risked looking at him. Her eyes locked to his. Hazel. Her new favourite colour in the whole world. Her breath came hard, for there was no hiding from the patent desire in his gaze. Desire for her.