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  Lucas parted his lips to speak, but she shook her head to cut him off.

  “I didn’t mean…never mind.” She was babbling like an idiot. Time to get her shit together. “When people say no, when they turn down your offer, do you walk away?”

  Lucas looked like he wanted to respond to her foolish slip of the tongue. She was grateful when she let her attempt to return them to safer ground stick. He tilted his head. “I never walk away. As I said, there’s always a bottom line.”

  Caitlyn tried to recall the last time she’d felt this far out of her league. Years spent in her legal practice had honed her skills, her ability to stand up to even the most vicious of bullies. The problem was Lucas didn’t strike her as a bully.

  He felt more like—she swallowed heavily—a Dom.

  And she was terrified he’d find a way to look deep inside her and see the one thing she really did not want Lucas Whiting to see.

  Her mother had told her once that the worst thing a person could do was hide their true personality, to deny who they were, to try to conceal the one thing that made them beautiful, made them special.

  Her mother knew who Caitlyn was. She knew it because they were the same underneath the skin. Mom had always seen, always tried to encourage Caitlyn in very subtle ways to accept her submissiveness. To embrace it and not view it as a weakness.

  Caitlyn continually struggled with that acceptance, and she’d never had any difficulty keeping the trait hidden from pretty much everyone.

  Until now.

  The problem was Lucas was looking at her too closely. His body language, his carriage, the way he held himself, God, everything about him was luring her closer to the fire.

  She pressed her legs together tightly, desperate to stop the sudden pulsing of her inner muscles that were screaming for sex. She needed to get a grip, needed to break free of…whatever this was. Lucas Whiting was the enemy, a threat to her family’s livelihood. The thought of her family helped her find her bearings.

  “I disagree about the bottom line. Some things simply can’t be bought. For any price.”

  Lucas didn’t bother to argue with her. His cool expression made it perfectly clear he thought he was right and she was wrong. His haughty attitude tweaked her.

  “What do you do for a living, Caitlyn?”

  “I’m a lawyer.”

  “Criminal or civil?”

  “Civil. I have my own practice.” She’d nearly said the name of her firm, but stopped short. Lucas might not recognize the name Wallace, but there was no way in hell he didn’t know the Collins family owned this pub.

  “Large firm?”

  “No. Small. Just my cousin and I, though recently we’ve started putting out feelers, looking to expand, perhaps add another attorney or two.”

  “So business is good.”

  “Yes. It is. We work with lower-income families, senior citizens.”

  “I see.”

  “I primarily deal with property disputes, landlord and tenant issues, immigration. My cousin works more with divorce and child-custody type cases.”

  “So you’re not ambulance chasers.”

  She shook her head and grinned. “No. We’re not.”

  Ailis returned and placed their pints of beer on the table. Tris must have clued her cousin into the fact that Caitlyn was up to something, because she simply said she’d check on them in a bit and moved on to deliver drinks to the table next to them.

  If they were counting on Caitlyn for information, they were going to be sorely disappointed. She was striking out. Big time.

  She glanced toward the door to her apartment again. This game of cat and mouse had her on edge. And horny as hell.

  She’d joined Lucas intent on discovering his secrets. Instead, it felt as if he was uncovering hers.

  Caitlyn needed to move the conversation away from herself. Lucas was too good at dodging her questions, making her forget why he was here. “Was your meeting tonight successful? Were you able to buy what you wanted?”

  “Not yet. We’re in the beginning phases of the project.”

  “What does that involve?”

  Lucas took a sip of beer and leaned back in his chair. “Research.”

  Caitlyn fought to control her temper—and the niggling bit of fear—his words provoked. He still wanted to buy Pat’s Pub. There wasn’t any doubt in her mind. What she couldn’t tell was if he knew who she was, if he was baiting her, using her as part of that so-called research.

  With her family’s livelihood on the line, Caitlyn found herself better able to snuff out her ill-advised, unwanted attraction to Lucas. “Sounds like we’re similar souls. I know quite a bit about research myself.”

  Her tone was more threatening than she’d intended, but she refused to cower, refused to let Lucas think he had the upper hand.

  It was obvious her sudden aggression caught him off guard, making her think, once again, that he didn’t have a clue who she was.

  He recovered quickly. Damn him. “Tell me about yourself, Caitlyn.”

  She took a deep breath. Clearly, she still had a shot at trying to figure out his intentions. “I’m not sure what there is to tell. I think we pretty much covered all the bases already. I’m a lawyer. I’m single. And I have shitty taste in men.”

  Lucas chuckled, and she couldn’t help but think it sounded rusty. Was this guy always so serious?

  “I’m curious what the attraction was between you and Sammy. He doesn’t seem like your type.”

  She frowned. “We’ve known each other approximately twenty minutes. How do you know what my type is?”

  “You don’t make it very far in my line of business without paying attention to details. You studied law. I study people.”

  Caitlyn felt compelled to push Lucas’s buttons. The man seemed unshakable. Which made her long to rattle him. “You can’t figure someone out in just twenty minutes.”

  “Sammy is weak.”

  She shrugged. “So?”

  “So that’s not what you want. What you need.”

  The way he said the word “need” had her chest going tight with fear…and, God help her, longing. “You have no idea what I need.” She’d meant to put some power, some strength behind her assertion. Instead, the words came out in a whisper that belied them.

  Once again, Lucas didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. How the man could say so much with just one look was beyond her, but it was obvious he knew way too much about her needs.

  Lucas let his gaze travel over her body, taking his time as he studied every aspect of her. “You dress conservatively, but you know how to accentuate your strongest features. While you don’t seek to hide the fact that you’re very beautiful, your dress slacks, your simple silk blouse, and the understated jewelry prove that you wish to appear professional, not sexy. I assume that’s something you—as a woman in a male-dominated world—have to be attuned to. You’re every bit as intelligent as your male contemporaries and you are determined to be seen as such.”

  She shrugged, still struggling to recover from the needs he’d uncovered with just a few words and heated looks. “You’ve just described pretty much every woman in my profession.”

  “Are you daring me to dig deeper, Cait?”

  She shivered at the dark tone in his voice that felt almost possessive.

  She couldn’t play this game anymore. Couldn’t risk having him expose something she didn’t want to acknowledge, especially to him. “Why are you at this pub?”

  “You know why.”

  “Say it anyway.”

  “I want to buy it.”

  * * *

  January Girl is AVAILABLE NOW.

  About the Author

  Writing a book was number one on Mari Carr’s bucket list and on her thirty-fourth birthday, she set out to see that goal achieved. Too many years later, her computer is jammed full of stories — novels, novellas, short stories and dead ends, and she has nearly eighty published works.

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&nbs
p; Virginia native Mari Carr is a New York Times and USA TODAY bestseller of contemporary erotic romance novels. With over one million copies of her books sold, Mari was the winner of the Romance Writers of America’s Passionate Plume award for her novella, Erotic Research.

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