Love on the Boardwalk Read Free Page A

swimmer.
    “No, I picture you as Captain America. The shield. Protecting the country against wrongdoers, just like you do now. You’ve got the hair for it.” Her hand reached out to skim along the side of his head. “Probably the agility, reflexes and endurance, too.”
    “Definitely the endurance,” he said with a significant double waggle of his eyebrows. That squeezed another trill of laughter from her. And Brad realized he was having a great time flirting with the cute redhead. As long as he ignored the eardrum-busting music, the lap dancer sticking her tongue out at him while she dry-humped the guy in front of them, and what had to be a frat guy puking in the fake bushes in the corner. He’d never thought of a strip club as a good pick-up joint before. Hire by the hour, maybe, but not really a place to get his flirt on. Who knew?
    Trina slid her tray off the table and onto her shoulder. “I’d better go deliver these drinks. But if you can stick around, I get my dinner break in a few minutes. We can chat more then.” She swished away, her grass skirt revealing just the slightest hint of under-ass. Damn, it was hot.
    Brad thought back four months. He and Coop had stayed at their family’s beach house in Ocean City for a week. Ran into Trina and her best friend, Darcy. While Coop and Darcy got tangled up in each other, all four of them got tangled in what he’d suspected to be nothing more than a wild flight of imagination on Trina’s part. In actuality, it ended with the girls being held at gunpoint and the guys locking up a particularly disgusting criminal who preyed on foreign teenagers.
    Trina had been a lot of things that week on the beach. Crazy. Capable of cobbling impossible assumptions together into a surprisingly solid case. Wacky. As addicted to changing careers as he was to the Orioles. Adorable. Way too deep a pool for him to jump into at that cataclysmic point in his life. But the one thing she definitely hadn’t been was a stripper.
    Why would a nice girl from Baltimore be working in an AC strip joint? Especially one with a solid friend like Darcy, who Brad was sure didn’t know about this job, and would definitely not approve. Couldn’t be a money thing. If Trina was hard up, Darcy would’ve either taken her in or handed over a loan. It didn’t make sense. And the more he thought on it, it sure as hell didn’t feel right.
    Coop was family to Brad—by choice, not just because of their matching blue eyes. And even a rookie cop could read the clues to know that Coop would fold Darcy into that family sooner rather than later. Which made Trina a friend-in-law, at the very least. Which meant he had to look out for her.
    Totally altruistic. Just the right thing to do. Nothing to do with how he’d wanted to plant his fist in the guy three tables over who’d tried to smack Trina’s ass as she walked by. Or how the thought of some other guy getting the same eyeful of bra and breast that he had made him a little crazy.
    He finished off the brownish water left at the bottom of his drink and slammed it on the table. Club Eden was no place for a sweet and funny woman like Trina. And he wouldn’t waste any more time flirting while jackasses gaped their fill of her. Cape or no, he intended to rescue her from this pit. Brad stood, intent on charging off to find her. Luckily, she appeared from behind a listing palm.
    Grabbing his sport coat off the banquette, Brad draped it around her shoulders. “We’re leaving.”
    Lips pursed, she cocked her head. “You want to come with me to dinner?”
    What he wanted was to throw her over his shoulder and make a run for the door. But mindful of the bouncer, Brad just put a hand at the small of her back to urge her forward. “I want to take you away from here,” he growled. “Dinner, drinks, back to Baltimore—take your pick.”
    “I do need to be back in less than an hour, but geez, you really offer a girl the world. All I had in mind was some boardwalk