Midnight Sommelier - Anne Malcom Page 0,19

meaningless emotion. Or so I had thought.

I felt self-conscious. Sure, I looked good, had on the Balenciaga heels and a full face of makeup, but still, I didn’t have tattoos and an eyebrow ring, which I figured would be more to his taste.

“Ah, would you like to come in? Inspect the house for signs that this is all just an elaborate front for a sweatshop I’m running and have roped your daughter into?” I was trying for humor. Why the fuck was I trying for humor? I hadn’t cracked a joke with a stranger in over a year. I had no interest in trying to amuse people or make them laugh because it was all bullshit.

But here I was trying to crack a joke to some six-foot-tall midnight man. To be fair, I was also doing it to try to weather the stare.

He did not smile. His gaze flickered behind me, where the sounds of music came from, Luna’s laugh carrying, easy and beautiful.

Something changed in him them. His body jerked as if he’d been stung, his eyes softening ever so slightly. But that wasn’t saying much.

He wasn’t a murderous hot guy cyborg with no soul. Hearing his daughter laugh did something to the man.

But he still looked like a dangerous hot guy. I had rolled my eyes when Alexis droned on about him, but she was underexaggerating if anything. This man was something beyond hot.

“I’m Bridget,” I said, realizing that neither of us had spoken in at least a minute. “Mom to two out of the three boys. I’m kind of the black sheep of the street, if you ask around. Which is a badge I wear with pride, though I worry you might be stealing it with your air of menace. Then again, considering a lot of the women on this street are stay-at-home mothers whose husbands don’t pay them enough attention, they’re not likely to write you off, since along with the air of menace, you’re … you know … hot.”

Did I just say all that? Oh my fucking god. I was having some sort of brain incident. I was a grown woman. I had control over my mouth and what came out of it. I did not go around calling my neighbors—whom I’d just met—hot.

And then there was the case of my dead fucking husband, only gone a year and I’m calling men hot to their faces.

Something moved in the man’s face after I blurted all of that. Maybe some kind of panic that his daughter was in the home of a crazy person. Or maybe amusement. It was hard to tell.

“Zeke.” He said the single word hitting me physically.

Yeah, this guy was totally a Zeke. “Nice to meet you,” I said lamely, not trusting myself to say anything else.

But then he just stood there, comfortable in the awkward silence. “Luna’s most welcome to stay for dinner. My sister will be cooking something healthy and palatable. You’re welcome to join,” I added, despite the fact having him in my house, dripping his dark sexiness all over the place had me erupting in hives.

As a rule, I was not a woman that babbled or lost her cool in the presence of a man, even a hot one.

Even so, I was what I liked to think of as a social expert. I had my parents to thank for that. Despite them not being ‘country club people,’ they were cultured enough to teach both Alexis and me how to behave. How not to get ruffled. Despite my father having two girls, he made sure we did everything a man could do, most of the time better. We spent the nights our mother worked late at the restaurant playing poker with my father and his buddies from the factory. I could bluff better than anyone.

I bluffed my way through my wedding, through David’s mother’s dark comments and the sly looks all his rich friends gave me, pretending I didn’t hear the gold-digger comments.

And then I bluffed my way through all sorts of firm dinners I had to sit through as a dutiful wife. Pretended I liked the partners, that their jokes were funny.

And looking the way I did, short with a nice rack, a tight ass, and perfectly accentuated features—with some help from Botox and fillers—you got used to speaking to men. Became an expert at it.

Even if I’d been married for almost all my adult life and had never actually dated.

“I’ve got plans,” he said, dismissing me quickly and