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her plain, ill-fitting blue top bunched around her bra strap.
    Her, a bonafide Bombshell? She clutched the raunchy outfits tight.
    She needed all the help she could get.
     
    Jack needed a beer and a blonde.
    Not necessarily in that order.
    The beer would settle his nerves; the blonde would take the edge off the relentless hunger pounding through his veins. Hunger for Jess.
    So he was horny? Big frigging deal. Hadn’t been a problem before. Girls went for guys with an Aussie accent who could cook. With a constant babe smorgasbord on offer, he could afford to be choosy.
    Not tonight. Tonight he needed a blue-eyed, busty blonde the opposite of Jess with her carefully tied back brunette ponytail and her big, brown, wary eyes. Eyes that saw too much. Eyes that seemed to look straight through him. Eyes that skewered him better than any pork rotisserie.
    He spotted his date for the night the instant she strutted into the club in four-inch spangly stilettos and a slashed-to-the-waist, thigh-skimming red dress that accentuated her sizable assets.
    Blonde, beautiful and brazen, her imperious gaze swept the dim interior of the club, sizing up the crowd. She smiled and half-turned to talk to a friend who’d sidled up behind her.
    Jack downed the rest of his beer and stood. He didn’t want to waste time. He needed to shed the unease crawling under his skin, to rid his memory of Jess and the way she’d made him feel with one touch of her hand on his thigh.
    He was hard just thinking about it. Something that hadn’t happened when he’d looked at the impressive blonde.
    He rolled his shoulders and shook out his arms, feeling like an idiot. What did he think this was, a frigging prizefight?
    He took two strides toward the blonde when her friend stepped out from behind and laughed at something the blonde had said.
    Jack stopped. Shock peppered every preconception he’d ever had about the woman who was one hundred percent hands off to him.
    The woman clad in a skintight, knee-length black dress, her glossy brown hair loose and tousled, her eyes sparkly and her lips glossed, her long legs bare and ending in towering come-fuck-me heels.
    Jess.
    He had to get out of here. Pronto. But like a train wreck waiting to happen, he stood rooted to the spot, gawking like a randy teenager.
    She wouldn’t look up, wouldn’t scan the room; it wasn’t her style.
    But the Jess he thought he knew, the shy, young girl with an enormous crush, was nothing like the woman before him and with a boldness that turned him on even more, if that were possible, she checked out the guys in the club. And he wanted to beat each and every one of them to a pulp.
    With unerring precision, she honed in on him, their gazes clashing across the room and he could’ve sworn something indefinable sizzled in the air, invisible and incandescent.
    Shit. Where was the corny crap coming from? Getting laid would’ve stopped him from getting soft over Jess but she’d shot that plan to hell.
    She said something to the blonde, who glanced his way then headed for the bar, before Jess wound her way through the crowd toward him.
    He had ten seconds to do the smart thing, the right thing, and get the hell out.
    Instead, he stood there like a schmuck, bracing for impact. Because that’s what would happen, no doubt about it; a crash of monumental proportions that could potentially damage them both.
     “What’s a respectable chef like you doing in a place like this?”
    She stopped less than a foot away, invading his personal space, too damn close. He could smell a hint of her lilac shampoo overlaid with something stronger, something more potent.
    Desire.
    He was a dead man.
    “Do you come here often?” He mentally cringed at the trite line but he seriously wanted to know. Is this what she’d been doing since she’d dumped that gutless prick ex? Hanging out at seedy clubs, scoping guys?
    He sure as hell hoped not. Belatedly realizing why the hell did he care?
    She laughed, a soft