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“What?”
“You know, you’d be handsome if you hadn’t been hit in the face so many times.”
A slow, wicked smile answered her, and something flared between them, something hot and mutual, tangible as the heat rising from the stove. “Is that your idea of a seduction?”
She shook her head.
“Just as well. You should’ve seen me before the fighting. Way uglier than this. All the broken bones have done me good. Quite the face-lift.”
She laughed.
“You know,” Mercer said, “you’d be cute yourself, if you weren’t hell-bent on wrecking my life.”
Her face went warm from both aspects of his comment, and she hid her blush by tending to the sizzling stir-fry.
“So, Miss Matchmaker. You leave some poor guy crying back in California?”
“I was exiled on a ship for six years, remember?”
“And you never bothered hooking yourself up while you were helping all those lonely tourists?”
She shrugged. “I dated a few guys, sure. Coworkers, of course.”
“Of course?”
“Well, there’s no point getting involved with the guests, when they’re only going to be around for a week. Which is fine for a fling, I guess, if unprofessional…”
“But you’re not a fling-y kind of girl?”
“No, I’m not. And cruise ships are really incestuous places. You blink, and everyone’s hooked up with everyone else—the lifeguard with the lounge singer, the nanny with the tango instructor. Sort of complicates a guy’s appeal, knowing he’s kissed half your friends by the time he gets to you.”
“I can see how that might wreck the mystique.”
“Plus the gossip on those ships is shameless. And I like that sort of stuff to stay private.”
“Bit traditional, then?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that.” She offered a mysterious little grin and turned back to the stove. It was a curious sensation, knowing he was standing there, just on the other side of the counter. That life, that weird set of experiences and skills. And holy hell, that body. Jenna usually caught herself falling for tall, slender men. Mercer was tall enough, but slender…no. Not burly, either, but…cut. Yes, that was the adjective. If he ever wound up in her Boston bachelor database, she’d be stuck with the inadequate drop-down menu designation of athletic to qualify that build. And if Mercer was athletic, then Bill Gates was well-off.
“So, you won’t be competing in that tournament next month?” she asked over her shoulder.
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