even better-looking in person than he was in the pictures I’d seen, and by better-looking I meant brain-melting, bone-crushing good looks. The kind you generally only saw in the movies. Or in those calendars that featured half-naked firefighters. The man was a god in human clothing, only a whole lot darker and more mysterious.
Maybe he was Satan himself in human clothing. A wolf in sheep’s clothing?
Wait.
I glanced at the mug next to me, wondering if I’d already been drinking. Why the heck were my thoughts getting so mixed up? Because I knew it wasn’t just because Ethan Parker was sitting there spying on my conversation with my friend and sending out his hotter-than-hot pheromones. Because I wasn’t that sort of girl.
I wasn’t the sort of girl who got all sidetracked by the first insanely gorgeous face I came across. I was the kind of girl who had a plan and stuck to it, and right now that plan was to get a little bit tipsy at my favorite bar and then go home. Sleep it off. Start all over again tomorrow.
But while I was having that internal dialog, Ethan was turning to me, grinning, and giving me one up-and-down look that sent my stomach spinning—and my plan flying right through the window.
“And he was right to do so,” he continued. “In my opinion. You made an awfully good case. The judge would have been a fool to rule against you.”
Well, that wasn’t what I’d been expecting. “You agree with him even when it cost you four million?”
Ethan brushed that off with a quick flip of his hand, the way only the rich can do, and I wondered suddenly if he’d ever had to struggle for anything in his life—or if everything had come so easily that he truly didn’t know what it felt like to not have two pennies to rub together. To not be able to buy the thing you really wanted… or even food to fill your belly.
“We were wrong to lift the track,” he said. “I wasn’t involved, of course.”
“Oh, of course not,” I said, thinking that he was likely telling the truth. He probably had so many employees that he didn’t even know what most of them did most of the time. “But that doesn’t mean your company wasn’t at fault.”
He leaned a bit closer to me, lifting one eyebrow. “Which you very efficiently proved in court.” Then he sat back and eyed me for a moment. “I was impressed, you know.”
Now that did take me by surprise, and I softened a bit, despite my vow not to pay attention to the first insanely gorgeous face I saw.
“Really?” I said.
He nodded. “You were very good. Better than the guys I pay way too much money for. Makes me think I should steal you away from your firm and lock you away in my own offices.”
Okay, so that was a double entendre if I’d ever heard one.
The thing was… it was sort of working. The whole charming-guy-in-the-bar thing. I was sort of paying attention. Though I didn’t think I could put that down to just him. It was everything. I’d just won a big case and was feeling pretty darn good about myself. I was in my favorite bar with my favorite drink. And a hot guy was flirting with me. Complimenting my legal skills.
Was it really so bad if I just… gave into it, this once? I never let myself have any fun—mostly because I didn’t have the time for it.
But just this once… what if I did?
I leaned toward him, closing the distance between us. “You couldn’t afford me,” I whispered.
He barked out a booming laugh at that, surprising me, and before I knew it I was laughing as well, too charmed by his big smile and his dancing blue eyes, the dark charcoal of his hair and the scruff on his jaw, to lecture myself any further about maintaining appearances.
Hey, you only live once. And I didn’t know if I’d ever win another case this big again. I’d almost definitely never have a billionaire flirting with me in a bar again. I might as well take advantage of it while I was ahead.
Within ten minutes, Ethan and I had finished our long-distance flirting and moved to stools that sat side by side, each of us leaning against the bar and looking at our drinks, but casting the occasional sidelong glance at the other.
And no, in case you’re wondering, he hadn’t gotten any less hot.