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nature all along? Heaven knew he pushed every hot button in her.
    “What do you mean?” she asked.
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    Mari Carr
    “Are you familiar with the term Dominant ?”
    “You like to be in charge?” she asked.
    “Not the adjective. The noun. I am a Dominant.”
    “I’m not sure I know exactly what that means,” she admitted.
    He sighed heavily and pulled away. “I’ve been battling with my conscience for weeks over approaching you at all, but the fact remains, I’m very attracted to you.
    Painfully attracted.”
    “I feel the same. I—” she started, but he shook his head, halting anything else she might say.
    “Tell you what. Why don’t we just take this a step at a time? I’d love to take you out to dinner tomorrow night. Are you available?”
    Actually she wasn’t. She was working the dinner shift, but she was fairly certain she could persuade Ewan to trade with her. He was scheduled to wait tables during the lunch rush. “I’d like to go to dinner with you.” He smiled. “Excellent.” He glanced over his shoulder at the bar before turning back with a wicked grin. “Now maybe we could test your brother’s reaction to this…” He lightly gripped her face, pulling her toward him as his lips descended.
    His kiss was exactly what she expected—the perfect illustration of what she’d come to know about him. It was powerful, strong, commanding and she gave herself up to his touch, allowing him to control the moment.
    She wasn’t sure how long the kiss lasted before a menacing voice sounded from above her. “Want me to freshen up those drinks?” Tristan stood next to the table with his arms crossed against his chest.
    Keira and Will broke apart and she giggled at the covert wink he gave her before turning to face her brother. “No thanks, Tristan.”
    “Yeah well, I thought you were tired, Kiki. Maybe you should call it a night. Go upstairs to bed.”
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    Come Monday
    She narrowed her eyes at her brother, prepared to emasculate him for pulling out her cursed nickname in front of Will.
    “Kiki?” Will murmured from beside her.
    “Don’t even think of going there, William Wallace,” she threatened.
    Will laughed and rose from the table, reaching down to help her up. “Actually, I do need to be going. Why don’t we call it a night? Give us both a chance to rest up before our date tomorrow.”
    “Date?” Tristan asked. “I thought you were working the dinner shift.”
    “Ewan traded with me,” she replied, hoping she could get to her younger brother to make the swap before Tris did.
    “I didn’t think teachers could date their students,” her brother commented, his tone belligerent. He was begging for a fight and Keira couldn’t wait until she had him alone to give it to him.
    “I’m not Keira’s teacher anymore. In fact, I’m on a leave of absence from the college, so I’m not anyone’s teacher at the moment.” Will’s reply was smooth as silk and Keira grinned at her brother, daring him to try to find some other reason to convince them to cancel their date.
    “Aren’t you a little old to be dating my sister?”
    “Tristan Collins!” she said, amazed at her brother’s rudeness, but Will cut off her chastisement.
    “I’m only thirty-five,” he said. “Hardly robbing the cradle. As someone once pointed out to me, eight years isn’t so vast a gap.” Now she understood why he’d grinned at her response that first night in his office.
    Had he been thinking of asking her out even then?
    Tristan fell silent and Keira decided to cut him off at the pass before he embarrassed her any further. “I’ll walk you out, Will.”
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    Mari Carr
    He took out a twenty for the beers and started to hand it to Tris, but Keira waved it away.
    “The drinks are on me,” she said as they headed for the exit.
    Once on the sidewalk, they started laughing at the furious expression on her brother’s face. “I swear to you, I fully intend to kill him when I go back inside,” she assured