Virginia Kantra - All A Man Can Be

She crossed the tiny square dance floor to the bar, her low heels echoing in the empty room. Maybe she had managed to get through this first meeting without throwing herself at his feet and begging him to use her. But she was pretty sure that continued exposure to Mark DeLucca’s lethal good looks would be bad for her nerves, wearing on her resolution and dangerous to her heart.

She wiped her hands on a bar rag and reached for the phone. Riffling through her day planner, she found Kathy’s work number and dialed. She stood, staring out the window, as the line rang on the other end. Behind the cold, dusty glass, the ruffled lake threw shards of light.

“Paradise Commercial Realtors. This is Kathy.”

Nicole wedged the phone between her shoulder and jaw and said, “Tell me again why I need Mark DeLucca.”

Kathy—clever, confident, divorced—laughed. “You weren’t impressed with our local heartthrob?”

Nicole scrubbed at the faint black streaks on her fingers. “I was impressed all right. Is he like that with customers?”

“Like what?”

Arrogant. Intimidating. Sexy.

“Rude,” Nicole said.

“We-ell, I’m fairly new in town myself, but the real estate office hasn’t had any complaints. He knows his drinks. He knows the regulars. He seems pretty popular with the summer people.” Kathy gave another knowing laugh. “Especially the teenage daughters of the summer people.”

Nicole frowned. “He doesn’t serve drinks to minors, does he?”

“Not that I’m aware of.” Kathy paused before adding, “Of course, his sister’s engaged to the chief of police, so I don’t think you’re in danger of losing your license. But I think DeLucca just flirts with them.”

“Wonderful. Does his future brother-in-law, the police chief, bend the laws about sexual harassment and statutory rape, too?”

“From what I saw last Saturday night, I’d say your bartender’s on the receiving end of the harassment.” Kathy sounded amused.

“So you don’t blame him,” Nicole said.

“I don’t blame him or them. I’ve been tempted to harass the man myself. He can handle it. And he can handle the Monday-night football crowd, which is saying something around here. That’s why we kept him, really, despite his background. He did a good job for the previous owner. She couldn’t run the place, and she needed the income.”

Nicole might be a dupe where men were concerned, but she wasn’t that naive about business. “Not to mention that an active operation is more attractive to purchasers than a closed one,” she said dryly.

“That, too,” Kathy admitted. “I showed you the numbers. So, what did DeLucca do to upset your apple cart?”

Nicole couldn’t say. Didn’t want to say, not when her confession would make it painfully clear how susceptible she was to the wrong kind of guy.

“Nothing much. He was a little aggressive. And I was late,” she added, trying to keep the accusation from her tone.

“Oh, I forgot to wake you, didn’t I?”

“That’s all right,” Nicole said, although it wasn’t, really. “I should buy myself a new alarm clock.”

“Put your old one in storage?”

No. Her clock had been missing ever since Kevin had packed his things and a selection of hers and moved out of her apartment—right before he fired her. And in the three months since, Nicole had kept an irregular schedule, reading until all hours of the morning and then sleeping through the day. But she didn’t feel like confiding that to Kathy, either.

“Something like that,” she said.

“Well, another good thing about Mark DeLucca is he shows up when he says he will. He’s reliable.”

Nicole eased her death grip on the receiver. Reliable was good.

And then Kathy went and spoiled it all by adding, “It’s remarkable, really, given his background.”

“What background?” Nicole asked.

“Well, remember, I’m not a local, so I can’t tell you everything,” the real estate agent said. Though she seemed to be doing a mighty thorough job to Nicole. “But that whole family has issues. I know the mother has a drinking problem.”

Nicole closed her eyes. No new business owner wanted to hear that her key employee came from a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic gene pool.

In Nicole’s own personal rogues gallery, that résumé put Mark DeLucca somewhere between Charles the self-absorbed graduate student and Yuri the vodka-prone cellist. Some women fell for tall, dark and handsome. She was a sucker for tall, dark and misunderstood.

Not anymore, she reminded herself. She opened her eyes to the light streaking through the window.

Never again.

She would not allow herself to be used, and she would keep Mark DeLucca around only as long as he was useful to her.

The memory of his smooth, flat voice mocked her resolution.

I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll work for you.

There was a woman waiting upstairs in Mark’s apartment.

He recognized the signs: the car parked in the marina’s lot below, a light in the window above. But this car, a battered compact, belonged to his sister. And since his sister was also the only woman who currently possessed a key to his apartment, it was a good bet she was the one waiting inside.

Too bad. Mark pulled his Jeep into a space by the boathouse steps. He wondered what Tess wanted this time.

Or—since this was Tess, after all, who had bullied and mothered him since they were both old enough to stand—what it was she thought he needed now.

He smiled as he climbed the stairs. He was sure she would tell him.

She was already in his kitchen when he opened his door, a pretty dark-haired woman in tight jeans and a red sweater, standing in front of his refrigerator.

“You’ve got cold pizza and three different kinds of mustard in here,” she said without turning around. “What kind of a diet is that?”

Mark grinned. “Jarek got you on some kind of health food kick now?”

Jarek Denko, Eden’s chief of police, was Tess’s fiancé. They were getting married in three weeks.

Tess snorted. “Hardly. I brought hazelnut crescents.” She pulled a white bakery box from the fridge, dangling it by its string. “From Palermo’s. I thought I’d have to leave them for you.”

Mark raised his eyebrows. “Palermo’s, huh? That’s some kind of bribe. What do you want, Tess?”

“Aren’t you home early?”

Ah, hell. As if being his big sister wasn’t bad enough, Tess was also a reporter. She was both perceptive and damnably hard to shake. “Joe’s opening the bar today,” Mark said. “My shift doesn’t start till four.”

“Which hasn’t stopped you from being there at eleven every other day this week.”

He shrugged, not denying it.

“It didn’t go well, did it?” Tess’s golden gaze was concerned. “Your meeting with the new owner.”

Not well. Now, there was an understatement.

Mark cut the string on the bakery box. “She hasn’t fired me yet, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Of course she didn’t fire you,” Tess said. “She’d be a fool to fire you. You’re all that’s kept that place running.”

His sister’s quick loyalty was both touching and more than he could bear right now.

“I don’t know if I want the job.”

Tess frowned. “What else would you do?”

That was the problem, Mark acknowledged. Despite his stint in the marines, he didn’t like taking orders. He had enjoyed running the bar. Calling the shots. But Nicole Reed, with her silk blouses and dot-com fortune, had nixed his dream of making the place his own.

Since he came back to Eden a year ago, he was just drifting through civilian life. So far he’d avoided repeating his old mistakes. He wasn’t drinking, and he hadn’t been arrested. Not yet, anyway. He’d come close a couple of months ago. But he couldn’t blame his sister for looking at him like a loose boat cruising toward an accident.