Jack’s little sister. That’s what she’d always be to him. Not the owner of this establishment. Not the woman he’d deflowered a decade ago. Not…anything. Just Jack’s little sister.
“On the house?” She allowed him to ease her onto a barstool. “I am the house.”
He just laughed, leaning so close to her ear she thought he was about to plant a kiss on her neck.
“I believe you’ve already had a sample of our new draft selection, right, Ken-doll?”
She just looked at the bartender, vaguely remembering a younger version of his face that had no doubt spent hours with the baseball boys in the basement. She’d been so blinded to anyone but Deuce. “I’ll just have a soda, please,” she told him.
And then Deuce was gone. A whisper of “Excuse me,” and the warmth of his body disappeared from behind her. She fought the urge to turn and watch him work the crowd. Instead, she cuddled Newman in her lap and gratefully accepted the cold drink for her dry throat.
“He’s absolutely adorable.”
Kendra turned to see the familiar, friendly face of Sophie Swenson, her hostess and right hand at the café. Sophie held a glass of white wine—in a stem glass—and her deep-blue eyes glinted with excitement.
“Yeah, he’s adorable,” Kendra assured her, with a disdainful glance back at Deuce. “But he knows it.”
Sophie let out a soft giggle. “I meant the dog.”
“Oh.” Kendra couldn’t help laughing as she pulled Newman higher on her lap. “Well, Newman knows he’s adorable, too.” She narrowed her eyes at Sophie, noticing the flush on her pretty cheeks, the way her gaze darted around the crowd. Would her most senior employee want to slide over to the Dark Side now? “You want to switch to a new evening schedule, Soph?”
Sophie shrugged and settled into the barstool. “If the action stays like this, I might. I mean is Monroe’s going back to being a bar? What about the expansion plans?”
Kendra let out a long, slow sigh. “I have no idea,” she admitted. “I just wish he’d go back to where he came from.”
“He came from…here.” Sophie’s eyes were without humor. “I mean, his dad owns the bar.”
Kendra’s shoulders slumped slightly. “I own half of this bar.”
Sophie raised a surprised eyebrow.
“Internet café,” Kendra corrected, burying her fingers in Newman’s soft fur and scratching him. “And I’m not going to walk away because the mighty Deuce has come home.”
Sophie’s gaze moved from Kendra to Deuce, then back to Kendra. “He’s crazy about you.”
Her heartbeat skidded up to triple time. “I doubt that.”
“He hasn’t taken his eyes off you since you walked in here.”
Why did that fact send yet another shower of goose bumps over her? Kendra closed her eyes until it passed. “No, we’re just in an oddly competitive situation right now.”
Kendra stole one more glance over her shoulder. Ginger the track star-turned cocktail waitress gazed up at Deuce and giggled. Another athletic-looking man slapped him on the back.
But Deuce’s gaze moved over everyone and locked on Kendra. There was that secret smile, that cocky tease in his eyes. And, as it had since before she knew how to write his name in cursive, the old zingy sensation washed over her.
Oh, Lord, not still. Not at thirty years old. That incapacitating girlhood crush had resulted in nothing but sleepless nights and pillows drenched in tears. A lost opportunity to graduate from the finest university in the country. And she wouldn’t even think about the baby. She’d trained herself not to ever, ever do that.
Hadn’t she paid enough for the honor of worshipping at Deuce’s altar?
“Call it competition if you like,” Sophie said, yanking Kendra back to the present. “But that man’s got you front and center on his radar screen.”
“Well then I’ll just have to disappear.”
“That’s kind of difficult since you’re both working in the same place,” Sophie said.
“Not at all,” Kendra said, gathering up Newman with determination. “I work days, he works nights. And never the twain shall meet.”
Sophie tilted her head a centimeter to the right in a secret warning. “The twains are about to meet, honey. Hunky baseball player on your six.”
Clutching Newman, Kendra slid off the stool and took a speed course through the crowd around the bar. The back door was closest, so she focused on it like a beacon for a lost ship. If she could just get into the kitchen before he got to her, she could slip into the back parking lot.
She breezed through the storage area, ignored the surprised looks from the borrowed employees of The Wingman who were plating up chicken in the little kitchen, and flung the back door open into the night.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” she whispered to Newman, setting him gently on the concrete.
Newman sniffed at the corner of the Dumpster.
“No time for trash, Newman.” She tugged on his leash and led him along a brick wall through the side alley and to the main road.
Where she walked smack into one six-foot-two-inch former baseball player wearing that triumphant grin that used to melt her in the stands of Rockingham Field.
“The party just started, Ken-doll,” he said softly, placing those incredible hands on her shoulders and pulling her just an inch too close to that solid wall of chest. “You can’t run away yet.”
The definition of stupid, she thought desperately, is making the same mistake twice. And Kendra Locke, who’d scored a coveted scholarship to Harvard and masterminded the makeover of Rockingham’s version of Silicon Valley was not stupid. Was she?
“I’m not running away,” she insisted. “It’s too crowded in there for a dog. And I—” she cleared her throat. “I have to go home.”
“I’d like you to stay.” He dipped his face close to hers. She didn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t possibly think.
Deuce was going to kiss her. She opened her mouth to say something, something like “This is a bad idea,” but before she could manage a word, he covered her mouth with his.
She stood stone-still as his fingers tightened his grip and his lips moved imperceptibly over hers. He closed a little bit of space between them, his chest touched hers, his legs touched hers, his tongue touched hers.
Was she really going to do this? She, the former Mensa candidate and Rockingham High valedictorian? Could she be that foolish and wild? Could she dare let history repeat itself?
Opening her mouth, she did the only thing she could possibly think to do.
She kissed him back.
CHAPTER FIVE
KENDRA SLID HER ARMS around Deuce’s shoulders, which was all the body language he needed to completely close the space between them.
A soft moan rumbled in her throat as he tested the waters by grazing her teeth with his tongue. In that instant, it all came back. The magical kisses of an eager, sweet girl. The memory of that extraordinary night hit him as hard as the surf that they’d let pound them as they’d lain naked on the sand.
He touched the dip of her waist and skimmed his hands over the curve of her backside, hardening instantly against her stomach, moving automatically