“What do I owe you?”
She smiled again, a little bigger this time. Her whole being lit up when she smiled like that. Jeez, he couldn’t remember the last time a woman had knocked him this off balance. She murmured, “It’s on the house for helping break up the fight.”
“Wow. Generous. Who’s the owner so I can say thanks?”
Her eyes went furtive again, and she suddenly glanced toward the door beside the bar.
His senses went on high alert. “Are you safe here, Hank?” he asked.
A pregnant pause. Her doe-eyed gaze flickered to him and then skittered away again. “Yes. Of course.”
Not safe. And there went his protective instincts, firing on all cylinders. “What time do you get off work tonight? I’ll walk you home.”
Massive alarm fired off in her big, scared eyes. “No!” she blurted.
“It’s nothing like that,” he explained quickly. “I’m just offering to see you home safely. I swear I won’t come on to you or anything. But after that fight, those drunks will hang around outside looking for trouble.” It was a lie, but he really did want only to protect her from the threat scaring her inside the bar. And she obviously wouldn’t let him walk her home without an excuse.
“I can take care of myself,” she said.
He frowned, studying her face closely. Lord, she was mesmerizing. He greedily memorized every nuance of her face. Then he asked bluntly, “Do you ever work upstairs?”
Hank stared down at the big, intimidating man seated before her and answered forcefully, “No!” She ought to be offended by his far too personal question, but she got the distinct impression he wasn’t asking because he wanted to buy an hour’s use of her body.
Not that she would necessarily say no to him if he offered. He was handsome with a capital H. Fashion magazine hot. He had that whole chiseled features thing going. Dark hair. Dark tan. And Lord, his light eyes looked right through her. She couldn’t tell in this light if they were gray or blue. A hint of pain clung to him, masked by his deep reserve. She never could resist a man with a dark past.
Not just his big, athletic body, but his entire being, was perfectly still as he watched everything that went on around him. She got the feeling that his all-encompassing stare could turn predatory in a second. But so far, whenever he’d turned it on her, his eyes had lit up with something reminiscent of a volcanic eruption—hot and molten.
If only she could tell him the truth. That her brother was lost somewhere inside the criminal organization that ran this place. That she was trying to infiltrate the Russian mob far enough to find him and save him from whatever he’d gotten mixed up in. Or at least to find out what had happened to him. That he was her big brother, and he’d practically raised her after the car accident.
She turned her attention back to the man lurking in the shadows. She was a total sucker for brooding, dangerous men, and he was both in spades. She couldn’t get over how well his dark hair was set off by those light gunmetal eyes of his. And the way he’d handled himself in the bar fight left no doubt how deadly he really was. He’d waded through seasoned brawlers and armed mob muscle like they were school children.
She spoke earnestly under her breath. “You seem like a decent guy. This isn’t the kind of place you should hang out in. Go have a nice life and don’t worry about me.” Find yourself a supermodel and have insanely great sex...
He poured himself a healthy shot of whiskey from the open bottle she’d put in front of him. “Not how I roll.” How then, did he roll? God, she’d love to find out firsthand. Of course, any idiot could see he was severely out of her league. Men like him just didn’t want anything to do with cheap waitresses in sleazy joints like this.
“I’m not everyone...Hank. Hankova is a feminine patronymic. What’s your actual first name?”
She frowned. He knew how patronymics worked? Practically no American had ever heard of the universal Slavic custom of taking the father’s first name, adding an ending, and making it the child’s middle name. “It’s Evgeniya. My first name, that is.”
He winced sympathetically, for which she might just have loved him a little, and then smiled ruefully. “I see now why you prefer Hank. It’s going to take a little getting used to, though.”
He planned to stick around long enough to adjust to her weird name? Whoa. Cue the stunned happy dance. She smiled shyly. “My mother called me Eve.”
“Eve. That’s nice.”
Nice? Well, crap. There went any chance of him ever seeing her as a sexy femme fatale. The kind of woman he would consider having a torrid affair with. “I always thought it made me sound like an old lady.”
“Well, then, Hank it is. But you’re still nice.”
Frantic to dispel the nice image that went hand-in-hand with “girl next door” and “my best friend’s off-limits little sister,” she took a step closer to the table. Then she leaned down, planted her palm on the table beside the whiskey bottle and gave him a generous look down her shirt.
Reaching for her toughest, most threatening tone of voice, the one she used to back off drunks who simply would not take no for an answer, she purred, “I’m a lot of things, mister, but nice isn’t one of them.”
Lifting a brow, he leaned back in his seat and pinned her with an intent look. Well, that wasn’t exactly the response she’d been hoping for at all! She’d wanted heat. Interest. Acknowledgment that she was torrid-affair material. Instead, it felt like he was stripping her bare with that laser stare of his, analyzing her psyche with computer-like precision.
She had to fight not to squirm under his probing gaze as the layers of her deception fell away. Drat and double drat. He’d seen right through her ruse.
At long last, analysis apparently complete, a wry smile curled up one corner of his mouth and he looked away from her, his gaze casually scanning the club. She sagged in relief and released the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Intense guy.
He murmured mildly, “Put your claws away, kitten. I’m no threat to you.”
Hah. He had no idea. She did not need any distractions. Nor did she need some high-profile guy coming in and making waves around her—the kind of waves that would attract undue attention in her direction. Her whole plan revolved around being invisible. Innocuous. Quietly sliding so deep inside the Russian mob outfit running this place that she could unearth the truth and maybe get some closure. Figure out whether Max was alive or dead—
“Take this,” the man seated before her murmured. He passed her a business card.
Disappointment coursed through her. Really? He was giving her his phone number to get a date? One word was written on the back. Asher. And a phone number.
“Is that your first name or last?” she asked.
“First. And my mother called me Ashe.”
She couldn’t picture this hard-edged man ever having had a mother. Glancing back down at the card, she frowned. What was that area code? It wasn’t local. She turned the card over. It was for some sort of sporting goods and ammunition warehouse in Baton Rouge. “You sell tents and guns, Asher?” she asked drily.
His voice was low, sexy as he murmured, “You can call me Ashe, too.”
Cripes. Her toes curled in her high-heeled platform shoes as the masculine confidence in that low rumble vibrated through her belly.
He