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“Perfect.” I snap back to attention. “Why?”

“No reason.”

He absolutely knows. Before I’m half-tempted to spray him, too, he leans across the bar until I can smell his cologne beneath the citrus and alcohol. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow afternoon, Jules.”

Every stupid, jealous ember inside me goes out. “Oh? What are we doing?”

“Lunch.”

Pensive, I tap my chin. “Extra points for evasiveness.”

“I aim to please.”

Someone calls for tequila at the far end. I point two fingers at my eyes, then at him. “This isn’t over.”

“I desperately hope not.”

I turn away before he can see me smile.

It takes another fifteen minutes for the rush to thin enough until I can breathe. I’m finishing a whiskey sour when I notice Gage staring past me, amusement vanished, all the ease gone out of him. The back of my neck prickles.

I follow his gaze to a man standing beyond the far corner of the bar. Late forties. Salt-and-pepper hair. White collared shirt sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms. Attractive in a generic, respectable way.

Except…I swear I’ve seen him before.

My blood goes cold. I know that face. No—I don’t. But a sense of deja vu rattles a locked part of my memory. He’s watching me. Not checking me out. Tracking me. When another bartender crosses between us, he shifts until he can see me again. My stomach knots.

Gage stands. That’s how I know I’m not imagining it.

The man turns. Their eyes meet across the crowd before a group of clubbers spills between them. Gage moves, and I follow around the end of the bar, but by the time the crowd clears, the man is gone. Gage stops, scanning the hallway, dance floor, front entrance.

Nothing.

I reach him. “You saw him.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know him?”

“No.” His voice is quiet.

I stare at the empty stretch of wall. “I swear I’ve seen him before.”

He faces me, tensing more. “Where?”

“I don’t know. He feels familiar, but I can’t place him.”

His jaw flexes.

“Why are you making a murder face?” I ask.

His focus jerks back to me. “I have a murder face?”

“You absolutely have a murder face.”

For years, something like this would have wrecked the rest of my night. I would’ve checked every exit, asked a bouncer to walk me out, then gone home and checked the locks until my nerves settled. Oh, I’ll likely keep doing some of that. I’m not stupid. But the instinct to fold inward doesn’t come.

Because Gage is beside me.