Captivated Read Online Free PDF Page A

but at the way Jesse was looking at her.
    “He used to tell me all the time that I needed to loosen up. Lighten up. That I didn’t know how to have a good time. That because I liked things a certain...way...” She paused, swallowing, not sure why she was telling him this. Only that she needed to tell someone. “He said I was a pain in the ass to live with. No fun. I was a boring, nagging bitch who had to control everything, but that I was incapable of doing anything on my own. He made me feel constantly incompetent. Oh. And, according to him, I was frigid, too.”
    Jesse coughed lightly.
    Colleen laughed. Low at first, then louder, letting her head fall back. The sound was harsh, very little humor in it. She closed her eyes for a second, memories unfurling like a ribbon inside her head, before she opened them to focus on Jesse.
    “I’m not,” she said. “I just didn’t like fucking him.”
    It was Jesse’s turn to laugh, the sound sweet as honey and just as thick. He leaned on the bar, hands shoulder-width apart. Fingers slightly spread. “He sounds like an asshole.”
    “He was.” She licked her lips, watching again as his eyes followed the movement of her tongue. His gaze warmed her more than the booze had; Jesse looked at her as though he wanted to eat her up.
    It had been a long time since a man had given her that stare. No, that wasn’t true. It had been a long time since she’d paid attention to a man giving her that look and wanted to return it. Colleen let her fingertips trace a circle of damp left behind on the bar by her now empty glass. She glanced out the front plate-glass windows to the cobblestone street outside. A few people walked past, laughing and tossing snow at each other. Night had fallen, hard and dark and deep.
    “It’s still snowing,” she murmured.
    “Good thing we don’t have any place to go, huh?”
    “Why did you let me stay, Jesse?”
    His smile faded for a moment, just long enough for him to blink. Then he leaned a little closer. “Because...I thought you needed to.”
    She remembered him giving her the chocolate mousse, and how it had rubbed her the wrong way. Yet he’d done so many things for her over the past few months since he’d started here at The Fallen Angel. He’d come to know her preferences so easily and had made it so easy for her to come back, week after week.
    “I told you how I feel about people assuming they know what I need.”
    He nodded and turned to press a button on the small remote that controlled the pub’s sound system. In seconds the slow, distinctive beat of “Cry to Me” filtered through the speakers. It had been one of her favorites for years, first as a cut on a vinyl album she’d found as a teenager scouring thrift stores and then later, as an adult, an iTunes track. How had he known?
    Like the whiskey and onion rings and mousse and everything else, Colleen thought, he just had.

Chapter Four
    Jesse moved before he could second-guess himself. He went around the bar, one hand out. He didn’t ask her to dance. He waited for her to take his hand.
    She waited long enough that he was certain she wasn’t going to, but then her fingers eased into his and squeezed. Colleen slipped off the stool, a little unsteady but catching herself so that she didn’t stumble. She was in his arms half a minute after that, the two of them pressed close on the splintery wooden floor that wasn’t really meant for dancing. On one of The Fallen Angel’s good nights, when the crowds of Fell’s Point filled this bar cheek to cheek and hip to hip, there would have been no been room for them to do this, but now he spun her out slowly and back in again to dip her.
    She laughed as he pulled her up, and damn, that smile, that gorgeous chuckle, made him understand why men had claimed they’d die for their lady loves. Everything about this woman made him want to make her happy. Keep her safe. When she allowed him to pull her in close again, he took a long, deep