Sugar (3 page)

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a slender hand swoop down and fasten onto his striking arm. “Stop! You’ll kill him!”

It was her, the blonde. Chest heaving, Cole shook her off. “You . . . say that like . . . like it’s a bad thing.” Holding the mugger down, he risked a look up.

“Please . . . stop.” She stared down at him imploringly.

Succumbing to the moment’s distraction proved to be a monumental mistake. Beneath him, the bastard bucked, rolled, and rebounded to his feet. Cole shot upright and made a grab for him. He got hold of one arm but lost his grip, catching only cloth. Shedding the garment, the mugger jerked free and peeled off.

Darting across Canal Street, he just missed being creamed by an oncoming cab—fucking shame—and disappeared down Baxter Street.

Holding the hoodie, he wheeled around to the woman. “I
had
him. What the fuck is your problem?”

She stared as though he’d grown a second head. The latter might not be a bad idea. God knew the one he had was pounding.

“My problem? You’re the one who went all
Lethal Weapon
just now.”

Swiping a sleeve across his sweating forehead, he glanced around as the spectators dissipated. “What did you expect me to do, cradle him in my arms until the cops got here? Where the fuck are they anyway? Did the 911 dispatcher give you an ETA?”

She hesitated, biting her bottom lip.

Disgusted by the slow police response, Cole threw the sweatshirt to the gutter. “You called 911, right?”

She still didn’t answer, and this time her silence told him exactly what he didn’t want to hear. “You didn’t make the call, did you? Why the fuck not?”

“I don’t want any pub . . . any
police
.”

Sucking on his split knuckles, he shook his head. “Why? Are you in the Witness Protection Program?”

She folded her free arm about herself as if suddenly feeling the chill. “Of course not.”

A cigarette would be really great right now. He pulled the crushed packet from his pocket and threw it to the ground. “Fuck!”

She eyed him, her slightly superior attitude doing nothing to buoy his mood. “Maybe you should consider it a sign.”

He jerked his head up. “I’ll probably regret asking, but a sign of what?”

A shimmy of slender shoulders answered. “A sign you should quit. In case you missed the memo, cigarettes are bad for you.” She smiled, but her eyes stayed serious.

Cole snorted, not sure how he felt about being preached to by a pretty but so far nameless woman. “You work for the Surgeon General or something?”

In Iraq, smoking had gotten him and the other guys through the tedium and the homesickness. Being the team leader for an elite three-man explosive ordnance disposal had brought hair-raising moments and split second decisions juxtaposed with long periods of downtime. Unlike most of his fellow soldiers, he’d drunk little. A bomb, any bomb, wasn’t something you wanted to face hungover, and the makeshift ones were a lot harder to detect than the military models. These days most IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) were made without metal and electronic parts, rendering standard monitoring equipment next to useless—and the clever fuckers who made them were getting better at it all the time.

“Not . . . exactly.” Her voice called him back to the present— the United States of America, New York City, April 2014. The thief he’d wrestled to the ground was only that, not an insurgent and not a terrorist.

“Not exactly, huh?” he repeated, taking a moment to regulate his breathing. Pounding the piss out of the punk had felt good, too good. “Tonight my smoking habit turned out to be damned lucky for one of us—
you
.”

As if chastened, she nodded. “You’re absolutely right. Thank you for smoking.”

Another smile, this one bordering on a grin, lit her face, igniting the sexual spark Cole had felt from the moment he’d set eyes on her inside the store. Where
had
he met her before? The curiosity was damn near killing him.

Wiping his palms on the tops of his pants, he said, “Look, as we’ve established, I’m kind of drunk. I need to eat something. You wanna grab—”

“Thanks, but no.”

Another refusal, seriously! Cole couldn’t recall the last time a woman had turned him down, let alone twice in twenty minutes. His damsel in distress was turning into something even more irresistible—a challenge.

He folded his arms across his chest. “I haven’t even asked you yet.” “Sorry, it’s just that I don’t . . .” Her voice trailed off. For the first time since being knocked to her knees, she seemed less than one hundred percent together.

Seeking out chinks in armor, sniffing out weaknesses, was Cole’s specialty, or at least it had been. Pressing his advantage, he said, “Did you or did you not come out tonight for ice cream?”

“Yes, but—”

“No buts. Washington Square Diner makes a hell of a walnut sundae. Their banana splits don’t suck either.”

She hesitated. “It’s late. I should get home.”

He stared pointedly at the purse she held by its severed strap. “I just saved your life—or at least your credit history—and ruined my penguin suit in the process. The least you can do is to buy me a greasy breakfast in thanks.”

“B-but—”

“No buts,” he broke in, unfolding his arms. “It’s your karma on the line. We’ll negotiate the dry cleaning bill once I’ve fed the machine.” He patted his gut, which was seriously empty of anything but booze, and gave her a deliberately huge grin.

“You’re—”

“Persistent, yes I know. It’s one of my few good points.” Angling away, he faced out onto the street and lifted a hand to hail an oncoming cab, the on-duty light fortuitously shining. The driver skidded toward them, rolling up to the curb.

Cole turned back to the blonde. Nibbling her bottom lip, she still seemed undecided. The last time he’d been so completely enthralled, his obsession had been his first C4 explosive. The high he’d gotten from dismantling it had been unlike anything he’d felt before or since. For a flicker of an instant, it occurred to him to wonder why continuing their . . . encounter had become so goddamned important. Challenge, he reminded himself, the fleeting yet heady thrill of victory, a distraction from another otherwise endless-seeming night, nothing more.

He reached out and opened the bright yellow door. “So what’s it going to be?” Heart drumming, he waited, knowing that despite everything she might well walk away.

She hesitated and then took a step toward him. “I hate bananas, and my name is Sarah.” Brushing against him, she ducked and climbed inside.

Cole, her rescuer, surveyed her metal ice cream dish with definite disapproval. “Single scoop, plain vanilla, huh? I wouldn’t have figured you for a vanilla girl.”

The gleam in his eye told her the double entendre was entirely intended. Determined to give as good as she got, Sarah smiled back. “Every flavor has its charm. Sometimes plain vanilla is exactly what I’m in the mood for.”

He cocked his head to the side, his deep blue eyes fixing on hers. “And other times?”

“I like all the flavors.” Deliberately, she ran her tongue along her lower lip, savoring the last trace of sticky sweetness. It was what Martin liked to call her “money shot,” and it always worked, only this time there were no cameras honing in for a close-up—only one pair of ocean-blue eyes.

He swallowed hard, the corded muscles of his throat working. The table hid their lower bodies, but she’d bet her AVN trophy he was hard. “All, huh?”

“Pretty much, yes.”

“Me too.”

His comment snapped her back to sanity. God, she was flirting! It had been so long, she’d almost forgotten what it felt like. For the past decade, sex had been her job, a very public, very commercial act performed before a director, production crew, and rolling cameras. Private courtship rituals, the subtle interplay of sensual advance and retreat, seemed a relic from a kinder, gentler, bygone time—or maybe not so bygone after all.

Pull it together, Halliday. This isn’t courtship. It’s breakfast—bad for you breakfast—with a semi-drunk dude
.

Drunk, semi-drunk, or stone-cold sober, Cole was altogether too sexy to dismiss as anything other than one hundred percent primal male. Tall, broad-shouldered, and built, dark-haired and blue-eyed, he was hot enough to be a porn star, better looking than many of the name actors with whom she’d worked. Other than offering his hand in exiting the taxi, he hadn’t made a move to touch her and yet she felt every stroke of his gaze like a physical caress. Sitting across from him at the Formica-top table, the neon lights overhead searing in their brightness, she was intensely aware of her nipples hardening and her sex moistening. Watching him butter another piece of dry, white-bread toast, the tops of his big, broad-backed hands dusted with black hair, she couldn’t stop thinking how those hands might feel palming her breasts and playing in her panties. The fantasy landed a delicious staccato beating between her thighs.

And then he had to go and ruin it all by asking, “Have we met before?”

Fuck! She shook her head. “No, at least I don’t think so.”

She added the qualifier to throw him off. She couldn’t yet put her finger on it, but he had . . . not a cop vibe but something similar, maybe some other area of law enforcement, for all that he wore a designer tuxedo and collar-length hair. If she had any willpower remaining, she’d get up, go home and settle for the simple, safe release of her vibrator. But this man, Cole, seemed to melt her resistance, much like the ice cream turning into a puddle on her plate.

He ran his gaze over her, his darkened irises unpeeling her layered clothing, until she felt as though she were naked. “You’re not from here.”

Despite her desire for subterfuge, his faulty assumption had the native New Yorker in her bristling. “I’ll have you know I’m a Brooklyn girl, born and bred. Di Fara’s on Avenue J, best slice in the city.”

Her reference to the iconic Midwood pizzeria got his attention— and seemingly his respect. “I stand corrected.” He eased back in his seat, dunking a triangle of toast in the broken yolk of one over-easy egg. “So, Brooklyn, what brings you back to Gotham?”

Sarah hesitated. Other than her identity, she had nothing worthy of detecting. Starring in porn films wasn’t illegal. Neither was being superlatively successful at it. Her taxes were paid, her driving record spotless, her personal life a squeaky-clean solo act—flat lined, boring. Jaywalking was her only infraction, and that was just since moving back to New York.

He popped a piece of bacon into his mouth. Chewing, he slid his gaze over her, taking his time. Sarah stiffened, suddenly carried back to her first casting call, those terrible tense moments waiting to take off her robe in a roomful of strangers for the very first time.

Swallowing, he finally said, “You all but radiate sunshine and fresh air, you still smell like the beach, and you’re wearing pastels. You don’t see all that many New York women in orange and green.”

The woman he described sounded mainstream, utterly wholesome, more like a soccer mom than her carefully crafted porn persona. As Sugar, she could make men pop with a single sultry look, but as Sarah she was considerably less confident. Unsure of whether she was being complimented or criticized, she glanced down at her patterned Ann Taylor knit-wool sweater. The v-necked, slim-fitting cardigan was one of her go-to pieces. Until now, it hadn’t occurred to her that it might not be right for New York. Then again, other than a weekly coffee meet-up with Liz’s friends and a few solo restaurant dinners, she hadn’t gone out since she’d gotten here.

“That would be coral and mint,” she corrected.

He rolled his eyes in the way of a man who couldn’t care less about clothes, despite being dressed in custom-tailored, designer evening wear. The sapphire studs sparkling from his French cuffs would cover the rent on her Soho sublet for several months. “I’m figuring you for West Coast.”

Surrendering, she admitted, “LA, I just moved back.”

“Job relocation? Family?”

“Spanish Inquisition?”

He dropped the toast point and held up both hands. The movement caused his sleeves to ride up. The sudden fantasy image of strapping cuffs around those thick, masculine wrists took her breath away. “Mea culpa, just making conversation, Brooklyn. Forget I asked.”

His sarcasm made her feel silly. Was she taking this incognito crap too far? “Sorry, it’s just that I’m . . . a very private person.” A very kinky private person who, it seemed, badly needed to get herself laid.

“Duly noted.”

“I moved back in part to help out a friend who’s . . . going through a hard time.” Even to a stranger, okay an almost stranger, who’d never met and would never meet Liz, the Big C seemed too big of a deal to confide.

He nodded. “That’s very altruistic.”

“Jesus, are you mocking me?”

He looked genuinely surprised. “No, but you might want to offload that chip on your shoulder. It must be getting pretty heavy.”

Feeling like a jerk, she subsided back against the vinyl-covered booth. What was it about this guy that made it so easy for her to lose control? “Sorry, it’s just . . . weird being back.”

“Tell me about it.” He rolled his eyes, only this time she sensed empathy, not sarcasm.