Page 10

10

MADDOX

Alissa’s been staring off into space for a good ninety seconds now, delicately nursing her drink.

“You okay, Alissa?”

She blinks a few times, returns her gaze to me. “Yes, sorry. I just got a little lost in thought.”

I smile. “Does that happen often?”

She presses her lips together. “Increasingly so.”

I nod. “I get it. This place takes a little getting used to.” I lean in. “To tell you the truth, Alissa, you’re the first woman I’ve ever brought here.”

She lays a hand over her heart. “I am?”

“Yeah. The only other person I’ve brought here is my best friend. And he’s a guy.”

She narrows her eyes. “You brought him as a wingman?”

I take another sip of my gin and tonic—it’s nearly gone. “Perhaps.”

She chuckles. “You don’t have to hide it, Maddox. You’re a perfectly handsome man. I don’t see any reason why you’d need to have a wingman, but I know how the male of our species works. You’re allowed to have dated in the past. You’re not going to find that I’m a jealous bitch when it comes to things like that.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation”—I reach my hand across the table and barely touch my fingers to hers—“you are more enchanting, more intriguing, not to mention more beautiful, than any other woman I’ve ever dated.”

Sounds like a line, but it’s the truth. Alissa is gorgeous, after all. She has an innocent-looking facade, but I can see underneath that—a hunger. A hunger for the unknown.

I can see it because I know the feeling. I live with it every day.

It’s why I ditched my family’s political ambitions, pursued the haberdashery.

Maybe that’s why Dad left his membership to me. Despite the fact that we never made nice before his untimely death, he at least recognized that I had a taste for the bizarre.

And Aces Underground certainly fits that bill.

Alissa blushes. “You’re very kind, Maddox. I’ve certainly never met a man so ruggedly handsome, yet so tidily kempt. Nor a man with such charm.”

My cheeks warm at her words. “Thank you, Alissa.”

She takes another sip of her gin and tonic. “Thank you .” She looks around the club. “You know, I’ve gone out to other bars and clubs in the past. Chicago is full of them. My friend Dinah—she works at the hospital with me—drags me out every so often when our off-work schedules align. She’s always telling me I have to get a life outside of the hospital.” She chuckles. “If she could only see where I am now.”

I grin. “Sounds like I’d like this friend of yours.”

“I’m sure you would. Just last weekend, I was helping her with her garden—she has a little co-op greenhouse in the condo complex where she lives, so she can garden year-round—and she was whining at me that helping her plant tomatoes was the most I’d done in months outside of the hospital.”

“I’m sure it’s easy to let a job like that consume you.”

She nods. “It takes up quite a bit of energy, not to mention my time. Sometimes I’m on twelve-hour shifts. After that, all I want to do is melt into a puddle of goo in front of the TV before passing out on my couch.”

I creep my hand across the table until I can lay it over Alissa’s.

Sparks. Fireworks. A goddamned rainbow of emotions exploding into multicolored confetti in my brain. Just from touching her soft skin.

I almost draw my hand back at the physical reaction from our touch, but I keep myself steadily in position.

Alissa’s eyes widen. Does she feel it too?

“I understand what you mean,” I say after my heart has slowed down a bit. “Of course, I don’t work in a hospital. I’m not working to heal the sick and wounded. I can’t imagine what kind of energy that takes. But running the haberdashery on my own—all the up-front business as well as the paperwork behind the scenes—it’s enough to drain the life out of you.”

“I’m sure that’s true. I could never imagine running my own business, Maddox. You don’t have any employees at all?”

“No one full time. I hire an accountant to go over my books every tax season, and I’ll usually find a temp to man the shop if I ever have to go out of town for an extended period of time, but that’s about it. I inherited the building, but everything else in that shop, from the inventory to the décor, is all me.”

She smiles at me. “Absolutely fascinating. At the hospital, I’m told when to show up, where to go, who to attend to. I realize it comes at a price, but having the kind of freedom and flexibility you get from running your own business must be wonderful.”

I nod. “It is wonderful.”

And I’m not lying. I love that shop. It’s a pain in my ass ninety percent of the time, but being able to work in my chosen field and stay out of the polluted swamp that is the Chicago political sphere is worth the extra time and toil.

But the joy I get from running the haberdashery—seeing a young man smile at himself in the mirror as his parents buy him his first suit, fitting a set of groomsmen into matching outfits to support their best friend as he walks down the aisle, even renting tuxedos at a steep discount to at-risk kids for prom night—none of it compares to the feeling I got when Alissa and I touched hands.

I’d sell the shop—hell, I’d burn it to the goddamned ground—for just ten seconds of that feeling.

Fuck.

I’m in trouble.