Eternal by V. Forrest (new reading TXT) 📗

herself, with all the thoughts and emotions bouncing around inside her. Tonight, she needed the comfort, the anonymity, of a loud, crowded bar.

But instead of going home to change first as she usually did, she walked a couple of blocks and entered an upscale pub. It was only eight-thirty, early by bar standards, but the place was crowded with suits. Suits and sling-back heels. Lawyers, CPAs, corporate executives.

Fia strode along the bar, taking the only empty seat on the far end.

“Help you?” a waiter in a wool cap asked.

“Probably not,” Fia quipped. “But how about a tonic and lime?”

“Stout’s good here,” said the guy in the dark suit on the barstool next to her.

Fia felt the hair rise on the back of her neck.

“But the best stout I’ve had was in a little dive in Delaware. Place called the Hill. You know it?”

Fia spun on the bar stool. “Glen?”

He grinned and raised his glass in toast.

Chapter 17

One glimpse of her smile and all the drama Glen had suffered through in the last week was worth it. Stacy’s runny nose, her sobbing tears. Her begging him to reconsider. The frantic calls from her mother, her sister, her aunt, even the stern calling out from her father on the steps of his apartment building. All worth it, just to be here at this moment, on this bar stool, sitting beside the tall, sexy, smolderingly sensitive Fia Kahill.

Glen had never done anything this impulsive in his life. Hell, he never did anything impulsively. A lesson learned from dear old Dad. It was his father’s impulsiveness that had gotten him killed, from what Glen had been able to glean from the account of the incident, read years after the fact. It was a personality trait he had chosen a long time ago not to inherit. Over the years, the decision had served him well. Until Fia Kahill had come along.

“What are you doing here?”

Fia was so surprised to see him that for once, her response was utterly spontaneous. There was nothing planned about the lilt in her voice, her smile, or the dimples he hadn’t realized were there. And he liked her this way. Slightly ruffled. Suit wrinkled. Her hair not quite so smooth and perfect.

“I’m having a beer.” Glen demonstrated by taking a drink. “What are you doing?” He looked at the glass the bartender slid across the bar toward her. “Tonic and lime hardly seems worth the effort.”

She was still smiling, and the memory of the red-faced, snotty-nosed Stacy was receding from his mind. The guilt was fading faster.

At this point Glen didn’t care that he’d made no arrangements to sublet his apartment. Or that he didn’t have a place in Philadelphia yet and was staying with his elderly great-aunt Emma. Glen didn’t believe in fate or predestination or any of that happy horseshit, but the job opening in the Philadelphia Field Office where Fia worked had come up so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that it was eerie.

Another agent in the Baltimore Field Office had wanted to keep his family in Baltimore so that his special-needs child could remain in the school she was attending. Everyone in the office had thought Glen was being some kind of magnanimous, standup guy for volunteering for the position expected to be filled immediately. None of them had suspected his motives had been purely selfish. That they’d been all about a redhead with blue eyes and a killer attitude.

It was crazy. Glen knew it was crazy. He knew he didn’t have a chance in hell with Fia. Women like her didn’t go for guys like him. But he had to try. As much as it went against his nature, just once in his life he had to take a risk. He just hoped he wouldn’t end up like his father, splattered all over the sidewalk.

“I’m serious.” Fia turned on her bar stool until her knees brushed against his. “You have business in the office here?”

He sipped his beer. “Transferred, effective immediately. I’ll continue working the Clare Point cases with you, but I’m supposed to be a part of some new antiterrorist task force.” He rolled his eyes. “How many does that make for this administration?”

“At least nine hundred and eleven,” she quipped. “But this is a new new antiterrorist task force, right?”

He raised his beer glass. “Don’t get me started. Not tonight.”

They were both quiet for a minute, sipping their drinks. But she was still watching him.

“So…what’s Stacy have to say about your transfer?” Fia asked after a moment. “She ready for cheesesteaks and the Liberty Bell?”

“Stacy’s not coming.” He sort of said it into his beer glass.

“Not coming? As in not coming now, or never coming as in no “until death do us part” not coming?”

“Both, I guess. Neither.”

“You guess?” Fia pulled back a little, slipping the paper cocktail napkin around her damp glass. “Not that it’s my business or anything, but this is a case where guessing isn’t really a good idea. In this particular instance, you should know what’s going on. Are you marrying her or aren’t you?”

“I’m not.” He took a chance—the second in a week—and met her gaze over the rim of his glass. She was interested. Definitely.

“Why not?”

She said it so softly that he wasn’t absolutely sure that was what he had heard.

He took a deep breath and exhaled. This had been the hardest part with Stacy. The telling her why. Every time he tried to explain himself, she’d started apologizing for everything she’d ever done wrong or perceived she’d done wrong, from choosing the wrong color napkins for their wedding reception to drinking the last cup of coffee in the morning when she slept over. She hadn’t wanted to listen to him. Hadn’t wanted to know the truth, really.

“Because it wasn’t right,” Glen heard himself say to Fia. It was weird, but it suddenly seemed more important to him that Fia understand than Stacy.

What was it about this woman that drew him to