Dammit. Stop. Overdramatizing.
Ugh, this whole thing was made so much worse because it was my mother’s exasperated, always annoyed voice delivering those words in my head. In the same tone she used when she wanted to be sure I knew that even simply acknowledging my existence was a drain on her patience.
His dark gaze raked over me. “What would you recommend?”
My arms tightened against the sides of my ribs to keep me focused on his words rather than the frisson of unease they caused.
He was just a customer. A customer. A nicely dressed businessman asking about jazz.
Nothing more.
I stepped forward to show him a few options, then froze. He was blocking the narrow aisle.
He stepped back, his courteous smile seeming to indicate he was doing me a favor. But his eyes never changed, completely unreadable, and his body still filled the aisle. He was pretending to give me space while taking it all.
As if he were luring me into a trap.
I pressed myself as close to the rack as possible and slipped past him. Even making myself small, my hip still brushed against him.
Heat shot through me—pure adrenaline, nothing else.
Yes, he was handsome in a dangerous way: tailored charcoal suit, neatly trimmed beard touched with silver, icy blue eyes. But attraction wasn’t an option. Not to a man who made the very air bend around him.
I definitely did not notice the curve of his bottom lip, the blade-sharp line of his jaw, or the expensive cologne laced with a whisper of scotch.
Men like him—men who owned a room just by existing in it, who didn’t need to flaunt money to prove they had it—did not make my heart stutter. They did not make my knees feel like water.
And I certainly didn’t catch the edge of a tattoo peeking from beneath his collar. I didn’t wonder what the rest of it looked like or imagine tracing the lines with my fingertips…or my mouth.
No. This wasn’t attraction. It was fear.
Something about him was wrong.
He didn’t belong here.
The male customers who came in here smelled like weed and Axe body spray—or clove cigarettes and stale coffee.
They came in because they were into vinyl before it was cool or were looking for some rare collectable as a gift, or they were musicians who appreciated vinyl’s tonal difference.
This man wasn’t any of those things.
So why was he here?
I didn’t believe for a second it was because of a newfound curiosity about American jazz. Maybe if he had asked for a copy of the “Imperial March,” or something Tchaikovsky composed, I wouldn’t question it.
Hell, I’d even buy that he was looking for some Magnitizdat tapes. We didn’t have any, but there were always collectors looking to score rare Soviet bootlegs.
But American jazz? Spotify would have been faster, and this was not the kind of man who wasted time.
No, he was here for something. Something that had nothing to do with the music.
My stomach tightened.
Could it be…her?
I wasn’t naïve about my mother or her career.
She wasn’t the humble civil servant she pretended to be. She was an openly crooked politician available to anyone with a checkbook. Various industries had her in their back pockets. So did a couple of slimy manufacturing or service conglomerates. I’d long suspected that even organized crime had a piece of her. It wasn’t like it would be a stretch. If the devil himself made her an offer, she’d ask for cash up front.
