“You offering?” She slams back all five shots in quick succession before she turns to face me, and when she does, she almost falls off her barstool. “Holy fucking shit.”
Her cussing brings a smile to my lips. She’s a beautiful badass dressed in good-girl’s clothing? I once again experience the unexpected allure of this dual-natured woman.
She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and her wide brown eyes scan me from head to toe several times before her gaze comes to rest on my face.
I raise an eyebrow at her as she keeps staring, but she doesn’t quit looking at me. Instead, her fingers inch blindly along the baruntil they encounter her bottle of beer, then she takes it to her lips and keeps staring at me while she drinks.
I watch her right back, prop my face with my hand, and keep smiling. “Whatcha thinkin’?”
Her cheeks flush a pretty pink. She lowers the nearly empty beer bottle from her shining lips, but she doesn’t say anything. Nor does she quit her staring.
I can’t tell if she likes what she sees or not. Her expression is still kind of reading as “stunned.”
I tip my head toward the empty shot glasses. “Bad night?”
“I… I’m not sure.” She looks me up and down again and turns back toward the bar. Her head hangs for a moment, then she looks at the ceiling. Her lips move as if she’s doing some sort of complex calculation in her head.
I signal to the bartender that I’d like another, and when I check out the blond again, she’s looking straight at me. Only now she’s all nervous and shit. Like she wants to ask me something, but is maybe too scared.
“What’s up?” I ask, checking to make sure I haven’t accidentally gravitated closer to her prettiness without meaning to. My size and general appearance can be intimidating sometimes.
“Um…” She takes a deep breath and glances around the bar before her eyes return to me. She seems to build herself up for something, and I’m expecting her to come up with a polite excuse to escape, but this woman is full of wonderful surprises.
“Would you like to sit in a booth? With me? Over there?” She points behind me to an intimate little corner booth with dim lighting and fancy glasses set out.
Holy shit. Is she interested?
My heart races, and half of me is set to rush over there to wait for her. The other half of me cools my jets because it remembers I’m not a giddy schoolgirl.
I give her a casual half-nod, as if my middle-aged ass is propositioned by beautiful young women every day, then I gesture for her to lead the way. “After you.”
She slides off her stool and walks briskly to the booth, where she quickly makes herself comfortable and pulls the small spiral-bound notebook from her bag again. She extracts her pencil from the coiled spine, then flips open the cover and thumbs through several pages before starting to scribble again.
I ease into the seat opposite her. “Are you… making notes?”
I tilt my head and squint at her mish-mash of symbols and letters, unable to interpret the gibberish she’s written.
“Sort of. Just… ordering my thoughts.” She flips the notebook shut, and her blush deepens. “I know — it’s annoying and weird; it’s just something I do. Sorry.” She rushes to get the notebook out of my sight as if she’s done something wrong.
Her response sparks annoyance in my gut. A gruff rumble escapes my chest before I can smother it. “Don’t ever apologize for being yourself. To anyone.”
She stares at me again, her lips slightly parted. Her breaths are so silent and shallow that she may not even be breathing. In my experience, that kind of reaction to me usually means one of two things.
“Do I scare you?” I ask, hoping it’s not true.
She shakes her head, and she seems genuine, so I relax into my seat a little. “Good.” That means her intense gaze and subtle breathlessness are because of the other thing — the thing that makes kissing her a definite possibility.
I glance at the closed notepad sitting next to her on the booth seat. “What code were you writing in? Made it hard for me to read your notes and learn all your secrets.”
Her full lips curl into a hesitant smile. “I don’t bother with secrets. They make me feel disingenuous, and they’re a waste of time. The truth always comes out in the end, so it may as well betold from the start.” She tightens her grip on the notepad. “This is just my version of shorthand. Saves time. I’ve done it since I was a kid.”
I scratch my beard as I search her face. “Must have been a busy kid to need a tool like that.”
“Not really,” she says with a shrug. “But if I was organized, life felt less chaotic and more manageable. Mostly it’s just… annoying and weird. Like I said.”
I want to challenge her wording, but her quick, efficient actions are too distracting and fascinating to watch. She opens her notebook again and strikes through something on what I now suspect is a list.
“What did you just cross off?”
