His gaze cut straight to her face.
Like a lion’s, his irises were golden. Also like a lion’s, they seemed preternaturally aware of the weaker creature—Shay—in the vicinity. The tiny hairs on her body lifted, her senses warning he was supremely aware of her tripping heartbeat and all the delicious warm blood rushing below her skin.
Though her belly fluttered, she remained as she was—frozen, and feeling like an impala just now singled out by the biggest predator on the savannah. One of his dark eyebrows winged up.
And Shay blurted out the first thing that came into her head. “I’m supposed to be celebrating my birthday tonight but my friend couldn’t get here.”
The corner of his mouth twitched as the second eyebrow joined the first. “Okay.”
“This is my third martini.” She gestured toward her current glass, then frowned. “Or my fourth.”
“All right.”
“I’ve had nothing to eat yet.” At that, she ran out of things to say. None of what she’d already shared, she realized, gave any rational explanation for why she’d been staring at him. Damn.
“Is it a four-martini birthday, then?” he inquired conversationally. He murmured thanks as his beer was placed before him. His gaze turned assessing. “I can’t imagine it’s one of the more painful ones.”
“Oh, um, well.” She shifted her attention to her drink and drew it closer. “Maybe it’s the fire.”
“Aren’t we safe?” He sipped from his beer. “The highway patrol seemed to know what they were doing when they shuttled me in this direction. They said I might be stuck here for as little as a few hours, though possibly longer.”
“We’ll be fine.” There was no need to pass along her skittishness. “The fire protection people and the other authorities have a lot of experience.”
Her quesadillas arrived and the smell of them tickled her taste buds. She could feel the man at her side eyeing them with interest. Enough interest that she felt compelled to offer, “Help yourself. There’s too much for me to eat all by myself.”
“Oh, I—”
“Go on,” she said. “We’re fellow refugees of a sort, after all.”
There was another moment’s hesitation, then she saw his hand reach toward the platter. She pushed half the tall stack of paper napkins that had been delivered with the food toward him.
What she didn’t do was look at him again.
Never before had she found a man so attractive, Shay decided. She wasn’t a nun; she’d dated and had been in a couple of longish relationships. But one-night stands were on her Not Ever list.
Living in a small tight-knit community meant that everyone knew everyone’s else’s business. Since Shay was the product of an extramarital affair and the father of her sister Poppy’s son had hightailed it at the words positive pregnancy test, there was more than enough Walker tattle for people to tittle over. Shay had never been tempted to add to it with a casual hookup.
Not that the man on the next stool was in the market for a hookup with her. He could have anyone. Though he didn’t wear a ring, for all she knew he was married to the most beautiful woman on the planet.
“Hey, birthday girl,” the man at her side said. “You really are down in the dumps, aren’t you?”
She risked a look at him. Whoa. Still unbelievably handsome. His golden gaze swept her face, dropped just briefly, then came back up to meet her eyes.
That was good, because her nipples were tingling as they tightened into hard buds just from that quick glance. With masterful effort, she resisted squirming on her seat.
He was still staring at her expectantly and she couldn’t help but notice the faint white lines radiating from the corners of his eyes. Clearly he spent a lot of time outdoors squinting into the sun. They could be laugh lines, she supposed, but he didn’t look like the type who succumbed to hilarity on a habitual basis.
A question, she remembered now, as he continued staring. He’d asked a question. “Um...” Clever or charming was really beyond her at this point, whether it was due to the martinis or his rampant masculinity. “I really don’t like my birthday,” she confessed.
“That’s too bad. No good memories about it whatsoever? Not one?”
Shay’s brow furrowed as she thought back. “I had a pony party when I was eight. We went out on a trail ride and at the end my dad barbecued and my mom served a cake in the shape of a horseshoe.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“It was.” She smiled a little. “When I was thirteen I had a pajama party. My older sisters treated me and my friends to facials, manicures and cosmetic makeovers. That year, the cake was shaped like a tiara.” Also fun.
“So, when did the day go from tiaras to tragedy?”
The very next year, when she was fourteen. It was the year her father died and at her birthday party one of the guests had whispered loudly to another that Shay was a bastard and her mother a whore. Though that mean girl had been summarily sent home, in that moment Shay had become very self-conscious of who she was and who she wasn’t.
Not that she would tell the stranger all that. So she shrugged instead and turned the tables on him. “What about your birthdays? Pizza and laser tag? Cakes shaped like footballs or Super Mario?”
“We didn’t celebrate birthdays in my house.”
Shay’s eyes rounded. “What?”
“My mom was gone early...I don’t remember her. My father, a former Marine, was a hard man. At my house, the showers were cold, Christmas was just another day and the date of your birth was only something to put on a medical form or a job application.” He said it all matter-of-factly, no shred of self-pity in his tone.
Shay stared at him a moment. Then she swiped up her martini glass and swiveled forward in her seat, unsure how to respond.
“I’m sorry.” He sounded genuinely apologetic, not to mention a trifle embarrassed. “Too much information, right?”
His discomfort eased hers. She threw him a little pretend glare as she took another sip of vodka. The look was ruined by the hiccup that bounced up her throat. As she swallowed it back down, she caught sight of the corner of his mouth kicking up in that small, amused and very attractive smile of his.
She tossed another brief glare in his direction.
“Okay, Birthday Girl, what’s wrong now?”
“What’s wrong, he asks?” she said, shifting to face him while rolling her eyes. “I was into my four-martini, poor-me birthday routine, though still sharing my appetizer, you’ll recall, when you released the air from my gloom balloon by telling me about cold showers, no Christmas and a complete lack of birthday cake.”
“Gloom balloon?” He started laughing, husky and low, showing a wealth of even white teeth. The sound of it rolled over her like honey.
She
