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Her heart skipped a beat. Literally. “Thank you.”
“All I could think about throughout the wedding and the dinner was your panties.”
She let out a surprised laugh. “Excuse me?”
“It’s true. I wanted to slowly lift up that long skirt of yours and find out what color they are today.” His pointer finger drew a slow circle over the skin of her back. “Maybe they’re yellow. They were black last night.”
She swallowed a moan. “Were they? I don’t remember.”
“I do.” His grip on her hand tightened. “I’ll never forget. Every time I see you, I’ll remember last night.”
She glanced over her shoulder nervously. His voice was low, but if someone heard him… “Good thing we won’t be seeing a lot of each other, then, huh?”
“Yeah. Sure.” He locked eyes with her, and something told her his words didn’t quite match his feelings, which was awfully ironic, because no matter how hard she tried to pretend otherwise, neither did hers. “It’s a great thing.”
They stared at one another.
Neither spoke.
“You’re doing it again,” he said, his voice dipping dangerously low.
“Doing what?”
“Challenging me with your eyes,” he said, lowering his mouth to her ear, just a breath away from touching her skin with his lips. “And, Daisy, if you keep issuing unspoken challenges like that, I’m going to forget that we were only supposed to have one night together, and I’m going to want to fuck you again. So I suggest you watch what you start, before it’s too late.”
Who was he kidding?
It became too late the second she agreed to dance with him. Heck, it became too late when she told him he could stay in the seat next to her at the bar.
But instead of saying all that, she just cocked a brow and kept on staring.
That was answer enough, in her opinion.
“Why didn’t you want to meet me?” he asked, not breaking eye contact. “What was your reason?”
She stiffened because this went well into the territory of personal crap she didn’t want to talk about. She hadn’t even told Lauren about her father and the abuse he’d put her through before she was old enough to leave, or the stuff he still put her through, even now, so she sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Mark. “Why di
dn’t you want to meet me?”
“Besides the fact that I’m not really looking for a relationship in the first place?” He shrugged. “I don’t like that you’re a cop.”
She reared back. “Is that a sexist comment about how women can’t be cops? Because if so, I’ll—”
“Easy,” he interrupted, frowning. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what?”
“Ginny already lost a mother. If and when I decide to open myself up to the possibility of another relationship, one that would involve my daughter learning to love another woman as well as me, then it has to be someone who isn’t going to get shot at work”—he swallowed, not meeting her eyes—“like her mother did. No matter how much I like a woman with a job like her mother, Ginny can’t go through that again.”
And neither could Mark, she was guessing. And he had a very good reason for not wanting to be with her. One she couldn’t even find fault with. “I don’t like military men.”
A laugh escaped him. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. I refuse to date one.”
“Why?” he asked, frowning.
“History.”
