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She saw stars and put out a hand to brace herself.

“Hey, careful.”

Heath caught her around the waist and pulled her back.

She barely brought her hands up before she was pressed knees to chest against his body.

And oh, what a body it was.

She hadn’t had a single drink with alcohol, but it felt like it.

Flushed with heat in her cheeks and other places.

Her hands, pressed between them, were flat against what felt like a rather impressively muscled chest.

She felt herself blushing all the way to the tips of her ears and more than a little breathless.

“Are you hurt?”

“Hurt?”

Her chin lifted and she met his eyes, getting her closest view yet of his eyes.

They were the most amazing shade of dark grey with something else in them making them almost shine like metal.

“Derringer,” she mused. “That’s a kind of gun, right?”

He smiled, his expression easing from a sharper look of concern to a lighter look. “Yes and no.”

As he spoke, his hold on her eased, but he didn’t let go.

“It was deringer with one ‘r’ at first. Both the family’s last name and the gun.” He grimaced a little. “I’ve heard all the jokes about the ‘short gun’ in my pocket.” Heath shook his head. “But given that Booth used a deringer to attack President Lincoln, I think that’s why the family added an extra ‘r’ to it.”

She wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. “Adding an extra ‘r’ to… I guess separating the family from the assassination?”

He shrugged. “Maybe it made more of a difference back before TV and the internet and people had to read everything on paper, but now…”

“I didn’t even remember what gun Booth used. The main connection in my head,” she blushed even more at the thoughts in her head, “is that Booth from the TV show Bones was somehow descended from the man who shot President Lincoln.”

He laughed and she felt it.

She felt a lot of things with how closely they were pressed against each other.

Her experience with men was limited. A boyfriend during college. Another after. A few dates here and there in those years, but none of them was like Heath.

Mari was pretty sure no one was like him or could have held a candle to him.

Her breath caught in her throat which was good because if she’d been able to speak, she might have said something crazy.

Her thoughts were chaotic at best, heated and needy at worst.

There was something about Heath that made her react at a cellular level.

That was the best way she could describe it.

She didn’t have a real reference for something she’d never experienced before.

And as she stood there, she realized they’d fallen into silence.