AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I bet not.”
“You don’t have to be that sure,” he mumbled.
“Sorry.” She laughed. “I meant that I usually laugh at how cranky you are.”
“I’m not that grumpy.”
“Please. You’re always yelling at me. Every day I hear, Alison, get in here. Alison, you’re late. Alison—”
“That’s not true.”
“Uh, yeah, it is. I even created this random generator of the twenty most common Barkerisms. Every day I click the button to see which one you’ll say. If you say that one, then I do it again.” She giggled. “One day I played Harker’s Barker-Meter thirteen—”
“Harker’s Barker-Meter? You wrote a program about me.” He stopped in front of her.
“I probably shouldn’t have told you that.” She looked up at him.
The moonlight put his face in shadows and suddenly he didn’t seem like the same man she’d known for months. His shirt glowed in the light and there was so much white. His chest was muscular, lean and all male and it was right there in front of her.
“No, you probably shouldn’t have.” He leaned down, his mouth only inches from hers. “Now, I’ll have to reprimand you for messing around on the job.”
“Oh my god. That’s the one it picked for today. I never thought you’d say it. Not today.” She burst out laughing and her head tipped back, slamming into his nose again.
“Shit. Fuck.” He backed away his hand over his face.
“Oh, oh. I’m so sorry.” This was a disaster. She felt horrible, but she laughed harder. “You’re bleeding again.” It wasn’t as much this time, but a few drops colored his clean shirt. “Let me help.” She moved toward him.
“Stay the fuck away from me.” He side-stepped her and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Away from you.” He strode down the hallway.
Alison heard a door open, and then slam shut, followed by the sound of the garage door opening and closing. She dropped onto the couch, holding her stomach and laughing. This wasn’t funny. It really wasn’t, but he was so predictable, and he was her husband who’d just left her on their wedding night. Tears ran down her cheeks and she blamed them on the laughter.
CHAPTER 23: Harker
“Harker, good to see you.” Katie, one of the waitresses at La Petite Mort Club, stopped next to him at the bar. “Is that blood on your shirt?”
“It’s nothing. Sit.” He pushed out a chair. “Keep me company.”
“You know I can’t. I have tables and customers to wait on.”
“Quit and spend the night with me.” He was half joking. He liked her. She was cute with short, reddish-brown hair. She reminded him of a pixie.
“No can do. Then I’d have to do that for all my favorite customers and I’m not quite ready to hang up my tray”—she waved her cocktail tray—“for a bracelet.” The one thing that identified a Pleasure Associate from everyone else at the Club.
“Good. You shouldn’t.” He’d happily fuck her if she were a Pleasure Associate but a woman like her didn’t fuck for fun. She was a marrying kind of gal and he already had a wife. He should’ve picked Katie. She wouldn’t have laughed him out of his wedding bed.
“Oh, now you’re hurting my feelings,” she teased.
“Trust me, I’ll be your best client if you ever switch jobs.”
“Oh Harker, you’d tire of me in no time just like you do every one of your subs.” She put her hand on her chest. “And I don’t want to be left heartbroken and horny.”
“I should pay you to talk to a woman I know.” He laughed. This was what he’d needed. Someone to appreciate him as a man.
“Oh, poor baby. Is that why you’re drinking alone tonight? Your new conquest isn’t interested.”
