KING’S PROMISE

King’s Promise
Adrianne Byrd

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

To Alice: Forever my inspiration

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

To my family and friends, thanks for all the support

and love that you’ve given me.

To my editor, Evette Porter, for helping me

through one crazy year. To my wonderful fans

and readers, thank you for allowing me to do

what I do. It’s always a pleasure to entertain you.

I wish you all the best of love.

The House of Kings series

Many of you have followed the Unforgettable series, which morphed into the Hinton Brothers series. Now I’m introducing you to the Hintons’ playboy bachelor cousins—the Kings.

Eamon, Xavier and Jeremy, along with their infamous cousin Quentin Hinton, are business partners in a gentlemen’s club franchise called The Dollhouse. One of their most popular and lucrative specialties is their bachelor party services. With clubs in Atlanta, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, the brothers are determined to make sure their clients’ last night of bachelorhood is one they’ll never forget. And the brothers are prepared for anything…except when love comes knocking on their door.

In King’s Promise, love is the last thing on Xavier King’s mind. In fact, he’s renewed his vow to remain a player for life. But no matter how much he parties, it’s getting harder to hide the feeling that there’s something missing in his life. Enter Cheryl Shepherd, the sexy new bartender at the Atlanta club. But Cheryl has a few secrets of her own.

Next month, look for the final book in the House of Kings series, King’s Pleasure, featuring Jeremy King. If you missed the first book in the series, look for King’s Passion, featuring the eldest brother, Eamon, which was published in June 2011.

Remember, in love, never bet against a King….

Adrianne

Contents

Prologue

The Loyal King

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

The Bigger They Are…the Harder They Fall

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

The Devil You Don’t Know

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Let’s Make a Deal

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

The Queen of Lies

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Then There Were Two

Chapter 32

Prologue

Lying in a king-size dark oak paneled bed, Quentin Hinton huffed and growled among a set of tangled black silk sheets as orgasmic tremors shook him to the core. Eyes closed, he braced his chiseled body with his two muscular arms planted on opposite sides of tonight’s passionate beauty.

“Mmm. That was wonderful, honey,” the woman’s angelic voice praised as she linked her slender arms around his sweat-slicked neck.

“You were wonderful,” he said, returning the compliment before leaning over to the side and plopping down on the pile of fluffy pillows. Exhausted, Q glanced over at the digital clock next to the bed and puffed out his chest with a sense of pride, having calculated that he and this evening’s dessert had been going at it for two solid hours straight. With that kind of performance, he estimated that his partner would be asleep in exactly four…three…two…

“Zzzzzzz.”

Quentin smiled at the sound of soft snoring coming from the woman lying on his left. He turned his head. Her hair was so mussed up that he could barely make out her face and was only fairly certain that her name was…

“Christina.” Another woman’s voice drifted into his head.

Quentin’s neck whipped around to see Alyssa Hinton, or at least his imaginary version of her, sitting in the window seat of his bedroom, in the wedding dress she wore to marry his brother Sterling. “What are you doing here?” he hissed.

She shrugged. “You tell me. Since you’re the one seeing things.”

Quentin shook his head as he started to peel off the covers. “This is just going too far.”

Alyssa quickly covered her eyes with her hand when he jumped out of bed. “Oh, my God! Hurry up and put something on.”

Q frowned as he reached down and snatched his robe from the floor and pulled it on. “You’re in my bedroom, remember?” He stopped and then looked over at the bed and then back at his sister-in-law. “Just how long have you been here, anyway?”

Alyssa peeked through her fingers and saw that Quentin was decent, so she lowered her hand. “I’d rather not answer that question.”

Embarrassment heated Quentin’s face—and he was not a man who easily got embarrassed. “You can’t keep doing this!”

“Hmm?” The sheets ruffled behind him.

When he turned around, Christina lifted her head. “What did you say, baby?”

“Nothing,” he lied to reassure her. “Go back to sleep.”

Christina gave him a lazy smile. “What are you doing up? Come back to bed.” She stretched out her arm to pat the empty space beside her for emphasis. “It’s getting lonely over here.”

“I’ll be back in a minute. I’m just going to the bath room.”

“Mmm,” she moaned, and then plopped her head back down onto the bed. “Hurry up. I’m missing you, big daddy.”

“You got it.” He waited a few seconds.

“Zzzzzzz.”

Quentin turned his angry gaze back toward Alyssa.

She just frowned. “Big daddy?”

“Drop it.”

“Hmm?” Christina asked.

“Nothing,” he hissed, and then stormed toward the bathroom. “I’m not going crazy. I’m not going crazy,” he repeated under his breath.

“You might want to get a second opinion on that,” Alyssa said, following behind him. “Like maybe go back and see that nice Dr. Turner you were talking to last month.”

Quentin groaned. “I don’t need a shrink. Thank you very much.”

“And yet here I am,” she volleyed back.

When they reached the bathroom door, Quentin stopped abruptly and looked back at her. “Do you mind? Can a guy get a little privacy?”

“Sorry.” Alyssa folded her arms and leaned against the door frame. “A few minutes ago you were all too willing to show me big daddy.”

Quentin slammed the door in her face, but he could still hear her laughing on the other side. “Women! Even the imaginary ones were impossible to live with.” He shook his head as he relieved himself and even took a quick shower. By the time he had wiped away the steam from the mirror, he was reasonably sure that he’d pulled himself together.

That is, until Alyssa leaned over his right shoulder.

“Aaaaah!” He took his towel and covered the front of his chest like a damsel in distress.

Alyssa jumped and screamed, too.

Knock. Knock.

“Quentin? Are you all right in there?” Christina asked, twisting the doorknob.

Q finally clamped his mouth shut when he realized what the whole thing must have sounded like on the other side of the door. “Uh, yes! Never better.”

There was a brief pause before Christina asked. “Why were you screaming?”

“What? Uh…”

Alyssa snickered and then immediately launched into a game of charades to help him out.

“I saw…someone? No. Something?”

Alyssa nodded.

“Like what?” Christina asked.

“I, uh…” He looked to Alyssa, who was running around the bathroom with her fingers in the shape of a V over her head.”

“I don’t know. It looks like a rabbit—no? A what? What the hell is that?” he whispered to Alyssa.

“A cockroach,” she answered, offended that he didn’t get it. “A cockroach!” he thundered. “That looked nothing like—”

“You have roaches?” Christina asked, sounding disgusted.

“No!” he snapped at the door.

“You said—”

“Forget what I said.” He glared back at Alyssa. “I, uh, just thought I saw a gray hair.”

“Oh,” Christina said dubiously from the other side of the door.

“A gray hair?” Alyssa challenged, frowning. “You’d freak out like that over a gray hair?”

“Maybe.” Q rolled his eyes. “By the way, what happened to my privacy?”

Alyssa shrugged. “I waited until you had finished showering.”

“I don’t get this. How in the hell am I being haunted by someone who is still alive?” He headed toward the door.

“Maybe that’s why you need to go back and see Dr. Turner.”

“No! I’m not crazy!” Quentin snatched open the door.

Christina, clutching the top silk sheet to her chest, asked suspiciously, “Who are you talking to in there?”

“No one,” he answered too quickly.

Christina peered over his shoulder and looked into the empty bathroom. “You know, uh, I really should be going. I, uh, have a very full day tomorrow.” She turned and started grabbing her clothes.

“Wait. You don’t have to leave,” he said.

“Don’t worry. I’ll call you later,” she said, moving like someone had struck a match to her behind. Less than two minutes later, she was dressed and racing out of the house with Q trying to catch up so that he could at least walk her to her car. But just as he reached the front door, it slammed in his face.

At the top of the stairs, Alyssa folded her arms. “That went well.”

The next day Quentin stretched out his six-foot-two frame across the black leather chaise, staring up at the ceiling in Dr. Julianne Turner’s downtown Atlanta office. Truth be told, he’d surprised himself by returning to the doctor’s office for another round of therapy, especially since he didn’t really believe that there was anything wrong with him.

“Oh, there’s plenty wrong with you,” said Alyssa, his hallucinated sister-in-law/fantasy-lost-love from across the room. She wore that damn white wedding gown again today. Their marriage was a scab that everyone had hoped would heal over time, but so far—no dice. He’d been the one who his li’l Alice had a crush on. It was he who had first fallen for the li’l minx when she’d grown up to become a beautiful fashion model. It was Sterling who had discouraged Quentin from pursuing a relationship with her—since according to his brother she was like their younger sister—only to have him turn around and marry Alyssa himself.

“I wish you’d put something else on,” Q mumbled under his breath to his mirage.

“Like I have something to do with what I have on,” Alyssa said, throwing up her hands. “I’m not really here!”

“What was that, Quentin?” Dr. Turner asked, sitting across from him in a straight-backed chair.

“What? Nothing.” He shook his head at the doctor, who took great pains to hide her lush curves under large, unflattering clothes. The fact that she dressed so frumpy bothered him more than it should have. He didn’t understand why beautiful women did things like that. Didn’t they understand their power?

Alyssa smirked. “Are you really sitting there thinking about having sex with your psychiatrist?”

“Who said anything about having sex with my doctor?” Q snapped.

“Excuse me?” Dr. Turner said, looking up from her notepad.

“What? Nothing.” He glared at Alyssa, who shrugged her shoulders.

All right, yes. Quentin knew that it wasn’t exactly normal to be seeing and talking to someone who wasn’t there. But as far as he could tell, it was just a coping mechanism until he could work through his conflicting emotions. So far, it was better than getting drunk and being pulverized in bar fights—which had actually been his first line of defense.

Dr. Turner started scribbling in her yellow notepad. “You think today you’ll tell me who it is that you see and talk to?”

He hesitated as Alyssa raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lied. “I’m here because…I want to understand…”

“Love?” the doctor suggested.

Quentin bobbed his head while Alyssa shook hers.

“That’s a tall order, Mr. Hinton,” Dr. Turner said, crossing her long, chocolate-brown legs, which continued to distract him. A connoisseur of women, Quentin had spent his entire adult life enjoying learning all there was to know about women—sexually, that is, he proudly boasted. He loved nothing more than to lose himself in the curve of a woman’s hip, the valleys between and around a pair of succulent breasts and, of course…other hidden treasures.

“Quentin?” Dr. Turner repeated, breaking his trance from her long limbs.

“I’m sorry. What?”

Alyssa huffed out a frustrated breath and plopped down in an empty chair across the room. “This is a complete waste of time. This isn’t about love. To you this is about winning and losing.”

Quentin frowned, but before he could ask Alyssa what the hell she meant by that, Dr. Turner cleared her throat. “I said that trying to understand love is a tall order. Many people spend their entire lives trying to figure it out, nurture it and even control it.”

“I’ll take control for two hundred, Alex,” Alyssa said, mimicking a Jeopardy! contestant.

“Humph.” A half smile curled Q’s lips.

“I guess I’d be remiss if I didn’t add those who try to run away from love,” she said.

Once again, they had hit his category and the room fell silent.

“Have you given any more thought to calling your brother Sterling?”

I think about it all the time. “No.”

“Do you think that you’ll never be able to forgive him for the wrong you feel that he has done to you?” Dr. Turner asked.

Quentin held Alyssa’s gaze from across the room. “I’m not sure.”

“That’s different from the flat no last week,” the therapist gently reminded him.

He stopped and weighed his words carefully. “Trust…is still an issue.” He shifted in his chair and ignored the way his beautiful mirage frowned at him. “No matter what has happened in my life, the constant power struggle between me and my father or the insane messes I found myself in, I always thought that I could trust my brothers. Sterling…Jonas. We’re each different. Granted, they are megasuccessful and now happily married with children, and probably a dog and even a white-picket fence. I never questioned their loyalty or intentions. I believed that my brothers, more than anyone, always had my best interest at heart.”

Q shook his head. “How do you learn to trust someone again after they’ve poured gasoline on that bridge and blown it up?”

“Perhaps by reaching out?” Dr. Turner suggested.

“So it’s all on me?” The idea repulsed him. “I wasn’t the one with the gasoline.”

The statement hung in the air as Q struggled to swallow the huge boulder in his throat. He even blinked back a few tears. “It’s not that I don’t miss Sterling. I do. I just don’t know how to go about forgiving him. But then when I think about my cousin Xavier—”

“Xavier King?”

Quentin nodded. “I told you about him and his brothers the last time.”

“Yes, your coveted boys’ club.”

“I believe that boys’ club is your terminology—not mine.”

“But they were who you ran to as a substitute for your real brothers since Sterling and Jonas were no longer available bachelors for you to hang out with.”

“I never said that my cousins were substitutes.”

“Weren’t they?”

Quentin shifted in the chaise at the provocative question. “No, not consciously.”

Dr. Turner removed her black-rimmed glasses from her perky nose. “Do you mind if I disclose some observations that I’ve made about you?”

Quentin turned his tall frame onto his side to meet his doctor’s soft, steady, brown-eyed gaze. “You mean that I actually get to hear a little of what you spend hours jotting down on your little yellow notepad?”

She smiled reflexively as she crossed her arms over her lap. “You’re a creature of habit. You have a hard time adjusting to change. And when things don’t turn out like you expect them to—as eventually happens—you seek out those things that will give you a sense of familiarity.”

“Please.” He gave her a dismissive shake of his head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No? When your father cut you off financially, didn’t you rely on women to support you in a fashion that you were accustomed to instead of getting out there and making your own way?”

“Wait. I’m a successful businessman in my own right.”

“Now, but not then. And when your brothers were no longer available to pal around with, you sought out the next best thing, which is a family of cousins whose dynamic was much like your own.”

Alyssa waved her finger. “Ooooh. She really is good.”

“You’ve said that before,” Q reminded her.

“It’s still true.”

“I don’t remember us discussing this before,” Dr. Turner said.

“Sorry. Not you. I was talking to someone else,” he said before thinking.

“I see.”

He winced and waited for her to ask the obvious question again, but she surprised him and let the comment go. However, Dr. Turner’s pen went back to scribbling. Great. At this rate, I’ll be in a mental hospital by the end of summer.

“Xavier,” Dr. Turner suddenly said. “You were about to tell me something about your cousin?”

Quentin allowed himself to relax a little. “Um, yeah. I was saying that my cousin Xavier had sort of a similar situation with trust when love came knocking on his door.”

“Ah. Another player bites the dust?”

“Exactly.” Quentin laughed, but continued to nod his head. “Of all the players I thought would ride this bachelorhood thing until the wheels fell off, it was him. I mean, I can tell you some stories that would make your hair stand on end.”

“You two are best friends?”

“Absolutely,” Q said, nodding, but then his smile slowly started to fade. “Of course, after his older brother Eamon married Victoria, I should have seen the handwriting on the wall.”

“Oh? How so?”

“Bad things usually happen in pairs.”

“I always heard they happened in threes,” she corrected thoughtfully.

“That explains a lot,” he grumbled with a roll of his eyes, and then stared back up at the ceiling. “Like I was saying, Xavier had to overcome some major trust issues. But then again, maybe all it takes is for the right woman to come along….”

The Loyal King

Chapter 1

“Welcome to The Dollhouse Atlanta,” Xavier King exclaimed, sweeping his huge, muscular biceps toward the newly renovated club. The enormous white stone building looked more like a high-end shopping mall than a gentlemen’s club smack dab in the middle of downtown Atlanta. “So what do you think?”

This latest renovation of the Atlanta club started off as a small-scale repair project, much of which resulted from the damage done by an old-fashioned bar fight involving a patron who had tried his best to permanently rearrange his cousin Q’s face. But once Xavier got started, the project got bigger and bigger, to the point that the once modest-size club now rivaled the infamous Cheetah Lounge in square footage.

A little-known fact was that Atlanta was the strip-club capital of America. So Xavier took the attitude that The Dollhouse needed to go big or go home. He went big. Really big.

Quentin Hinton, Xavier’s best friend and cousin, stepped out of his black Mercedes and cocked his head so that he could get a better view of the exterior. “Hmm.”

Climbing out of the backseat of the car, Xavier’s younger brother Jeremy took one look at the place and declared, “I love it!”

Xavier’s chest swelled with pride as his pearly white smile stretched from ear to ear. “I knew you would. C’mon inside. Let me show you what else I’ve done.” He waved for them to follow him.

Once they entered through the glass doors, they walked across the black marble floors of the lobby.

“Niiiice,” Quentin finally said, bobbing his head as he took in some of the erotic artwork hanging on the walls in gilded frames. “Took it old school, did you?”

“Just a little bit.” Xavier winked and then turned. “Here is where the club’s concierge/hostess will be,” he said, pointing to a matte-gold podium. “This will also be where the limo service will check in or out when bringing in clients from Bachelors Adventures or patrons from any of the surrounding hotels.” He waved them on to follow him through the lobby and through the club’s main arched entryway.

There, both Quentin and Jeremy gave a low whistle of approval. The first thing that caught their eyes was the long U-shaped runway in the middle of the main floor with elevated seating along the side. The next thing that drew their attention was the two forty-five-foot-long bars surrounded by cushioned leather bar stools that flanked two lighted side-by-side dance stages. The rest of the seating on the main floor consisted of stationary counter-height tables with chairs.

“You’re a genius,” Q praised as a smile crept up his face. “If you tell me that you’ve added a loft upstairs, then you’ve just built my fantasy dream house.”

Cocky as ever, Xavier raised his hand to his lips, blew on his nails and then buffed them on his chest. “Well, I don’t like bragging. But—yes, I am a bit of a genius.”

“And the head swells bigger,” Jeremy joked with the appropriate eye roll.

They all laughed as the three continued to tour the redesigned club.

“See, the way I figure it, every evening the girls will descend the staircase leading to the main runway stage. That way, they can fill the room for a showcase revue and a two-for-one dance special. Off to the far right, we have a mini VIP area, which is where the customers can have a more private lap dance. And of course upstairs we have the main VIP room for private parties like Bachelors Adventures.”

Xavier watched the two take it all in. Their opinions were important. Not only because they were family, they were business partners, as well. Until recently, there had been four owners. Quentin, the initial investor, and the three King brothers: Eamon, Xavier and Jeremy.

Eamon jumped ship after falling in love with billionaire heiress Victoria Gregory. It was a love that had almost fell apart after Xavier put his foot in his mouth by mentioning how much Victoria looked like Eamon’s first love, Karen, who’d been killed by a drunk driver. It was definitely the wrong thing to say to a woman. The hardest part for Xavier was having to come clean to his older brother, and telling him what he had done. It was a good thing he had a strong bond with his brothers. Eamon never once blamed him for being dumped by Victoria and hightailing it back to New York. That was when Eamon made the decision that he wanted the rest of them to buy him out of the business.

Ever since then, guilt gnawed at Xavier. He couldn’t shake the idea that somehow he was responsible for his brother tossing in the towel to become a full-time restaurateur…and husband. Turned out that chasing after Victoria was just the thing he needed to do in order to win her back. But the four musketeers were now down to three.

“Well. I gotta hand it to you, cuz. You outdid yourself on this one,” Q said, patting him on the back. “This calls for a celebration.”

Xavier’s forehead wrinkled as he folded his arms. “Who are you kidding? Your getting out of bed is cause for celebration.”

Quentin held up a finger. “This is true. But seeing as how this swanky new shindig is going to make us a whole lot more money, I’m going to take you two out for dinner.”

Jeremy’s brows hiked. “You paying?”

“No. I was just going to drive.”

“Figures. You cheap bastard.”

Feigning shock, Q pressed a hand over his heart. “I’m offended.”

Jeremy rubbed his index finger and thumb together. “I’ve got the world’s smallest violin playing for you right now.”

Xavier shook his head while he listened to them carry on.

“Excuse me?” a soft voice floated from behind them.

The men spun around.

Xavier experienced a Mike Tyson punch to the gut when his eyes landed on a maple-brown sister with jaw-dropping Jessica Rabbit curves. How he managed to keep his tongue inside his mouth while his gaze roamed over her ripe cantaloupes that were posing as breasts and stretching the hell out of a black T-shirt with a decal that said Got Milk was a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Equally mystifying was how she managed to get her painted-on jeans over a red-beans-and-rice booty that at the right angle looked like an upside-down question mark.

All in all, those were just a few of the questions that he was more than happy to get to the bottom of.

“I’m sorry,” she said, pushing up her designer shades and flashing a smile that would make a Hollywood starlet green with envy. “I didn’t mean to interrupt, but is this where I apply for the bartending position that was listed?”

Xavier was struck by the way her voice seemed a little older than she appeared, mainly because it had a sexy huskiness to it and a slight Caribbean lilt. His lips widened. It had been a while since he’d had an island girl.

Jeremy stepped forward first. “Actually—”

Xavier grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back. “Yes. This is the place, but I’m afraid the interviews are tomorrow from four to seven. Not today.”

The woman looked down at the folded newspaper and read the classified ad again. When she saw that she did indeed have the wrong day her shoulders collapsed and she huffed out a frustrated breath. “Just great! I went through all that trouble to arrange a makeup lab test to come here today.” She slapped her forehead with the newspaper and then turned around. “All right, thanks! I guess it’s a sign that it just wasn’t meant to be.”

It was the sight of that thick butt walking away and possibly never returning that sprung Xavier into action. “Whoa! Wait,” he called after her.

She stopped and turned back around. “Yes?”

Again, he felt that punch to the gut, and when he caught his breath he smiled. “Well, since you’re already here, why don’t you let me see that résumé?”

“Great!” She quickly reached into the bag dangling off of her shoulder and handed over a single piece of paper. “I really appreciate this. It’s crazy trying to rearrange my schedule during the day—I’m in school. Med school, actually. Over at Emory, which is why working nights really fits my schedule.”

Xavier bobbed his head while she rambled on nervously.

“Cheryl Shepherd,” he read. “Twenty-seven… You’re clearly a med student like you said…but I don’t see a lot of bartending experience.”

“Well, I usually do a lot of small parties. Plus, I have an uncle who has a bar in Alabama. I used to help out there during the summers when I was in college.” She tossed in. “I probably should’ve added that.”

Xavier smiled, his gaze still caressing her curves. “Maybe we should give you a little audition behind the bar? See if you really know your stuff?”

“All right.” She nodded her head. “I’m down with that.”

He stepped back and extended his arm. “Right this way.”

Cheryl looked in the direction of the bar and strolled ahead of him, giving him a bird’s-eye view of all that her mama blessed her with.

Q leaned over and whispered in his ear, “Any chance we can talk her into putting all that into a thong?”

Jeremy shook his head. “I don’t know if even the three of us together can handle all of that. Humph. Humph. Humph.”

“Speak for yourself,” Q said, moving Jeremy out of the way and straightening his shoulders. But before he could activate his pimp walk, Xavier cut his stride off by stepping in front of him and taking the lead behind Cheryl.

In her immediate wake, Xavier recognized the sweet raspberry nectar and magnolia scent of Givenchy’s Hot Couture and his interest climbed a few more degrees. For some time now, it had been an abstraction of Xavier’s to pair women’s personalities with their choice of fragrance. What popped into his head as he followed her down the club’s new staircase was…sophisticated, sensual and bewitching. Those were his favorite qualities—for now, anyway.

“Wow. This is nice,” Cheryl praised, walking behind the bar and running her hand across the mahogany top. “Paid a lot of money for this baby.”

“And you’re going to be the first to try her out,” Xavier said, settling onto one of the stools. There was so much to marvel about her curvy body that his gaze kept darting around, trying to decide what was his favorite part. It was a three-way tie between her face, breasts and butt.

Jeremy and Quentin caught up and flanked his sides.

“All right, boys,” Cheryl said, flashing her Hollywood smile. “What will it be?”

“I’ll have a Slow Comfortable Screw Up Against the Bedpost Mexican Doggy Style,” Xavier ordered with a sly smirk. It was pretty much a frat-boy drink, but he wanted to see if this dime diva could handle a curveball.

Cheryl met his twinkling gaze and fired an imaginary gun at him. “You got it!” She immediate reached for the vodka, two different rums, Tequila Gold, Midori and gin, and threw in the appropriate mixers, and in less than a minute she set Xavier’s drink on a cocktail napkin in front of him. “Enjoy your screw.”

It took everything in Xavier’s power not to lower himself into the gutter even more by responding to the pun. Instead, he reached for the drink and took a sip. “Mmm. This is a good screw.” Okay, so he couldn’t help himself.

“I’ll have a Voodoo Sunrise,” Jeremy said, seeing if he could stump the hopeful bartender. Her hands flew to the vodka, white rum, grenadine and orange juice, and a few seconds later, she sat his drink down.

“My turn. My turn,” Q announced, and then clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “I have to make this one a good one to see if you got the right stuff. I mean…clearly you got the right stuff, I mean, damn. Look at you.”

Xavier reached over and popped Quentin on the back of the head.

“Ow.”

“Just order a damn drink.” Xavier cut him a look that told him to knock it off.

“All right. Damn. There’s no reason for all this black-on-black crime.” He pumped his fist to his chest. “We’re family.”

Xavier rolled his eyes at his cousin’s nonsense. Cheryl snickered. “Take your time.”

Q turned and hit her with his dimpled smile, but before he could get his mack mojo going, Xavier elbowed him. It wasn’t like him to cock-block this hard. But he instinctively felt the alpha-male impulse to mark his territory.

“I’ll just have a Singapore Sling.” Q looked over at Xavier. “If that’s all right with you.”

Cheryl hopped right to it, while Xavier and Q exchanged looks. No words were exchanged between the cousins, but their ESP battle went something like this….

Xavier: Cuz, back the hell off. She’s mine.

Quentin: I don’t see any rings on her fingers. She’s fair game.

Xavier: Family be damned, if you don’t pump the brakes I’ll take you out back and break your face.

Quentin: A’ight. A’ight. Stop the violence.

“Your drink,” Cheryl said, setting the third drink on the counter with a flourish and settling her hands on her hips.

Q picked up his glass, sipped, smacked his lips together while pretending to be in deep thought and then sipped again.

“Well?” Cheryl asked.

“Not bad. Not bad,” Q said. “But I’m concerned about your presentation.”

Xavier groaned and then propped an elbow on the bar so that he could massage the bridge of his nose.

“I’m sorry,” Cheryl said. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“Entertainment.” Q threw up his hands. “I know a little bit about being behind the bar and it’s been my experience that people really like it if a bartender…you know, entertains a bit.”

“Like hop on the bar and start dancing like Coyote Ugly.”

Quentin tapped his nose. “Do you dance?”

“Uh, no. I’m not interested in being a dancer. I just want to tend bar.”

“The job doesn’t entail dancing.” Xavier elbowed Q.

“What?” Q hissed. “Closed mouths don’t get fed.”

“Please ignore him,” Xavier said.

Cheryl held her smile. “Aw. He seems harmless.”

Quentin settled both his elbows on the bar and cradled his head in his hands. “I am completely harmless. Are you married?”

“Q,” Xavier warned.

“No. I’m not,” Cheryl answered.

“Boyfriend?” Quentin pressed.

“No boyfriend, unfortunately,” she said. Her gaze cut over to Xavier.

He felt another gut punch and wondered how much longer it would take before he suffered a knockout.

“But if you’re looking for more entertaining bartending…” She flipped the bottle of rum over her shoulder and then dipped her knees and caught the bottle with one hand behind her back. “I can do that, too.”

“You’re hired,” Quentin said, grinning.

“Q!” Xavier snapped. “What?”

Xavier jerked his head around toward his cousin, a look of annoyance plastered on his face. “You’re a silent partner. That means be quiet.”

“Touché.” Q shifted in his seat and straightened an invisible tie. “I’m sorry, Ms. Shepherd. Apparently, I don’t have the power to hire you. But I want you to know that I would hire you if I could.”

“Me, too,” Jeremy tossed in, draining his drink. “This is a really good Voodoo Sunrise.”

Now three sets of eyes turned toward Xavier.

“You said that you’re in school. How many hours are you looking for?”

“I’m looking for full-time work. Medical school isn’t cheap,” she joked.

“That’s a lot of work,” he noted.

“I can handle it,” she said, thrusting her chin up. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m a hard worker.”

Intelligence and determination glimmered in her maple-brown eyes as well as a hint of playful interest as she held Xavier’s bold gaze. “You say that you used to work at your uncle’s bar, but you know that working at a gentlemen’s club is a completely different animal. Patrons are going to hit on you—some are rude, some are obnoxious. Do you think you can handle that?”

Cheryl cocked her head. “I didn’t just get this body last night, Mr. King. Putting up with rude and obnoxious comments comes with the territory.”

Xavier laughed. “Good answer.”

Jeremy leaned over. “Now will you hire her?”

Xavier rolled his eyes. “Looks like if I don’t hire you, your new fan club might revolt.”

Cheryl flashed the two cousins an appreciative look. “A woman can never have too many fans. Thanks, guys.” She winked at them and they literally slid their elbows out in front of them like she’d just melted their hearts. “So does that mean I have the job?”

“It’s yours if you want it. Job starts Friday. Six o’clock sharp.”

“Great! I’ll be here!”

She finally tossed Xavier a wink and he nearly made a fool of himself, too, by gushing all over her. “Then we’ll see you Friday.”

Chapter 2

Lord have mercy.

Cheryl had never seen three finer men in all her life. When she first walked in and they turned toward her, she honestly felt like she was the winner of some kind of man-fantasy lottery. But the one who was seriously buttering her toast was the one she could barely look at. And when she finally did toss him a wink, his smile turned predatory. How on earth was she going to manage working for this man without suffering through endless fantasies of ripping his clothes off and having her way with him?

Hell, even now she wasn’t sure that she was walking a straight line toward the front door. It had a lot to do with knowing that there were three pairs of eyes following the sway of her hips and the jiggle of her ass. Of course, when she turned around at the glass door to give them a final wave, they all played it off and exchanged innocent smiles with her.

“Thanks again.” She rushed out into the parking lot to her old blue Ford Taurus, pretending that her heart wasn’t racing a mile a minute. As she climbed behind the wheel, she saw the three of them walk out of the club, as well. They looked like GQ models, laughing and joking with one another.

Cheryl’s gaze zoomed in on the tallest of the group, Xavier King, as she felt the muscles in her stomach quiver. When was the last time something like that had happened to her—junior high? She fumbled with the keys, trying to insert them into the ignition, while she took in his close-cropped hair, handsome chiseled features, smooth, milk-chocolate skin and a muscled body that was just screaming her name.

Even though he wore a bright white dress shirt and a pair of black jeans, Cheryl had no trouble picturing him stripped down to his birthday suit. How could she not? Broad chest, trim waist and powerful thighs—this was a man who hadn’t let himself go since his days of earning money in the boxing ring. He was beyond fine, but the problem was that he knew it.

She had no problem imagining women tripping over their bottom lips trying to get his attention, and no doubt he had his pick. Shoot, under the right circumstances… “Shake it off, girl. Shake it off.” Cheryl finally slipped the key into the ignition and started the car.

The men glanced in her direction and she exchanged a polite wave as she pulled out of the parking lot and headed out onto the street. No sooner had she taken a left onto the main road did her cell phone ring. “Hello.”

“Well, how did it go?” Johnnie asked.

“I got the job,” Cheryl said, unable to stop herself from sounding cocky.

“It was the Got Milk T-shirt, wasn’t it?”

“Are you insinuating that my body got me a job at a strip club instead of my amazing bartending skills?”

Johnnie laughed. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Cheryl smiled. “Well…maybe it was more like a one-two punch.”

“Uh-huh. You keep telling yourself that. How far are you from the station?”

Cheryl glanced down at the clock on the console. “Be there in ten.” She disconnected the call. During the ten-minute drive, Cheryl had a hard time keeping her mind on the road and off Xavier King. How many hours did a man have to put in at the gym to get a body like that? Two hours a day—three?

She was sure that if she had a magnifying glass or a jeweler’s loupe, she wouldn’t have been able to find a single ounce of fat anywhere on his body. And Lawd have mercy, that chest. Not only was it wide, but he had just the right kind of muscles that didn’t make him look like a steroid freak. They looked like the perfect place for a woman to lay her head down on every night.

Before Cheryl knew it, she was getting herself so hot and worked up that she had to turn on the air conditioner to try and cool off. By the time she reached the police station, she was reasonably composed, but she wouldn’t have turned down a cold shower if the opportunity presented itself.

She parked, cut off the engine and reached over to the glove compartment to retrieve her badge and police-issue Glock before climbing out of the car. But the minute she walked into the precinct, she drew more than her fair share of stares from her male colleagues.

“Yo, Grier. I got some milk for you,” Officer Daniel Banks hollered with his arms outstretched. “What’s my prize?”

There was a ripple of laughter across the precinct floor.

Cheryl gave his ignorant ass the bird and kept it moving toward her department.

Her partner, Officer Johnnie Walsh, hung up the phone on her desk and then glanced over at the ridiculously large clock on the wall. “Eight minutes. Not bad.”

“I aim to please,” Cheryl said, plopping down into the chair beside her partner’s desk. “Have I missed anything?”

Johnnie leaned her five-foot-four frame back in her chair and exhaled a long breath. “Nothing that has anything to do with our case, if that’s what you mean. But the mayor and the chief of police are in the lieutenant’s office right now giving him a dressing-down over that botched armored-car robbery yesterday. Two cops down and the perpetrators getting away means the lieutenant isn’t going to have much ass left to sit on for the rest of the year.”

Cheryl glanced at the lieutenant’s closed door and shook her head. “It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

Johnnie laughed. “I take it that means you and the big man haven’t kissed and made up yet?”

“That is never going to happen.”

Johnnie shrugged and gave her the “I told you so” look a couple of seconds before it tumbled out her mouth. “I told you not to get involved in an office romance. Let alone with someone you work for.”

Cheryl performed her customary head bob and eye roll. What else could she do? Johnnie had warned her repeatedly and she had ignored her repeatedly. Mainly because as far as Cheryl was concerned, her mother had been right: she had to learn to do things the hard way. It was one of the unfortunate side effects of never taking no for an answer, wanting to do things her way and having issues with authority figures. Combine all of those traits and it meant that Cheryl almost always stayed in trouble.

Johnnie’s phone rang and she quickly picked it up.

Cheryl started to turn her head away from the door when it suddenly jerked open and the mayor and chief of police strode out like twin tornadoes ripping through the office. All eyes followed them until they were out of sight before looking back at Lieutenant Jason Mackey, who was last to exit his office.

To Cheryl’s inquisitive eye, it looked like Jason Mackey’s superiors had done more than just chew his butt off. They had beaten every ounce of confidence out of his usually cocky demeanor. “Aww,” Cheryl said, low enough for Johnnie’s ears only. “I almost feel sorry for him.”

Johnnie placed a hand over the mouthpiece. “The keyword is almost.”

Cheryl turned back around and flashed a smile. “Good ear.”

Johnnie removed her hand and said into the line, “We’re on our way.” She hung up and climbed out of her seat. “Let’s go.”

Drawing in a deep breath, Cheryl pitched herself out of the chair and followed her partner into the department’s smallest conference room. On a corkboard were photos and diagrams of how the police department believed Operation Striptease broke down. As Cheryl took her seat in one of the metal folding chairs, she stared at pictures of the suspected mules, Mario and Alejandro Gutierrez, hauling everything from marijuana, cocaine and heroine out of Mexico to the runners, Kendrick Hodges and Jermaine Wallace. From there, things tended to get a little tricky. Who was trafficking drugs and distributing them to the dancers and clientele at a number of strip clubs, lounges and gentlemen’s clubs? More importantly, just how far up the chain did the illegal activity go? Cheryl had a little run-in with Hodges last year—picked him up on a breaking-and-entering charge. He was a mean son of a bitch who hated cops. She didn’t look forward to crossing paths with him again.

In no time at all, Cheryl’s gaze shot up to the top of the board where striking pictures of Xavier King and Quentin Hinton were posted. Each had a large question mark made with a wide, black Sharpie next to their faces. While other members of their team and even some from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation task force filtered into the room, Cheryl couldn’t pull her gaze away from Xavier’s handsome face.

Johnnie leaned over and whispered, “Between you and me, is Xavier King that fine in person?”

Immediately, the corners of Cheryl’s lips curled. “Honey, his pictures don’t nearly do him justice.”

Johnnie leaned in so close that Cheryl felt like her partner was invading her personal space. “Ooooh. I know that look.” Johnnie groaned, shaking her head. “I know that look.”

“What?” Cheryl’s brows knitted. “What look?”

“That bitch in heat look,” Johnnie spat out. She had never been one to mince words. “You know, the one you always get two seconds before you land in hot water.”

Cheryl nodded and began rolling her eyes again.

Johnnie’s groan became louder before she hissed, “Get that silly-ass look off your face. Get your hormones in check and your mind on the J-O-B.”

“Since when don’t I do my job?” Cheryl asked, looking at her partner and friend.

Johnnie crossed her arms. “All I’m saying is that I’ve been gunning for that sergeant’s badge and this case can make it happen. Don’t screw it up.”

“Again. When it comes to my job, I do my job.”

“And when it comes to good-looking men, you lose your head,” Johnnie reminded her. On cue, Lieutenant Mackey strolled his arrogant butt into the squad room and their eyes connected for a brief second before another officer captured his attention with a question.

Jason Mackey, six foot one with a smooth, dark-chocolate complexion, had first attracted Cheryl’s attention five years ago when she joined the force, mainly because he knew how to wield his power and authority like no one she’d ever met before. Ignoring common sense and unsolicited advice from her partner, she gave in to their obvious physical attraction and proceeded to have a six-month affair that was totally against department policy.

Their first night together was great. The other five months and twenty-nine days was a complete nightmare. She suffered endless migraines and gut-wrenching regret. Mackey, however, was head over heels in love. Cheryl had to learn the hard way how bad and sticky it was to try to end an office romance—though Jason Mackey seemed hardly over it.

Slowly, she realized that Mackey was working his way around the room. She found herself feverishly praying for the meeting to hurry up and get started. But Cheryl wasn’t that lucky.

“Officer Grier.” Mackey’s eyes roamed over her face before slowly following the contours of her curvy body. “Now, why am I not surprised that you didn’t have a problem landing a job at The Dollhouse?”

She smiled. “Because you know that I’m good at whatever I put my mind to.” That didn’t come out right.

Mackey immediately hiked up a brow. “You know…now that you’ve mentioned it… You do have a point there.”

From the corner of her eye, Cheryl saw Johnnie pretending to gag. However, when Mackey cast his gaze over at her partner, she had a straight face and quickly feigned an innocent smile. That alone was enough for him to continue to look at her suspiciously.

“So, uh, what was your impression of Mr. King and Mr. Hinton?” Mackey asked, returning his gaze to Cheryl. “Any red flags we should know of?”

“No. Actually, they seem like three normal—”

“Three?”

“Yeah. Uh, Xavier’s younger brother was there, as well. Jeremy King. When I applied for the job, Xavier was with Quentin and Jeremy.”

“Think the younger brother might have a hand in all of this?”

Cheryl started to shake her head.

“I mean, don’t the other King brothers own The Dollhouse’s other locations in Las Vegas and Los Angeles? What if they have a whole network set up?”

Mackey was getting that ambitious look in his eyes. No doubt expanding the scope of the investigation, as visions of a major drug bust danced like sugarplums in his head. The fame and the national recognition could land him something like head of Homeland Security.

When Cheryl glanced over at her partner to make sure that she got a good look at Mackey’s daydreaming butt, she saw Johnnie had the same look in her eyes. “I don’t know,” Cheryl said. “They seemed like normal guys to me. My instincts tell me that they don’t have anything to do with any of this,” she said, gesturing toward the corkboard. Her comment was like a sharp pin in their fantasy career-making balloons. She’d swear on a stack of Bibles that she heard two thunderous pops—deflating their lofty ambitions—before they leveled disappointed frowns in her direction.

“But you could be wrong,” Mackey said snidely. “It’s been known to happen before.”

Cheryl’s eyes narrowed. “You asked me for my opinion and I gave it.”

Mackey smiled when he sensed that he had hit a nerve. “And if you’re wrong, you won’t have any problems slapping the handcuffs on Mr. Big-Time Ex-Boxing Champion, will you?”

“Absolutely not. I am a police officer first and foremost, and if and when the time comes to slap the handcuffs on Xavier King, I’ll do so without hesitation.”

Chapter 3

Across town, Xavier, Jeremy and Quentin were being seated at a private table at Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Whenever they got together, the occasion usually called for something involving steak—or beer—but definitely a steak.

“Here you go, gentlemen. Your waiter’s name is Sasha and she will be with you in a minute,” their hostess said as she flirted and then added a wink.

All three men gave her their best player’s smile before easing into the leather chairs around the table and opening their menus. Once she turned and walked away, they looked at one another and said in unison, “She wants me.”

They immediately looked at one another skeptically. They knew that any one of them could easily turn heads when it came to the ladies. Xavier, a former heavyweight champion, stood a solid six foot four and was muscular with smooth chocolate skin and licorice eyes. His natural swagger was loaded with confidence that he’d earned in and out of the bedroom. Unlike his older brother Eamon, Xavier didn’t have a single monogamous gene in his body, and that was a good thing in his opinion. It didn’t make him a jerk or anything. He truly believed that life was meant to be enjoyed to the fullest, and more than anything he enjoyed the pleasure of a woman’s company, or two, but definitely no more than three. And he had it on good authority that they enjoyed him, too.

“A hundred bucks says that she was winking at me,” Q said, easing back in his chair and puffing out his chest.

“In your dreams, grandpa,” Jeremy countered. “The only thing that dime would give you is a senior citizen discount on your meal.”

Xavier pressed his lips together, but a snicker still managed to escape.

“Senior—what?” Q’s face colored with embarrassment. “I’ll have you know that the forties are the new thirties, young blood.”

“Sure. Sure.” Jeremy bobbed his head, but crudely gestured with his hands in a way that implied Q was a whack job.

Quentin’s indignation deepened, causing him to smack the table with his hand and up the ante. “A thousand bucks.”

Both Xavier and his nearly look-alike brother straightened in their chairs now that there was some serious money on the table.

“What exactly is the bet?” Xavier asked.

“Simple. Whoever gets her number wins.”

The King brothers rolled their eyes and waved him off.

“Please,” Xavier said, reaching for his water. “That’s child’s play. Who’s to say that she won’t give her number to all three of us?”

Q conceded his point. “All right. Let’s make it whoever can get her in bed. Sounds fair?”

The brothers looked at each other and shrugged.

“All right,” Jeremy said. “Why not? I don’t have any plans tonight. You in, bro?”

Xavier looked at his watch and remembered that he actually did have other plans after dinner and heaved a reluctant sigh. “Sorry. I’m going to have to leave this easy money on the table. But you two go for what you know. I’ll be interested in seeing how this one pans out—old school versus new school.” He pointed a finger at his brother. “Don’t you let me down.”

“Please.” Jeremy leaned back in his chair so that his ego would have enough room at the table. “I got you covered like Allstate. Don’t worry about me, be concerned about grandpa here. I don’t think that he’s going to accept the fact that his player’s card expired—a loooong time ago.”

If looks could kill, Jeremy would have been slowly disemboweled by his cousin.

“I see right now that it’s time to smack you on the ass and send you back crying to your mama,” Q said, smirking. “When it comes to women, all the real players know to call me the Professor.”

“Oh? Is that right?” Jeremy laughed.

“That’s right. Look it up in the dictionary. You’ll see my picture in there.”

While the two cousins argued and goaded each other as to who was the better player, neither of them noticed when the hostess waltzed back by the table, leading another party to their table, and very slyly slipped her number next to Xavier’s silverware.

Xavier caught the slick move, picked up the scrap of paper, looked at it and then tucked it into his black jeans with a smirk. Old school, new school—there was nothing like just being the best school. “Will you two knuckleheads shut up and get back to telling me how much of a genius I am with all the new renovations?”

That stopped the argument long enough for them to flash him a get-over-yourself look.

“What? That is why we came here, isn’t it? To celebrate my genius?”

“Frankly, I just tagged along for the free meal,” Jeremy said.

“Free?” Q frowned. “The only thing free, cuz, was the ride over here. That fancy new renovation job is coming out of my pocket.”

Xavier shrugged. “You’re the one that wrecked the place.”

“When I said I would pay for the damages, I was thinking a few tables and chairs. I didn’t think that you’d go buck-wild and gut the place.”

“Maybe next time you’ll be a little more specific,” Xavier said with absolutely no remorse.

“Does that mean you’ll pay for renovations in the Los Angeles club?” Jeremy asked, since he managed that location.

“Hell to the no!” Quentin said, twisting his face. “What do you think I am—First National Bank?” Then, suddenly, he closed his eyes and groaned.

Xavier frowned. “What’s up with you?”

Q shook his head. “I sounded like my father just now.”

Xavier and Jeremy exchanged looks and busted out laughing.

Quentin and his father’s contentious relationship had been gossip fodder for family members over the years. Roger Hinton, perhaps the most successful man in the family tree, built his fortune in commercial real estate and computer technology in the early eighties, and was one of only a handful of African-American billionaires. Brilliant in business, he’d raised two sons who were equally ambitious and nearly as successful in their own right. Then there was his third son, Quentin, who by all accounts until recently showed an almost violent allergic reaction to the very thought of holding a job.

After much back and forth, disinheritance, bribery and being swept back into the family’s good graces, the one business that Q invested in—The Dollhouse—had made him rich in his own right. Brilliant or lucky? Most of the family decided it was luck. Xavier thought it had more to do with his own brilliance.

True, his older brother Eamon already owned The Dollhouse in Atlanta and he was content to keep it a small club while he fiddled with the idea of opening a restaurant until Xavier saw its true potential, and expanded the operation by capitalizing on a niche market—bachelor-party planning—and launched Bachelors Adventures. The concept was simple, and Xavier saw an opportunity to capitalize on an underserved market. Sure, any strip club could host a bachelor party. But not many catered to fantasy-driven bachelor parties, complete with themes and costumes—if that’s what you wanted.

A bachelor party was a rite of passage. It was a big deal, and since it would be in poor taste to have a wake the night before a wedding, most men felt they deserved to party one last time like a rock star. There was no event too small or too big that Bachelors Adventures couldn’t make happen. That simple business concept and the power of an influential word-of-mouth campaign is what really put The Dollhouse on the map, and not only made them serious contenders in their industry but solidified their reputation as Kings.

“Hello, gentlemen. My name is Sasha and I’ll be your waitress for the evening. Are you ready for me to take your drink orders?”

They quickly put their conversation on pause and turned their attention to an extremely petite red-bone sporting short, natural hair in spiral twists. Her black-rimmed glasses gave her a studious look and her bright-white smile was warm and inviting.

“Three Heinekens,” Xavier ordered for everyone.

Sasha quickly scribbled it down and then asked whether they were ready to order food. Once they’d selected their entrées, she took their menus and promised that everything would be ready in a few minutes. Of course, when she walked away, they gave her retreating figure another look.

“How about double or nothing,” Quentin asked.

Xavier rolled his eyes. “I think you need to put your dick on a shorter leash.”

Q’s face twisted in horror. “Why in the hell would I want to do that? The happier he is, the happier I am.”

Xavier’s brows lifted. “Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?”

Clearly, Q had because he immediately started shifting around in his chair.

Sasha proved to be good at her job and quickly returned with their beers, setting their bottles down in front of them. “Your food will be right up.”

The men flashed her quick smiles as they reached for their beers and returned to their conversation.

“So what do you think of the spanking-new bartender you hired today?” Quentin asked, seemingly having tired of arguing with Jeremy.

Xavier leaned back in his chair and gave the question some serious thought. “She’ll certainly make things interesting.”

“I’ll say,” Q responded, reaching for his beer. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you cock-block so hard in my life.”

“Please.” Xavier gave a halfhearted laugh and rolled his eyes. “If anything, I was trying to prevent you guys from embarrassing yourselves and scaring the woman.”

Neither his brother nor his cousin looked like they bought that load of crap.

Jeremy was the first to call him on it. “Please. You were throwing so much shade that I thought we were in the middle of a cave. But that’s all right. I’m gonna let it go. But only because I’m heading back to Los Angeles tomorrow and you know how I feel about long-distance relationships.”

Quentin laughed. “Yeah. The same way you feel about all relationships. You don’t do them.”

Jeremy bobbed his head along with the joke, mainly because it was true—for all of them. In their world, marriage was a dying institution. Who needed a piece of paper? Life was meant to be lived and enjoyed—the less drama, the better. And if there was one thing that all three men at the table agreed upon, it was that relationships ultimately involved a whole lot of drama.

“Frankly,” Jeremy said. “Business has more than doubled at our L.A. club, so we might want to look into expanding some more.”

“In a down economy?” Xavier asked.

Quentin laughed. “Our business is recession-proof.”

Xavier conceded the point. “Maybe I’m not feeling it because I’ve been renovating for a hot minute. All I’ve been doing is writing checks.”

“There’s still revenue from Bachelors Adventures coming in,” Q reminded him. “You’ve been on top of your game keeping those parties going at local hotels and other venues.”

“True that.” Xavier nodded. “I have this Lawrence of Arabia one coming up with this big-wig CEO out of New York. We’re blowing up off word of mouth.”

Q shrugged. “The old-fashioned way of doing business.”

“We may have to look into expanding into New York, too,” Jeremy interjected.

Q and Xavier frowned.

“What?” Jeremy shrugged. “If there’s money to be made and our hustle is strong, what’s the problem?”

“There is such a thing as growing too fast, you know?” Quentin warned.

“Just like there’s such a thing as striking while the iron is still hot,” Jeremy volleyed, unfazed.

Xavier smiled at the raw, unadulterated ambition gleaming in his brother’s eyes. Jeremy made no bones about the fact that he was out to make his paper. Ambition was great. It would probably take his brother a long way. At least, Xavier hoped it would—unlike his own.

A wave of disappointment and regret started rolling inside him again, but he ignored it and plastered on another smile. Somehow, over the years, he’d become the brother that everyone brought their problems to without anyone ever really asking whether he had any of his own.

For the record, he had quite a few of them.

He suspected that most people thought that because he could take and land a hard punch, and that he could handle just about anything. For the most part, they were right. He knew how to duck and dodge most of life’s problems. But the death of a dream…is something very few ever get over.

In 2002, he was on top of the world after becoming a national Golden Gloves champion with his eye toward the Olympics, the International Boxing Federation, the World Boxing Association and the World Boxing Council heavyweight titles. He wanted it all, like his heroes Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson, who once had the world at their feet. He wasn’t inspired so much because of the money and endorsements—though those were nice, too—but it was the recognition that came with being the best, being number one.

Then came the fight that changed everything…

“Hello.” Quentin snapped his fingers in front of Xavier’s face and brought him back from his ruminations. “There he is.” Q smiled as their plates were being set on the table. “Still thinking about that hot bartender?”

Xavier rolled his eyes. “No.”

“Riiiight.” Quentin picked up his fork and knife and started cutting his steak. “The only time a man drifts off like that is because he’s thinking about a woman.”

Xavier laughed as he unrolled his linen napkin and started in on his baked potato. “Believe it or not, not all men spend their every waking moment thinking about women.”

Jeremy and Quentin stopped eating and looked at him. “They don’t?” they said in unison.

“Since when?” Jeremy added.

Xavier’s laughter deepened. “You two aren’t serious, are you?”

They looked at each other and then back at Xavier, their expressions unchanged.

“You both need psychiatric help,” he said, and took the first bite of his steak. He immediately moaned as he savored the cut of meat.

“Well, since you’re not interested in Ms. Got Milk, then you won’t mind if I stick around and see what the deal is with her. Hell, I can give her a run for her money behind the bar.” Quentin smirked.

Xavier’s frown returned. “Weren’t you just betting on who would get our hostess in bed a few minutes ago? Now you want to try to move in on my new bartender?”

“What? A man can’t multitask?”

Xavier shook his head. “I hope that you’re donating your brain to science because something is seriously wrong with you.”

“What? Aren’t you at least happy that I’m not drinking myself to death and getting into bar fights anymore?”

“Newsflash—you’re not going to be able to screw Alyssa out of your system, either,” Xavier schooled.

“Ouch. Harsh,” Jeremy mumbled under his breath.

Q nodded. “I wasn’t ready for that sucker punch.”

“Sorry,” Xavier said, and meant it. “That was uncalled for.”

“No. But it’s probably true, too,” Quentin said.

Xavier’s brows rose in surprise. “It was?”

Quentin shrugged as he pretended to think about it. “I said probably. I’ll get back to you with my findings.”

Xavier and Jeremy had to laugh. At the end of the day, Q was doing whatever he had or needed to do to get over his broken heart. The only thing was, Xavier questioned who really broke it—Alyssa or Q’s older brother Sterling.

Xavier counted himself lucky for never having gone through anything remotely similar—since he’d never been in love.

And God willing, he never would be.

Chapter 4

As her first day at The Dollhouse approached, Cheryl delved deeper and deeper into Xavier King’s background, almost to the point of making it a miniobsession. Her eyes pored over his family’s history like it was the latest Dennis Lehane bestseller. On paper, the King brothers’ parents struggled to raise them on a city bus driver and substitute teacher’s salary in a low-income section of Atlanta. There was no record of any of the brothers getting into any real trouble growing up—just a single missing person’s report for Jeremy King when he was six years old. Apparently, the kid had run away from home after finding a box of puppies in the woods and had become upset when his father told him that they couldn’t afford to keep them and would have to take them to the pound. Two days later, Jeremy’s childhood friend broke down and confessed that Jeremy was living in their backyard in his tree house.

Cheryl smiled every time she read the old newspaper story. Not to mention, Jeremy was an adorable kid. But even looking at those old articles, her eyes would eventually drift to a frowning Xavier standing in the background. The other material Cheryl dug up on Xavier included spelling-bee championships, high school football accolades and scholarships. At nineteen, the football accolades turned to success in the boxing ring. Xavier won the national Golden Gloves heavyweight championship in ’02 and ’03 and even made the Olympic team in ’04. But his career abruptly ended with a near-perfect 21-1 record without any real explanation as to why he left boxing.

He just stopped fighting.

As far as Cheryl could tell, Xavier just disappeared from the spotlight for two years and then reappeared as a gentlemen’s club owner, where accusations and suspicions of drug trafficking continued to swirl.

Cheryl’s gaze settled once again on the department’s black-and-white photographs of the sexy club owners. And try as she might, she just didn’t or couldn’t see them as criminals. Maybe it was something about Xavier’s dark soulful eyes. They struck her as being too honest…and playful. Now since she’d had the pleasure of being in the same room with the man, she would testify on a stack of Bibles that Xavier King did indeed dominate a room. The power of his gaze, the line of his shoulders and the unmistakable strength in his bulging arms… “Whew!” She reached for her cold bottled water and downed most of its twenty ounces, trying to put out the fire of her own making.

Something creaked and Cheryl’s head whipped around to her bedroom door. There standing at the threshold, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, was her six-year-old nephew, Thaddeus. A smile spread across her face again. “Heeey, li’l man. Whatcha doin’ up?”

“There’s a monster in my closet,” he whined. His footed pajamas shuffled across the hardwood floor of her bedroom as he made his way over to her.

“A monster?” she responded with wide-eyed shock. She circled her arm around his tiny shoulders. “Are you sure?”

Thaddeus poked out his bottom lip and nodded.

“Oh, no. That just won’t do.”

“Will you come in my room and shoot it with your police gun?” he asked hopefully.

“How about I just go in there and check it out for myself?” she suggested. “I’m tough. I’m sure that I’ll be able to handle that monster with my bare hands.”

Her bravery made his eyes grow wider. “You sure? What if it hurts you?”

“Are you kidding me?” Cheryl curled her right arm. “Check out these muscles,” she said, and waited for her nephew to give her Michelle Obama–like arms a good squeeze.

“Wow. You are strong,” he said, awestruck.

“I sure am.” She winked at him and stood. “Now let me at that monster hiding in that closet. We don’t have time for none of this foolishness, do we?”

Thaddeus shook his head and then fell in line behind his aunt as she strolled out of her bedroom and headed into his room. “That monster is going to get it,” he declared confidently.

“He sure is,” Cheryl agreed. “Just let me at him.”

They stormed into his Spider-Man–themed bedroom together. Cheryl flipped on the light switch and made a beeline to the closet. At the last second before touching the doorknob, Thaddeus gave her a quick last warning, “Be careful, Aunt Cheryl.”

She tossed him a confident wink and then threw open the door.

Thaddeus gasped and covered his eyes. But when he didn’t hear any hissing, growling or Lord knows what else his active imagination had anticipated, he slowly peeked through his small fingers.

“Huh.” Cheryl settled her hands onto her hips and looked around. “There’s no monster in here.”

Frowning, Thaddeus raced over to the closet and mimicked his aunt’s stance. “Where did he go?”

“I don’t know.” Cheryl pretended to be dumbfounded before suggesting, “Maybe he heard you going to get me and he got scared?”

Her nephew nodded at the explanation. “Yeah.”

“Well, he better run. I was really going to put a hurting on him,” Cheryl bragged as she dusted off her hands.

“Were you going to use karate on him?” He shifted his gaze from the monsterless closet and stared up at her.

“You know it.” She tried to run her fingers through his thick blondish-brown hair, but as usual it was a bit tangled with its wayward curls. “When is your mother going to fix your hair?”

“She was supposed to do it tonight, but she fell asleep.”

Cheryl shook her head. “All right. Back in the bed you go, li’l man. You have school in the morning.”

Thaddeus poked out his bottom lip, but shuffled his way over to his twin-size bed where Cheryl peeled back the top sheet and waited for him. When he got close to the bed, he launched himself onto the mattress and laid his head on his cartoon-character pillow.

Cheryl couldn’t resist tickling his side to elicit one of his hilarious, funny-sounding giggles. Once she got it, she leaned down and planted a wet kiss on his chubby cheek. “Good night, li’l man.”

“Night, Auntie. When I grow up, I’m going to be a police officer just like you.”

Cheryl’s heart squeezed as tears quickly flooded her eyes. “And I’m sure that you’ll make an excellent police officer.” She stole another kiss and then tucked him into bed. “Sweet dreams,” she said at the door before turning off the light switch.

Her smile was still stretched across her lips as she walked from her nephew’s bedroom and headed toward the kitchen. There, her younger sister, Larissa, was slumped over her biology textbook and snoring softly into the pages.

Cheryl stopped at the entry to the kitchen and shook her head. She couldn’t help but be sympathetic to her sister’s hectic schedule. She worked full-time in a clothing store, while juggling being a single mom and going to college at night to become a nurse. It was a lot, and Cheryl was extremely proud of her sister. Because Larissa had her son so young, she could’ve continued her life making bad decisions. But when Thaddeus’s father decided not to be a part of his biracial son’s life—along with his well-to-do family—Larissa didn’t fall apart. She picked herself up, dusted herself off and got busy trying to ensure a better life for her and her son. A lot of times that meant having to lean on family members, but everyone in the Grier family was more than willing to help as long as Larissa was committed to doing what was right.

Cheryl was no different.

Three years after Thaddeus was born, the Grier sisters were thrown a major curveball when their parents were killed in an electrical fire in their family home. The fire occurred in the middle of the night. Larissa managed to save herself and Thaddeus, and their mother did manage to get out, but she later died in the hospital. Their father never made it out of bed. The fire department report said that there had been some bad wiring in one of the upstairs bedrooms—the room where their father had installed a ceiling fan two days earlier.

After such a devastating blow, Cheryl and Larissa relied on each other more than ever. As a result, Larissa and Thaddeus moved into Cheryl’s single-family ranch in the small Atlanta suburb of Marietta. It was a bit of a tight squeeze, but the sisters were doing all they could to make the living arrangement work.

Cheryl placed a gentle hand on Larissa’s back and spoke just loud enough to break through her snoring. “Rissa, why don’t you go to bed?”

“Hmm?” Larissa lifted her head, but didn’t open her eyes.

“Go to bed,” Cheryl said, using the opportunity to close her sister’s schoolbooks.

“Can’t,” Larissa moaned. “I have a big test tomorrow and I’m not prepared.” She sat up and stretched.

“You’re not going to learn anything by drooling on your textbook. I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“I knooooooow.” She dropped her head into the palms of her hands for a second and almost immediately drifted off to sleep again.

Cheryl put her sister’s book back on the table and chuckled when her sister jumped. “I’ll put on some coffee for you.”

“Thanks.” Larissa grabbed her book again and opened it up. “I can’t wait until this quarter is over with. It’s really kicking my butt.”

“Didn’t it just start?” Cheryl asked as she shoveled Folgers grinds into the coffee filter.

“What’s your point?”

“Hang in there. Next year this time, you’ll be holding that degree.”

“More like I’ll be falling out and crying, and calling out for Jesus,” Larissa corrected.

“Whatever. You just make sure that you get that degree, too.” Cheryl hit the brew button and then turned back toward the table. “About Thaddeus’s hair…”

Larissa groaned. “Oh. I’ll take care of it this weekend. Drae recommended this great barbershop in Atlanta and I’ll take him there.”

“Do you want me to take him?”

Larissa’s eyes widened with hope. “Will you have time? I thought that you were starting some new super-duper secret case tomorrow?”

“I am. But I can take Thaddeus Saturday morning, if you want.”

“If I want? Girl, if I had the energy I would jump up and kiss you. That means I can sleep late for once.”

“Not a problem.” Cheryl pulled out a chair and sat down while she waited for the coffee to finish brewing.

“I know that you probably can’t wait for me and Thaddeus to finally move out and find our own place.”

Cheryl frowned. “I never said that.”

“Oh, please. You don’t have to.” Larissa eased back in her chair. “Any sane single woman would love to have her place back—child-free, so that you can do what single women do with the opposite sex.”

“Give it a rest.” Cheryl stood and went to the cabinet for two coffee mugs. “I like having you and my Energizer Bunny nephew around. We’re a family.”

“True. But I imagine that one day—maybe one day soon—you’d like to start your own family.”

Cheryl glanced over her shoulder.

“Maybe with a certain lieutenant?”

“Oh, God, please. Just say you’re kidding.”

“What?” Larissa shrugged. “You know Jason still has the hots for you. He still calls—”

“What?”

“C’mon. Don’t play coy. You know that man is like a puppy dog around you.” Larissa laughed. “I don’t know what you put on him, but it’s clearly something that he can’t shake or take a pill for.”

Cheryl huffed out a long frustrated breath and poured their coffee. “I tell you what. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking when I hooked up with that man. Maybe I bumped my head or something.”

“You mean to tell me that you don’t feel anything for him?”

“Zip….nada….nothing.” She quickly added French-vanilla creamer and sugar to their mugs and headed back to the table. “You know it all happened so soon after Mom and Dad died and… Maybe I was just weak. He caught me at a vulnerable time. Insert standard cliché here.”

“Sounds like it makes life real interesting around the department,” said Larissa as she carefully picked up her coffee mug. “Was he at least good in bed?”

“Excuse you.”

Larissa shrugged and refused to retract the question. “Hey, I can’t remember the last time I even had sex. So you’re going to have to forgive me for getting all up in your Kool-Aid. I have to get my jollies off some kind of way.”

“You know…if you want to go out sometime, I can babysit Thaddeus.”

“Ughh. The last thing I need in my life right now is the complications of a man.” Larissa shook her head. “Maybe after I get at least one thing off my plate.”

“So does that mean that you’re going to take a rain check?”

“Is the offer good until next summer?”

“As a matter of fact it is.”

“Then, yes, ma’am. I will.” Larissa straightened up in her chair and flashed her sister a silly grin as she thought about a potential date she might have…a year from now. “Now all we have to do is find you a new man.”

Instantly, Xavier’s face popped into Cheryl’s head, and less than a second later, her body was flush with a tingling warm sensation.

“Ooooh. Looks like you already have a new man in mind,” Larissa said, easily reading her sister.

“What? No.” Cheryl shook her head but the damage had already been done. She popped out of her seat. “You want some cake?”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire!” Larissa wagged her finger. “Who is he? And where did you meet him?”

“It’s no one. Stop it.” Despite her protests, Cheryl couldn’t look her sister in the eye. She made a living deceiving criminals when she went undercover, and yet she was unable to get a simple lie past her sister. So she did the next best thing, she sliced them both two huge pieces of lemon cake.

“Pathetic.” Larissa laughed as she accepted her late-night snack. “Go ahead. Keep your secrets. Deny your only sister the pleasure of living vicariously through you.”

“Oh, God. Someone please give Ms. Larissa Grier her hard-earned Academy Award.”

“I’m still waiting for a name.”

“Then you’re going to be waiting for a long time,” Cheryl said, still struggling to push Xavier’s image out of her head.

Larissa’s laserlike gaze studied Cheryl as she shoved the first bite of cake into her mouth. “Uh-huh. We’ll see.”

Chapter 5

“Five…four…three…two…one. Welcome to The Dollhouse!” the staff yelled the moment the gentlemen’s club’s doors opened for business.

Given the amount of money that Xavier had spent on advertising for the grand reopening of the club, there was a large crowd on the other side of the door and they were as hyped as the staff was as they streamed inside. While the music pumped at an unbelievable decibel, the customers crowded around the tables near the main stages first and then around the bars.

Xavier experienced a wave of nervousness not unlike what he’d felt before a big fight. It was time to bring his A-game. This was a night to impress and he wanted nothing but happy customers.

Dressed to kill in a black double-breasted blazer, a classic white dress shirt and reflective aviators, Xavier made sure that when his guests saw him, they saw a well-groomed, stylish and confident man. He was the man of the hour and this was his playground.

At exactly 9:00 p.m., the Dolls descended the stairs of the main stage and strolled around for a parade revue and table dance. The crowd went wild at the sight of the first gorgeous beauties Xavier had lined up for them that evening. If he could, he probably would’ve broken his arm trying to pat himself on the back as he watched everyone’s reaction.

“Two minutes in and I’d say that tonight’s reopening is a raving success,” Q said, standing to his right. “You might be a genius, after all.”

“I’m glad that you finally recognize,” Xavier said, swinging his arm around his cousin’s neck and then strolling deeper into the jubilant crowd.

Immediately, guests started hailing the cousins to stop by their tables so that they could congratulate them on the renovations. Everyone from the governor to local celebrities wanted a few minutes of their time. Before long, the Dolls were sliding down their golden poles and his smiling waitresses and bartenders kept the drinks flowing.

No doubt about it, the reopening was a hit.

In all honesty, Cheryl didn’t know what to expect her first night on the job. She had been in her fair share of nightclubs and she had indeed bartended in her uncle’s sports bar back in the day. But the over-the-top numbers from The Dollhouse strippers, or rather dancers, had her blushing for the first couple of hours of her shift. How in the world the women were able to dance, slide and shimmy—forget the poles—in those incredibly high heels was clearly above her pay grade.

Between the music and the dancing her senses were on overload, and she struggled like hell to hear the drink orders that were being yelled at her from patrons and the waitresses. It was damn near one o’clock in the morning before she remembered that she was also supposed to be keeping an eye out for any suspicious activity.

This is going to be much harder than I thought.

“So how are you holding up?”

When Xavier’s warm baritone wrapped around her ears, Cheryl’s hand slipped on the bottle of vodka and she had to make a desperate second grab to hold it. Luckily, she caught it before it hit the floor.

“Nice catch,” Xavier praised.

She turned to see him leaning in between two patrons who had been nursing the same beer for the past hour. “Thanks. And I’m doing okay…I think.”

“I haven’t heard any complaints. That’s a good thing.”

Cheryl appreciated the praise but was suddenly having a difficult time concentrating when he started smiling and looking at her like she was a T-bone steak. “Thanks.”

A few more drinks were yelled out at her and she immediately got to work. However, she was very aware of her new boss’s gaze following her every move. Butterflies flooded her belly and there was a visible tremor of her hands. Could he see it, too? After passing a pair of drinks to Lexus, Cheryl stole a glance to her left only to have her gaze crash into Xavier’s again. Again, her fingers slipped on another bottle.

“I hope that I’m not making you nervous,” he said, amusement clearly dancing in his voice as well as his eyes.

“I’m only trying to impress the boss.”

“Then consider me very impressed.”

That damn bottle slipped again, but this time hit the floor with a loud crash. Cheryl jumped back but caught the reflexive curse word before it flew out of her mouth. Embarrassed, she looked back up, but Xavier was gone.

Cheryl, get it together.

For the next two hours that is exactly what she did. By the time the doors closed at three in the morning, Cheryl felt as if she’d just completed a triathlon and she needed someone to wring her out and put her on a shelf away somewhere. The night flew by with the onslaught of customers. The club officially closed at 3:00 a.m., but at three-thirty there were still patrons lingering around at the tables and bar, taking their sweet time nursing their drinks.

One thing for sure, Cheryl was more than impressed with the tips she’d made for the evening. She wouldn’t know the final tally until she went home and counted it all, but she made a mental note that bartending could be her second career if she ever decided to turn in her shield.

At 4:00 a.m., the last dregs started drifting toward the front door and Cheryl rushed to finish cleaning up her station so that she could get out of there. She wasn’t the only one. The two remaining waitresses couldn’t wait to plop down on the bar stools and pull off their high heels.

“Good Lawd, my dogs are barking up a storm,” Lexus complained, rubbing her painted toes and sighing like she was starring in a Calgon commercial.

“I hear you,” Cheryl said, flashing a smile and welcoming an opportunity to start bonding with the staff. If she was ever going to know the ins and outs of everything that went on in the club, she was going to need to connect with The Dollhouse grapevine.

Lexus pulled out her wad of cash and immediately started counting. “You’re really good behind that bar,” Lexus complimented. “You certainly held your own.”

Cheryl laughed. “It was either that or give everyone a real show when I set my head on fire.”

Lexus laughed, but clearly she was a master at multitasking because she had yet to stop counting her cash during their brief conversation. “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it—and you might even start having a good time.”

“Advice from a veteran?”

“After you get a week under your belt, you’ll be considered a veteran, too.” Lexus finished counting and her smile grew wider. “Definitely a good night. You’re now my official bartender. You were working rings around Randy on the third station bar. The waitresses over there spent half the night threatening to lynch him. Frankly, I’d be surprised if he comes back tomorrow.”

Cheryl’s chest expanded with pride.

As Cheryl waltzed from behind the bar, stuffing the night’s booty into the side pockets of her black leather duffel bag, she opened her mouth to bid Lexus a good-night. From the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Xavier and Quentin talking and laughing together as they descended the main staircase.

Lexus looked up at Cheryl and then over to see what had captured her attention. “Uh-oh.”

Cheryl blinked and then jerked her head away. “Uh-oh, what?”

Lexus’s smile turned into a smirk. “Which one has caught your eye?”

“What? Neither one,” Cheryl quickly blurted out, and shook her head.

Lexus laughed. “Yeah, right. And I have a swamp for sale in the Louisiana bayou that you’re just going to love.”

“Please. They’re not all that,” Cheryl continued to lie, though she didn’t know why she bothered. Her face was hot and once again she was having trouble meeting Lexus’s gaze. What in the hell had happened to her lying skills?

“Look…what’s your name again?”

“Cheryl…Shepherd.” She reached out her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Lexus accepted her handshake but with a condescending smile. “Honey, the only way that you’re going to convince me that you’re not feeling Quentin or Xavier is if you’re about to tell me that you’re gay. And since there is nothing wrong with my gaydar, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you’re as straight as an arrow.”

Cheryl finally met the woman’s eyes and then, a second later, a smile eased across her lips. “All right, so they’re cute. Big deal. I’m sure that there isn’t a day or an hour that they don’t have some woman throwing themselves at them.”

“An hour?” Lexus glanced over her shoulder and sure enough there were now three women giggling and flirting shamelessly with the cousins. “Honey, if two minutes passes without some chick throwing themselves at them, then it means that there aren’t any women within a three-mile radius. Believe that.”

Lexus’s words drifted over Cheryl while she continued to watch the three women she recognized as Dolls who had spent half the night sliding and gyrating on the club’s golden poles. Cheryl self-consciously straightened her back and puffed out her chest. They ain’t all that!

“It’s Xavier, isn’t it?”

Cheryl’s head whipped back around and her face was scorching hot from having been busted. “I, uh—”

“Save it.” Lexus waved off Cheryl’s stuttering and shoved her wad of tips in her bra. “Trust me when I tell you that it’s normal. There’s isn’t a woman who’s worked with the Kings and Sir Quentin who hasn’t at one time or another been in love with one of them or all of them. My ass included.”

Cheryl hadn’t meant to, but she gave the waitress a cursory glance and mentally compared their bodies.

“Hell, I’m not too sure that we all haven’t slept with them at one time or another.”

“What?”

Still laughing, Lexus pulled herself out of the chair. “C’mon. You can’t be surprised. They’re men…who own a gentlemen’s club that is filled with naked girls. Surely you don’t think they sleep alone.”

Cheryl forced her lips to smile again. “Of course not. I’m not stupid.”

Lexus shook her head. “Honey, sleeping with Xavier King may make you a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.” With that, she winked and strolled off. “See you tomorrow night.”

While the waitress’s words slowly sunk in, Cheryl’s gaze once again drifted back to the handsome cousins and their small clique of groupies. But this time Xavier looked up, smiled and winked at her.

More heat than she knew what to do with flooded her entire body and there had to be something wrong with her knees. At any second she was sure they were going to buckle and her ass would drop to the floor.

Get it together.

At last, Cheryl shook herself out of her stupor, gave Xavier a departing nod and then forced one leg in front of the other. But in order to leave the club, she had to walk in his direction. Turned out the closer she got, the weaker her knees became and the wider his smile stretched.

“Excuse me, ladies,” she said, and waited for two of the girls to step aside so that she could pass.

During what took about two seconds tops, Cheryl could feel Xavier’s gaze as though it was a feathery touch stroking the sides of her face. She even quivered and darted her eyes away.

“Good night, Cheryl,” Xavier said.

There was something about the way he said good night that sounded familiar, though it was the first time he’d ever said it to her. How easy it was to imagine him saying, “Good night, Cheryl,” every night for the rest of their lives before curling up together and going to sleep.

What in the hell is wrong with me? Snap out of it!

“Good night, Xavier,” she responded softly, and maneuvered past him and his laughing clique. Cheryl didn’t know why she thought that there would be some kind of relief once she passed him on the stairs. There wasn’t.

None.

She knew he turned, not because she saw him, but because she could feel that feathery caress now floating down the back of her head and then lingering on her butt. All right. That knowledge did make her smile a bit. One thing for sure, none of the girls that she saw dancing tonight even came close to what the good Lord and her mama blessed her with.

“Excuse me, guys. I’ll be right back,” Xavier said.

Cheryl’s eyes bulged while her brain screamed for her legs to move faster. And that was just what the hell they did. Then that magical baritone said, “Cheryl, wait up.”

Don’t you dare stop! She shoved open the glass front door and marched like a soldier headed off to war. Xavier chuckled.

When she realized that the deep rumble sounded entirely too close, it was a nanosecond before his hand locked around her wrist. Cheryl gasped aloud as an electric charge surged through her body. Unfortunately for Xavier, it also activated her self-defense reflexes and before either of them could process what was happening, she’d turned and flipped his large frame over on the asphalt. Once reality settled in, Xavier was lying on his back on the pavement with Cheryl still holding his hand and her right foot planted squarely in the center of his chest.

He blinked. “I just wanted to see if you were interested in grabbing something at the Waffle House, but, uh, I can take a rain check.”

Realizing what she had done, she released his hand and removed her foot from his chest. “I’m sooooo sorry. You just startled me.” She dropped down and then tried to help him up.

Still dazed and confused, Xavier sat up and looked around. “How in the hell…?”

“I, uh, took some self-defense classes a while back.” She waved off the question and gave him a nervous smile.

“You took classes or you taught classes?” He stood up. “I don’t know whether to be embarrassed right now or impressed.”

Cheryl smiled and stepped back. “Well, I did have the element of surprise on my side,” she offered as a way for him to save face.

He nodded as he proceeded to dust himself off. “Good point. I’ll add that to my version of events when I’m nursing my pride over a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”

“Don’t beat yourself up too bad. I’ve taken down men a lot bigger than you.”

A singular brow arched in the center of Xavier’s forehead.

“Really? Care to tell me about it over waffles?”

“Uh, maybe another time,” she said, clinging to the leather strap of her duffel bag and stepping backward toward her car. “I’m really beat and just want to fall into bed.”

An effortless smile eased across his face, and though he didn’t say the words, his eyes asked, Want company?

“See you tomorrow night,” Cheryl said, continuing to walk backward to her car.

“Yeah.” He started walking backward himself. “See you.”

Cheryl bumped into the front of her car and then turned around so that she could go to the driver’s side and climb in as soon as possible. After getting behind the wheel and starting the car, she was still a bundle of nerves. When she pulled out of the parking lot, Xavier, still standing at the front door of the club, lifted his hand to wave goodbye.

She smiled sheepishly and waved, then quickly jammed her foot on the accelerator and peeled off. Not until she was twenty minutes down the road did her heart rate return to normal and she felt like herself again.

“This case is definitely going to be a lot harder than I thought.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.