"Are you sure? You didn't get much sleep the past couple of nights." His voice lowered to husky intimacy.
"I'm fine." Or she would be after she killed him. First she would stake him out in the desert, slather him with his own honeyed words and set the ants loose.
Then she would kill him.
Kathleen decided not to dignify his comment with an explanation about how her sleepless nights were a byproduct of a late-night visit to the flight line followed by a transcontinental trip home. No need to encourage Randy into thinking they would he sharing those waffles. And the only waffles for Tanner would be dumped on his head. She understood ants loved syrup.
Randall tightened his tie. "Time to call it a night, then. I have an early call myself, Captain Bennett."
"Nice meeting you, Randy."
"You, too. G'night, Kathleen." He didn't even hesitate on his way out the door.
Kathleen pivoted on the bar stool until she faced Tanner eye to eye. "What was that all about?"
"What?" He cocked his head to the side, keeping his arm possessively placed behind her back.
"Don't play dumb jock with me, hotshot. I know you better than that" She shoved his hand off the bar. "You ran the guy off with your macho territory marking."
"I thought you would be glad."
Anger must be cutting off the blood supply to her brain. "Run that one by me again?"
"The guy was hitting on you." The air carried a full measure of musky Tanner and seasoned leather.
"That's your problem because…?" She propped one elbow on the bar, for distance as well as steadying. She couldn't even put on her leather jacket anymore without thinking of him. "I'm thirty-two years old, Bennett. I can handle myself, thanks all the same."
"Excuse me for trying to help. It's obvious he wasn't here to discuss metallurgy and quality control."
"Do you think I don't know that?"
Tanner straightened, his face blank. "So you were meeting him here—socially."
"No." She lowered her voice, which forced her to move closer in order to be heard, but not overheard. "I was asking some informal questions, just like you planned with Crusty."
"Crusty wasn't playing with my hair." Tanner advanced a step. Her knees brushed his thighs. "That guy had his hands all over you."
Kathleen resisted the urge to hop off the bar stool. She held her ground and didn't move, not that she had any choice. Her only other option to avoid contact would be to part her legs.
Not a chance.
Her whole focus narrowed to her tingling knees, and that royally ticked her off. Her hormones would not rule her. "I was handling it just fine until you shouldered your way over here and all but whizzed on his leg. Geez, Bennett! My job places me in an almost exclusively male world, traveling in close quarters with men on a regular basis. Do you think none of them have ever hit on me? Let me tell you, hotshot, I've picked up more than a few skills in turning down a guy without making him mad."
Tanner's eyes honed from pale blue to steely gray in a sharpening flash. "Who's been giving you trouble?"
The need to shout at him almost overwhelmed her. Holding her ground wasn't working. "I do not need a bodyguard."
She yanked her purse off the back of her chair and leaped from the bar stool. Her knees forgot their job for one wobbly second before Kathleen regained her balance. She jammed her purse strap over her shoulder.
"Kathleen, now hold on—"
"Let me make one thing clear, Bennett, in case you were wondering." Her voice rose with each word, and she was too frustrated to care if the whole bar heard her. "I'm mad as hell at you right now. Mad. Angry. Furious. Not turned on!"
She spun on her heel and stalked toward the exit.
Her slam rattled the glasses over the bar. Tanner stared at the closed door and resisted the urge to charge out after her and finish their argument
Jangling glasses silenced. Only the television's low drone filled the room. The bar full of faces trained on him.