“You should go over, say hi,” Molly prompted. She peeped over her shoulder at the guy by the bar, then turned back to Maggie with a wide smile. “He looks like he has some experience with wall sex. Make sure you give him your number.”
“I’m not going over. And I’m not giving a perfect stranger my phone number,” Maggie said, staring hard at the table in front of her, willing herself not to look at him again. Willing herself to ignore the unbidden images of the sexy blond pushing her up against a wall, just as Cecelia had suggested. She wouldn’t think of him like that. She wouldn’t think of him at all. Even if he was the most attractive man she’d ever seen.
Ever.
Attractive men were trouble. And out of her league.
This guy was so far out of her league he wasn’t even playing the same sport.
Besides, she didn’t like that she couldn’t get a read on him.
“Well, if you’re not going over,” Cecelia said, pushing her chair back and rising from the table, a siren on a mission, “I will.”
Maggie’s jaw dropped on a protest, but she quickly clamped her mouth closed. After all, she’d more or less just told the group she wasn’t interested. That she was seeing someone else. She didn’t have any right to cry foul now that Cecelia had called dibs.
Still, she couldn’t help but watch jealously as Cecelia sauntered across the bar, tossing her long blonde hair over her shoulder as she sidled up to Maggie’s sexy admirer. Much as it rubbed her raw, Maggie couldn’t look away while her friend spoke to the man. Cecelia then leaned close to him, revealing a generous amount of cleavage. She offered him a business card.
Only the man hadn’t taken his eyes off Maggie. Not once.
An odd sense of intimacy was blooming between them, and Maggie became flustered. She’d never experienced anything like this before and didn’t know what to do about it.
He subtly shifted away from Cecelia, intriguing Maggie despite herself. Seemingly with great effort, the man finally tore his gaze from Maggie long enough to smile at Cecelia. He said something, very brief and to the point. He refused Cecelia’s offered business card. And then his attention was back on Maggie. Implacable. Unwavering. Compelling.
She couldn’t quite squash the tiny thrill when Cecelia turned away, a disappointed sulk on her beautiful mouth. She returned to their table alone.
“Looks like it’s Maggie or nothing for Mr. Tall, Blond, and Sexy,” Cecelia grumbled. She picked up her drink and took a big, irritated gulp.
Maggie’s brows shot up, and her lips parted in shock, as did Gail’s and Molly’s. Cori, as she usually did whenever Cecelia didn’t get her way, simply smirked. Theirs was a strange friendship. They knocked each other all the time, but let someone else do the knocking and blood would spill.
Maggie shook her head. Someone had shot Cecelia down? Over her? Inconceivable. Cecelia was every man’s walking wet dream. No way would a healthy, red-blooded man pick Plain Jane Maggie over Blonde Bombshell Cecelia. There had to be something wrong with him.
Scraping her teeth over her bottom lip, she glanced up beneath lowered lashes. He’d shifted his weight to the other foot, and he had a bottle of beer in his hand now. But he still watched their table, watched her, causing a strange insidious warmth to spread through her body, at once making her feel both edgy with attraction, and yet protected. As if he was a sentinel standing guard over her.
Baffling.
Frowning, she struggled to focus on the conversation that had resumed around her, making what she hoped would pass for appropriate sounds when necessary. She didn’t look his way again, no matter how badly she wanted to, and he never approached the table. But she could feel the weight of that amber stare like a physical caress. Once her friends decided to call it a night, while Maggie gathered up her own purse and jacket, she finally risked a glance, unable to stop herself.
He was gone.
Disappointment slid through her. She tried to tell herself it didn’t matter. She was dating somebody else already. And Brett was fine.
Perfectly fine.
Right?
Yet, she couldn’t quite shake the memory of that entrancing amber stare.
Chapter Two
Gideon sucked in a cool breath of night air as he faded into the shadows across the street from a swank little nightclub nestled in the heart of Portland, Oregon aptly named Angel’s Fall. His gaze lingered on the door as he waited for Maggie Michaels to exit the building. He’d found her at the middle school where she taught, per Sebastian’s intel. He’d then followed her home, to a little bungalow style house in the suburbs. And then he’d followed her here.
He’d slipped inside to keep a better eye on her. At first, he hadn’t meant for her to see him. But then he figured, what the hell? He was going to have to get the cuff in his pocket locked on her wrist, wasn’t he? Sooner or later she was going to have to see him.