Down London Road

that I thought he was the funniest man I’d ever met – drove her up the wall.
    If only she knew that just made me want to do it more.
    I was serving drinks to three guys who weren’t mind-blowingly attractive but were charming and sexy in their own way, and I was enjoying their attention.
    ‘Seriously, you should just jump over the bar and come spend the rest of the night with us,’ one of them insisted, flashing me a crooked smile. I could usually read when a guy was being lascivious, but these guys were just having fun.
    I leaned my elbow on the bar, handing the shortest guy his change with one hand while resting my chin thoughtfully in the palm of my other. ‘Hmm, where would you take me?’
    ‘I heard Fire is a pretty good nightclub,’ the one in the middle suggested, his eyes glinting with hope.
    I snorted and gestured around the bar. ‘Leave one club for another. No, you’ll have to do better than that.’ I smiled slowly and watched the three of them lean in closer, their eyes dipping to my mouth.
    ‘The Voodoo Rooms.’ The short one nodded at his mates as if it was a great idea.
    I shook my head sadly in response. ‘Expand your horizons, boys.’
    The one with the crooked and very hot smile leaned on the bar so that our faces were only an inch apart. My eyes smiled into his as he stared at me intensely. I suddenly realized he’d stopped playing and was serious, and my smile wilted a little. His gaze dropped to my lips. ‘I’ll take you anywhere, darling, anywhere in the world, if you’ll give me your number.’
    I heard the clearing of a deep throat before a warm hand pressed against my belly. I jolted in shock and twisted my head around to see Cam leaning into me.
    It was
his
large, warm hand pressed to my belly.
    He put pressure on me and eased me back off the bar. ‘Excuse me,’ he muttered, his expression blank except for the muscle jumping in his jaw. Cam’s touch set off sparks in my body, my skin prickling with excited heat, and in my dumbfounded reaction I let him push me back from the bar, his body curling into mine as he reached past me. His hand slid around to my waist, nudging my tank top up so his callused hand gripped my bare skin, holding me in place as he bent down for a bottle of liqueur. When he straightened, our eyes met, and it took everything in me not to reach for him too.
    As if it suddenly occurred to him that he was still touching me, he leaned back and nodded at me, then strode down to his end of the bar. I stared after him too long, wondering why he’d felt the need to touch me, to move me rather than just ask me to move. Usually, I would read that as interest, as an invitation, but Cam was sending me a whole bunch of mixed signals. I stared so long that when I turned back to the guys I had been diligently flirting with, they were gone. And so was their prospective tip.
    Crap.
    Bloody Cam.
    The rest of the shift flew by and as I had taken to doing the last few nights, I hurried out of the bar as soon as we’d cleaned up at closing, desperate to get away from Cam.
    It was a freezing-cold, brisk walk back to the flat, avoiding drunks who took one look at a single female and decided she’d make great target practice. Joss hated me walking home alone after our shift, but I was used to it, and had a rape alarm on my key ring and a small can of pepper spray in my bag as a precaution.
    I hurried quietly up the damp stairwell of my building, and almost melted against our front door with relief and exhaustion. Home at last. Deciding that a cup of tea would be nice to take with me to my room I headed for the kitchen to switch on the kettle but was stopped dead in the doorway.
    A haggard resentment rippled through me at the sight of my drunken mother passed out on the kitchen floor. Thankfully, she was wearing pyjamas. There had been times I’d discovered her like this and she’d been naked.
    I wondered how long she’d been there and feared that she’d not only got a chill from the cold kitchen tiles but hurt her bad back. Shaking my head, biting back the tears of frustrated exhaustion, I shrugged out of my jacket and took a minute as I decided how I was going to carry her back to her room without waking up Cole and without doing any more damage to her back. I supposed I could drag her as carefully as I could manage.
    Attempting to move quietly, I did just that. I lifted her under the arms and began to slide her body out of thekitchen. Her foot hit the edge of the