definitely, she was warming up. Her skin was glowing and rosy. And her hair was starting to curl as it dried, with little wisps falling in her face even though she kept shoving them back.
“Usually men quake in their boots when I walk by,” she noted casually. “I have quite the reputation for being terrifying at work.”
“Ah, but we’re not talking about work, remember? And not your real name, or life, or politics, or headlines.”
At her own words repeated back, her lips curved. “You’re not a local. You don’t have the slow Southern ways. And you don’t have the accent, either, that lazy, drawn-out way of speaking that makes so many women want to swoon.”
He sent her a lazy, drawn-out smile and drawled in a perfect imitation of an Alabama local, “I can make up the accent, if it’d make you swoon.”
“Is it real?”
“The smile? Or the accent?”
“Either.”
“Are you trying to charm me out of my panties?”
“You have quite a memory,” she said, but smiled at her own expense. “I’ll have to quit giving you things to make fun of me with.”
“I wasn’t making fun,” Mike assured her. “Much.”
“Hmm.” She studied him with a sidelong glance. “You’ve very neatly avoided telling me if you’re a local or not.”
“Maybe your need for anonymity tonight goes both ways.” Without thinking, he lifted a hand and stroked her cheek.
At the contact, she went utterly still, as if his touch had stunned her every bit as much as it had stunned him. And it had stunned him. He’d touched plenty of women in his life, some he’d known no longer than he’d known her, but never had his entire body quivered at that touch as it did now.
She searched his gaze long and hard, as if assessing him for something very important. Maybe…honesty?
He was being honest. Here, amid the crowd, sitting with the most arresting woman in the place, he didn’t want to think about work, either. He didn’t want to think about anything other than what he was doing, which was enjoying the company of a beautiful stranger.
She seemed to come to a conclusion about him. She nodded thoughtfully, then uncrossed her legs. Her stockings made the most arresting silk-on-silk sound, and for the longest moment he couldn’t get his mind wrapped around anything but the thought of what her legs would feel like without the stockings. “Another drink?” he asked.
“That’s how a good number of the people in here are going to get in trouble tonight.” She glanced around. “Look at those women. Lonely. Drinking. Easy prey for all those men watching them.”
“Maybe they want to be prey.”
A sigh escaped her, a sound of…longing? “Yes,” she said, so softly he had to lean closer. “Maybe so. Maybe they don’t know how to just go after what they need, even if it’s not practical.”
“Are we talking about sex?” He grinned as she raised an eyebrow. “Because really, sex can be quite practical. It’s a great stress reliever, for one. And spectacular exercise. Not to mention it’s just a feel-good sort of thing.”
Her lips quirked. “You’re speaking from experience, of course.”
“Oh, no. A man should never kiss and tell.”
That made her laugh, and she looked surprised at the rusty sound, as if she didn’t do it often. “I need to get a room,” she decided, slapping her palm on the bar as she reached for the bag she’d dropped at her feet. “There was a crowd at the front desk before.”
He glanced at the very large—and getting larger by the moment—throng of people. “You don’t have a room yet?”
“No, I wanted to get warm before standing in line.”
Which was the last thing she said before the lights went out.
“DON’T PANIC,” came the low, unbearably sexy voice of her perfect stranger. “I’ve got you.”
And he did. He’d slid off his bar stool to stand right beside her, his hand reaching for hers. Corrine could feel the heat of him, the strength in the tall, leanly muscled body that she’d been trying not to notice since he’d first spoken to her.
He wasn’t her type.
Which was damn laughable, because it had been so long, she didn’t actually remember what her type was. At work, a man with a cocky, knowing smile and such a laid-back manner would drive her crazy.
But here it was the opposite.
At work she was serious, intense, and…okay, a perfectionist. She freely admitted that. She wasn’t a sexual creature, not at all. In fact, working as a woman in a man’s world, she tended to ignore her sexuality and the needs that went along with it, for long periods of time.
Hell of a time for her libido to lift its head.
“The power will come back on in a moment,” he reassured her as everyone around them seemed to panic. “Nothing to be worried about.”
Corrine wasn’t worried, and it wasn’t just his bone-melting voice making it so, but the fact that she didn’t worry about things out of her control. It was a supreme waste of time, and she hated wasting anything, especially time.
Someone trying to get out of the bar jostled her. She wouldn’t even be in this madhouse if she hadn’t had to fly here from Houston for an emergency meeting of the utmost importance—meeting the new pilot. After this she could only hope there weren’t any delays in her next project—commanding upcoming space shuttle mission STS-124. As it was her team would have to work hard to bring the replacement pilot on board.
Given the angry, disturbed, upset voices around her, general panic seemed imminent, so Corrine both forgave and ignored the person who’d pushed her. But she didn’t intend to be pushed again.
“I’m going to make my way to the front desk,” she said, turning her head toward where she imagined her stranger’s ear would be. Making herself heard in the uproar was difficult. “I’m going to get a room and just sleep the power outage away—” Oh God. Her mouth brushed skin. His ear, she thought, but it was hard to think at all because her body tingled with the most mind-numbing awareness.
Lust.
She recognized it, cataloguing the fact in her technical mind. But it didn’t stop the phenomenon. “I’ll come with you.” That was all he said, but in the dark, his voice seemed even lower, even more husky and sexy, if possible. Before she could figure out how to lose him, he’d taken her bag and was tugging her toward the door.
There wasn’t much light. None from the windows, which looked out into the pitch-black, stormy night. But since the generator hadn’t kicked on, the bartender had lit candles along the length of the bar, and was doing her best to calm people down.
With her hand in the stranger’s large,
