Flashpoint Read Online Free

that she was surrounded by other bare breasted women—i.e., the real waitstaff of the Gentlemen’s Den. Who were going to wonder what Tess was doing cheating them out of their hard-earned tips.
    And sure enough, as Jimmy watched, an older woman with long golden curls, who looked an awful lot like the figurehead of an old sailing ship—those things had to be implants—tapped Tess on the shoulder.
    He couldn’t possibly hear USS
Bitch-on-Wheels
from this distance. Her face was at the wrong angle for him to read her lips, but her body language was clear: “Who the hell are
you
?”
    Time for a little secondary rescue.
    He took off his jacket and tossed it into the corner. No one in this dive so much as owned a suit and his was ruined anyway. He snatched off his tie, too, loosened his collar, and rolled up his sleeves as he pushed his way through the crowd and over to the bar.
    “Oh, here he is now,” Tess was saying to Miss Figurehead as he moved into earshot. She smiled at him, which was distracting as hell, because, like most hetero men, he’d been trained to pick up a strong positive message from the glorious combination of naked breasts and a warm, welcoming smile. He forced himself to focus on what she was saying.
    “I was just telling Crystal about the practical joke—you know,” Tess said, crossing her arms in front of her, “that we’re playing on your cousin?”
    Well, how about that? She didn’t need rescuing. The Figurehead—Crystal—didn’t look like the type to swallow, but she’d done just that with Tess’s story.
    “Honey, give her a little something extra,” Tess told him, “because she lost that tip she would have gotten.”
    Jimmy dug into his pocket for his billfold and pulled out two twenty-dollar bills.
    Tess reached for a third, taking the money and handing it to her brand-new best friend. “Will you order those two beers for me?” she asked Crystal.
    The waitress did better than that—she went back behind the bar to fetch ’em herself.
    Tess turned to Jimmy, who took the opportunity to put his arm around her—she had, after all, called him honey. He was just being a good team player and following her lead, letting that smooth skin slide beneath his fingers.
    “Thanks.” She lowered her voice, turning in closer, using him as a way to hide herself—from the rest of the crowd at least. “May I have my shirt back?”
    “Whoops,” he said. Her shirt was in the pocket of his jacket, which was somewhere on the floor by the restrooms. That is, if someone hadn’t already found it and taken it home.
    ” ‘Whoops?’ “
she said, looking up at him, fire in her eyes.
    As Jimmy stared down at her, she pressed even closer. Which might’ve kept him from looking, but sure as hell sent his other senses into a dance of joy. It was as if they shared the same shirt—she was so soft and warm and alive. He wanted her with a sudden sharpness that triggered an equally powerful realization. It was so strong it nearly made him stagger.
    He didn’t deserve her.
    He had no right even to touch her. Not with these hands.
    “Are you all right?” Tess whispered.
    Caught in a weird time warp, Jimmy looked down into her eyes. They were light brown—a nothing-special color as far as eyes went—but he’d always been drawn to the intelligence and warmth he could see in them. He realized now, in this odd, lingering moment of clarity, that Tess’s eyes were beautiful.
She
was beautiful.
    An angel come to save him . . .
    “No,” he said, because for that instant he hated the idea of lying to her, and it had been a long time since he’d last felt anywhere close to all right.
    Her eyes widened, and he knew that she’d spotted the blood on his shoe and the hole in his pants—number three on the roof had fought back—and assumed he’d been hurt. In truth, his physical health was the last thing he’d been thinking about.
    But then Crystal put two bottles of beer on the bar, and Tess turned to