“What?” The word sounded hoarse to his own ears, and a strange prickly sensation spread over his body.
“If someone asked me to describe my perfect man, he’d end up sounding a lot like you.”
Her confession was just the oxygen needed to feed the spark that her first statement had triggered. His control erupted in a burst of orange fire. His fingers gripped the cool glass holding his tonic water, as if somehow the substance could cool him down.
It didn’t.
Instead, he was afraid he would crack the cheap crystal.
Mattie reached over, her fingers so close to his that he swore he could feel their heat. But she didn’t touch him. Not yet. But he wanted her to. Wanted it with his entire body. He thrummed with need, need that he had repressed for over half a decade. Need that he’d never expected to tempt, let alone to fill.
“We were friends so long ago.” Mattie’s words teased him like a physical touch, and energy skittered along his flesh. “And then we werealways fighting. Do you think there was something there all the time? Something we’ve been overlooking?”
He’d never overlooked it. Not once. He’d buried it. But not deep enough. Never deep enough. It wasn’t possible.
“I don’t have a lot to offer, Mattie. I don’t own a single piece of property other than an aging biplane that was built to train pilots, not to set records.”
Her lips curled up... dangerously. The muscles in his throat closed, holding further protests at bay. The tip of her finger touched his. He should have withdrawn. He should have scrambled backward quickly enough to upset his chair. But he didn’t. He stayed.
“I had a millionaire’s son flirt with me tonight. He was nice. Charming. Affable. And he bored me. What would I do with a big mansion and heaps of bric-a-brac anyway? You can’t fly them.”
Leo choked, his first words coming in a splutter. He hadn’t expected her to say that. For some women, it might just be sentimental bluster. But not Mattie. She’d never cared much about material possessions. She enjoyed looking at them, for sure. She appreciated them. But she didn’t need them. Didn’t desire them. Not like she did excitement.
“I’m not adventurous enough for you either, Mattie.” He couldn’t keep the desperate tone from his voice, but whether he was desperate to convince her of his unsuitability or desperate for her to deny his objections... he didn’t know. But it seemed that she did.
Her finger slid up to his knuckle. He swallowed at the burst of sweetness that cascaded through him. How was she managing to seduce him with the most innocent of touches?
“I had a bouncer at a speakeasy flirt with me tonight. He has connections to the underworld. He knows bootleggers and gangsters, and maybe he even is one. But he was still nice and courteous and seemed like a generally good man. But he isn’t right for me any more than the wealthy aristocrat.”
“And you’re saying that I am?” The words squeezed out of him. He actually hurt from trying to physically hold them back. He shouldn’t have said them, shouldn’t have encouraged her to rush into this like she did everything else. But he couldn’t stop her... or even himself.
Her hand closed over his. It was smaller, more delicate, but no less capable than his larger one. Her warmth, her confidence, her unshaken belief in them seeped through him. His heart seemed to swell like a hydrogen-filled balloon and threatened to lift straight from his chest. His inhibitions certainly did.
“You’re honest, and you’re steady, and you’re completely devoid of unnecessary flash.”
Leo grinned. Mattie’s words weren’t those that a lover would typically utter, but he liked them. Liked their sturdiness. Liked that they weren’t sweet nothings but something blessedly logical. Something real.
This was happening fast. But then Mattie never did like to apply the brakes.
“Are you saying that you are attracted to me because I am boring?” Leo didn’t know if he had ever teased a woman in his life, but it suddenly came naturally.
Mattie’s fingers now grazed his wrist. Her eyes blazed with golden fire. “Because you’re solid, Leo. Sensible. Sometimes I chafe when you try to stop me from doing a stunt, but there is an unwavering strength in you that I cannot deny. We complement each other, like two opposite ends of a magnet. I just don’t know why it took me so long to notice the pull.”
Because he’d been fighting it for the both of them.
“It came to me in a brilliant flash tonight,” Mattie continued, “but I think part of me has been thinking about us since we built the sandcastle.”
He shifted his palm until it pressed against hers. Their fingers closed around each other’s hand, tight and firm. Her thumb danced along his flesh.
“You were right before.” Mattie paused her caress as she spoke the words.
Leo froze, sharp little shards of pain like shrapnel ripping through him. “I was?” Did she know how he’d struggled against his feelings for her? Was she changing her mind about blazing forward with her newly discovered attraction for him? He should be reassured she was being uncharacteristically wary, especially when he’d lost his own caution... but he wasn’t relieved. Quite the opposite.
“Let’s blouse.” Mattie winked at him, indicating they should leave the speakeasy. “I’ve always wondered what a beach looks like in moonlight.”
What she was offering was probably the most dangerous challenge Leo had ever faced. But with her hand snug against his, he didn’t balk... hecouldn’tbalk. In fact, he felt a glimmer of fresh excitement, a light, buoyant, springy feeling that he hadn’t experienced since his first days in the skies.
“I’ll ask John if we can take his Ford.” Leo stood up. He almost bent over their still-joined hands and pressed a kiss against her knuckles. But he wasn’t a knight or even a military man anymore. And sweeping emotive gestures weren’t him.
