Page 10 of Pack Baby for the Silver Foxes

“Long way for one night.”

“I have a very important meeting tomorrow.”

The bartender’s mouth lifted on one side. “I see.”

Lincoln made a small sound into his drink. I looked at him.

He looked at the table. “How old do you think she is?” he said.

“Old enough that he gave the card back.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

I tapped the table and watched her. “I know what you asked. I’m declining to answer it.”

“Hud.”

I turned back to him. “I’m thirty-nine. You’re older. There’s no answer to that question that improves for either of us.”

“I only want to know whether I should be ashamed of what I’m feeling.” He twisted to get a better look at her.

“It depends if what you’re feeling is immoral.”

The bartender set the whiskey in front of her. “How old are you really, Mary?”

She smiled. “Twenty-three, like my card tells you.”

Lincoln exhaled through his nose. Twenty-three was legal, adult, but still far too young.

She lifted the glass and drank, and through some miracle of pride she did not cough.

“Smooth,” she said as a floral thread slipped through the room again.

I looked away first. “Is that her perfume?” I asked quietly.

Lincoln’s gaze stayed on the bar one beat too long before he turned back. “What?”

“Is it perfume? The smell.”

Lincoln leaned in, and his voice dropped. “Or her scent.”

I looked at her again.

She sat with one foot hooked round the rail of the stool, shoulders drawn tight, the glass held in both hands. Her hair had fallen forward across half her face. She kept touching a napkin to her brow and then glaring at the napkin as if it had done her wrong.

A man two stools down said something to her. She glanced at him, and laughed.

This time, Lincoln turned fully. So did I.

The man was thirty or so, in a suit gone shiny at the elbows. He leaned in. She leaned away by the smallest measurable distance and lifted her whiskey.

Lincoln’s hand flexed around his glass. “He’s going to make a move on her.”

“He’s been trying since she sat down. But her body language shows she isn’t interested.”

“She’s being polite about it. He’ll mistake that for progress.”

Under the bar, the man’s knee angled toward hers.