Thanks to Myron, all she could see as she made her way around the crowded bar was the word loser. And it was that word that prevented her from seeing Flynn at all until she turned down the little corridor that led to the bathrooms and practically collided with the wall of his chest.
Somehow, she managed to stop herself before doing that, and stared for a moment at the Oxford shirt, the silk tie . . . the square chin, the sexy five o’clock shadow, and the dancing gray eyes framed in very thick and dark lashes. And when she had made it that far, he smiled and said, “Hello, Rachel.”
Her pulse jumped up a couple of notches. “Hey.”
His smile was dazzling, all pearly white and gorgeous, just like in the James Bond movies, and he unabashedly let his gaze drift the length of her. “How fortunate—I thought it was you.”
“You did?” she asked, still blinking up at him, still trying to reconcile that gorgeous smile with the fact that it was aimed directly at her. Again. Again.
“Yes, of course,” he said with a laugh. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been working a bit to gain your attention.”
“Where—here?” she asked, confused, and unthinkingly glanced over her shoulder into the crowded bar area. When she turned around, she started—Flynn had casually braced himself with an arm to the wall, one hand on his trim waist, and had blocked her way to the ladies’ room.
“Here, there, and everywhere, really. But I’m rather beginning to believe I’m invisible.”
Oh nooooo, he wasn’t invisible, he wasn’t even remotely invisible. More like a peacock, gorgeous and impossible to miss, even in a crowd.
“It’s been rather bruising to the ego, actually, so if you might possibly shake your head a bit to indicate that I’m really not so invisible after all?”
Rachel shook her head a bit.
He laughed low, a sound that tingled down her spine. “That’s a relief,” he said, shifting closer. So close that she thought she could detect the pleasantly spicy scent of his Calvin Klein cologne. And he was still smiling at her, his gaze sort of dancing between her eyes, her lips, and her bosom. “So now that we’ve established that I’m not entirely invisible, perhaps we might move on to discussing what it will take to get you to agree to have a drink with me . . . unless, of course, it’s too complicated. The ketones, or the schedule, you know.”
She loved the way he said schedule. Okay. All right. Now there was a fire building in her belly and spreading to her limbs, to her face, and she smiled, her face practically splitting open with it. “A drink,” she repeated, and wished to God she could make more use of her tongue than to repeat everything he said.
“A drink. A cocktail,” he said, moving closer, “a nightcap, or a belt, if you prefer, a nip . . . whatever you desire. If you’d only nod your head or otherwise indicate your consent that yes, it is indeed within the realm of possibility.”
With a soft laugh, Rachel self-consciously folded her arms across her middle. He smiled, lifted his hand from his waist and touched a curl at her temple. Rachel froze, absolutely paralyzed by his touch. A real man’s touch.
A fire-breathing dragon could not possibly have made her hotter than that single touch.
“Ah . . . you know?” she stammered, seeing as how he was very casually fingering the curl at her temple and that fire-breathing dragon was setting her shorts on full-blown inferno. “You, really don’t have to do this. I wasn’t offended that day at the phone.”
“Quite happy to hear that you weren’t, yet I don’t believe I am making myself entirely clear. I don’t have to do this—I want to do this.”
Okay, hats off to Dagne. Rachel would never say a disparaging word about white magic again. Never. But still . . . this was so improbable, so unreal—men never looked at her like that, never stalked her for a drink, and she had never, ever melted under the intensity of a man’s gaze like she was melting this very minute. That, naturally, sent up all sorts of red flags, and she suddenly blurted, “Are you making a film?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Or maybe a documentary? Like a reality show where you maybe go around asking American women out to see what they’ll say or do?”
“Clever idea, but not the case. And if it were, I’d be the bloke whose face was flashed across millions of tellies with the caption, Horribly unsuccessful thus far.”
“So you really want to have a drink with me,” she said, her voice full of incredulity as his hand dropped to the braid that hung over her shoulder, calmly feeling the weight of it.
He smiled, stooping a little so that he could look her directly in the eye, and she could see the glimmer of amusement in his. “I really want to have a drink with you. It’s all quite simple, really. Where I come from, if a man is interested in getting to know a woman, he asks her out for a drink. In fact, I think it is a common practice all around the globe. Yet you do not seem entirely familiar with it.”
“That’s an understatement,” she muttered.
“So what, then, is the proper protocol on your planet?”