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  It’s her.

  She’s smiling, humming under her breath, a throaty sound that makes me think her voice will be even sexier. She glances over her shoulder toward the bar, just once, but I catch a look at her face, and she’s everything I pictured. She has her hair pulled into a messy ponytail, so long it falls midway down her back, and I imagine wrapping that ponytail around my fist as I lean over her in bed.

  I need her.

  Judging by her outfit—a T-shirt, sneakers, and track pants that hug her curves enough that I can picture the exact shape of her luscious ass and her thick, milky thighs—she’s going to work out somewhere.

  Even better, she sticks in some earbuds and hits the pavement, running out of the parking lot and jogging down a side street.

  Perfect.

  I should leave right then, head into the bar to avoid suspicion and any chance of her spotting me. But I can’t bring myself to tear my eyes from her backside, enjoying the way her ass curves so fucking perfectly above her flashing legs.

  I’m definitely going to be picturing this moment the next time I’m getting off.

  Then, all too suddenly, she rounds a corner ahead, and I’m forced to shove to my feet and walk fast toward my truck.

  It’s time to make her mine.

  Chapter Three

  Sloan

  Sloan

  I wake up first thing in the morning with a blinding headache and my sixth sense ringing in my ears. That’s what Mom always called it. Me and Freddie’s sixth sense. We’ve got smell, hearing, touch, sight, taste, and an innate feeling whenever one of us twins needs the other one.

  Before I even finish turning on the light, I’ve rolled over to speed-dial his number. I expect it to go straight to voicemail, the way it’s been doing for the last two weeks. I’ve had to literally break into his house using the spare key he keeps under his doormat like a damn idiot just to get a single word with him face-to-face.

  Today, however, he picks up before the first ring finishes sounding. “What?” he says, none of the morning gruffness in his voice, all business, despite the hour (8 a.m., earlier than I’ve woken up in the last I can’t remember how long. Living in the gambling capital of the east does have its perks—namely the kind of night owl work schedule I adore).

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, my own voice gravelly from dreams.

  He groans. “Not this again.”

  “I’ve let this go on for two weeks, Freddie. No more. You tell me what the hell is wrong with you.”

  “Did anyone ever tell you you’re a pain in the ass?” he says. In the background, I hear his coffee machine beeping, the sounds of him rooting through cabinets for a mug.

  “Did anyone ever tell you you’re a terrible liar?” I counter, sitting up in bed and letting my hair fall around my shoulders in its usual morning messy knot.

  “No, actually, sis. You’re the only one who can tell when I’m bluffing.”

  “We should play poker together sometime, we’d clean up.” I inject a healthy dose of sarcasm there, and he knows exactly why. My brother quit gambling for good four years ago, right after Mom died, after he blew half the money we’d inherited from her on a single grief-stricken drunk casino escapade. “That’s not what’s going on, is it?” I prompt. “You haven’t started again?”

  “God, no. Sloan, I’d tell you if that was it. You know I would.”

  I sigh into the receiver. That much I have to hand to him. He might be a liar and a jerk about telling me when anything bothers him, but my brother knows when to be honest with me, about the real stuff. The serious stuff.

  Which is why I’m so weirded out by the way he’s acting right now. He should’ve spilled the details already. This isn’t like him.

  “Just promise me that whatever it is, if it gets to be too much, or if you need help or something, you won’t be too proud to ask me. Can you promise that?”

  Now it’s his turn to sigh. But he knows me every bit as well as I know him, and he’s fully aware I’m not going to give up on this. “I promise,” he finally says, though from his tone I’m not so sure I believe him.

  For the moment, it’ll have to be good enough. “Okay then. So I’ll see you tomorrow night, yeah?” Every Tuesday we have a standing movie night hangout at the theater down the block. My brother is the only other person I know who enjoys the same cheesy-as-hell comedies that I do, the kind of movies that make other people roll their eyes or ask me if I’m seriously wasting my money on that junk. But he gets it.

  “James Bundy: Spy Who Failed Too Much, here we come.”

  I grin as I hang up the phone and roll out of bed. Since I’m up anyway, might as well get started early on the morning cardio.

  My boss has been on my case worse than ever this month. Can’t you just lose ten more pounds, Sloan? Then you’ll really rake in the tips. Like it’s any of his goddamn business what I weigh, and like I’m not already a zillion times more in shape than most of the staff, who’d faint at the idea of running a 5K, never mind the half marathon I ran last month.

  But his words still get to me, as much as I hate to admit it. I try to block them out, turn up my music to deafening levels as I head out for my jog down to the boardwalk, but they still echo in my head every time I pass guys and girls around my age, a couple years out of school, all of them apparently happily coupled up, laughing as they stroll along the boardwalk or jog in clusters gossiping the whole way.

  Mentally, I know they all must have similar problems. Maybe that smiling couple is making up from a bad argument the night before; maybe that girl upside-down on the beach in her yoga pose is recovering from a bad breakup or struggling with a gambling problem like my brother. You can’t judge people by looking; I know that.

  It’s just that they all look so much more at peace than me.

  It’s not that I don’t like my life. I do.

  I was born here, went to community college down the block, lived here my entire life, and will likely live here for the rest of it, too. I’ve been with guys before, but nobody who lasted longer than a month, and even then it was all casual, let’s be friends but sometimes hook up, until one or the other of us (usually me if I’m honest) got bored and stopped replying to the other one’s texts.

  It’s not a bad life by any means. I love being near the ocean. I like my apartment, now that I’ve redecorated the whole place. My job is decent when my manager isn’t being an asshat, and my regular customers are all total sweethearts. Plus, I love my brother, of course.

  I just can’t help feeling like there’s something missing. Some big piece of me out there that I haven’t stumbled upon yet. Something that will make all the other puzzle pieces of me click into place, so this life I’m living will finally make sense as a whole. At the end of the boardwalk, I reach my turnaround point. I normally stop here to stretch, or shake my muscles out before I work on the jog home, but there’s a couple of guys at the end of the pier, joints in hand, the scent of pot rolling off them in waves that I can almost physically feel. Not that I have anything against weed, but it makes me nauseous, especially mid-run. I stop a good ten feet from them, but before I can turn around to run back the other way, one of the guys catches my eye and elbows his companion.

  “Hey sweet thing, how you doin’?” His eyes rake my body in a way that makes me want to cross my arms over my chest, even though I know he can’t see anything in my more-than-modest tracksuit.

  “I’d love to bite me off a chunk of that pie, mm. You got a boyfriend, boo?”

  “Course she does, who you think she keeping that ass so tight for?” the first one replies, still staring.

  I’m already spinning on my heel to run the other direction, my cheeks burning hot. I want to tell them to fuck off, but in a creative way, except that my head never comes up with witty replies on the spot like this. So instead I just run, and pretend I can’t hear them over the noise on my headphones, shouting after me, “Hey come back, boo!”

  I wish I could think of something
witty to shout back at them, but to be honest, I am a total wimp. Any other girl at the diner would give those two a piece of her mind and then some. Me? I just try running as fast as I can in the other direction. My usual approach to life’s biggest problems.

  Then, my worst nightmare. The pound of feet on the boardwalk behind me. One of the guys, following.

  I turn off my music, though I leave the headphones in, trying to pretend I haven’t heard, that I don’t notice.

  “Hey, babe, we’re talking to you!” A rough hand closes around my wrist, wrenching me out of my stride, and I stumble to a halt.

  What happens next comes too fast for me to process in the moment. It’s only later, thinking back on the scene, that I could piece together what actually took place. As I stood trying to pull my arm free from this creep’s grasp, someone else collided with him fist-first. His grip on my arm fell away, and he raised both hands to his face, but it was too late. Another heavy punch sent him sprawling on the boardwalk, and my rescuer, a tall man with bulging arms and a curled black tattoo along one bicep, stands between me and the rest of the creep’s friends, who looked for a moment like they were going to help him but are now inching in the opposite direction, gazes averted.

  “Thank you,” I gasp, still rubbing my wrist.

  He doesn’t seem to hear me. He looms over the guy on the ground, dirty blonde hair falling across his forehead as he scowls down at the man who tried to grab me in broad daylight. “Touch her again and you’ll wish you were dead,” he growls in a tone that makes my heart skip a beat.

  No one has ever threatened anyone because of me before. No one has ever sounded quite so possessive.

  Not gonna lie, it’s hot as hell.

  But before I can ask his name, or even get a good look at the face of my rescuer, he’s gone, storming up the boardwalk toward this guy’s other catcalling friends. I hesitate for a moment, unsure if I should wait here, or follow him, or just go. He doesn’t look back in my direction, though, so I convince myself I misheard that tone in his voice.

  It wasn’t me he was protecting. Hell, he probably didn’t even notice me standing here, he just has some beef with these guys.

  I shake myself out of the weird headspace this whole morning has created, turn away from the scene, and start my long, slow jog home.

  Time to get ready for work. But I wonder who that guy is.

  Chapter Four

  Sloan

  The diner is packed, which is weird for 7 p.m. on a Monday night. There must be a big fight on this week or something—AC tends to fill up in the off-season when fight nights are coming up in a few days. People fly or drive in for those a few days early, and they usually want to get their junk food on.

  Which works well for me, I think as I pocket yet another over-twenty-percent tip, my third of the night, and then swing by the register to key in another table’s order of four cheeseburgers and extra onion rings.

  As I make the round, the skin at the back of my neck prickles, my hair standing on end. I’m being watched, I think, even though that’s ridiculous. First of all, of course people see me, I’m striding through the middle of this restaurant in a bright red and yellow uniform. Second of all, who would bother to notice me, with all the other girls I work with on staff already.

  But I turn my head slightly to survey the room, my finger still held in midair, ready to finish keying in the order.

  Sure enough, at the back table, the one near the restrooms where hardly anyone ever sits on purpose, wedged into the four-person booth by himself, there’s a man staring straight at me. He meets my eyes when I look at him—and, not gonna lie, I definitely don’t mind the view. Muscles bulge on his arms and beneath his T-shirt, which is just tight enough to tease about how much more it has to reveal, and there’s a tantalizing curl of blank ink running down one of his biceps, the tail end of a tattoo I so badly want to see the rest of. Add that body to his messy, just-fell-out-of-bed dirty blonde hair and eyes such a pale blue they could give a glacier a run for its money, and you’ve got the makings of a total beefcake.

  Even more noticeable than his good looks, though, is his confidence. He meets my eyes head-on, and he doesn’t look away, or suddenly bury his nose in his menu in an effort to pretend he wasn’t staring. He continues to gaze at me, calm and steady. A man who knows what he wants.

  That or he’s just trying to figure out why they make us wear these hideous uniforms, I tell myself. Because there’s got to be some other reason. He can’t be looking at me.

  Except, as I’m staring back at him like a total idiot, his lip curls into a dangerous half-smile, and he quirks an eyebrow at the same time. If I’ve ever seen a come here expression before, this is one. He couldn’t be any more obvious if he stood up and shouted across the whole restaurant.

  Flustered, feeling my cheeks heat up in the beginnings of a blush, I finish what I was doing, tuck the check for my other table into my skirt, and turn away from him for a moment to quickly spot-check my appearance in the distant mirrored window. How’s my hair?

  A total mess, since I just threw it into a ponytail before I left. Plus, I didn’t bother to put on more than a base coat of makeup today either. Who was I going to meet, I figured?

  Way to be prepared, Sloan.

  It’s fine. He probably just wants to place his order anyway. I take a deep breath and cross the room toward him, keeping my eyes on the kitchen door so that I won’t stare at him too creepily. But even out of the corner of my eye, I can tell that his gaze still hasn’t left me, not in the whole minute it takes me to weave across the room, depositing checks and taking drink orders at my other tables along the way.

  By the time I finally reach his side, he’s doing that half-smiling thing again, and tilting his head to one side, like he’s appraising me. “I thought you’d never get here,” he says, his voice deep and husky, with just the right amount of smoke to send a thrill shooting through my chest, straight down to my groin. If I could cross my legs right now without being totally obvious, I would.

  The other, crazier thing, though, is that I recognize it. That voice. “You . . . ” My voice falters, and I clear my throat to encourage it into functioning normally again. “You were on the boardwalk this morning, weren’t you? With those guys?”

  “They didn’t bother you again, did they?” His eyebrows join in real, deep concern.

  I shake my head with a faint laugh. “I doubt they’re going to bother any girl, after what you did to them.”

  “I’m sorry that you had to see that. But they should never have treated a woman like you that way.”

  My teeth edge around my lip, digging into the flesh there, to keep myself grounded and sane. “Um . . . thanks,” I manage. Then I clear my throat, into what I hope sounds more like a normal voice, and plaster a smile onto my face. “Anyway. Glad to see you again. I wanted to say thanks before, but you were gone. What can I get you? Whatever you want, on the house. Least I could do for my brave knight.” Oh god, Sloan, stop talking right now.

  But he doesn’t seem to be the least put off by my babbling or my dorky references. His smile only deepens. “What I want isn’t on the menu, I’m afraid.”

  Oh my god. That line from any other guy would have me rolling my eyes or showing them the door. Somehow, though, he makes it work. Probably it’s the dangerous glint in his eye, the one that tells me he really means it. After what I saw him do this morning on the boardwalk, I have a feeling he’s the kind of man who always gets what he wants.

  I swallow. Hard. “Well, can I get you anything that is on the menu?” Fucking hell, I am so terrible at this. Thinking up witty things. Not my strong suit.

  “Depends. What time does your shift end?”

  I never do this. I never go out with customers—okay, or anyone—and I never let cheesy pickup lines get to me, and I never give guys like him a chance—guys who look like they could eat me alive. But he beat up a guy for me, and now somehow, miraculously, he’s here in my diner, and not only th
at but he cannot take his eyes off me. Before I can talk myself out of it or rethink this terrible move, I can already hear myself saying, “Midnight.” Stupid, Sloan! Nobody goes out at midnight unless they’re looking for a one-night stand. I don’t do those, either. Well, okay, maybe once or twice. But not lately. Not since the last one I took a chance on went downhill, fast.

  I shake my head. “But I turn into a pumpkin at that hour, so you probably don’t want to waste your time waiting around.”

  His eyebrows dance up his forehead. “I don’t know about that. You seem like you’d be worth waiting for, Sloan.”

  I’m blushing worse than ever. But I’m also hearing alarm bells ringing now, frantic. “How do you know my name?” I ask, my smile faltering just a little.

  One of those eyebrows descends, so he’s looking at me with just one raised, a little sarcastic. He gestures at my chest. I glance down.

  Duh. Nametag.

  It’s just that I’m pretty sure, in my two years of working here, no one under the age of seventy has ever once read that nametag. And definitely no one who wasn’t a regular customer, like the guys who come in here every morning for their coffee and eggs, or the older couples who eat out here for their big date night once a week (always on Tuesdays, because they play bingo down the road after).

  Whatever the reason, it feels different to hear him say it. My name in his mouth. I’d like to have something else in his mouth. Oh god, the blushing is turning into a small forest fire on my skin.

  As if sensing that he pushed a bit too far with that last comment, my mystery suitor leans back in his seat, relaxing, and finally taking those piercing blue eyes off of mine, which lets me relax as well, just a little. He flips open his menu, scans through the items as though he hasn’t even bothered to look at it yet. Maybe he hadn’t.

  “I’ll take a steak,” he says. “Rare.”