Loose and Easy by Tara Janzen Read Free Book Online

haven’t eaten, or buy you a drink, if you have.” It wasn’t original, and he just kind of blurted it out, but it was solid, something a girl could count on.
    “Actually, I have an appointment, and I’m running a little late.” She made a point of checking her watch. “So if you’ll excuse me…”
    An appointment? At nine o’clock on a Friday night?
    Actually,
he was going to have a little trouble excusing that, and if Esme Alden
actually
turned out to be some kind of high-end call girl, he was going to have to sit down and sort through the unsettling information with Christian Hawkins—Superman, second in command at Steele Street, owner of the beauteous Roxanne, and SDF’s unofficial but widely used therapist. Hawkins knew things about women all the other guys could only surmise. Dylan was certainly useless in that capacity. He and Skeeter had been married for—hell, Johnny didn’t know how long, a few years, and it didn’t look to him like the boss had figured out too much about women, or he might have noticed he’d been holding the reins a little too tight on his girl. If he wasn’t careful, Skeeter was going to flat-out break loose.
    Kid was holding on to his wife, too, holding on for the ride, but who could do anything else with Nikki? She was an artist, like quicksilver. Johnny had posed for her completely buck naked, the first time a couple of years ago, and a few times since, and he still wasn’t sure if he’d ever quite recovered from the experience. He liked the paintings she’d done though, most of them dark angel paintings with him looking pretty badass. He liked them a lot. Nikki did, too. She’d picked one of the paintings of him for the poster of her latest exhibit, the Ironheart Angel. It would probably impress the hell out of Esme.
    Sure it would—and he just happened to have the announcement Nikki had left for him at Steele Street in his back pocket. She and Kid had left for Los Angeles this morning, and he knew she was hoping he’d stop by the gallery and just sort of be there—getting stared at.
    Right—just one of the perks of posing naked for a famous artist, having women show up to check you out. Not that they needed you there. Nikki didn’t leave anything to the imagination, but Johnny had wondered if she kind of added a little something extra here and there. Even with paintings of himself to look at, the verdict was still out on that one.
    “Well, maybe after your appointment then,” he jumped back in, reaching around and checking his back pocket. Sure enough, he had the postcard announcement next to his wallet. “You could give me a call.” He pulled out the postcard. He wasn’t really floundering. This was a plan. “A friend of mine has some paintings showing at the Toussi Gallery on Seventeenth. There’s going to be wine and cheese, that kind of stuff, tonight, and these things always go late. So, if you like, we could go and look around, check out the artwork, whenever you were free. It wouldn’t matter what time, not really. I know the owner.” He handed the postcard over to her—and if her answer had even a hint of “I’ll be busy the rest of the night,” he was heading straight back to Steele Street and knocking on Hawkins’s door.
    “You know Suzi Toussi?” Her eyebrows went up again, her expression slightly disbelieving.
    Okay. More than slightly.
    He wasn’t insulted. There was no reason on earth for her to think he’d turned into anything other than the street gangster his guidance counselor had predicted.
    “Yeah, I know Suzi, and she’s still involved with the gallery,” he said. “But the woman who owns it now is named Katya.” Katya Hawkins, Superman’s wife and mother of three, with another one on the way. Johnny wasn’t the only one at SDF who was beginning to wonder if Christian and Katya were going for some kind of record.
    “Uh, sure…Toussi’s, that sounds like fun,” Esme said, after another few seconds of looking him over.