CHAPTER ONE
“There she is.” The sharp jab of an elbow to his ribs got Peter’s attention as much as his buddy Tim’s statement had.
In response to Tim’s comment, Peter pointedly glanced around them, peering through the swirling haze of cigarette and cigar smoke hanging in the air of the Post Pub.
“There’s who?” Peter asked.
He was playing dumb. He knew exactly whom Tim was talking about. He’d spotted her across the D.C. bar the moment they’d stepped inside.
Tim scowled. “You know who. Your girl.”
Peter let out a laugh at that. “She’s hardly my girl.”
She was, in fact, the most interesting woman in the place. And that was saying something given this was the nation’s capital.
Her larger than life presence filled the room, tonight and last night. Yesterday in this very pub had been the first time he’d laid eyes on her.
“She would be your girl if you’d grow a pair and go talk to her instead of making eyes at her all night and then leaving. Alone. Again.”
Apparently, his friend Tim had noticed his gaze traveling to the woman when they’d been in here drinking the night before.
Peter scowled at the comment. “You mean instead of not behaving like you, who brings home a different girl every night. Correction. You don’t bring them to your home. You bring them back to my apartment.” Every damn time Tim was there visiting.
Tim lifted one broad, muscle-bound shoulder. “Can I help it that women find me irresistible?”
“Is it you they find irresistible? Or that you hint that you’re part of some highly trained elite team in the Navy? Hmm?”
Tim wobbled his head. “Let’s say it’s fifty-fifty.”
Peter scoffed.
Not that it mattered how many women Tim got, because Peter didn’t want anything to do with any of the females his less-than-discerning buddy from high school picked up. It was just annoying he did it during the rare times he could take official leave and visit Peter.
Although, Tim was right about one thing. Peter would like to at least have a conversation with the elusive beauty who talked only to her girlfriend and wouldn’t even make eye-contact with him.
“Okay. This is ridiculous.” Tim shook his head as he caught Peter staring over the heads of the other patrons in an attempt to get a better look at her. “Either you go talk to her, right now, or I will.”
At that Peter snapped his attention to his supposed friend.
“I’ll do it,” Tim warned. “You know I will.”
After being best friends with Tim since freshman year in high school back in Pennsylvania when they’d both made the JV football team, Peter believed he would.
“What would I say to her?” Peter asked, feeling like an idiot and nothing like the salutatorian of his graduating class at Penn State.
“How about you start with your name, doofus?”
Peter pushed his glasses up his nose, a nervous habit he’d been trying, without luck, to break. “Then what?”
He needed to prepare more than ten seconds of conversational material if he was going to actually do this.
Tim folded his thick arms across his chest, which only emphasized the pecs of steel visible through the cotton of his US NAVY short-sleeved collared shirt. “Then you ask her name. And what she does. Then you get to dazzle her with what you do for a living.”
“Dazzle her?” Peter sniffed.
“You think everyone in here gets to work for a United States senator?”
“And you think that’ll impress her?” Peter asked, not so sure. Politicians, and their staff, were a dime a dozen in this town.
Nope. He knew better. Women liked guys like Tim. Not guys like him.
Tim widened his eyes. “Duh. Yes, that’ll impress her. That shit—political power—is pussy bait.”
“Shh. Jeez. Watch your language.” Peter glanced around to see if anyone had heard his friend cursing like a sailor . . . even if he was one.
Tim rolled his eyes, then reached out for Peter’s tie. “And for God’s sake, take off that damn thing. You look like some kind of stick-up-his-ass professor.”
Peter took a step back, out of reach.
He slammed into the guy behind him, earning him an annoyed, “Hey! Watch it.”
“Sorry. So sorry.” Peter shot the sincere apology over his shoulder and put a defensive hand over the Windsor knot of his tie. “I look like a man worthy of working beneath the senator from Virginia. The tie stays.”
Tim lifted his brows and mumbled, “Now he grows a pair. Whatever. Just go talk to her.”
Big hands that used to catch every pass without fail back in high school when Tim was a wide receiver and Peter was the quarterback, grabbed Peter by both shoulders and spun him to face the woman of his dreams.
With a small vain hope that this encounter wouldn’t turn into a nightmare, Peter drew in a bracing breath. That only filled his lungs with acrid smoke from the man and woman huddled over an overflowing ashtray as they both puffed like chimneys next to him.
He took his first step forward, toward the girl of his future. Maybe. If he were lucky and didn’t screw it up.
As he neared the two girls, he reminded himself he could just as easily be heading toward his future humiliation.
When he was right up next to the object of his interest and her companion, he said, “Um, hi.”
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes at himself. He’d aced his public speaking class in college but you’d never know it now.
“Hi.” Her friend giggled and bumped her shoulder into the girl who had yet to speak.
“Can I, uh, buy you two a drink?” he asked, calculating quickly how much cash he had in his wallet before he’d made the offer.
Aides got paid next to nothing and rents around there were sky high. But he’d eat Ramen Cup O’ Noodles for a month if he had to, if it got him a date with this woman.
It wasn’t just that she was gorgeous, which she was with her long fall of silky blonde hair and porcelain skin that set off eyes so blue they looked almost unreal. It was that he could tell, just from the way she carried herself, that she was special.
This was a woman who would challenge him. She’d keep one lucky man fascinated for a lifetime. Not just for an hour, or maybe a night, like the girls Tim preferred.
Finally the sultry siren turned to fully face him. “And you are?” she asked.
How could he have forgotten to introduce himself? He was epically bad at this. He should have brought Tim over with him for back up.
Of course, doing that could be risky. What if she liked Tim more than him?
No. Better to leave Tim in the background and just flounder through this on his own.
“Peter Greenwood.” He extended his hand and realized too late that was a dumb move.
What man stood in a bar and shook hands with the girl he actually wanted to kiss instead? Tim sure didn’t and he got the girl every damn time.
He dropped his hand quickly as her friend said, “I’m Maria and this is Martha, but you can call her Marty. Everybody does.”
Grateful for all the useful information Maria had supplied, Peter smiled. “Maria. Marty. It’s a pleasure to meet you both.”
“Slow Comfortable Screw,” Marty said, slowly enunciating each word while a challenge showed in her eyes.