It comes out low. One word. The first thing I've said to a stranger in this club in longer than I want to admit.
She looks at the stool. Looks at me. That eyebrow climbs the rest of the way.
"That usually work for you?"
"You're still standing here."
She laughs, and it's a real one, surprised out of her, husky at the edges. Then she sits. Crosses one leg over the other, slow, and angles toward me with her drink, and the whole time her eyes stay on my face doing math I'd pay good money to read.
"Bianca," she says.
"No names was the rule tonight, I heard."
"I never agreed to that rule. I just got here." She sips. "And you don't strike me as a man who follows rules he didn't write."
She's not wrong. "Kieran."
"Kieran." She tries it out, and the way my name sits in her mouth does something to me I'd rather she didn't know about. "You've been guarding that whiskey like it owes you money. Your friend left, by the way."
He has. Declan's halfway across the room already, the traitor, grinning at me over his shoulder.
"He does that."
"Mm." She studies me, open about it, no shame in the looking. Her gaze drops to my hands on the bar, the scars across the knuckles, the burn mark on my left thumb from a router that bit back. Comes back up. "You don't talk much."
"No."
"Strong, silent, glowering in the corner of a sex club. Very on theme." She tilts her head. "Let me guess. Brothers dragged you out. You planned one drink. You were gonna disappear up whatever mountain you live on before anybody made you have a conversation."
My jaw tightens, because that's accurate to the word.
She watches it happen and her mouth curves. "There it is. Hit a nerve."
"You here for a month," I say. Not a question. Vacation rentals run in four-week blocks this time of year, and a woman who orders without reading the cocktail list knows what she likes and isn't staying long enough to learn anything new.
"Four weeks. My aunt left me her cabin up off Sutter Ridge. I'm deciding what to do with the rest of my life." She says it plain, no apology. "I walked out of a kitchen six weeks ago. Head chef, real talent, real garbage human. Screamed at a nineteen-year-old until she cried over a torn pasta sheet. So, I took off my apron and left." She shrugs one shoulder. "Now I'm here,drinking overpriced bourbon, looking at a man who clearly hasn't let himself have a good time in a while."
"You always read people this fast?"
"Only the ones worth reading." She leans in. Close enough that I catch leather and warm vanilla off her skin, close enough that her knee brushes mine and stays there, deliberate. Her voice drops. "I've done this before, Kieran. The deep end. I know exactly how deep I like it, and I know what I'm looking at when I look at you. So here's my question."
"What's your question."
"You've been telling yourself you're leaving for the last twenty minutes." Her eyes hold mine, dark and steady and not one bit scared. "Are you?"
The smart answer is yes. Finish the whiskey. Walk out into the cold mountain dark and forget the red dress by morning.
I cover her knee with my hand. Feel her breath catch, the only crack she's shown all night, and watch her fight to keep her face even.
"No," I tell her. "I'm not."
CHAPTER TWO
BIANCA
His hand is warm and heavy on my knee, and I let it stay there because I want it there. Simple as that.
My phone buzzed with Renata's text an hour before I left the cabin, and I can still see it.
