Page 65 of Direct Action

“Girl, have I told you how hot you look tonight?”

Poppy tossed her hair over her shoulder and smiled. “You have. And have I told you that those leopard-print pants are inspired?”

She had, three times since I walked into work two hours ago.

We could stand there all night giving each other compliments, but I had drinks to serve and so did she.

“Afoot?” I asked, bringing us back to her original declaration.

As soon as the word came out of my mouth, I wished I hadn’t asked. Gone was the smile and teasing, and back were sad eyes from this afternoon.

With a shrug she told me, “I’m in my vamp era. I read that in one of my books, and I’ve been waiting to use it in real life for months.”

“Vamp era?”

“Hot romance book where the hero is a vampire.”

I blinked, not sure how to respond. “Like, suck-your-blood vampire?”

“Yeah. They’re insta-love times ten. And the werewolf ones are even better. They can smell their mate. Then, bam, they’re doing the deed while he’s nuzzling her temple, marking her so no other males will get near her. Totally hot. Way better than Rio’s ‘mama.’”

I wasn’t sure that was possible.

Though I’d be totally down for Ryan to nuzzle . . .

Stop.

Recalibrate.

No sexy thoughts about Ryan.

“Okay, so what’s afoot?”

“Muriel’s acting weird.”

She is? She seemed perfectly normal to me when I’d said hello before I started my shift. Maybe a little distracted, but she’d told me I was going to have a six top of what she’d called high rollers in my section the last hour of my shift. I’d chalked up her being sidetracked to a group of rich people coming in she obviously wanted to impress.

“Weird how?”

Poppy leaned closer and once again whispered when she told me, “I went into the locker room to grab my lip gloss. She was on the phone, and she jumped when she saw me.”

Okay, that was weird. I didn’t know Muriel all that well, or, say, at all, but she was not the type of woman who would jump at getting caught on the phone. First, she was the manager; she could be on her phone all she wanted. Second, the woman seemed to have a spine of steel and the constitution of a strict private school teacher.

“Jumped?”

“Totally jerked in surprise, like I caught her at something she shouldn’t be doing.”

Wait. That didn’t make sense.

“Cell phones don’t work in the building.”

Poppy leaned back, widened her eyes in a comical way that screamed “I know,” then leaned back to tell me, “Told you. Something’s afoot.”

I filed that away to tell Ryan when he picked me up.

“We need to get back to work. I have drinks to deliver, and the next song starts in five minutes.”

“I’ve been waiting all night for this song.” She told me something I knew not only because she’d mentioned it four times, but because her Pat Benatar getup was a dead giveaway.