After suffering through a full meal trying the best that they could to ignore that they’d been naked in bed together last night, she’d escaped to the bar. And she hadn’t gone back. When he saw her watching him, he smirked and lifted his glass to her in a salute. She spun, giving him her back, trembling with anger and something else that she refused to name right now.
She picked up her bottle of water and chugged the rest of it. Before she even set the empty bottle down, she felt his presence behind her, and smelled his addictive, irresistible scent.
Seriously, what is that crap? Crack in cologne form?
She stiffened, not even bothering to face him. “Go away, Mark.”
Completely ignoring her, he held his glass up to the bartender. “I’ll have another, please. And a cosmo for the lady.”
“I don’t want a cosmo,” she said, her tone caustic.
“What would you like, then?”
She smiled at the bartender. It wasn’t his fault that Mark couldn’t take a hint. “A Diet Coke, please.”
After the bartender started making their drinks, they stood in silence for a while. Mark sighed, dragging his hand through his hair until it stood up. Seeing it all messy like that reminded her of last night, when it had been her fingers running through his hair. “Look. I’m sorry, okay?”
“For?” she asked slowly.
“Poking the bear, so to speak.” He shot her an apologetic look. “I just didn’t expect you to be…well, you know. You.”
“Yeah.” She lowered her head, avoiding his gaze, because for the first time since she found out who he was, he was acting like her Chris…and that was a dangerous, dangerous thing. “I didn’t expect you to be you, either.”
He didn’t say anything, just stared straight ahead.
His profile was flawless.
Messy hair. Hard jaw. Dark stubble. Dimpled chin.
“So.” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Now what?”
“After this wedding, there’s no reason to think we will ever see each other again…at least not until another one of them actually does the deed, and has their own wedding.” He nodded at the bartender and tipped him. Then he picked up their drinks, handing her hers. “So, I guess we go back to avoiding a blind date with one another…though we’re not blind anymore.”
“No. We’re not.” She was very not blind to all the things about him that she found attractive…but she wasn’t blind to the one thing she didn’t, either. She took her soda, and their fingers brushed. That all too familiar magnetic draw between them only strengthened with the skin on skin contact. “Thank you.”
“Can we start over?” He held his hand out, locking eyes with her. She could lose herself in those brown depths, if she let her guard down long enough. And, God, she wanted to. “I’m Mark Matthews.”
“Daisy O’Rourke.” She slid her hand into his, shaking it, smiling despite the electric zing of his skin on hers. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too.” He let go of her and lifted his drink to his mouth. She did the same. After he finished, he turned and faced the room, his arm pressed against hers. It was an innocent enough touch, but from him, it was anything but innocent. “Can I ask you a question?”
Oh, crap. She hated questions. “You can ask anything you’d like. I’ll decide whether or not to answer once I hear it.”
“How’d you really break your arm?”
She laughed, because that wasn’t what she was expecting. “I was chasing a perp on a rainy fire escape, and I slipped. I fell, and my partner got him at the bottom.”
He didn’t say anything. Just flexed his jaw.
“So…a kid, huh?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He frowned down at his drink. “She’s three.”
“And likes Elsa,” Daisy said softly. “Lauren told me. Her mother…?”
“Died in Afghanistan when her convoy was ambushed.” He finished off the glass, and she stiffened, because in that moment, with loss coloring his voice and an empty glass of booze in his hand, he reminded her of her father. And that terrified her. “Ginny was seven months old.”
Daisy pushed her soda away, her chest tightening painfully. “That’s horrible.”