"Would you dance with me?"
Izzy blinked up into Drake's icy gray eyes, then held out her hand. No hesitation. Where her self-preservation had gone she had no idea.
He tugged her into the dance area and pulled her into his arms. She could immediately tell he wasn't a dancer, but his natural athleticism would serve him now as he adapted and started to move his feet and rock his shoulders.
"You don't seem like the dancing type to me," she murmured, hand grazing his neck before settling to his shoulder.
"I'm not," he said quietly, "But I wasn't going to let anyone else dance with you."
She pulled back enough to raise a brow at him. "Really? I thought we were trying to cool things off?"
"I didn't say that," he rumbled. "You did."
Izzy sighed. Yes she had. "I like you, Drake. A lot. But let me tell you something. If you break my heart, I'm going to have to string you up by your balls."
She said it in jest in the hopes that they could laugh about it, but instead he stopped moving and looked down at her.
"I've never been in this position before, and I have no desire to break your heart. I don't know what we're doing exactly, or where it's going, but I don't want either one of us hurt. It's gotten more complicated than I ever expected."
With a slight nod, she leaned into his arms again and started moving.
For several minutes they didn't say anything more, just moved to the music. Several songs played, but they danced the same way to all of them, slow swaying and shuffling. She hoped his men didn't make fun of him for this. A couple of times she thought she caught him inhaling her, but she couldn’t tell for sure.
"So, I don't feel like I know very much about you. Where are you out of?" she asked finally. "I know SEALs are usually California or Virginia, right?"
He inclined his head. "Yes. I'm from the Virginia group. I'm a special boat operator attached to the USS Carl Vinson."
"Where are you from originally?"
"Indiana. Grew up on a farm with my three brothers and my dad. But didn't stay there. I wanted to see the world."
She smiled up at him. "You kind of went all in, huh? Navy SEALs are no joke."
He grinned slightly. "I did."
"And did your family support you?"
He blinked and looked out over the crowd surging around them. "Not really. My mother died when I was young so my dad assumed I would always be there on the farm, and it just wasn't for me."
"Yeah, I get that," she told him thoughtfully. "My dad left us when I was ten. He was a smoke jumper for the national park service, and though he seemed to love my mother, he couldn’t conform to normal life for her. She wanted a husband willing to work a nine to five like she did at the hair salon. He couldn’t do it. So he left.” She shrugged. “Mom eventually remarried a really nice guy, a barber, and they opened a hair salon together. Years later, my parents didn't understand why I wanted to leave Pennsylvania. They wanted me to take over the salon. But they kind of rolled with it better than your dad did, it sounds like. They're used to my eccentric personality. I tried about fifteen different jobs before I finally decided I wanted to help people. Once I decided on nursing and physical therapy everything kind of fell into place."
He blinked down at her. "Fifteen jobs? Are you serious?"
She laughed and nodded. "Yup. I was a hair stylist for a while in PA at the salon, worked at an arboretum in Ohio, parked cars for a restaurant in New York. Helped on a ranch in Texas for a while, drove taxi in Louisiana. It was when I got a job at a nursing home in Florida that I felt like I was finding my direction. I went to school for a while and hooked up with a guy whose family was in Colorado. I followed him home one day and fell in love with the state. Knew it was where I wanted to stay so I headed back to school and the rest is history. I work at Ft. Carson now as a nurse in the rehab facility."
"Army, huh?" he shook his head sadly. "I thought better of you than that Izzy."
She laughed, knowing he was just messing with her. Joking between the branches was an everyday thing where she came from.
"Those Army guys are pretty awesome, I'll have you know," she murmured up into his ear.
Again, he shook his head as if he couldn't believe her words. "You just haven't been around enough SEALs."
Their conversation wandered from subject to subject as they learned about each other, and there were no deal breakers as far as she was concerned. He leaned more toward Star Wars than Star Trek, and she informed him it was probably a generational thing. He pinched her on the ass for that dig.
Drake told her she was nuts to like the Detroit Redwings over the Pittsburgh Penguins and wondered how she could call herself a Pennsylvanian. They laughed and joked about light-hearted things, but under the surface of the words was the simmering awareness that they were finding common ground and deciding whether or not to fight for their so-young relationship.
Several times other men tried to tap him off the dance floor, but with an ice-cold stare they generally turned tail and disappeared. Izzy appreciated that in spite of his discomfort on the dance floor, he was trying to give them time to connect. This night wasn't going to last forever. Even now the sun had already set over the mountains to the West. Lights were flickering on in the fading light.
