Page 17 of Hustle

“Come on,” he sighs. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Not like this anyway. I’ll get you home.”

The adrenaline’s left me and I’m too tired to fight. My eyes burn, my mouth is dry, and I can’t get warm even wrapped in my coat. It feels like I’ve been hollowed out to my core.

There’s just an aching silence between us. I try to block it out, because it’s everything that’s gone wrong in the last decade coalesced in one horrible moment. Block after block flashes by without me registering it. The silence bleeds from aching to icy, leaving me a whole different kind of numb.

I let him take me home and walk me upstairs to my loft.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asks. He voice is raw with emotion.

What he’s actually feeling? I’ll probably never know.

Enough of this “woe is Evi” bullshit. I square my shoulders and stick out my jaw. Then I look up at him defiantly. I can’t let his care drain the fight out of me. Not now, when I need it more than ever.

“I always am, Seamus.”

He looks at me for another long moment, and then heads down the stairs. I don’t go inside until I watch him drive off.

I clean off my makeup. Hank, who had been glaring at Seamus, jumps up in my lap. He’s never done that. I must look really pathetic.

“Thanks, buddy,” I say, stroking his head. He bites me.

Figures.

5

Seamus

It’s 11:08. I glance at my Cartier watch. Again. My jaw tightens, eyes narrowing.

Evi is eight minutes late. Time is money, and I’m so tightly scheduled that eight minutes in either direction is enough to throw off my whole damn day, cost me thousands, and inconvenience people I can’t afford to piss off.

For a moment I wonder if she’s backing out because of embarrassment at what happened at the club. But I dismiss that thought almost immediately. Evi’s no coward.

Which is why, instead of heading straight up to the clerk’s office, I’m standing here with my hands shoved into my damned pockets. Against my will, my mind goes back to the feel of her lips on my skin, her body moving with mine on the dance floor.

It’s time to be all business, to act like that never happened. She was drunk, overcome with emotion, dealing with a lot of stress. The kind thing to do will be to act like it didn’t happen, and let it go so that she’s not ashamed. What I’d said about her deadbeat father hadn’t made me proud, either.

I school my face, determined to just move forward with the issues at hand. Unfortunately, my cock doesn’t seem to be getting the same message, getting hard while I pace the sidewalk like an idiot.

It’s so difficult with Evi. Every time I’m with her, every time I look into those flashing gray eyes and that body that can move like that with reckless abandon, she makes me want to question my choices. She has so much life in her. So much passion.

But the key word is reckless. I don’t have any room in my life for that kind of explosive force, the uncontrollable X factor. No matter how much it appeals to me. In law, that’s how you lose cases. That’s how people spend decades in prison. In my family’s line of work, that’s how people get killed.

My eyes sweep across the plaza again, as I shift anxiously from foot to foot. It’s not just the timing. I’m amped up.

Even as I tell myself that it’s just the meeting, the reality is that it’s anticipation of seeing Evelyn.

Evi, I correct myself sharply.

The catch in my throat and the sense of relief that I feel when I see her tall, willowy form working its way toward me catches me off guard. And frankly, it pisses me off even more.

There are a thousand reasons that I’ve kept Evelyn McCallum at arm’s length all these years, and the fact that she leaves me so off balance is number one. A man in my position can’t afford weakness, and I’ve always had a glaring one where she’s concerned.

She’s not, strictly speaking, the kind of woman I’m usually attracted to. Actually, that’s a lie. She’s not the kind of woman I date. Refined, educated, restrained women are the type of woman I’m expected to be with, and the sort of woman I’ve tried to settle in with for long-term relationships.

Not that it’s ever gone particularly well.

But Evi? She’s exactly the kind of woman that I actually desire. Hell, she’s the fucking archetype in motion and the exact reason why the other women never work out.

---