Shrugging her shoulder, she told him honestly, “I don’t go out enough to notice.”
He watched her with such concentration. After that, she thought he might have dozed off. It wasn’t until Derek dropped their drinks off that he finally spoke. “You’re nothing like I thought you would be.”
“Umm, thanks, I guess.” She didn’t know how to respond to that. “What did you think I would be like?” She had to know even if it killed her.
“Honestly?” She nodded a yes. “Like most strippers. Always looking for more than there is. Most girls would have eaten up his attention, pushed their chest out more. Had him drooling in your lap. Even at the club, you avoid people unless you’re forced to, and then it’s only minimal.”
“I guess I’m not most girls.” She looked up through her lashes at him warily. Did he want someone flashy? A girl who tried to get everyone’s attention? Because she wasn’t that girl and he needed to know that.
“Don’t I fucking know it.” He smiled. However, she couldn’t tell if that was what he wanted or not, and that bugged her.
“Is that what you want?”
“What do you think?” he immediately shot back, the smile gone from his face, and a new intensity settled into his eyes.
Taking a sip of her fruity drink, she resolved herself to find out just what the hell they were doing. “I think you’re an anomaly to me,” she said. Casey looked away for a second before nodding encouragingly. “Your eyes are like deep pools of chocolate, and they show your every emotion. Sometimes they’re laughing, sometimes they look at me with liquid heat and have me melting into a puddle of goo, but mostly, Casey, they’re haunted. I can see the demons swimming inside of you and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.” She revealed far more in her observations than she intended but decided he might as well go for broke.
“You see all that, huh?”
Meeting his stare head-on, she recognized anger beginning to swirl like ropes of ribbon in his dark orbs.
“Yes,” she answered softly.
“Well, you’re wrong,” he snapped.
Taken aback, she wasn’t sure what to do with his anger. “Okay,” was all she could think to say. They fell into a strained silence again after that.
Derek re-appeared, startling her into a near squeal. “Shit! You need a damn bell,” she laughed.
“Sorry about that. Sadly, you’re not the first to bring that to my attention. Maybe it’s time I invest in one.” Pulling his keys from his pocket, he jingled them for her and asked, “That better?”
“Much,” she smiled. Casey glared at them both.
“Are you ready to order, or do you need another minute?” he asked looking between the two of them, not oblivious to Casey’s death glare.
“Tamales with chicken and salsa, please.” Her stomach chose that moment to let its hunger be known, loudly.
“Worked up an appetite?” he half asked, half laughed.
Uncomfortable, she took a chance look at Case and replied to the server. “Uh yeah, I guess so. Dancing does that,” hoping Case would intervene like he seemed to have been prone to do.
Nothing from him as Derek asked, “Dancing, huh? What kind?”
She hated answering that question and began to squirm in her seat.
Case was pissed she could read him so easily. He wasn’t an open book, and the way she so accurately felt his pain was overpowering in its intensity. He felt like an ass for snapping at her afterwards, but he couldn’t tell how she felt about his hidden secrets. Not knowing how she would react when he told her about his leg had him nervous. Would she be disgusted? Would she need time to decide how she felt? Or would she be a one in a million woman and accept it as being a part of who he was?
He watched as she flirted and then squirmed under their waiter’s questioning. Tired of seeing the shame in her eyes at not wanting to disclose what kind of dancer she was, he told the man, “A fucking ballerina.” Not completely lying because she had the technique. She was perfection, and as he watched her float across the stage earlier that night, he knew she had to have some
sort of love for it. His tone, however, was filled with attitude and impatience. “One of the best there is.”
He deliberately ignored the man after that, maintaining eye contact with Ev. “I’ll have the same as her,” he finally told the waiter as he was about to walk away. “He lost his tip,” Casey commented to Ev as she looked down.
Her brows furrowed in confusion as she asked, “What for?”
Looking her up and down, he licked his lips meaningfully. Intensely turned on by her as her cheeks bloomed in embarrassment. “Flirting.”
“Oh.”