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help the laughter that spil ed out of him. It took him long, long moments to stop. “Is that right?” he final y managed to say.
    “What’s so funny?” asked Hannah.
    Brandon grabbed harder on to the jug and, as gently as he could, pried Laura’s hand from his. Ignoring her sputter of outrage, he shook the jug gently. “By al means, read my pulp,” he told Ali. Then, just for fun, he held out his other hand for a shake. “It’s nice to meet you, by the way. If you’re going to read my pulp, we should at least be introduced. My name is Brandon.
    Brandon Prince.”
    Laura growled a heartfelt, “Damn, damn, double damn.”
    Ali whispered a wide-eyed, “Oh, my!”
    And from beside him Hannah muttered, “Wel , golly gosh.”
     

Three
    BRANDON POURED the juice into his glass, ignoring Laura’s protesting sputters.
    Laura final y found her voice. “She doesn’t do freebies,” she rushed to say.
    He smiled, still pouring. “I’m certainly willing to pay for her services.”
    Laura’s mouth went dry when she thought of that low baritone murmuring words of love in her ear. She shook it off.
    “She’s off duty,” she managed to croak out.
    “The shingle’s out,” Ali said imperiously.
    Desperation seized Laura, although she didn’t know why.
    “Ali, I don’t have a license for this. You can’t do paid readings in here. You’l get me shut down.”
    “This one’s free,” Ali announced. “Pure entertainment.
    You can’t get in trouble for that, can you?”
    Laura wanted to bury her face in her hands. She couldn’t believe she was in this situation. She couldn’t believe Ali was about to practice her voodoo on the man.
    Ned sat beside Brandon, and a smal crowd gathered behind him and Ali as she began an intense analysis of his drink. She studied the pulp from above, below, and the sides.
    Annoyed, Laura marched the two steps to the waitress station to meet a customer and get her order. Unfortunately, the customer didn’t have an order. She’d simply come to see what the fuss was about.
    So Laura busied herself, trying to ignore the smal crowd and most especial y Brandon Prince. While she did a darn fine job of keeping her eyes off them, her ears betrayed her by staying finely tuned to the activity.
    Ali was saying “hmm” a lot, but everyone else had gone quiet as mimes.
    “What do you see?” Brandon final y asked.
    “I see a man who owes me fourteen ninety-five,” Laura said, giving in to her curiosity and swinging back to them.
    “Give me a minute,” Ali answered him. “I need some time for it to gel in my mind.”
    Brandon—who’d been leaning over the drink, squinting into it—straightened and grinned at Laura, pulling his wal et out of his back pocket. She had this insane desire to say, “No, al ow me.” He handed her a fifty this time, and Laura peered up at him, working hard at resisting his smile. “Keep it?” she asked, eyebrows raised innocently.
    “Certainly not!” he said with a mock frown. “I did al the work.”
    She bit back a smile. “Technicalities.”
    “So just keep five of it.”
    Tossing her head, she turned to the register, rang up the drink, then brought him his change. Al of it.
    Brandon raised a brow, but he knew better than to fight Laura on the tip issue. God, he was utterly aware of this woman.
    Even with a bar separating them, she was wreaking havoc on his libido. Her perfume scented the air. Her eyes made him crazy.
    They were so liquid and so warm, they heated his insides as effectively as a good snifter of cognac.
    And standing in front of her, he felt like a giant. He knew better than to underestimate her small size, but it really turned him on. Maybe he was a terrible chauvinist, but the idea of having this petite woman in his arms appealed to him on some primal level. The contrasts in their bodies would make him even crazier.
    With that in mind, he went to work on getting her to go out with him. From his paper bag he pulled out a bag of bal