He took it, unable to ignore how small and soft her fingers felt enfolded in his grip—or the sudden heat that spread through him. “Dan Warren,” he said.
She removed her hand from his a little too quickly. The flush on her cheeks told him that she’d noticed the connection, too. She turned to her boyfriend. “This is my, uh, Julien Bernard.”
“Her boyfriend,” Julien said, sliding his arm around her waist to draw her closer. He might as well have lifted his leg and peed.
That little frown between her eyes deepened. She was looking at Julien as if he were a strange beast that she’d never seen before at a zoo.
It was called territorial male.
Clearly she didn’t like it. She shifted away from Julien’s hold under the guise of taking the paperwork. “Should we go downstairs and find a table? I have a few questions about the boat and the dive equipment before we finalize everything.”
Dan lifted his brow, a little surprised by her businesslike tone. But it was clear she took both very seriously, which he could definitely appreciate, as he did as well.
He nodded. “Shoot.”
For the next hour she did exactly that, hitting him with dozens of questions about the equipment: the compressed air and other gas mixes he had available, the backups in place, the water temperature, wind speeds, lights, buoyancycompensation systems—pretty much everything he would have asked in her place.
Maybe even a few he wouldn’t have thought of.
After a few minutes of sulking—probably at being ignored—Julien gave up trying to follow the conversation and stuck his nose in his phone.
By the time Annie signed the paperwork and handed Dan the deposit, he was impressed—and not dreading the job as much as he had been. Annie Henderson knew how to dive, and what SEAL—even a supposed-to-be-dead one, he thought grimly—didn’t admire that in a woman?
Four
Annie tried not to squirm as Julien interrogated the poor waitress about the wine list. From what she could tell, the restaurant had a broad selection of wines from Chile, Australia, Spain, Italy, California, and even Argentina. But apparently the handful of reds from France weren’t up to par.
The first time this had happened at a restaurant, Annie told herself that she was being oversensitive. Wine was obviously important to him, and Julien’s worldliness was one of the things that attracted her to him. But right now she just wanted to tell him that he was being an ass. They were in a remote corner of Scotland in a small seafood restaurant, and the waitress was probably eighteen, for goodness’ sake. What kind of extensive knowledge about Bordeaux did he expect?
But after their argument earlier, she didn’t want to ruin the special evening that he’d arranged to make it up to her.
She didn’t like the captain any more than he did, but neither had she liked Julien’s attempt to humiliate the other man, forcing him to apologize and then lying about contacting another company. If she’d noticed that captain’s confident, no-BS, “don’t even try to mess with me” silent strength in the contest between the two men, she didn’t mention it. Nor did she think too long about who had so obviously come out ahead in the exchange.
She didn’t know what was wrong with Julien, but the mean-spirited, childish behavior had reflected poorly on him. She’d told him so and he’d apologized, but it still bothered her.
The waitress finally gave up and the owner came out to talk to him. After a few apologies, the owner brought out the closest thing they had to a Bordeaux. Apparently it met with Julien’s rigorous standards. After going through the long, drawn-out process of tasting it, he nodded his approval. The same process had fascinated her the first time—she’d never gone out with anyone who knew anything about wine—but right now it was just adding to her irritation.
For once she wished he would just order a damned beer.
“Whatever lager you have on tap,”the Canadian captain—Dan—had said when the waitress came by to take their order earlier and Julien had asked whether he wanted a glass of their wine. He’d shaken his head.“Never acquired the taste for it.”
If Julien hadn’t disliked him enough already, that had ensured it. He’d smiled superiorly, and she knew he was thinking something along the lines of “peasant.”
When the waitress started to pour a glass for her, Annie felt a spark of rebellion. “I think I’ll have a glass of the rosé instead.”
Too bad they didn’t have a white zin, but the rosé was almost as “bad” in Julien’s book.
Annie didn’t care. She liked blush wines. She would tell him about the time at college she and some of her friends had done the “Tour deFranzia,” a drinking game played with the boxed “pink” wine, but he’d probably keel over and die of horror.
Instead he only gave a slight frown in her direction, before launching into another long series of questions directed at the waitress about the menu and how everything was prepared. When he started in about his girlfriend being a vegetarian, Annie stopped him. He wasn’t going to make her a part of this.
Smiling apologetically at the girl, who by now was looking as though she wanted to cry, she said, “I’ll just have the rocketsalad to start, and the goat cheese and onion tart. Both sound delicious. Thank you.”
The young girl nodded back in gratitude. Annie would make sure to slip her an extra ten pounds the next time she went to the bathroom. Julien wasn’t a bad tipper, but whatever he tipped wouldn’t be enough for that ordeal.
Eventually he decided on the rabbit starter and the veal entrée—exactly what Annie guessed he would order when she’d first glanced at the menu. He liked cute and fuzzy. Annie couldn’t do it. She wasn’t a vegetarian for health reasons; she just thought that if you ate meat you should be willing to kill for it.
Her father had taught her that the first—and only—time they went hunting together. His lesson had backfired, however, when the ten-year-old Annie refused to pull the trigger and announced that from that moment on she wouldn’t eat meat. Her mother, never much on the hunting bandwagon herself, had thought it was hysterical and told him it was his own fault—Annie hadn’t gotten her stubbornness or fierce set of beliefs from her.
