“I hear you’re a librarian. Read any good books lately?”
Jake surfaced from his triple-X daydream just in time to notice a male guest leaning on the bar and looking down the top of Sophie’s dress.
She didn’t seem to notice any of that as she smiled back at the guy. She was too innocent to realize when a guy like this was aiming for one thing, and one thing only: to get into her panties.
Panties Jake was almost certain she wasn’t even wearing.
“Mmm,” she said in that seductive voice, still slightly hoarse from her tears, causing Jake to be slammed with another crazy vision of her lying naked beneath him, crying out his name again and again until her voice gave out altogether. “I’m always reading great books. What do you like to read?”
The guy shrugged, not seeming to care that there was a huge backup of thirsty people bottlenecking behind him. “I’m a doct—”
“What are you drinking?” Jake broke in.
The guy shot him a look that said, Can’t you see I’m about to score here?
“Corona,” he said to Jake before turning back to Sophie’s phenomenal br**sts. “As I was saying, I’m a doctor, so I don’t have too much time to read. But when I do, I usually read thrillers. Medical thrillers, to be more specific.”
Jake couldn’t believe it when Sophie leaned over the bar and said, “Oooh, how exciting. Medical thrillers always leave me breathless.”
Didn’t she get that this loser was way beneath her? She should be throwing a drink in his face, not giving him a better view of her perfect body as she leaned down to grab a bottle of beer. Dr. Dickwad looked like he’d hit a home run, was counting the minutes until he could strip that dress from her tanned skin and find out if she tasted as good as she smelled.
Like hell. Jake would kill him first.
Jake snatched the bottle from her hand. “Here’s your beer. Time to let everyone else get a drink.”
He could feel Sophie frowning at him as he pinned the guy with his hardest look. If she couldn’t pick good from bad, he was going to have to save her. Whether she wanted him to or not was irrelevant.
Although the guy flinched at Jake’s silent promise of violence, it didn’t stop him from saying, “Be sure to save a dance for me, gorgeous,” before he walked away.
Jake held on to his control by a very thin thread. Nothing would feel better than to jump over the bar and tackle the guy to teach him what happened when he flirted with the wrong girl. A girl who was too sweet, too pretty, too damn perfect for him to ever even think of touching one hair on her head.
“You’re not dancing with him,” he growled. “Not tonight. Not ever.”
“I’m a big girl, Jake. I’ll dance with whomever I want.”
Serving the customer always took priority. But not this time. Turning his back on the crowd still in line, he slid between Sophie and the bar, then put his hands on her shoulders and gripped her hard.
“No. You won’t. He’s not good enough for you.”
“It’s so sweet of you to be concerned, Jake,” she said in a soft voice. “But I can take care of myself.”
“Your brothers would kill me if anything happened to you.” Hell, they’d kill him if they ever suspected the way he was thinking about her.
“Actually,” she said as she looked over his shoulder, “I think my brother’s guests might kill both of us if we don’t keep serving them drinks.”
Very reluctantly, Jake shifted back into position. But even though he didn’t spill a drop and his fingers didn’t slip on any more bottles, his attention was wholly focused on Sophie. Which was why he saw her shoot a glance at the a-hole who had been flirting with her just before saying, “I think he looks perfectly harmless. In fact...”
Jake tossed an empty bottle into the bin beneath the bar with a loud crash. “In fact what?”
“Since you don’t want to help me out with my plan to make my ex jealous, maybe I should use that guy instead.”
“Sammy,” he called out across the reception area, motioning for his employee to take over the bar again. He didn’t wait for Sam to make it to the bar before wrapping his hand around Sophie’s wrist and pulling her out from behind the bar. He didn’t stop walking until they were hidden behind a large storage shed, just on the edge of the reception area.
“No.”
She looked down at his hand where it was still clamped around her wrist. “There are thousands of other words in the English language, you know.”
He ignored her sarcasm and told her flat out, “You are not getting within a hundred feet of that guy again.”
Anger flared in her eyes. Eyes that had been full of happy tears, full of pure joy, just a short while ago. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Like hell I can’t.”
She yanked her arm from his and started to walk away, but he couldn’t let her go. Not when she was bound to do something stupid, like kiss a smarmy doctor. And maybe even offer him her body, those sweet curves slipping and sliding beneath him as she gave herself to him.
Furious at the picture of anyone touching Sophie like that, instead of just grabbing her wrist or her shoulders, this time Jake wrapped his arms all the way around her and pulled her into him. He held her tight, her chest pushing into his forearms, her height matching his so that her hips fit perfectly between his open legs, her soft hips pressing into his groin.