He didn’t mean those words the way they sounded. Rachel was sure of that.
Aidan laughed and got the drink. “Hope you have better luck than the last one.” He pushed the whiskey toward Dylan.
Dylan’s fingers curled around the glass. “I will.”
Rachel took a quick gulp of her drink. It burned, in a good way, as it slid down her throat.
Dylan emptied his whole glass in one swallow. His eyes stayed on hers. He had the deepest, darkest eyes she’d ever seen. So dark they almost looked black.
His hair was black and thick. It was cut short and the cut just accentuated the hard lines of his face. Dylan wasn’t technically handsome. Rachel had to remind herself of that fact every few days. He wasn’t, though. He was more...dangerous. Rough. His jaw was square and firm, his cheeks were sharp angles, and Rachel was pretty sure that he’d broken his nose a time or two in bar fights over the years.
Dylan Foxx was an ex-Navy SEAL. As far as she knew, the guy feared absolutely nothing in the world. He was her team leader at the EOD. He was the man who had her back on every mission. The one man she trusted above all others.
He was also the man who was off-limits to her.
Actually, as far as Rachel was concerned, all men were off-limits. She’d made a near-fatal mistake with the last man she’d let get too close.
She wasn’t planning on getting burned—or attacked—again.
Rachel cleared her throat. “How did you know I was here?” Because Rachel knew it wasn’t some coincidence that he was in the pub, too.
He leaned toward her. Whenever he got too close, Rachel had the feeling that Dylan surrounded her. Maybe it was because of his shoulders. His shoulders were so wide. Muscled. Or maybe it was just because of...Dylan.
The guy seemed to dominate everything and everyone around him.
“I was on my way to your place,” he told her, voice low. “Then I saw you heading in here.”
She took another quick gulp of her drink. Perhaps she should be sipping it, but Rachel was too tense for that. “Why were you coming to my place?” Rachel pushed.
His eyelids flickered. “Because I wanted you.”
No, he had not just said that. The pub was too loud. She’d misheard him. “Wh-what?”
A furrow appeared between his dark brows as he leaned even closer to her. His crisp, masculine scent teased her nose. “Because I wanted to talk with you.”
Right. That made more sense. Her too-eager imagination had twisted his words.
“But this isn’t the place to talk.” He tossed some cash onto the bar, and his hand wrapped around hers. “Come on, let’s go.”
She should say that she’d just gotten there. That she wasn’t ready to leave.
But I am. She didn’t want to dodge pick-up lines and leering guys. Rachel had come to the bar because she couldn’t stand the silence.
There would be no silence with Dylan.
She rose.
His fingers twined with hers.
Rachel glanced down at their hands. That was new. He’d never held her hand before. Sure, Dylan seemed to touch her pretty frequently. He’d brush back her hair or he’d squeeze her shoulders, but never something quite so intimate as actually holding her hand.
“Dylan?” Her voice was so soft that she wasn’t even sure he’d heard her.
He didn’t respond, but he did lead her through the crowd, pulling her toward the door. Bodies brushed against her, making Rachel tense, then they were outside. The night air was crisp, and taxis rushed by them on the busy street.
Dylan still held her hand.
He turned and pulled her toward the side of the brick building. Then he caged her with his body. “Want to tell me what you were doing?” An edge of anger had entered his words.