by Amy Andrews
Della found it hard to wrap her head around twins. She remembered being pregnant with one baby and how nervous she’d been. Two babies would have daunted the hell out of her.
The waitress brought Della’s cocktail and set it down. “Thank you.” Picking it up, she took a fortifying sip of the icy pink daiquiri. She sighed and shut her eyes as the sweetness spread across her tongue. “Not as good as yours,” she said, “but I’d expect nothing less from the best bartender in all of Colorado.”
Her eyes fluttered open to find his gaze fixed hot and heavy on her mouth. So heavy it could have been a caress. And just like that, the atmosphere changed. Della’s pulse beat thick and slow through her head, through her breasts, through her thighs. The air in her lungs grew hot, and they felt too big for her chest.
He dragged his eyes away, but the charge between them remained. If Tucker wanted her to believe he didn’t think of her like that, then he really needed to stop looking at her mouth like that.
“I’ll give them my recipe before we leave,” he said, taking a sudden interest in his beer, swallowing down half of it in one hit.
The long stretch of his neck covered in a scruffy growth of sandy whiskers was exceedingly distracting. She swallowed. Where were they? Oh yes, that’s right, small talk. One half of her brain frantically cast around for a topic while the other half melted into a puddle of goo.
“What do they farm around Credence?”
“What do they farm?” Tucker gave a small laugh as he set his bottle down. “That the best you got?”
“It’s small talk,” she said waspishly.
Her brain wasn’t exactly operating on all cylinders. Hell, ever since he’d ma’amed her, her body had been hijacked by her hormones. And then he’d looked at her mouth like he wanted to lick daiquiri off it, and her ovaries took complete control.
“And if I was a farmer, that would be relevant. Gotta keep the chitchat pertinent to your date. Keep it personal.”
“Okay then.” She shot him a faux-pleasant smile. “What’s your sign?”
“Ha! Very funny.”
“No?” Fine. “What’s your favorite color?”
“Blue.” He didn’t hesitate, staring intently into her eyes, as intently as he’d stared at her mouth, and that charge flared again. “Light blue. Clear and cool. Too pristine to disturb. The color of polar ice.”
Della dragged in a ragged breath. He was describing her eyes. She was sure of it. But…is that what he thought? That she was cold. And pristine?
“What about you?” he asked.
She didn’t hesitate, either. She knew the exact hue of his eyes and how it shifted and changed depending on the light. “Tawny brown,” she said, her voice raspy. “Like whiskey. When you hold a glass of it up to firelight and it’s all warm and golden and shimmery.”
Long moments passed as they stared at each other. Tucker was the first one to break eye contact, picking up his beer again. “I think you pass the small-talk assessment.”
Della made an effort to distance herself mentally from him, too, taking a big suck of daiquiri through her straw. It was worth the brain freeze to bring her back to her senses. “What, even with the farming thing?”
“It wasn’t your finest moment, but I suppose it was better than asking me if I’m a registered voter.”
She snorted. “Even I know not to bring up politics. Or religion.”
“Okay then, next assessment. Flirting game. Whaddya got?”
Della was fairly certain she couldn’t flirt her way into a date with a man who hadn’t seen a woman in decades. Still, muscles deep behind her belly button unfurled at the thought of trying some on Tucker. She’d seen a lot of women vying for his attention at Jack’s. Seen them lean in and smile, laugh and joke and tease, swish their hair sexily, swing their hips just right.
There was no way she could compete with those ninja-level flirting skills.
“So it’s okay to flirt on a first date?”
He shrugged. “Sure, if you want to. If the guy is nice and you’re getting along well and you like him. Men like it when women flirt with them.”
“Because they’re lazy?”
Tucker laughed. “No. Because it’s flattering to our poor fragile egos.”
He put his hand on his chest in faux fragility, but there was no universe in which Tucker Daniels looked fragile. Hell, there was no universe in which he didn’t look like he’d just come in from chopping logs all afternoon. His masculinity oozed across the table.
“The same way it can be flattering for women. And it’s a lot easier to tell if a woman’s really into you.”
“But…what if he gets the wrong idea from my flirting?”
“I’m talking something light here, Della. Nothing hard-core.”
“But what if he does anyway?” One of the hangovers of being in an abusive relationship was how strictly Della had needed to curate her interaction with the opposite sex. Unlearning all that wasn’t easy.
This whole dating, small talk, flirting thing was a giant leap of faith for her.
“If he gets the wrong idea, he’s an asshole and you walk away. You get to call the shots, Della. Any guy who doesn’t understand that isn’t worth your time.” Tucker’s tone was light, but his expression was suddenly serious and his jaw tight.
“Okay.” She nodded. “Check.” No assholes allowed. Getting the conversation back into less-fraught territory, she asked, “What do you consider light flirting?”
He shrugged. “Little things, really. Something as simple as…” His gaze drifted over her face and settled on her left ear. “Playing with your earring.”
The chandelier brushed lazily against her neck as Della laughed. The caress seemed supercharged, and her laughter petered out as Tucker’s gaze lingered. Her breath seized in her throat, but, almost of its own volition, her left hand lifted from the table and her fingers played with the heavy drop of the earring before moving to caress her lobe, the stones swishing back and forth as she toyed with it.
“Like this?”
The flare of heat in Tucker’s gaze glowed bright, and, if she wasn’t very much mistaken, his nostrils flared. He nodded slowly. “Tip your head a little. To the opposite side.”
Della tipped, the light caress of the warm metal against her skin causing more unfurling. A low fizz percolated through her veins. “How’s that?”
He followed the movement of her fingers as she tugged gently on the earring. “Perfect,” he murmured, his voice a low kind of burr, rubbing against her skin like fine-grade sandpaper.
“Well, that’s easy.” Della gave a husky laugh as she dropped the earring and straightened her head because it was getting harder to breathe. And she liked to breathe.
“What else?”
He dragged his gaze back to her face, his reluctance not lost on her. The fact his eyes were all smoky like the Tennessee whiskey her daddy used to drink wasn’t, either. That vibe she’d felt in the cab of his truck that night was back, and it’d just shot in the stratosphere.
If there was such a thing as a vibe-o-meter, it’d be in the red zone right now.
“Sometimes that’s all you need.”
Della shook her head. “Oh, come on. I’ve seen women at Jack’s flirting with you.” She’d envied and admired them in equal measure. “They lean in and pout and smile. And they do that thing where they put their elbows on the bar and they use their inner arms to squish their boobs together and emphasize their cleavage. What about that stuff?”
“Too obvious,” he dismissed.
“I was under the impression that men appreciate obvious.”
He gave a kind of meh expression. “Obvious has its place.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “You don’t like when women push their boobs in your face? Oh, sorry…” Della rolled her eyes. “I forgot—boobs are off the table.”
&nb
sp; He laughed. “I like it just fine. But you’re easing your way into this, right? Less is more, yeah? Less can be…sexy.”
God…that word again. Sexy.
“Okay, so what says sexy to you?” she asked.
His jaw jutted determinedly, and Della was worried he was about to banish sexy to the naughty corner with boobs and kissing. “C’mon, wingman,” she jumped in. “This is the kind of stuff I need you for.”
He sighed, clearly resigned, his gaze drifting again. “Fiddling with your hair. Pushing it behind your ear, for example.”
He eyed the strands of hair that had come loose from her ponytail. Her bangs weren’t quite long enough, and they had a tendency to fall around her face, although only one side had misbehaved so far tonight. “It draws a guy’s gaze to your face, to your eyes, to your…” Tucker’s gaze dropped briefly to her lips before returning to her eyes. “Mouth. It’s a look at me move.”
Never in a million years would Della have guessed an action she did probably dozens of times a day could be considered sexy. But she was willing to give it a try.
He was assessing her, after all.
“Like this?” Her voice was husky, and her pulse fluttered at her wrists and temples as she slowly tucked the fallen strands of her hair behind her left ear. Tucker watched her intently, his eyes all smoky again. The charge between them started to hum.
Della had no idea what possessed her, but as her fingers slid from behind her ear, she toyed with her earlobe again, moving on to finger the stones in the earring. His nostrils flared, and the hum became a crackle.
“How was that?” she asked as her fingers slid away, wrapping around the frosty cocktail glass and drawing on the straw again. The sudden hit of iciness was sweet mercy to her overheating system, even if it barely took the edge off the heat coursing under her skin.
“Yeah.” He cleared his voice. “I think you’ve nailed it.”
The waitress interrupted them with their dinner, and Della was grateful for the distraction as she fussed around, putting their plates in front of them. “I’ll have another beer,” Tucker said, passing up his empty bottle.
Della sucked the rest of the daiquiri up her straw and handed her glass over also. “I’ll have another of these, too.” They could both use a cooling down. Or they were going to set the tablecloth alight.
She was pretty sure it was smoldering.
“That’s a rookie error right there,” Tucker said as he pointed at her bowl of spaghetti carbonara.
Della had forgotten what she’d ordered, and she glanced down at it, her brain still only at half power. “Pasta?”
“Spaghetti. Anything with spaghetti.” He reached for his napkin and spread it over his lap. “Unless you’re some kind of expert-level spaghetti twirler, it’s hard to eat without strands of it sticking out of your mouth half the time and getting sauce on your chin. It’s like ribs and lobster and anything you have to eat with your fingers. Not date food. Stick with things you can cut into pieces with a knife and fork.” He demonstrated by cutting into his steak and popping it into his mouth. “See? Easy.”
Annoyed that he could just switch back into wingman mode when she was scrambling to string words together, Della was not in the mood to be lectured about something as basic as eating. She’d been feeding herself for a very long time.
She picked up her fork. “Maybe I am an expert spaghetti twirler.”
He cocked an eyebrow, then dropped his gaze to her bowl as she twisted her fork through the strands of pasta heavily laden with a creamy sauce. It smelled wonderful—garlicky and divine. Bringing the loaded fork to her mouth, she popped it in, smiling at Tucker triumphantly when she executed the move perfectly.
“Mmm,” she said, savoring the explosion of flavors against her tongue. “So good.”
Screw the spaghetti police.
She wasn’t so lucky the second time. A longer strand escaped the fork as she shoveled it in her mouth, requiring her to suck it up, and Della was excruciatingly aware of him watching her cheeks hollow out, watching the strand get shorter and shorter. Watching that last couple of millimeters disappear between her lips and the quick dart of her tongue as it lapped up the excess cream.
His eyes darkened. “You missed a big old drip,” he murmured, pointing to her chin.
Damn it. She reached for her napkin. “Don’t you dare say it.”
“I told you so?” He chuckled. “I would never be so ungentlemanly.”
But he watched her intently as she wiped the sauce away, and that felt very, very ungentlemanly.
Chapter Nine
Two hours later, they were riding the elevator to Wade and CC’s apartment. With three cocktails under her belt, Della definitely had a buzz. Tucker sure seemed looser than usual, too, as he regaled Della with the details of a prank he, Drew, and Arlo had played when they’d been in junior high. It involved getting up at the ass crack of dawn every day to dye all the chicken eggs from the school farm blue for an entire week.
“You should have seen all those farm kids proclaiming it was some kind of miracle. Like blue chicken eggs were a sign of how well they were going to do at the state fair.” He hooted out a laugh as the doors opened into the penthouse.
“What happened? Did you ever get found out?”
“Hell yeah,” Tucker confirmed as he strode out of the elevator. “Randy Studebaker—he was the president of the high school FFA—caught us red-handed one morning. Actually, blue handed.”
He laughed again, and Della joined him as she stepped into the apartment. The milky white light of a full moon flooded in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. “Were you punished?” The elevator doors swished quietly closed behind them.
“School suspended us for a week, but my mom? She was so mad I washed glasses at Jack’s for an entire summer as punishment.”
Della shook her head. Try as she might, she couldn’t imagine her brother up to that kind of mischief. “It’s hard to imagine Arlo going along with something like that.” Her brother was so damn by the book, him being a rule breaker just didn’t compute.
Tucker snorted. “It was Arlo’s idea.”
“I would have liked to have known that Arlo.” The only Arlo she knew was the stern, stoic guy who had busted down her door and dragged her out of hell. Sure, he’d been kind and gentle and patient and understanding and protective, too, but this devil-may-care rabble-rouser? That didn’t seem right.
“Yeah.” Tucker glanced down at her. “He was a fun guy.”
“Is it because of me?” she asked, searching Tucker’s face. “That he’s different?”
Other than filling in some blanks for her, Arlo didn’t really talk about his past. He had told her a lot about his father—their father—and what he’d pieced together about his relationship with Della’s mother, and he’d talked a bit about his own mother, who she hadn’t met yet. But he hadn’t really talked about his life in broader terms.
Had the responsibility of her been such a burden he’d turned into some RoboCop?
“What?” Tucker frowned. “No. He just…grew up. We all did. He became a cop, became the one that people look to for law and order, and learned early in his career that flouting rules and going against orders could get you hurt.”
“His leg?”
“Yeah. If he’d followed orders that day, he’d still be walking around on two legs. He’d probably be some big-ass detective by now.”
“But the woman in the car would be dead.”
“No, actually…” Tucker shook his head. “The police investigation found she’d have probably been fine. If anything, he put her life more at risk by rescuing her than by sitting tight as he’d been ordered. But she was panicked, and he never could bear a damsel in distress.”
Della had always assumed the rescue had been a matter of life and death, and her heart ached for her brother. She knew Ar
lo didn’t want anyone sitting around feeling sorry for him, but he’d paid a big price for his impulsiveness. It certainly helped explain why he was so rigid today.
“For which I am forever thankful,” she murmured. His weakness for distressed damsels had saved her life.
Although she didn’t think for a moment that Arlo was alone there. Tucker had ridden in on his white charger earlier this evening to save her pride, after all.
Tucker nodded slowly as silence settled between them. He was still wearing his hat, and he looked big and burly and every inch the cowboy silhouetted by the moonlight coming from behind. Her hands tingled with the urge to trace his granite-like outline. Run her fingers through the scruff at his jaw. Smooth her palm up his abs.
Her heart pounded in her chest at the daring it would take to do that. A daring she just didn’t possess. Trust your instincts, Selena had said, but…there was too much to screw up between them, and hell, what if he rejected her? She’d enjoyed their date so much, she’d be stupid to mess it up with some clumsy seduction attempt. Even if he had looked like he’d wanted to lick carbonara sauce off her mouth only a couple of hours ago.
Frustrated by how impotent her lack of experience made her feel, Della wandered toward the large curved bank of floor-to-ceiling windows staring out over the lights of Denver. The top rail of the horseshoe-shaped Mile High Stadium gleamed in the moonlight. The distant Rocky Mountain foothills stood out in stark contrast to the darker, craggier peaks behind that sliced into the perfect canvas of night.
Della sighed. “I love this view.”
She sensed Tucker approaching well before he entered her peripheral vision. “Yeah, it’s something, isn’t it?”
He fell in beside her, not close, but Della could reach out and touch him if she wanted, and, as his aftershave invaded her space, God…she wanted. “I think if I lived in this place, I’d set up a chair about here and just watch the changing faces of the mountains all day.”
He chuckled, and it slid softly over her, softly as the moonlight. “Not a bad ambition,” he murmured.
Della glanced up, studying his profile. He’d removed his hat, and his hair, which was getting longer again, had that rumpled look. Her palms itched to touch. “Thank you for tonight,” she said, her voice quiet in the hush of the apartment. “For the”—she mimed air quotes—“date. I had fun.”
