Wolfe Watching Read Free Page A

interested in any kind of male-female relationship other than friendship. She’d been that route; it had a lot of potholes and detours.
    No, thoughts of the coming evening were not the cause of her state of mind, Tina acknowledged, jabbing the long, pearl-tipped pin through a stem on the elegant corsage—this time correctly. The root cause of her distraction stood six foot four, and possessed a lean, mean sexiness that wouldn’t quit.
    Wolfe.
    Tina sighed.
    What else?
    * * *
    Eric was bored. Bored and itchy. There wasn’t a damn thing happening in the house across the street.
    Deserting his position behind the lacy curtain at the solitary window in the minuscule living room of the bachelor flat, Eric prowled to the even tinier kitchen and pulled open the door of the compact apartment-size refrigerator.
    “And when he got there, the fridge was bare,” he paraphrased in a disgusted mutter.
    Heaving a sigh, Eric inventoried the contents of the small unit. A quarter of a loaf of bread, a week past the sell-by date on the wrapper; one slice of lunch meat, curl dried around the edges because he hadn’t rewrapped it properly; a small jar containing two olives, sans pimentos; a carton of milk; and a package of butterscotch Tastykakes.
    Hardly the ingredients of a well-balanced dinner, he allowed, sighing once more as he shut the door. He really should have stopped at the supermarket on his way back from the city this morning...but then, Eric conceded, he really hadn’t been concerned with his stomach this morning. His concern had centered on a lower portion of his anatomy.
    Tooling a powerful bike through a city the size of Philly required concentration...plus the ability to sit comfortably in the saddle. And, with Tina’s thighs pressed to his rump, Eric had lacked both requirements.
    Would she be going to the tavern tonight?
    The question had skipped in and out of his mind all through that boring day. From the detailed information he had received on her, compliments of his older brother, Cameron, an FBI agent, Eric knew that Tina generally met her friends at a neighborhood tavern on Fridays, for an evening of fun and frivolity.
    Eric likewise knew that the tavern served up a decent charbroiled steak with side orders of tossed salad and Texas fries. He had heard, as well, that the pizza was first-rate. He loved charbroiled steak and Texas fries. Good pizza, too, come to that.
    Should he?
    His stomach grumbled.
    Eric’s smile was slow and feral.
    Why the hell not?

Two
    H e stood out in the human crush like a fiery beacon on a fog-shrouded beach. The indirect amber lighting sparked bronze glints off his gold-streaked mane of tawny hair.
    Tina spotted Eric Wolfe the instant she crossed the threshold into the dimly lit taproom. A frisson of shocked surprise rippled the length of her small frame; her step faltered; her thighs quivered with remembered warmth.
    Appearing casual, as though her hesitation were deliberate, she studied him while making a show of glancing around the spacious room.
    Eric stood propped against one end of the horseshoe-curved bar, his back to the wall. He was dressed casually, quite the same as that morning, but in newer tight jeans and a different, brown-and-white patterned sweater. His right hand was wrapped around a long-necked bottle of beer, which he intermittently sipped as he lazily surveyed the laughing, chattering patrons crowded into the noisy, smoky tavern.
    “Do you see them?”
    Tina’s body reacted with a slight jolt to the intrusive sound of Ted’s voice too close behind her. Them? She frowned. Oh, them! Reminded of her friends, Tina dragged her riveted gaze from the alluring form at the end of the bar and transferred it to the far corner of the room, where she and her friends usually congregated at two tables shoved together.
    They were there, in force, all eight of them. Two of the women and one of the men had arms raised, hands waving, to catch her attention.
    “Yes,” she finally