She shook her head. “Can’t you just imagine me as a professional ballerina?”
I laughed at her sincere expression.
“Fine, don’t believe me.” She sighed, then perked up. “Should we hit the restroom?”
“I need to touch up,” Gretchen said, nodding, then tapped her bottom lip with a pink manicured nail. “Then again, I also need wine, and there’s a line for both. We only have fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll get drinks,” I volunteered.
Since Bill was entrenched in conversation with Andrew’s colleagues, I made my way through the crowd to the bar. As I waited to order, I pulled a lipstick from my clutch and popped open my compact.
Ever so slowly, I glided Ruby Red on my parted mouth and smoothed my lips together. I drew away from the mirror to admire my work. I looked . . . poised. Perfectly coiffed hair, teased and styled into a long bob, floated just at my shoulders, every shiny, golden-brown lock cooperating. My eyeliner swelled over my almond-shaped eyes, winging at the corner. I’d chosen lipstick just the right shade of red to complement my emerald dress and my olive skin—not too rich, not too subtle.
Everything looked just right.
But that was the problem with perfection. The slightest tremble could send it all tumbling down. A sense I’d been experiencing more as of late.
A bartender slipped a black cocktail napkin in front of me. “What can I get you?” he asked.
I quickly dismissed my unease and snapped my compact closed. “Three glasses of your house chardonnay.”
He nodded, turning away as I tossed the mirror in my handbag.
“Chardonnay?” A deep, steady voice rumbled beside me, the single word rolling off his tongue. “Not what I would’ve chosen for you.”
The din of the crowd faded as I looked up and met the same dark gaze from earlier that both pierced right through me and begged me closer. Only, the man’s eyes weren’t dark, but an indisputable light chestnut brown, intensified a thousand times by jet-black lashes and thick eyebrows.
I drew a sharp breath at the magnitude of his beauty, the kind that turned heads. All I could do was stare back and ask, “Excuse me?”
A woman trying to place her drink order bumped into me. I steadied myself on the bar but never broke the stranger’s gaze. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Hair blackest black, short and unruly but long enough to run my hands through. A naturally suntanned complexion, as if he regularly spent time outdoors. A freshly shaven, angular jawline that ended with a cleft chin, the only soft curve amongst otherwise chiseled features.
The bartender’s voice cut into my consciousness as he set three glasses in front of me. “That’ll be twenty—”
With an elbow on the counter, the man passed over cash without even glancing away from me. “Thank you.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but the bartender was already gone with the money.
“Merlot,” the man in front of me said, tilting his head. “Or Malbec. Plump and dark, with a smoky finish.”
As my mind raced to catch up, I resisted from touching my lips, suddenly aware of their color, grapes ripening on the vine. “That’s the wine you would’ve picked for me,” I figured.
“Chardonnay isn’t complex enough.” He gave me a once-over as he added, “Maybe even something rich and flavorful like aged scotch.”
There was nothing inappropriate about his words, but the way his voice deepened with the sexy clip of his voice, my insides quivered.
He took the lipstick I’d forgotten I was holding, his fingers brushing mine. My nipples pebbled as he checked the bottom of the tube and glanced up at me. “Ruby Red,” he mused. “So, which are you?”
“Which one what?” I asked.
“Dry and goes down easy? Or full-bodied . . .” He wet his lips. “With an aftertaste that sticks on my tongue.”
My heart beat in my stomach with his probing question. “You seem to think you already know the answer.”
“Maybe it’s both. Chardonnay on the outside.” He moved a little closer. Something about the lean in his posture was intimate and easy, yet the space between us physically warmed, fire flickering under my skin. “But with those green-olive eyes of yours,easyisn’t the first word that comes to mind. Neither is dry.”
If he kept this up, he’d be right about that—my body was already responding, the tender place between my legs pulsing as it grew wet. “Do I know you?” I asked. Something about him felt familiar, comfortable, as if our eye contact earlier had been equivalent to a first date, sweeping dull small talk out of the way and pushing us past formalities.
“No.” Another man tried to get between us to order, but the god in front of me moved closer, shooting him a dagger of a look I’d never seen. The intruder fell back into the crowd.
