“I’m in Africa. I can hear hippos over there in the grass. Can you just give me a minute to appreciate all this before locking me in my room?”
He frowned. “There may be hippos over there, but God knows what else.”
“You’re armed.”
His eyes were blacker than the water below us. “I’d prefer not to have to use it.”
And that, I could tell, was the truth. “Have you before?”
The handsome and emotionless face that peered down at me didn’t change. “My job can get dangerous.”
Not an actualyes, but enough of one, and I shivered again.
“Are you cold?”
Not really, but I didn’t want him to know that his words were the cause. “Yes.”
In the lamplight, I watched his hands close on the zipper of his jacket and ease it down. I wasn’t concerned about the holstered gun that came into view. It was his pending action that made me breathless.
“No, thank you?—”
But he ignored me and closed the distance between us, draping the soft fleece, warm from his skin, over my shoulders. “If we’re going to be eaten by a lion out here, at least you won’t die cold.”
He didn’t step away, and I had nowhere to go. My back was against the porch railing. And even if I could get away from him, I wouldn’t.
Holy hell, the man was enticing. Did he realize how risky it was for him to stand so close? I slipped my arms into the oversized jacket that smelled like pine and detergent and zipped it up.
Was that necessary?
The fleece was a barrier between our bodies. Again, thethought of his rough hands on me flooded me with heat. Since my head was already tilted up to meet his gaze, I let it go further to the night sky above and gasped.
“What is it?”
“The stars.” I’d been an Army brat, moving around before my father retired in Detroit, but the sky looked the same from all the different places I’d lived in the States.
But now, a million stars dotted the black, shining in brilliance. The beauty of it halted my brain.
“When I was younger,” I said, “during the summer, my brothers and I would go out into the road in front of our house. We’d lie on the warm pavement and make up fake constellations, then convince our younger brother they were real.”
Why the hell was I thinking of the memory, and more surprising, why had I told him about it?
He had no comment, and I refocused on the diamonds sparkling overhead.
“Anyway,” I said quickly to cover my embarrassment, “I’ve never seen it like that.”
“It looks that way without the ambient light of the cities.”
“It’s gorgeous.”
“Yeah.” There was an uneven quality about his voice that drew my attention.
He wasn’t looking up. His intense gaze was cast down on me, and for the second time this evening, it drained all the air from my lungs. Lust burned through my body, and I wanted this intimidating man I knew almost nothing about to set his mouth on mine.
His expression said that was exactly what he was thinking about doing.
But he didn’t. Instead, the gaze hardened into something that looked very much like aggravation.
What the hell was his deal?
