strangely piercing and unsettling.
There were crow’s feet at the corners that might have been from laughter, or spending a lot of time outdoors squinting into the sun. Both, maybe. He had that healthy outdoor look about him, a sort of raw masculinity that sent another shiver through her body, and she lowered her eyes a little and focused instead on a mouth that was just made for kissing...
No! No way. She pulled herself together sharply. She was done with that—with all of it. She went back to the unsettling eyes.
‘Is that your best shot? I’ve had better chat-up lines from a ten-year-old.’
Her voice sounded more brittle than she’d meant it to, but he just laughed, a soft huff of wry humour which reeled her in just a teensy bit, and those lips tilted into a smile that creased the corners of his eyes and made them suddenly less threatening.
‘Sorry. I wasn’t trying to hit on you. I just read the expression on your face when you answered your phone. Sort of “so what do I do now?” which is pretty much what I was trying to work out myself.’
Unlikely. Why would anyone that gorgeous have any difficulty working out what to do on a Saturday night? Not that she was interested, or cared at all about this total stranger, but that sinful mouth quirked again and something inside her lurched.
‘I take it your other half’s busy tonight, then,’ she said, telling herself it was utterly irrelevant since this was going nowhere, but his mouth firmed and for a moment she didn’t think he was going to answer. Then it twitched in a rueful smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
‘No other half,’ he said quietly, and his voice had a tinge of sadness which made her believe him. ‘The friends I’ve been staying with had something else on tonight, and I’ve got to hang on till tomorrow so I’m just killing time in a strange town, really. How about you?’
It begged an answer, and not even she was that churlish. ‘I was meeting a friend,’ she offered reluctantly, ‘but she’s been called into work.’
‘Ah. My friends are having way more fun than that. They’ve gone to a party, so I was well and truly trumped.’
He smiled again, a wry, easy grin this time, and hitched his lean frame onto the bar stool beside her and caught the barman’s eye. ‘So, can I get you a drink? Since we both seem to have time on our hands?’
She did, but she didn’t want to spend it with a man, and particularly not a man with trouble written all over him. She was sworn off that type for life—and probably every other type, since she was such a lousy judge of character. And gorgeous though he was, it wasn’t enough to weaken her resolve. Out of the frying pan and all that. But she had to give him full marks for persistence, and at least he was single. That was an improvement.
He was still waiting for her answer, the barman poised in suspense, and she gave a tiny shrug. She could have one drink. What harm could it do? Especially if she kept her head for a change. And it wasn’t as if she had anything else to do apart from tackling the mountain of laundry in her bedroom.
She let herself meet his eyes again, those curious pale eyes that locked with hers, beautiful but unnerving, holding hers against her will. They made her feel vulnerable—raw and exposed, as if they could see things about her that no one was meant to see.
Which makes having a drink with him a really bad idea.
She mentally deleted the name of the lethal cocktail she might have shared with Petra and switched to something sensible. Something safe.
‘I’ll have sparkling water, please.’
One eyebrow quirked, but he nodded to the barman and asked for two. So he wasn’t drinking, either.
‘I’m Sam, by the way,’ he said, offering his hand.
‘I’m Kate,’ she replied, and, because he hadn’t really left her any choice, she put her hand in his and felt it engulfed in something warm and nameless that brought her whole body to life. Their eyes clashed again, and after a breathless second he released his grip and she eased away and shifted on the bar stool, resisting the urge to scrub her hand against her thigh to wipe the tingle off her palm.
‘So, Kate, how come you’re living in Yoxburgh?’
‘What makes you think I’m not passing through like you?’
His mouth twitched. ‘On the way to where? It’s stuck out on a limb. And anyway, the barman knows you. He greeted you like an old friend when you walked in.’
His smile was irresistible, and she felt her lips shift without permission. ‘Hardly an old friend, but fair cop. I do live here. Why is that so hard to believe?’
He shrugged, his eyes still crinkled at the corners. ‘Because you’re young, you’re—’ he glanced at her ring finger pointedly ‘—apparently single, and it’s just a sleepy little backwater on the edge of nowhere?’
It wasn’t, not really, but it had a safeness about it which was why she’d chosen it, exactly because it felt like a quiet backwater and she’d thought it might keep her heart out of trouble. Except it hadn’t worked.
She ignored the comment about her being single and focused on Yoxburgh. ‘Actually, it’s a great place, not nearly as quiet as you’d think, and anyway I love being by the sea.’
‘Yeah, me, too. It’s been great staying up here for the last couple of days. I’d forgotten how much I’d missed the sea.’
‘So how long are you here for?’ she asked, forgetting that she wasn’t supposed to be showing an interest.
‘Only till tomorrow morning. I spotted a boat for sale just as I was leaving this afternoon, and the guy can’t see me till the morning, so I’m staying over to see if I can strike a deal.’
‘What kind of a boat?’ she asked, telling herself she was just being polite and wasn’t really interested in the boat or anything else about him, like where he was staying or how he was going to pass the next twelve hours—
‘An old sailing boat. A wooden Peter Duck ketch—’ He broke off with a grin. ‘I’ve lost you, haven’t I?’
‘Yup.’ She had to laugh at his wry chuckle. ‘Go on.’
‘Nah, I won’t bore you. If you don’t know anything about Swallows and Amazons it won’t mean a thing. Anyway, it needs work, but that’s fine. It’ll help pass the time, and I’m not afraid of hard physical work.’
She just stopped herself from scanning his body for tell-tale muscles.
‘So what do you do when you’re not rescuing old sailing boats?’ she asked, against her better judgement. Not that she had a better judgement. Her entire life was a testament to that and she was still hurting from the last time she’d crashed and burned, but her tongue obviously hadn’t learned that lesson yet.
He gave a lazy shrug, which distracted her attention from his kissable mouth to those broad, solid shoulders just made for resting her head against.
‘Nothing exciting. I spend most of my life trapped indoors governed by unmeetable targets, and I sail whenever I get a chance, which isn’t nearly often enough. Hence the boat.
