Because You Are Mine Part III: Because You Haunt Me Read Free Page A

men just passed her and kept walking. She rushed toward the bar, alarmed. She didn’t smell any smoke or hear any sirens. Their bouncer, Anthony, was nowhere in sight when she opened the door and peered inside the establishment.
    No one
was in sight.
    She paused inside the entrance of the bar, staring, aghast. The bar, which had been jam-packed with customers just twenty minutes ago, was now completely empty and quiet. Had she just entered the twilight zone?
    She noticed movement behind the bar. Much to her mounting amazement, she saw Sheldon calmly cleaning glasses.
    “What the hell is going on, Sheldon?” she demanded as she approached. Surely he wouldn’t be standing there so nonchalantly if there were a dangerous fire in the back room?
    Her boss glanced up at her and set down a beer glass. “I was waiting to make sure you got back okay,” he said, drying his hands on a towel. “I’ll just go to my office. Give you a little privacy.”
    “But what—”
    Sheldon pointed over her shoulder as if by way of explanation. Francesca spun around. She froze when she saw Ian sitting at one of the tables, his long legs bent before him. A large partition had blocked him from her view when she’d entered. Her heart did its typical bounce upon observing him. Even through her shock, she registered that he was wearing jeans and that there was a shadow of whiskers on his jaw. He looked very un-Ian-like, a little scruffy, a lot dangerous. . . . still sexy as hell. Had he been walking the streets alone again tonight?
    He pinned her with his stare as he waited calmly.
    “He wants to talk to you in private,” Sheldon said quietly from behind her. “He must want to
a lot.
I’m sorry if you don’t want to talk to him, but he’s not really the kind of man that a guy like me can refuse.”
    “It was his money you couldn’t refuse,” Francesca muttered acidly under her breath, anxiety and irritation spiking her tone.
What was he doing here? Why wouldn’t he leave her alone so that she could finish the process of forgetting him? Had he actually gone to the trouble of closing down this bar because he wanted to
speak
to her?
    You’ll never forget him. Who are you kidding?
she thought bitterly as she turned to deposit the lemon juice on the bar. Sheldon responded to her frown with a sheepish “what’s a man to do?” glance before he walked toward his office. She could only imagine what Ian had paid the bar owner to get him to clear the place out on his most lucrative night.
    She took her time unloading the grocery sack and lining the bottles of lemon juice on the counter, her neck prickling with awareness of his gaze on her. Let him put up with the inconvenience of having to wait for a few seconds longer. He couldn’t have everything in the moment that he wanted.
    He cleared out the entire bar just to talk to me?
    She silenced the excited voice in her head with effort. When she could think of nothing else to do to avoid him, she turned and slowly walked to him.
    “Out slumming, are we? This is going a little far to convince me that you don’t disdain a cocktail waitress’s service, isn’t it?” she asked sarcastically as she approached.
    “I didn’t come here to have you serve me. Not tonight.”
    Her gaze shot angrily to meet his stare at his innuendo. She expected to see his usual subdued amusement at her defiance. Instead, she saw fatigue and . . . was it resignation? In
Ian Noble
?
    “Sit down,” he said quietly.
    They regarded each other silently for a moment once she’d sat. A thousand questions zoomed around her brain, but she stifled them. He’d behaved outrageously, clearing out hundreds of people from the bar and shutting down a business in order to see her at the precise moment he desired it. He was going to have to be the one to break the silence after all that; she refused.
    “It just won’t do,” he said. “I know that I’ll hurt you. I know there’s a good chance you’ll end up despising