Blame It on the Bikini - By Natalie Anderson Page 0,3

age, he could get any woman to beg him to pour it all over her.

And Brad obliged. The guy had had more girlfriends than Mya had worked overtime hours. And Mya had done nothing but work since she’d badgered the local shop owner into letting her do deliveries when she was nine years old.

She tried to move but some trickster had concreted her feet to the floor. She kept staring as he walked through the bar, and with every step he came closer, her temperature lifted another degree. This despite the air-conditioning unit blasting just above the bar.

He was one of those people for whom the crowds parted, as if an invisible bulldozer were clearing the space just ahead of him. It wasn’t just his height, not just his conventionally handsome face with its perfect symmetry and toothpaste-advertisement teeth, but his demeanour. He had the presence thing down pat. No wonder he won every case he took on. People paid attention to him whether they wanted to or not. Right now Mya wasn’t the only person staring. Peripheral vision told her every woman in the bar was; so were most of the men.

She needed to pull it together. She wasn’t going to be yet another woman who rolled over and begged for Brad Davenport—even if he was giving her that look. But why was he giving her that look? He’d never looked at her like that before; in fact he’d never really looked at her at all.

Her heart raced the way it did before an exam when she was in mid ‘OMG I’ve forgotten everything’ panic. Had she entered a parallel universe and somehow turned sixteen all over again?

‘Hi, Brad.’ She forced a normal greeting as he stepped up to the space the stag boys had left at the bar.

‘Hi, Mya.’ He mirrored her casual tone—only his was genuine whereas hers was breathless fakery.

It was so unfair that the guy had been blessed with such gorgeousness. In the attractiveness exam of life, Brad scored in the top point five per cent. But it—and other blessings from birth—had utterly spoilt him. Despite her knowing this, the maple-syrup glow in those eyes continued to cook her brain to mush. She ran both hands down the front of her apron, trying to get her muscles to snap out of the spellbound lethargy. But her body had gone treacly soft inside while on the outside her skin was sizzling hot. What was she waiting for? ‘What can I get you?’

He smiled, the full-bore Brad Davenport charming smile. ‘A beer, please.’

‘Just the one?’ She flicked her hair out of her eyes with a businesslike flip of her fingers. That was better—the sooner she got moving, the more control she’d regain. And she could put herself half in the fridge while she got his beer; that would be a very good thing.

‘And whatever you’re having. Are you due a break soon?’ He stood straight up at the bar, not leaning on it as most of the other customers did. In his dark jacket and white open-neck shirt, he looked the epitome of the ‘hotshot lawyer who’d worked late’.

Mya blinked rapidly. She was due for her break, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to have it with him around. She felt as if she was missing something about this. It was almost as if he thought she’d been expecting him. ‘It’s pretty busy.’

‘But that stag party has left so now’s a good time, right? Let me get you a drink.’

‘I don’t dri—’

‘Water, soda, juice,’ he listed effortlessly. ‘There are other options.’ He countered her no-drinking-on-the-job argument before she’d even got it out.

Good grief. Surely he wasn’t hitting on her? No way—the guy had never noticed her before.

These days Mya was used to being hit on—she worked in a bar after all. The guys there were usually drinking alcohol, so inevitably their minds turned to sex after a time. Any woman would do; it wasn’t that she was anything that special. Naturally they tried it on, and naturally she knew how to put them off. She deliberately dressed in a way that wouldn’t invite attention; her plain vee-neck black tee minimised her boobs and the apron tucked round her hips covered most of her thighs in her black jeans. She did wear the platforms, but the extra couple of inches helped her ability to look customers in the eye.

She still had to look up to Brad. And right now he was looking into her eyes as if there