Nothing More Than a Sister

He said nothing.

"I'm sick of men panting after me at all hours. So do me a favor and head them off before some nobody snatches me up."

"Eva."

Dane cut her off. A silence settled over the table, and a gaze dry to the point of indifference met hers.

"I've told you more than once. To me, you're nothing more than a little sister."

It was an answer like a blade, but Eva had no intention of giving up. Even if he was slow to open his heart, she could wait. She lifted the water glass from the table to her lips as if nothing at all were wrong. A little sister—between a man and a woman who didn't share a single drop of blood?

"How frightening. Can't a girl even joke?"

A sip of water restored her poise, and she smiled, small and easy. Because she had backed down so readily, Dane said nothing more.

His father, Patrick Hunter, and plenty of others counted her hauteur and her self-centeredness among the charms proper to a young lady of the upper class. To Dane she was an acquaintance bound to him by their parents' friendship, and nothing more or less than that. He gave no credit to Eva's doll-like face, a face that held no trace of human warmth. Above all, she stirred not the slightest sexual spark in him. In the end, the picture of the two of them walking the aisle arm in arm was a fantasy that belonged to everyone around them except the man himself.

"Father's been thinking about a family trip. You know how noisy Congress has been lately over that bill to tighten gun control. Once the matter is more or less settled, he thought we might all go to Eos Island to clear our heads—and if we're going anyway, both families together..."

Sensing that Dane's attention had gone somewhere else, Eva broke off and followed his gaze.

An East Asian woman in a qipao was coming up to the second floor with a menu in hand. Dane's eyes narrowed.

"Hello, and thank you for visiting Tori's. My name is Zena. I'll be taking care of the two of you today..."

Zena's gaze, which had been on the woman, shifted to the man seated across from her. For an instant, the air went still.

Heat rushed up Zena's face. She pulled herself together at once, brought a curled hand to her mouth for a small, false cough, and went on.

"Um—I'm sorry. Chef Su said you wanted the tasting course. For a wine to pair with it, we have a Dom Pérignon ready, and..."

Dane stared at the lobe of her ear, flushed red against the pallor of her skin.

"Do you know her?"

After Zena left the table, Eva turned a puzzled look on him.

"No."

Even after she had gone from the private room, the line of her back lingered on his eyelids like an afterimage. Unlike the woman he had faced at the hotel two days ago, her hair was drawn into a neat ponytail, and she wore a white qipao that clung to her body. The bare face, free of makeup, made her seem somehow subtly unlike that first impression—but the bandage wrapped around her hand told him it was the same woman.

Sweat gathered on Zena's brow as she took the stairs a little too quickly. Her heart slammed. Every nerve in her was fixed on the gaze boring into her back.

God. Why here, of all places. He recognized me, didn't he?

Every time she recalled what she had done in that hotel room, her face burned, but she had comforted herself with the thought that they would never meet again, so it didn't matter. Face to face with him now, the memory of that night came down on her with a weight that was anything but light. Remembering herself trying to seduce him with a coquetry that didn't suit her at all, she wanted nothing more than to crawl into the nearest mouse hole.

Just then Luke came up behind her and tapped her shoulder.

"Did you hear? That's Dane Hunter, the owner of Hunter & Carlson. And the woman with him is the designer Eva Lambert. You know—the one with the jewelry store on North Michigan Avenue."

"Huh? Oh..."

There was no hiding a face gone red with a shame that clung to every inch of her. Zena clapped both hands over her cheeks and hurried toward the kitchen.

Dane Hunter, his solid frame wrapped in an impeccable suit, looked different from the man she had faced in that room. But the sexual charge that somehow set a person on edge—she didn't think even armor could have hidden it. The qipao that bared the shape of her body made it hard for Zena to breathe. Anyone with a sharp eye, she felt, would see exactly how fast her heart was racing.

Ah—!

Nerves sent her gaze somewhere it had no business going, and she nearly dropped one of the plates in her hands. She recovered without making a show of it, but for a split second the color drained from her face.

One hand resting against his chin and his mouth, Dane watched the woman setting the table. His eyes found the hand bound in white bandage, and he remembered the moment she had hurt it. It had taken only seconds for a dark bruise of blood to rise beneath skin gone deathly pale. She was probably still in pain. The elegant line of his brow drew in, just slightly.

"Looks like you hurt your hand."

"...Sorry?"

The low voice fell right in front of her face, and Zena flinched on instinct. Both of them already knew how her hand had come to this. Pretending not to know would have been better for them both. She couldn't understand why he would ask when he knew it was an awkward story neither of them could tell.

"Oh, I hurt it a little, but I'm fine."

She lifted her chin stiffly, as if it were nothing, but the breath climbing her throat trembled.

"Did you see a doctor?"

She didn't answer.

"You look uncomfortable."

With that, Dane lifted the wine glass from the table to his lips.

"No. It's already almost healed. Thank you for worrying."

Watching the two of them, Eva's fine brows twitched.

Dane met everyone with perfect indifference and a dry gaze. Even with people tied to him by work, he shut emotion out completely and never made conversation that wasn't necessary, and the reputation of a cold man followed him for it. For a man like that to take an interest in a wound on a waitress's hand made no sense.

"This is squash with beet, mustard pesto, pea shoots, and macadamia cheese. And this is seitan piccata topped with spinach cream, served with a roasted potato cake, oyster mushrooms, and lemon caper sauce..."

Zena kept her face as calm as she could while she explained the dishes set before them. She tried to ignore the gaze stuck to her lips, but it wasn't easy. Memories from two nights ago—memories she didn't want—kept jabbing at the back of her mind.

"If you need anything, please call for me anytime."

She offered a polite bow and headed downstairs, barely holding together a heart that felt as if it might drop at any moment.

Dane's eyes followed her down the stairs. Eva, watching his face as she picked up her wine, went stiff.

"Dane?"

He hadn't even registered that his name was being called.

"Dane."

Only when she said it a second time did he turn his head to look at her.

"Why do you keep looking at her like that?"

She didn't want to admit it, but the waitress was too pretty to cut down on looks alone, and that displeased her. For him to show that kind of interest in anyone—man or woman, young or old—was exceedingly rare. She wore a mask of calm, but inside, Eva seethed with something sour.

Dane didn't answer. With indifferent eyes he scanned the food set before him, and Eva swallowed the interrogation trying to force its way out, settling for a faint crease of her brow instead. An awkward silence passed between them without their eyes meeting. Only the dry clink of silverware, and the low murmur of voices trading words downstairs, drifted through the room.

No. It can't be. Dane Hunter, of all people, taking an interest in some woman who does nothing but wait tables? Eva hurriedly corrected herself.

"I hear this place is pretty well known among the vegan restaurants in Chicago."

She poked at the vegetables with the tip of her fork and turned the conversation, after weighing how to put it so she might read what Dane was really thinking.

"The presentation isn't bad. The service, though—a little lacking. Don't you think?"

She said it with a bite, looking down at food plated as beautifully as a work of art. Dane's gaze, which had been angled downward, came up. For the first time, those expressionless eyes took on a glint. Eva slipped a small spoonful of the finely puréed squash into her mouth and arched one brow at a sharp angle, as if her mood had soured.

"Serving with a bandaged hand. It's unsettling."

Unfortunately, all that came back was silence. If he had simply agreed with her, she could have let it pass lightly. Eva pressed her lips shut, her expression prim.

Dane tilted his head and looked down toward the lower floor. The way she whipped her face aside the instant their eyes met, as if she'd been struck with a switch, stirred his interest. Was this really the same woman who had come to his room and tried to seduce him so boldly? She looked innocent enough to make him doubt it. Her tightly wound nerves pulled his memory back to that hotel room two nights ago.

Quite some time after he had sent her out, a call had come from the lobby. Her back as she left had looked somehow unsteady, and sure enough, she never appeared where the limousine was waiting. That suggested she might have gone back to the lounge instead of heading home. Or else she had left in some other car. The first, of course, was more likely.

The gap between the woman working with such a neat, proper air and the afterimage of her looking up at him with that bewitching expression was almost too wide to believe. Had she found the sugar daddy she wanted in the lounge that night? No. She couldn't have. If she had, there would be no reason for her to be working this hard now with an injured hand.

Just then a customer who had stood up suddenly bumped shoulders with Zena as she passed carrying a teapot. She caught the pot at the last second before it fell. She could not stop the hot tea from spilling in a rush down her own arm.

Tsk. Dane clicked his tongue before he knew it, his straight brow drawing tight.

"Ah—I'm so sorry. Are you all right?"

The tea running down her arm had to be scalding, but Zena was busy checking on the customer. Only after she had confirmed two and three times that the guest was unharmed did she press a hand to her burned arm and leave.

Eva bit down hard on her lip. Dane's gaze, fixed on the waitress, grated on her. Lowering her lavish false lashes, she quietly swallowed a mouthful of wine. A moment later she lifted her eyes, as if the more she thought about it the more it displeased her, and spoke.

"Ha. The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it is."

Realizing he had been looking downstairs, Dane shifted his glance to Eva.

"Why is the service here this pathetic?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"When you pay this much, there's a level of service you have every right to expect. And they aren't meeting it."

"What exactly are you trying to say."

She wasn't unaware that picking at him like this could backfire. She had always kept her tail tucked just enough, and avoided words that would sour his mood. Today, though, her temper was unusually knotted, and holding her composure was hard. She sent a displeased look toward the dining room below.

"They call themselves one of the finest vegan restaurants in Chicago, and they have someone with a bandage on her hand serving VIPs? For all we know she's hiding some nasty skin disease under that wrap. And you saw it just now. She was so clumsy with those hands she nearly scalded a customer. This is something we ought to file a complaint over."

"You must have a great deal of time on your hands."

The sneer at the corner of Dane's mouth knocked the breath out of her. She set down her fork and pressed a napkin to her lips. Her appetite was gone completely. Why was he taking the side of a woman who had nothing to do with him? She could hardly get her heart, smothered in displeasure, back under control. Eva straightened her spine and faced him.

"I'm only trying to have something wrong set right. If you talk to me like that, what does that make me?"

She could endure his cold tone, and his colder eyes. She had even promised herself she wouldn't mind his indifference, so long as it was aimed at every woman. But she could not stand to watch him look at another one. The composure she had forced onto her face began to collapse like thawing ice and snow.

"I suppose my expectations were too high. The disappointment is just as large. Let's go somewhere else."

Her voice trembled in small pieces as she picked up her clutch and rose.

"Eva."

A chill voice fell from between Dane's lips.

"That's enough."

Caught halfway between standing and sitting, Eva turned confused eyes on him.

"I have a lot to do when I get back. I'm not idle enough to waste time indulging your whims."

Eva's lips parted, then closed, twitching faintly. No matter how unreasonable she had been until now, Dane had never openly said something unpleasant to her. He had always let her words pass with a kind of generosity, so she had thought a sulk of this size would work. All it did was confirm a distance that would not easily close.