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Jesse.
For just a split second, she hesitated. Shaking her head at herself, she pulled to the curb, bec
ause the fact that she’d even debated whether to offer him a ride—like she would for anyone else on the team—showed precisely how screwed up this whole situation was.
She opened the window on the passenger’s door and called out as he came alongside her car. “Get in.”
Jesse did a doubletake, and then he hesitated, too.
She waved at him. “Come on, get in.”
He braced those big hands on the opening of the window. Hands that had handled bombs, apparently. She’d worked a lot of years with guys like him, long enough to know that navy EODs earned the prestige universally attributed to their rating. They were undeniably brave, incredibly calculated and precise, and often loners. She’d once heard someone describe them as being as cool as jet pilots, with the hands of a heart surgeon. In her experience, that was pretty dead on.
Like she might pose him some danger, he leaned down slowly until he was peering at her through the window. His hair was so wet it appeared jet black, and rain drops covered his face and caught on his eyelashes.
He was…almost unbearably gorgeous.
“Get in,” she said again.
“I shouldn’t.”
Something in his voice made her belly do a little flip. “You’re soaked. And it’s not out of my way. Obviously.”
“Tara—”
“Jesse, it’s a ride.”
He heaved a sigh. “It’s fine. I’m already wet anyway—”
“I’m almost certain you would’ve outranked me, but I’m going to issue this order anyway. Sailor, get in the damn car.”
The next thing she knew, he was sitting next to her, his big body making the car feel small.
She used the control on her door to close his window and watched as he dragged a hand down his face.
“See, that wasn’t hard.”
The look he threw her felt like he’d taken a blow torch to her blood. For a moment, she was totally confused by the intensity of it, and then it hit her. Oh. Oh! Her gaze dropped to his lap, which was covered by his coat, of course. Just as quickly, she glanced back to his dark eyes.
“I think you should drive.”
She let out a shaky breath. “Uh, right. Good. Driving now.”
They caught the red light at the main intersection out of the marina. While they sat there, only the drumming of the rain and the thunk-thunk of the windshield wipers between them, about a hundred things competed to be said. But Tara held her tongue because Jesse was radiating back off loud enough that he might as well have just said it out loud.
Chancing a glance at him, she found him peering out his window. The hard angles of his face in profile appeared even more stark, more masculine. God, more appealing. Tara sighed.
The light finally turned green.
They didn’t say a word until they turned onto the street that led past her apartment to his hotel.
“I’ll drop you at your place,” she said.
“I can walk from your building.”
“But why—”
“You’ve done enough.”
