Lucky Devil (Lucky Break Curvy Girl Romance #5)

Chapter 1

ONE

DAEMON

Six months.

Six months of showing up at every event Lucky Break had any business being at. Of finding reasons to be wherever Nadia Becker was working, and volunteering for setups I would once have handed off to anyone. Of arriving early and leaving late and telling myself it was professional courtesy.

Six months of her saying no.

Her refusals were always polite. She delivered them with the same level voice she'd used to coordinate supplies in a war zone. She stated facts until I ran out of ground to stand on. She didn't create conflict; she just ended it.

Sorry, too busy.

Not a good idea.

Not with your reputation, Daemon.

That last one had stung more than it should have, mostly because she wasn't wrong. It didn't seem to matter that I'd cut back on what I euphemistically called dating. The cutting back had started after I first saw Nadia working at the official opening of the Donovan Warehouse.

Just like that night, I'd been watching her work the room for the past two hours. Lindsey Hunter's book launch had taken over the entire ground floor and basement of the warehouse, and Nadia's team had turned it into exactly what Lindsey had asked for.

Warm lighting, food that looked too good to eat and tasted even better, and everything running like clockwork thanks to the person in charge.

That person was standing near the bar, gorgeous in her monogrammed navy jumpsuit, the one-piece skimming her curves in a way that had my mouth watering more than the food did. If she knew what effect she had on me, she didn't show it.

Instead, she stood with a tablet in hand, watching her staff the way she must have under far more challenging conditions.

I knew about Nadia's military background. I'd asked around, because of course I had. I also knew she'd caught me watching her at least three times tonight and chosen not to acknowledge it, which was its own kind of answer.

"You're doing that thing again," said a voice beside me.

I turned. Lindsey Hunter, the guest of honor, stood at my elbow with a glass of champagne in one hand and a small notebook in the other.

She was sharp-eyed, with a way of looking at people like she was taking notes.

Given the notebook, and that she made her living writing steamy romances, she probably was.

"What thing?" I said, not wanting to know the answer.

"The thing where you look at her like she's the only person in the room and then pretend you weren't." She sipped her champagne. "I've been watching you all evening. It's very convincing if you don't know what you're looking for."

"I'm checking the setup, that's all."

"Mm," she murmured, clearly not buying it. "How long?"

"How long what?"

"Seriously?" she nodded toward Nadia. "How long has it been like this between the two of you?"

"There's nothing between us."

Lindsey smiled the way people do when they're too polite to call you a liar to your face. "Of course not," she said, and drifted toward a group of guests.

I watched her go with mild unease. Sure enough, twenty minutes later, she did exactly what I'd been afraid she would.

Nadia had come out from behind the bar setup to check the appetizer station near the windows, and Lindsey materialized beside her, the timing was too neat to be coincidence.

Nadia smiled, said something, and gestured toward the food the way she did with clients. Then Lindsey said something that had Nadia freeze, eyes wide.

No way in hell was I standing by while Lindsey stirred up who knew what sort of trouble. I crossed the room in ground-devouring strides.

"There he is," Lindsey said pleasantly when I arrived. "I was just telling Nadia that I've been doing research for my next book, and the two of you have been enormously helpful."

My eyes locked with Nadia's. She looked as alarmed as I felt.

"Research?" I asked, doing my best not to choke on the word.

"Character study, that’s all," said Lindsey, her tone suspiciously light. "There's nothing as useful for a romance writer as watching two people who are obviously crazy about each other spend six months pretending otherwise."

She then looked at us as though she'd won a bet. "The tension is extraordinary. I've been taking notes since August."

A spiky silence followed.

"I should go check on the cake," Nadia said, though she seemed incapable of moving.

"Of course," said Lindsey. "Though for what it's worth, and I say this as someone who's written forty-seven romances, the part where they finally stop pretending is always my favorite."

Then, as if she hadn't lobbed an emotional land mine between Nadia and me, she wandered off.

I looked at Nadia and found her staring at her tablet, doing her best not to react to what Lindsey had said.

"She's very direct," I offered, hoping to defuse the situation.

"She's a menace," said Nadia, drawing circles on her tablet.

Around ten, Lindsey's publisher gave a speech full of the usual platitudes and hints that this one might be made into a Hallmark movie. Then Lindsey cut into a book-shaped cake, its cover featuring a six-pack hero who'd apparently lost his shirt.

That done, she held the buttercream-covered knife aloft and promised spot prizes for anyone lucky enough to get a nipple. Given that incentive, there was no holding her readers back. It was a wonder no one lost an eye, let alone a nipple, in the melee.

After the prizes were handed out, the usual end-of-event rhythm took over. Lucky Break's crew started the breakdown while Nadia's team cleared the catering setup.

I was disassembling a lighting rig near the entrance when one of Nadia's team found me.

"Have you seen Nadia?" she asked. She had her coat on and her keys in hand. She'd already left, at least mentally.

"Kitchen area, last I saw."

"Can you tell her I took the van? Marco's got the other one, and I figured she'd get a ride with..." She trailed off, apparently reconsidering. "Tell her I took the van, will you?"

She was gone before I could confirm or deny, though there was no missing her broad grin.

I found Nadia ten minutes later, standing on the loading dock with her jacket over her arm, looking at the empty alleyway where her van had been parked.

She heard me and turned.

"One of your team took the van," I said. "The one with the pigtails."

"Yeah." She looked back at the space. "They just texted me."

"I can give you a ride home if you like," I said, fighting to keep the offer casual.

"That's unnecessary."

"Your van's gone, and it's late. My truck's out front." I kept my voice easy, because pushing had never worked with her, and I'd figured that out three months ago. "As friends. A ride. Nothing else."

She looked at me in the glare of the security lights. After a night of running a flawless event and one very direct conversation with a romance author, she looked tired and something else I couldn't name.

Something that hadn't been there before tonight. Or maybe it had been there all along, and she was weary of hiding it.

"A ride," she said. "That's all."

The truck cab was warm, and the streets of Coogan's Break were quiet at this hour. Nadia was quiet too, sitting in the passenger seat and looking out the window, her jacket in her lap and her hands folded.

I drove and told myself not to push it. That giving her a ride home was enough for now. It didn't take me long to realize it wasn't nearly enough.

"Lindsey wasn't wrong," I said when we were two blocks from her parents' place, where she lived in the apartment over the garage.

"Daemon."

"Six months, Nadia. You know it's not nothing."

She stayed silent for so long that I thought she was ignoring me. Then she whispered, "I know it's not nothing."

I pulled over. My dating history was such that I knew what that breathy response meant. We were no longer in friend territory. Not by a long shot.

I don't know which of us moved first. I'm not sure it mattered. What mattered was that she was kissing me like she'd been thinking about it for six months and had finally run out of excuses.

I had both hands on her face, her jacket was somewhere on the floor of my truck, and I was trying to remember how to breathe.

When we broke apart, she was looking at me like she was done pretending.

"Your place," she said. "Not mine. I'm not doing this above my parents' garage."

"Yeah," I said, unable to come up with anything more intelligent.

It was only after executing a U-turn and barreling toward my place that a thought hit me. My own living situation wasn't exactly set up for wild sex either. If anything, it might be worse than Nadia's.

Not that I lived with my parents. They were both gone, each in their own way. No, I lived with an eighty-six-year-old woman for whom being nosy was a way of life.

We made it through the gate, down the path at the side of the house, and into my apartment tucked under my landlady’s old Victorian without incident. This was frankly more than I deserved, given that I could barely string a thought together.

Inside, I reached for the light switch.

"Leave it," she said. "The lamplight's enough."

The hideous pink lamp cast its usual rose-colored glow across the room. I should have warned her about the decor. Now didn't seem like the right time.

She turned to face me in the diffused light, and the look on her face made everything I'd been planning to say irrelevant.

"Six months," she said. Like she was acknowledging something.

"I know."

"I'm not doing this if it's just—"

"It's not." I stepped toward her without spelling out what we were talking about. We both knew. "I promise you, it's not."

She studied me before reaching for the lapels of my jacket and yanking me close, and I stopped thinking about anything at all.

I walked her back toward the alcove that held the bed, her fingers fumbling with the buttons of my shirt while I found the zipper of her navy jumpsuit. When I peeled it wide and looked at her in the pink-lit dark, I forgot every smooth thing I'd ever said to anyone.

"You're staring," she said.

"Give me a minute."