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“It’s almost eleven,” Molly told him, somehow anticipating his question as she brought the pot over to refill his cup again. “Isn’t there somewhere else you should be?”
“Not anymore,” he told her.
Her eyes were unexpectedly sympathetic as she asked, “Did she kick you out?”
“Who?”
“Whoever’s responsible for that lost look in your eyes.”
“No one kicked me out.” Then he smiled at her. “Not yet, anyway.”
She laughed. “You’ve got another hour.”
He was still there at the end of the hour.
And Molly was still as conscious of his presence as she’d been from the minute he walked in the door. Conscious of his attention focused on her as she began tidying up her workspace and wiping down the counters after last call.
She was flattered, of course. The man was sinfully good looking with that dark hair and those smoldering eyes, a mouth that made her think of long, slow kisses and shoulders that looked as if they could carry the weight of the world.
But he didn’t belong there. She’d recognized that fact even before he’d opened his mouth and started speaking in that smoothly cultured voice that spoke of private schools and a wealth of other privileges.
And she wondered what he was doing in Texas or, more particularly, what he was doing in her bar.
She did know that every time she caught him looking at her, her pulse spiked. And when he smiled, her heart pounded and her blood heated. Though her experience with men was limited, she recognized her reaction for what it was: lust, pure and simple. And when a man looked like the one sitting at her bar, she was certain he had more than enough experience being the object of women’s desires.
The stirring of her own desire, however, was unexpected.
She wasn’t the type of woman to fantasize about having sex with a man she didn’t even know. Of course, her lackluster experience with Trevor had pretty much nixed her fantasies about sex—and the few brief relationships she’d had since then hadn’t given her reason to hope for anything different.
But she poured herself a single glass of wine—part of her usual closing up routine—and slid onto the stool beside his. “Are you really waiting for me to kick you out?”
“I’m not in a hurry to go anywhere else.”
“If I’m going to let you stay while I close up, I’ll need to know more about you.”
“Such as?”
“Where you’re from—because we both know it’s not Texas.”
“Tesoro del Mar,” he told her.
“Treasure of the Sea,” she translated.
“You speak Spanish?”
“A little.” She sipped her wine. “And is it—a treasure of the sea, that is?”
“Absolutely.”
“What brought you from there to here?”
“I was visiting a friend.”
“A girlfriend?” she guessed.
“No,” he said, then, “yes, there was a woman.”
She lifted a brow. “Only one?”
He smiled. “My best friend is getting married. His fiancée is the only woman I’ve seen since I’ve been here.”
“How long has that been?”
“Almost two weeks.”
“And why is it that you’re alone in a bar at quarter after twelve on a Sunday night?”
He made a point of looking her over. “I’m not exactly alone now, am I?”
“Alone except for the bartender,” she clarified.
“I would say alone with an incredibly beautiful woman.”
The heat in his gaze added weight to his words, but Molly wasn’t going to let herself get all tongue-tied and weak-kneed just because a handsome man paid her a compliment.
“I’m flattered,” she said. “But you’re going to be disappointed if you think a few smooth words will convince me to go home with you.”
“Since I don’t even have a hotel room booked, I was hoping you would invite me to go home with you.” There was something in his tone that told her he was only half joking.
“Not going to happen,” she told him.
“Is there anyone special in your life?”
She smiled. “There are a lot of special people in my life.”
“I meant a boyfriend,” he clarified. “Since you’re not wearing a ring, I’m guessing there’s not a husband or fiancé.”
She shook her head. “I don’t really have time to date. Too many other things going on.”
“That might be a valid excuse for neglecting to return a phone call,” he noted, “but it hardly explains not dating.”
“Does a broken engagement explain it better for you?”
He nodded. “Broken heart, too?”
She hesitated a moment, then shook her head. “No, and maybe that’s one of the reasons I haven’t been dating. I realized how close I’d come to making a very big mistake, and I needed some time to figure out what I really wanted.”
“And have you?”
“I’m still working on it.”
“Me, too,” he admitted.
“I would have figured you for the type of man who knew exactly what he wanted.”
“I used to be.” His eyes held hers for a long moment, then his gaze dropped to her mouth. “Not only did I know what I wanted, but I knew how to get it.”
Then he leaned down and kissed her.
And she kissed him back.
She, Molly Shea, who didn’t do anything spontaneous or impulsive, was kissing a stranger in a bar—and thoroughly enjoying every second of it.
Because—WOW—he knew how to kiss.
Her brain scrambled to find an explanation for this inexplicable turn of events. She wanted to blame the wine, though she’d only had half a glass. She might consider the lateness of the hour, except that she was accustomed to working nights and wasn’t at all tired. Or maybe it was just the strength of a purely physical attraction that she hadn’t felt in a very long time.
His tongue slid between her lips and the random thoughts and desperate explanations faded into nothingness as her brain seemed to stop functioning altogether.
His hands slid up her back, drawing her close, closer. Her breasts grazed the solid wall of his chest. Her nipples tightened, her belly quivered. He drew her to her feet, and she pressed herself against him, shocked—and aroused—to feel the hard ridge of his erection against her belly.
He wanted her.
Of course, he was a man and the state of his arousal might have more to do with that fact than the identity of the woman in his arms, but she wasn’t going to worry about that now. She was just going to bask in the knowledge that she was wanted, revel in this affirmation of her feminine power. At least for another minute.
Had she ever been kissed so thoroughly? Until her blood felt like molten lava pulsing through her veins and her knees went weak and everything inside her started to quiver? Never.
Not even Trevor’s kisses had made her feel like this. He was the first man she’d ever been intimate with, and she’d never responded to him the way she was responding now. Of course, her relationship with Trevor had come on the heels of the break-up of her engagement, when she’d been desperate to feel wanted by someone. But even then, she’d never wanted to be with him as desperately as she wanted to be with Eric now.
And the wanting terrified her.
She forced herself to ease away from him and when she spoke, she kept her voice light, careful to give no hint of the churning inside. “You know what? You’re as sexy as sin and when you kiss me, it makes my heart pound like you wouldn’t believe, but I don’t do one night stands with strangers.”
“I don’t, either…as a rule.” He slid his hands up her back, and she shivered as his fingers traced lazily along the ridges of her spine. “But there’s an exception to every rule.”
“And you think you should be mine?” she asked skeptically.
“I think you could be mine.”
She pushed his arms down, stepped away from him and temptation. “I might be a small-town girl, but even I can recognize a big-time con.”
He winced. “Okay, it did sound like a line.”
“You think?” What was even worse than the obvious script was how much she still wanted to give in to the desire thrumming between them.
“What I think is that, for the first time in a long time, I’ve met an interesting woman and I’m not ready to say goodbye to her yet.”
He sounded sincere, but if she’d learned nothing else from her failed relationships, she’d learned that she didn’t have a clue when it came to understanding the motivations of men. “Do you mean that?”
“Yes, I do.”
His voice was sure, his gaze steady, and despite the doubts and insecurities that swirled inside her, she wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet, either.
“I’m not working tomorrow,” she finally said. “If you wanted to meet me back here around ten, maybe we could spend the day together.”
“I’d really like that,” he said. “But I won’t be here tomorrow.”
Disappointment weighed heavily in her belly. “You won’t?”
“My plane’s scheduled to leave at 8:00 a.m.”
“You’re going back to Tesoro del Mar?”
He nodded, and though she regretted that it was true, she knew his leaving wasn’t any reason to throw caution to the wind and do something completely crazy.
“I guess this is goodbye then,” she said.
“I guess it is,” he agreed.
Then he tipped her chin up with his finger and brushed his lips against hers. It was a gentle kiss this time, as fleeting as their time together had been.
“Goodbye, Molly.”
“Goodbye.” She watched him cross the room. She watched as he flipped the lock and pushed on the door, and she felt all of her reason and common sense sweep through the open portal and into the night.
“Wait.” The word sprang from her lips without conscious thought.
He turned back. Waiting.
She could let him go—and always wonder what might have been. Or she could be wildly spontaneous and spend the night with a man whose kiss had singed her right down to her toes.
She’d always believed it was better to regret something she’d done than something she’d left undone, and while it was possible she’d wake up with regrets in the morning, she knew she would regret it more if she let him walk away.
Eric sensed the battle waging inside Molly and it took every ounce of willpower he possessed to keep his hand clamped around the handle of the door to keep from reaching for her again. If they were going to spend the night together—as he very much wanted them to do—it would need to be her decision. And he knew it wasn’t one she would make lightly.
She’d admitted that she didn’t date much, and he knew a woman as beautiful and warm and friendly as Molly didn’t sleep alone unless it was what she wanted. So what made him think that she would break her self-imposed rules to spend the night with him?
Chemistry.
It had crackled between them from the first moment their eyes had locked across the bar and had been building and deepening ever since. The sizzling kiss they’d shared was further proof of it.
His body was still humming from the after-effects of that kiss, or maybe it was almost three years of self-imposed celibacy that had everything inside him churned up. Whatever the reason, he knew what he wanted. He was just waiting for Molly to reach the same conclusion.
She looked at him now, her eyes locked with his, and she said only one more word.
“Stay.”
He flipped the lock on the door and moved back to her.
