Not anymore.
Tonight belonged to her.
And whether she knew it or not, he’d now been written into it.
CHAPTER 7
A Fine Line
Inside, Gideon remained motionless until the door clicked shut behind her. Only then did he exhale, fingers loosening from the bar.
Weeks of anticipation. Wondering if she’d accept the challenge he had never quite put into words.
She wasn’t just stunning. She was fire in composure. Defiance edged with skill.
Everything he’d sensed that night at Dot’s rang true the moment she stepped into his domain, claiming space without hesitation. Without apology.
“I take it the position that never existed has been filled?”
Marco Santiago, the Blackwell Room’s head bartender since the days of Henry Hawthorne and Richard Blackwell II, spoke with a laid-back assurance cultivated in his Miami roots. Rolled-up sleeves revealed leather bracelets around his wrists, clashing appealingly with the club’s polished decor.
Gideon turned, meeting the bartender’s knowing gaze, the corner of his mouth curving. “Was there ever any doubt?”
Marco chuckled, brown eyes glinting. “None. But I’ve never seen you so… invested in a hiring decision.”
He should’ve dismissed it. But it was true.
Different.
She was different.
He made his way toward his office, needing space, or at least the illusion of it. He loosened his tie. It felt like a noose.
Beyond the glass, the city sprawled. A sea of shifting lights. But his mind wasn’t with the view.
He was at the bar. Watching the way she’d met his stare. Unflinching. Assessing. The way she’d turned every professional question into something else entirely.
A negotiation. A test. And she had played it too well.
The logical decision would be to place her at one of his other venues—somewhere she wouldn’t be in his periphery every night. Somewhere he wouldn’t have to navigate the quiet pull of her presence. Wouldn’t have to wonder if she knew exactly what she was doing when she looked at him the way she did.
It would be easy. The simplest solution.
But he knew he wouldn’t do it.
Because as dangerous as this was, the alternative was worse.
Not watching her work his bar. Not witnessing her in motion; her precision, her mastery of the space. Not feeling that pulse of something sharp and electric whenever she was close.
That, he realized, was an entirely different kind of risk.
His phone buzzed.
Dan.
Gideon let it go unanswered, fingers curling instead around the glass of bourbon. Not now. He wasn’t in the mood for the kind of silence Dan specialized in. The kind that didn’t need words to call out your shit. Especially when his own thoughts were doing the job for him.
The way she’d held his stare and said, I think we understand each other well enough.
