And I’d fucked it all up.
Shit. Maybe I needed another smoke.
“I think you know.” Jamie handed me a newly opened bottle of his most expensive red wine. A wine I knew very well, considering I’d once shared a bottle of it with—
“Shit.”
“Don’t pussy out now. Although you might want a breath mint. You smell like a pool shark, Zola.”
“It’s a bar, Quinn,” I snapped even as I grabbed one of the Altoids we kept under the register.
He just chuckled. “Whatever you say. But if I had that waiting for me, I’d take at least four of those bad boys. And I wouldn’t keep her long.”
My friend turned to help a crowd of college students on the other side of the bar. I sighed, taking a second to adjust the rolled-up sleeves of my plain white shirt, the cheap black tie, the old black pants that were appropriate for a job where spills happened every few minutes, courtesy of over-excited patrons.
I felt strangely naked without a full suit. This was a woman who went through designer threads like she picked them up at the Goodwill. I’d never seen her anything less than perfect unless I was the one mussing her up. I wasn’t her equal in a lot of ways, but right now, the idea that I was no better than one of her servants hurt my pride more than I wanted to admit.
Or maybe you’re just delaying the inevitable, asshole.
I rolled my eyes. Yeah, even my conscience wasn’t putting up with my bullshit tonight.
I checked my breath, and when I finally turned around, I was immediately struck with the strongest déjà vu of my life. Nina de Vries was sipping wine at the end of the bar right where Jamie said she was, looking almost exactly the same as when I’d first met her in an elegant gray cashmere coat partially covering a white silk dress. Under the dim lights, her smooth, pale skin seemed to glow. One long leg was crossed over the other, a silver-colored high heel dangling off her foot. Her blonde hair gleamed, and her lips were stained with drink.
For a moment, it was the same dark and stormy night eleven months ago. I was knocking back gin like it was my job, feeling lost and alone for reasons I couldn’t comprehend. She sat at the other end, fingering the stem of her wineglass. An angel in white. A beacon in the dark.
This time, though, the angel was staring a hole through me and looked really fucking mad. Angel of mercy, I’d hoped for. More like the angel of death.
Still, it was her. Nina, in my bar. Nina, out of jail.
Nina…free.
“Excuse me?”
The palm of a short, snappy woman found the bar top with a flat, hard smack. Shit. Nina already had her drink, but there were at least four customers waiting to be served. As much as I wanted to ignore them, I couldn’t. I was working. And frankly, I needed the tips.
“Hey, handsome,” said the twentysomething woman, whose businesslike blouse was unbuttoned a few too low. “Think we could get some drinks?”
I blinked. “Sorry, ladies. Sure. Just caught in my thoughts for a second.”
“I like a daydreamer,” said her friend with a sly grin. “So long as he shows me what he’s thinking later on.”
She slid her jacket off, baring a thin black shirt that was a lot too tight, and batted a pair of eyelashes that looked like the ones my sister Joni glued on her eyelids every now and then. I told her they made her look like Betty Boop and that no man wanted to feel plastic butterfly wings smacking his cheeks when he was kissing his date. She told me to take my chauvinist male gaze and shove it up my ass.
Some manners.
I didn’t argue. Still, a man could have his preferences.
I nodded at Betty with a fake smile, conscious of the much more alluring siren to my right watching us with silver daggers.
In the two months since I’d last seen Nina in that interrogation room, I’d about given up on her. Us. Anything. After that little stunt I pulled, I had been told in no uncertain terms that I was not to approach her until she was sentenced, unless I cared to be disbarred completely. And even though Cardozo never said it, talking to her at all until her husband was locked up was probably a bad idea too.
But apparently I was a glutton for self-punishment. I had tried to visit her at Rikers only to be told that Ms. de Vries was not accepting visitors other than her attorneys. Since she was released, her phone number was disconnected too. She had a lot of very good reasons for the distance too, I supposed. Like that I’d broken her fucking heart.
Maybe that was the reason she looked like she wanted to claw my eyes out. Or maybe she was just acting the same way I felt as a couple of men eyed her overtly on their way to the restroom.
Jealousy really is a sneaky bitch.
So yeah, maybe that’s what made me wink at my new customers like a teenage boy on the prowl. I had an audience. And for the first time in months, it was making me feel a bit more alive.
“What can I get you ladies? Something sweet or something spicy?”
Okay, not my finest, I’ll admit. Still, the two girls giggled like hyenas. The white figure in my peripheral vision remained perfectly still.
“Can you make a cosmopolitan?” asked Betty, eyelashes batting hard enough to cast a small wind across the bar.
“Like a champ,” I told her with a grin. “And for you, miss?”
“A lemon drop, please,” said Blouse Buttons.
“Sweet and sour,” I confirmed. “The very best combination.”
The girls glanced at each other and grinned. “We like to think so,” one of them said. “Especially with the
