About Last Night

He gave her a wry smile, and she held on tight to the edge of the table. Maybe calm didn’t quite cover it. Not when he smiled, anyway.

“That’s precisely what you said last night.”

His voice wasn’t at all what she’d expected. It was low and warm and soothing, and it took the edge right off his fancy accent.

“Did I say why I wouldn’t tell you my name?”

The smile widened, and she decided it ought to be classified as a misdemeanor. Grinning with Intent to Discombobulate.

“You told me you were sad and quite tired, but you didn’t require my help, and all you needed to set yourself to rights was a cup of coffee and something to eat.”

“So how did I—”

He raised one finger to prevent her interruption, his eyes twinkling with amusement. She’d never noticed how unusual his eyes were before. They were green over brown, both exotic and warm.

“Then,” he continued, “when I tried to introduce myself properly, you covered my mouth with your hand and insisted we remain strangers, because you could tell I was a very nice man”—he pronounced the word nice as if it were a razor blade he was carefully spitting out—“and I’d be far better off not knowing you.”

Cath was impressed. Her drunk self had more sense than she’d given her credit for.

“That’s true,” she offered. “I’m not really your type.”

He cocked an eyebrow but let the comment slide.

“Since I’m here, I guess that means you took a pass on the opportunity to hop the next train and leave me to my own devices?”

“It was nearly midnight,” he said, defensive. “All the shops were closed, there were no cabs to be found, you wouldn’t tell me where you lived or let me see you home, and you could barely stand up. So yes, bringing you here seemed like the right thing to do.”

A thought distracted her from the question she’d been forming. “What were you doing at Canary Wharf at midnight on a Friday?”

“Trolling for prostitutes.”

He delivered the line in such a dry, remote tone, it took her a second to get that he was joking, but when she did, she couldn’t prevent herself from teasing, “You must have been so disappointed with the selection.” She glanced down at her small, decidedly unvoluptuous body in the oversized shirt.

“I wouldn’t say that, love.”

The dimple appeared again. She lost a few seconds gazing at his mouth, and then she came to and let her eyes slide down his torso to alight on his hand, which still held a paintbrush.

She hadn’t expected the smile. Or the paintbrush.

She definitely hadn’t expected him to flirt with her.

“I’d been to see a film,” he explained.

“I passed out,” she replied, attempting to steer the conversation back toward the safer ground of her humiliation so that she could get the details she needed and scurry home.

“I suppose you did. You were terribly tired. I made a pot of tea, and by the time I’d finished you were asleep at my kitchen table. I tried to rouse you, but you said, ‘Leave me alone,’ and then something that sounded very much like, ‘Don’t murder me.’ ” He reported all this matter-of-factly, as if drunk women passed out on his kitchen table every Friday night.

Which, for all you know, they do.

“Nice of you not to.”

“I seem to have convinced you I’m a nice man.”

Cath nodded her agreement, though he didn’t look all that nice at the moment. The gleam in those green-brown eyes was positively rakish. She hadn’t thought City had a speck of rakishness in him.

“Sorry about the stripping part,” she mumbled, partly because she was sorry but mostly because she wondered what he’d say.

The smile he gave her made her toes curl, it was so wicked. “You do remember,” he said in that low rumble.