Wicked Burn(11)

“I thought maybe you’d cleared out . . . decided the neighborhood was too dangerous or something.”

Niall stared. His grin had widened just enough to display that deadly, slightly off-center front tooth. The humor and heat that flashed into his eyes left Niall speechless. She hadn’t expected him to subtly tease her, so how could she have prepared herself for the potent result?

Talk about pure, distilled sexuality. If only Vic could package it, he’d be a billionaire.

She laughed nervously. “Of course not. I have to travel quite a bit with my job. I just got back yesterday.”

He nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving her. She recognized the tiny, almost imperceptible movement he made with his closed mouth, a slight roll of his angular jaw while he considered her unhurriedly. Just looking at his mouth and thinking about his teeth made a dull ache of longing expand from her lower belly downward.

“Vic.” A female voice broke Niall’s trance. She glanced over and saw the attractive, statuesque brunette who had been speaking to him at the bar. Niall thought she seemed vaguely familiar. There was nothing indistinct about the hard look she gave Niall, however. Despite the woman’s obvious irritation at her, she smiled when Vic turned.

“Our table is ready,” she said brightly.

“I’ll let you get back to your dinner,” he said with a brief nod of apology to Anne.

“There’s nothing to get back to,” Anne piped up with a broad smile. “Nothing but the crumbs.”

His eyes met Niall’s briefly before he started to walk away. Niall tried to smile but suspected she only grimaced. He stopped abruptly after he’d taken a step.

“Would it be okay if I called you?”

Niall, Anne, and the brunette waiting for Vic all froze simultaneously.

“Yes,” Niall finally croaked. Her eyes widened when he continued to stare at her.

“I don’t have your number. It’s not listed,” he said after a silence that lasted for only a few seconds, but seemed like eons to Niall.

He’d wanted to call her? He’d tried to call her?

“I’ll get it for you,” Niall managed eventually when her shock faded.

She fumbled in her bag, finally pulling out her business card and a pen. She wrote her cell phone number on the back, pointedly avoiding the significant looks and barely repressed smug grin that Anne was giving her from across the table. “Either work or my cell is fine. I never had a line installed in the apartment. Too temporary,” she stated lamely as she handed him the card.

He nodded once before he took it and followed the dark-haired woman away from their booth.

“It’s okay, Niall,” Anne said as she choked back laughter once he was out of hearing distance. “You can breathe now.”

Anne took the first cab in the queue outside of The Art; Niall, the second. Niall adored Anne, of course, but she was all too glad to escape her friend’s nearly nonstop questioning in regard to Vic Savian. By the time Anne had gotten into the cab and waved good-bye, Niall was fairly confident the older woman knew that Vic and Niall’s relationship consisted of more than occasional glimpses of one another and neighborly hellos.

Niall’s proclivity to blush at the most inopportune moments ensured that.

Her cabdriver rocketed down Randolph Street at an alarming speed, but Niall didn’t even notice. She was too busy picturing Vic as he looked down at her while she sat at the booth, too preoccupied with replaying his request for her phone number.

It had been wrong of her to give it to him without a shred of hesitation, just as it had been wrong of her to give him her body without a thought of refusal.

Hadn’t it?

Both things had felt so right and natural that refusing him had never even occurred to her on either occasion.

Her phone started to ring at the same moment that the cab made a tight turn down Wacker Drive, making her purse slide along the backseat. Niall lunged for her bag before she’d righted herself. She swallowed heavily when she saw the 217 prefix of the caller’s phone number.

Wasn’t that an area code from downstate Illinois?

Surely Vic wasn’t calling her already. He’d just walked away from their table not ten minutes ago!

“Hello?”

“Niall?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Vic.”

“Oh . . . hi,” she said breathlessly. The cabdriver made another wild left turn down Lake Street, causing her to grip tightly at the opening of the hard plastic window that separated the driver from his passengers in order to keep her body upright. The way the guy drove, he was lucky to have a little protection from what Niall assumed were frequently irate customers.

She floundered both physically and mentally in the seconds of silence that followed.

“You headed back home?” Vic finally asked.

Niall closed her eyes and let his voice wash over her, allowing it to still her wildly chaotic emotions. She loved the sound of it. The vague thought struck her that Vic Savian was not a man who should use the phone. Phone talkers couldn’t abide extensive silences, feeling the need to fill the unbearable void of nothingness. His words were as spare and lean as the man himself, calling to mind a stark, rugged landscape that was far, far from being simple.

“Yes. It’s going to be an early night for me. I’m a little tired after my trip,” she murmured.