‘I wouldn’t,’ she said, leaning in until her face was close to his. Close enough to decide that his eyes were, indeed, blue. The tan and shirt colour must have made them look green at first.
‘You wouldn’t what?’ His voice had dropped, low and intimate.
‘Call you old-fashioned.’ She lifted her cup and held his gaze as she sipped. As she intended, his eyes dropped to her mouth and stayed there until she set the cup back down. He definitely wasn’t immune. Good to know she hadn’t lost her touch.
‘You’re perceptive,’ he said.
‘Not really.’ She wasn’t about to make things easy. ‘But you don’t look like a man with good old-fashioned values.’
‘Depends what you’re referring to.’
‘Well, my mother is the epitome of old-fashioned values.’
‘Your mother… Maybe I should meet her. If she looks like you and shares my values, we might get on.’
‘You’re not in my mother’s league. She chews up men like you and spits them out.’
‘Sounds formidable.’
‘She is. In an extremely polite, gentle, yet forceful kind of way.’
‘You’re not like your mother, I take it?’
‘I’m not. Although I don’t believe you have much to base that on.’
‘You’re forgetting, I’ve seen you in action. I didn’t witness “extremely polite” or “gentle”. Only forceful.’
‘That doesn’t sound very attractive.’
‘Oh, you’re wrong. It sounds very attractive. To me, anyway. I don’t like a pushover. A bit of resistance is very sexy.’
She wished that weren’t true.
‘So long as it doesn’t get out of hand,’ she said.
‘Of course, my grandmother, if nothing else, taught me to respect women.’
‘Glad to hear it.’ And she was. It was one thing to be attracted to arrogant, strong men; they also had to know where the line was. It sounded like… She suddenly realised she didn’t know his name. ‘Mr…?’ She lifted a brow.
‘So formal.’
‘I’d use your given name if I knew it.’
He held out his hand. ‘Oliver.’
‘Oliver,’ she repeated, taking it. ‘Nice to meet you.’
‘And you… very nice,’ he said.
His handshake was firm without being crushing. A man with nothing to prove. He held on a fraction too long and she didn’t pull away, enjoying the little fizz of attraction between them.
‘And what brings you to MacLeod’s Cove, Oliver? Presumably not my coffee.’ She glanced down at it. ‘As good as it is, I doubt they’ve heard about it in Australia. And you do have an Aussie twang, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘You’re not mistaken. But then, I doubt you’re mistaken about many things.’
She leaned back, looping an arm over the back of her chair. ‘Well, that’s true on at least two counts here.’
‘And they are?’
