“Cut the bullshit. You know what you look like. You own a mirror.”
He dropped the pretense, wiggling his eyebrows at her. But then he shrugged and sighed, and his grin turned from cocky to self-deprecating. “Believe me. My dating calendar wasn’t always stacked.”
“No?” She forked a bite of omelet between her lips, cupped her hand in her chin, and chewed. She was enjoying this conversation more than she’d enjoyed any conversation since… Uh, probably since the last time I met him for lunch.
“No,” he assured her. “My body didn’t catch up with my bones until I was way past high school. At nineteen, I was still gangly. It wasn’t until I’d been in the navy a couple of years that I was able to pack on some pounds. Miraculously, around the same time, my acne cleared up. Throw in some Lasik surgery to get rid of my glasses…and voilà!” He held his arms wide. “That’s right, take it all in.”
Oh, I have been, she thought with a covert leer. All. Night. Long.
“Interesting.” She nodded, crunching a slice of bacon. Her stomach was singing praises to the chef. “I always imagined you were the type to shoot out of the birth canal, make the delivery-room nurses gasp and titter, and then exchange a high five with the obstetrician.”
He laughed. The sound was low and rolling. A good laugh. An honest laugh. The kind of laugh you could listen to for the rest of your life.
Whoa there, Sammie. That’s dangerous thinking.
“I can assure you, that was not the case.”
“So what then?” She cocked her head. “You’ve spent the rest of your adult years making up for the nookie you didn’t get as a teenager?”
“Why do I get the impression you’re calling me a manwhore?”
“Hey.” She lifted her hands. “No judgment here. I fully support playing the field. What’s love got to do with it? Am I right?”
“Tina Turner.” He nodded with satisfaction. “Nice.”
Although, in reality, the thought of all the women in his past made her want to chew nails. Or maybe use nails. Her nails. To scratch out their eyes. Starting with Janie with the really small… Grr.
“So what about you?” he asked.
She frowned. “What do you mean, what about me?”
“Were you always as beautiful as you are now?”
The piece of bacon in her mouth exploded in size and started choking her. She hastily grabbed the glass of orange juice by her right hand and gulped down half the contents. He thinks I’m beautiful? “You think I’m beautiful?” Her voice was wheezy.
“Of course.”
“There’s no of course about it.”
“Sure there is. You own a mirror, right?”
She glanced around, feigning confusion. “Is there an echo in here?”
“No need to rephrase a perfectly good argument.”
When she looked back at him, he was…smoldering at her.
And now he’s whipped out his tough, alpha, testosterone-y goodness!
Then, just like that, the heat in his eyes banked, and his mouth curved into a decidedly chummy grin. “Don’t worry though,” he said conversationally, spearing a piece of omelet with his fork. “I won’t jump your bones. I know you just want to be friends.”
She was pretty sure her mouth was hanging open. She was completely sure she was blinking. Rapidly. The room looked like it was lit by a strobe light. “I do?”
The look he pinned on her then was penetrating. Dark. That terribly intriguing warrior’s gleam was back in his eyes. “Don’t you?”
“No!”
Chapter 8
Ozzie fell off his barstool.
Or at least he almost fell off his barstool. He would have fallen off his barstool, knocked silly by Samantha’s vehement proclamation, if he hadn’t instinctively curled his fingers around the edge of the countertop.
For a second, he thought he might have misheard. But then he realized he hadn’t misheard; he’d just misunderstood. His heart sank. Down. To. His. Knees. It took his stomach with it.
I should never have said anything. Should never have flirted. Should never have—
“I get it,” he said, trying to hide the hurt in his voice. His omelet was suddenly threatening a reappearance. He had been so worried that taking Samantha to bed would lose him her friendship that he hadn’t considered their friendship might be one-sided. “You’ve got plenty of friends already. You probably don’t need one more. And it’s not like we have all that much in common, so—”
“No, you idiot.” She harrumphed, crossing her arms. “What I mean is I don’t just want to be friends. Not counting today’s misunderstanding, I’ve been waiting for you to jump my bones or even just…even just touch me for…well, forever!”
This time, he did fall off his barstool. Luckily, he caught himself, so he hoped it looked like he’d intended to dismount. He pushed, albeit it a little shakily, to his full height. And his heart? Well, it’d bounced from his knees up into his throat, where it proceeded to strangle him.
He assumed that was why his voice was hoarse when he said, “You have?”
“For a guy who’s supposed to have a high IQ, you sure are dumb.”
“I am?”
“What’s the matter with you?” She frowned at him. “Did you pop an aneurysm or something?” She waved four fingers in front of his face. “How many fingers am I holding up? What day is it? Name a compound that contains both ionic and covalent bonds.”
“Uh…four, Thursday morning, and sodium phosphate. Am I right?”
“I can only vouch for the first two. It’s been too long since I took chemistry.”
He realized he’d been stock-still and blinking for a really long time when Samantha threw her hands in the air.
“Well, don’t just stand there. Say something!”
“I…” Haven’t the first clue what to say. He was both ecstatic and scared to death. Ecstatic because…well, it was obvious why he was ecstatic. Just look at her. She was everything, and she was interested in him. Scared to death because…what happened after he jumped her bones? Would she leave after her itch was scratched? Stop calling and drift away?
She made a disgusted sound. “Great. Wonderful. I’ve rendered you speechless. That’s just what a woman hopes for when she makes her intentions toward a man known. Look.” She pushed up from the barstool and grabbed her plate. “I get it.” She walked over to the trash can and used her fork to scrape off the leftovers. “You have women chasing you all the time.” She deposited her plate in the sink and turned to lean a hip against the counter.
“The last thing you need is another one. You’ve probably looked at me all these months and thought, ‘Now here’s a woman who doesn’t want to rock my bod. A woman I can relax and be myself around.’”
His lips twitched at her fairly spot-on impersonation of him, then he frowned when he realized the second half of that sentence was true. He was himself around her. His old self.