In the smoky gloom of the bar, she glowed like a piece of jewelry displayed on black velvet. Something white-gold and emerald, delicately wrought and priceless.
James sat at a table with a half-finished beer in front of him, unable to look away. He supposed she was conscious of his stare, but did it matter to her? A woman like that ... why, she was probably used to it. God knew, he wasn't the only one watching her.
If she noticed, if she cared, she gave no sign. Her posture was somehow both perfect and languid as she sat on the high leather stool. The line of her spine – from here, it was the best angle James could see – was a supple curve that flowed from the nape of her neck to her slim but shapely behind.
Her legs were exquisitely long, tapering into sparkling green open-toed shoes with four-inch stiletto heels and gold mesh straps around the ankles. No stockings, no pantyhose. Bare-legged ... and if the seamless fit of her dress was any indication, bare-everything-else as well. It was a strapless, backless, thigh-high sheath that hugged her like a coat of paint. The color was a shifting, iridescent green-black, the belt a thin gold chain.
What she lacked in cleavage and voluptuousness, she made up for in grace. And, when she turned her head so that James got a better glimpse, a face that would have made Helen of Troy seethe with envy. Flawless features. Fair, unblemished skin. White-blond hair cut short and slicked back, making the large green eyes all the more striking. No make-up except for a hint of lip gloss.
She looked fragile and vulnerable, but the way she held herself gave the impression of confidence and inner strength. No ducking her head to avoid accidental eye contact. No nervousness. She ordered another drink from the bartender with cool, forthright assurance.
Idly rolling the bottom of his glass around the wet rings of condensation on the tabletop, James wondered if she might be a hooker. That would account for the fact that she seemed so fearless, one of only a few women in a dark room full of drinking men, and in a not-so-nice part of town.
But she didn't act the way he thought, from his limited knowledge drawn mainly from books and movies, a hooker was supposed to act. Nor did she seem like she was waiting for someone, a giant thug of a boyfriend who would show up to escort her and the collection of apparently expensive jewelry she was wearing.
Her drink arrived. It was something frothy and pale green in a tall glass with a straw. Her long fingers – the nails were done in a rich emerald polish – wrapped around the glass and lifted it. James was sure he wasn't the only man in the bar to catch his breath as her tongue parted her lips, slicked them, and then drew the straw into her mouth.
The way her eyelids slid dreamily shut as she sucked made James have to blot his palms on his pantlegs. He rolled his beer over his forehead, grateful for the damp chill on his suddenly feverish brow.
He had to look away. When his gaze roamed the rest of the tables, he confirmed that he wasn't alone in his fascination. No one was drooling outright, but the lust in the air was as palpable as the pall of cigarette smoke.
Of the few other female patrons, most were directing hateful looks that went as unnoticed by the woman in green as did the slack-jawed ogling of the men. One, a petite brunette with a buxom body crammed into a red satin bustier – and an attitude that, at least in James' media-succored mind, suggested that
she
was the hooker of the bunch – seemed to take the very presence of the slender blonde as a challenge.
She made much of tossing her masses of jet-black curls and laughing a throaty, whiskey-roughened laugh, and inhaling in a way meant to draw the attention to herself. Compared to the blonde's smooth elegance, her performance was crass and abrasive and about as sexy as roadkill, as far as James was concerned.
He turned back toward the bar, and an electric jolt shot through him. The woman in green had swiveled on her stool and was looking at James over the rim of her drink, the straw still encircled by her glossy lips.
Even through the haze, her eyes riveted him. They seemed to shine with secrets and promises, seemed to strip away his defenses and peer into his very innermost soul.
James couldn't have broken that connection even if he'd wanted to. He had no idea why she would single him out, of every other man in the place – if anything, he was the misfit here. Most of these men were blue-collar types, manly and tough and rugged, the sort of men who ran jackhammers during the week and went deer-hunting on weekends and could crack walnuts in the crooks of their brawny arms when they weren't crushing beer cans on their foreheads.
Maybe, he thought, that wasn't her type. Maybe
he
was. So what if he couldn't carry a pickup truck on his shoulders. So what if he was pale from a life spent mostly indoors, either at his easel or his desk, struggling in both venues to create art and passion from nothingness. Maybe she went for the starving-artist / computer geek sort. Stranger things had happened. Christie Brinkley had once married Billy Joel, after all.
Or, more likely, she wasn't interested in him at all. She was probably thinking that he was gay.
She finished her drink and swung up from the stool in a fluid motion that made his heartbeat accelerate. The tip of her tongue ran a slow course over her lips. She set the glass down, picked up a small green snakeskin-patterned clutch bag from the stool next to her, and walked toward him.
He felt like he had a sliver of chicken bone stuck in his throat. He told himself not to get his hopes – or anything else – up; that she was only on her way to the ladies' room. His table was between the bar and the short hall that led to the restrooms and the pay phone. Anyone would have to walk past.
And as a consolation prize, when she did he might be able to smell her perfume, and hear the subtle whisper of cloth on skin as she moved within her tight dress, the click of her stiletto heels on the floor.
As she came closer, he did hear those things, and did catch a whiff of perfume that carried the heady scent of flowers that bloomed in the tropical depths of the rain forest.
But instead of passing, she stopped and smiled down at him as he sat there in the dim shadows. "May I join you?" she asked, in a voice soft as the rustle of leaves.
James nodded. He didn't trust himself to speak, sure that if he tried he would blurt out something so astoundingly stupid that his head would explode. His mind raced, but in a spinning, tractionless way. The only coherent thoughts to surface were a primal "Yes!" and the dour certainty that he'd been wrong, that she
was
a hooker. Why else would she approach him?
The woman sank into the other chair, making the simple act look like a dance move. "My name is Nadia." She offered her hand across the table, not for a usual handshake but with the fingertips angled down, the way a lady of old might have done if she were expecting a swain's kiss on the hand.
He was peripherally aware of fuming glares directed his way from other corners of the bar, and decided right then and there that whatever she charged would be reasonable. He could live on peanut butter sandwiches for a few weeks.
Her fingers still floated there, and her head tilted to the side in a quizzical way. James cleared his throat. He wiped his hand on his pants again and hoped that it wouldn't tremble. It did, but only a little.
"I'm James," he said, in what was almost his normal tone. He'd been braced for it to be the mortifying adolescent squeak that had plagued him around pretty girls through all of high school and college.
