Gone with the Wolf - By Kristin Miller Page 0,12

pulled down a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label, Drake’s favorite and the most expensive in the brand, and poured a stout glass. “Ice?”

“Straight.”

“You sure you don’t want to hit the BevMo across town? You could save yourself the thirty-five-dollar shot and invest in the bottle.” She slid the glass across the bar; it stopped right on the mark, right in front of him. “Not that I couldn’t use the money.”

Drake held up the glass in mock cheers and took a sip. The smoky drink warmed his insides and erased the last hint of sickness that’d plagued him over the week.

Who was he fooling? The ease of tension in his middle had nothing to do with the scotch.

Moving with a kind of grace Drake hadn’t seen often, Emelia checked on Mr. Lumberjack at the end of the bar and refilled his beer. She wiped up a mess Mr. Goth had just made and double-checked to make sure Ms. Corkscrew didn’t want to order another round. When Emelia circled back around to Drake, she stared as if she expected him to poof into a cloud of smoke and disappear once more. That wasn’t happening. Not now. Not when he had the chance—away from prying company eyes—to get to know his Luminary.

“So this is your place?” Drake had been curious about the Knight Owl. He hadn’t expected a newspaper-clad bar with a dark, tavern feel. The bar wasn’t the kind of place he’d normally visit. It was warm and friendly and gave an unconventional, homey vibe. “It’s clever.”

“What are you doing here, Mr. Wilder?” Emelia’s hands found her hips, but attitude didn’t follow. She looked nervous. Like he’d invaded her turf and caught her being nice when it was the last thing she wanted. “Don’t tell me you came to pay compliments to my bar. I might have to hurl.”

Drake’s stomach wrenched. “For the love of God, don’t mention hurling.”

“Mr. Wilder, are you all right? You look…green.” She eyed him carefully. “Like Kermit green, you know? The men’s room is right over there.”

She hitched her thumb like a hiker, pointing over her shoulder to the main room, but Drake’s gaze didn’t follow. He focused on breathing. In and out, in and out. He closed his eyes. Despite the overwhelming aroma of his scotch, Emelia’s natural feminine scent invaded his nose. As tantalizing hints of warm sugar, and something a bit sweeter, worked their way through Drake’s senses, coating away the last of the queasiness, he sighed. Emelia truly was the calm to his storm, the Chicken Soup to his howling soul.

And he was royally botching this.

“You’ve been MIA all week,” she said, her voice like liquid velvet.

Drake opened his eyes and drank in the softness of Emelia’s features: gently rounded chin, high cheekbones, silky, honey-blond hair flowing to her shoulders. She was a goddess. Aphrodite in human form.

And she’d noticed his absence.

Before Drake got too excited, a hard bout of logic sucker-punched him in the gut. Of course Emelia noticed. She sat in front of his office door all damned day. Idiot.

“Glad to hear that I’ve been missed,” he teased. He could’ve sworn Emelia shuddered before averting her eyes.

“Wouldn’t count on it.” She snatched a wet glass off the drying rack and toweled the rim, scraping it like she aimed to shave it down to sand.

“Has Mr. Bloomfield been showing you the ropes well enough?”

“Not as good as you.” Her eyes widened as if she caught herself. “What I mean is, there were some things I wanted to talk to you about this week…” She paused, her gaze snapping to the kitchen as a plate banged against a sink. “Where’ve you been, anyway?”

“I had business to take care of in LA.” He drank to soothe the burn in his throat. “I won’t be going back there for a long while now.”

Not unless he wanted to compete in the Influenza Olympics. There was no way his businesses could slow down, no way he could ignore the work that had to be done at his offices around the country.

Emelia would just have to come with him, though he wasn’t sure how he felt about it yet. She was easy on the eyes—understatement of the year—but she also had a mouth like a sailor and Drake never knew what she was going to say, or do, next. Wild cards never panned out well. Not in a business run by logistics and numbers and margin calls. Drake had built his life around predictability, only inviting people