Golden Heat

Andy rushes into the lounge area of the Crown & Bull where he€s meeting Bernie. Taking a seat where he can observe the entrance, he orders a Scotch on the rocks and sits back to wait a bit. Just then, a strikingly gorgeous woman walks through the revolving doors. This is the kind of woman who drives a man to drink, he thinks sardonically.
It takes him a moment to realize she€s coming toward him. Man, she€s gorgeous; beautiful is too mediocre a word to describe her. She has a body that makes a man twitch just watching her, and he has the itch. He€s so busy trying to conceal the evidence of her effect on his body that he is taken by surprised when she addresses him.
€œMr. Redfield? I€m Bernie Harp.€
The voice is a husky contralto that makes the blood vacate Andy€s brain and rush to his masculine parts. He has to take a deep breath to slow down his heart rate. His powerful physical response to the woman irritates him. God damn it, he was expecting a man. Jonas never told him the investigator was a woman. He€d foolishly assumed, with a name like Bernie, it had to be a man. -----, he needs a moment to get himself together. So, instead of responding immediately, he sips his drink that the waiter had put in front of him a few moments earlier. Without saying a word, he lets the mellow taste of the liquor course its way through him like a kiss from the lips of a sensuous woman€"like the one standing in front of him now, with her hand extended. Only after the taste on his tongue has dissipated to a shimmering echo of heat does he look up. Why, he asks himself, would a woman who looks like this, be named Bernie?