“Yeah.” He pointed to the sunken middle. “That part was a restaurant dining room,” he said. “He made and sold grain alcohol out of the back.”

Maddie looked at him through those big brown eyes that turned all warm and sexy when he kissed her neck. At the moment her eyes were a little wide, like she was seeing ghosts. “Was he ever caught?” she asked but looked about once again, her mind clearly not on his masterful attempt at conversation. When he’d opened the back door and seen her standing there, she’d looked so tense, he’d had to check his first impulse to push her against the wall and kiss the breath out of her.

“Nah.” Mick shook his head. They both knew she was there to take photographs, and Mick was surprised at how uptight she was about being inside the bar. He thought she’d be happy. He was giving her what she wanted, but she didn’t look happy. She looked ready to break. “The town was too small and unimportant in those days, and Great-Grandfather was too well liked by everyone. When Prohibition ended, he gutted most of the place and turned it into a bar. Except for maintenance and a few necessary renovations, it’s been like this since.” He added a splash of vermouth, then put the lid on the cocktail shaker. “My grandfather turned the area over there into a dance floor and my father brought in the pool tables.” He shook the premium gin and vermouth with one hand and reached below the bar with the other. “I’ve decided to leave it as is.” He set first one and then another frosted martini glass on the bar. He added a few olives on toothpicks, and as he poured, his gaze lowered from the firm set of her jaw down her throat to her white blouse and the top button that look perilously close to popping open and giving him a great view of her cleavage. “I’ve put my money and energy into Mort’s. Next week my buddy Steve and I have a meeting with a couple of investors to talk about starting a business giving helicopter tours in the area. Who knows if it will pan out? Owning bars is what I know, but I really want to branch out and have other interests. That way I don’t feel as if I’m standing still.” He pushed the martini glass toward her and wondered if she was even listening to him.

Her fingers touched the stem. “Why do you feel as if you’re standing still?”

He guessed she had been listening. “I don’t know. Maybe because as a kid I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of here.” He reached for the toothpick in his martini and bit an olive off the end. “But here I am.”

“Your family is here. I don’t have family-well, except for a few cousins I’ve met briefly. If I had a brother or sister, I’d want to live by them. At least I hope I would.”

He recalled that her mother had died when she’d been young. “Where’s your father?”

“I don’t know. I never met him.” She stirred her martini with the olives. “How do you know what I drink?”

He wondered if she’d purposely changed the subject. “I know all your secrets.” She looked a bit alarmed and he laughed. “I remember what you were drinking the first night I saw you.” He walked around the end of the bar and sat next to her. She turned to face him and he planted one of his feet between hers on the rungs of her stool. She wore a black skirt and his knee forced the material up her smooth thighs.

“Really?” She picked up the drink and gazed at him over the top of the glass. She drained half of her drink. Sucking down his best gin as if it were water, and if she wasn’t careful, he’d have to drive her home. Which wasn’t a bad idea. “I’m surprised you remember anything beyond Darla’s tempting offer to show you her bare bottom,” she said and licked her bottom lip.

“I remember you were being a smart-ass that night too.” He took her hand and brushed his thumb across the backs of her knuckles. “I wondered what it would be like to kiss your smart mouth.”

“Now you know.”

“Yes.” He moved his gaze across her face, her cheeks, and jaw and wet lips. He looked back up into her eyes. “Now that I know, I think about all the places I didn’t get to kiss you the other night.”

She set her glass on the bar. “Lord, you’re good.”

“I’m good at a lot of things.”

“Especially at saying just the right thing to make a woman feel like you really mean it.”

He dropped her hand. “You don’t think I mean it?”

She grabbed her camera and spun around on her stool. Mick moved his foot and she stood. “I’m sure you do mean it.” She turned her back on him and raised her camera. “Every time you say it and to every woman you say it to.”

Mick picked up his glass and also stood. “You think I’ve said that to other women?”

She adjusted the focus and snapped a picture of the empty tables. The strobe flashed and she said, “Of course.”

That stung, especially since it wasn’t true. “Well, honey, you don’t give yourself enough credit.”

“I give myself a lot of credit.” Another click and flash, then she said, “But I know how things are.”

He took a drink and the cool gin warmed a path down his throat and settled next to a spot of irritation. “Tell me what you think you know.”

“I know I’m not the only woman you spend time with.” She lowered her camera and moved to one end of the bar.

“You’re the only woman I’m seeing right now.”

“Right now. You’ll move on. I’m sure we’re all interchangeable.”

Mick walked away as the strobe flashed. “I didn’t think you had a problem with that.” He moved into the dark shadows and leaned a hip into the jukebox.

“I don’t. I’m just saying that I’m sure we’re all the same in the dark.”

She was really starting to piss him off, but he had a feeling that was her point. He wondered why the hell he’d wanted to see her so damn bad. She believed the gossip about him, and he wondered why he cared. She didn’t mind if he saw other women, and he wondered why that bothered him. Maybe he should. Maybe he should kick her ass out and call someone else. The problem was he didn’t want to call someone else, and that ticked him off almost as much as her attitude.

She took several photos of the floor in front of the bar from different angles, then he said, “You’re wrong about that. Not all pussy is the same in the dark.”

She glanced over at him. He’d meant to offend her, but typical of Maddie, she didn’t act like other women. Instead, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Are you trying to make me mad?”

“It seems fair. You’re trying to make me mad.”

She thought a moment and then confessed, “You’re right.”

“Why?”

“Maybe because I don’t want to think about what I’m doing.” She moved to the end of the bar and looked at the no-skid mats on the floor. She snapped a few photos, then lowered her camera. Just above a whisper, barely loud enough for him to hear, she said, “This is harder than I thought it would be.”

He straightened.

“It’s the same bar and mirrors and lighting and old cash register.” She set the camera down and grasped the end of the bar. “The only things that are different are the blood and the bodies.”

Mick walked toward her and set his glass on the railing as he passed it.

There was a catch in her voice when she said, “She died here. How can you stand it?”

He placed his hands on her shoulders. “I don’t think about it anymore.”

She turned and looked up at him, her eyes wide and stricken. “How is that possible? Your mother killed your father right at the top of the stairs.”

“It’s just a place. Four walls and roof.” He slid his hands down her arms and back up again. “It happened a long time ago. Like I said, I don’t think about it.”

“I do.” She bit her lip and turned her head away to wipe at her eyes.

Mick had never met a writer before Maddie, but it did seem to him as if she were awfully emotional for a woman writing a book about people she didn’t even know.

“This has just been so much harder than I thought it was going to be. I don’t take my own photos for the books, and I thought I could do this.”

Maybe she had to immerse herself in the details and feel them in order to write about them. Hell, what did he know? He didn’t even read books that often.

She looked up at him. “I have to go.” She grabbed her camera off the bar and walked around him. On her way out, she picked up her jacket and purse off one of the stools where she’d set them earlier.

This evening had turned to shit and he did not know why. He didn’t know what he’d done or hadn’t done. He’d thought she’d take a few photos. They’d have a drink, talk, and, yeah, hopefully get naked. He followed Maddie through the back and out into the alley.

“Are you going to be okay to drive?” he asked as he stepped from the back door.

She stood just inside the pool of light and fumbled to shove her arms into the sleeves of her jacket. She nodded, and her purse dropped to the ground by her foot. Instead of picking it up, she covered her face with her hands.

“Why don’t I take you home?” He moved toward her, then bent down and picked up her purse. He’d been raised by females, but he did not understand Maddie Dupree. “You’re too upset to drive.”

She looked up at him through liquid eyes as a tear spilled over her bottom lashes. “Mick, I have to tell you something about me. Something I should have told you weeks ago.”

He didn’t like the sound of that. “You’re married.” He put her bag on the hood of her car and waited.

She shook her head. “I…I’m…” She let out a breath and brushed the tears from her cheeks. “I’m not…I’m afraid…I can’t…” She wrapped her arms around his neck and glued her body to his. “I can’t get the crime scene photos out of my head.”

That was it? That’s why she was so upset? He didn’t know what to say. What to do. He felt helpless and he slid his hands around her sides and held her. The skin across his abdomen got tight, and he knew what he’d like to do. He figured it was a good thing she couldn’t read his mind, but it was her fault, really. She shouldn’t have pressed into him and clung to his neck.