a beer? I’m flattered, but I have to be up-front. I’m not a kiss on the first date kind of guy.”
“No, I think a date would be too much commitment for you.”
That earned her a smile. “Need help out of here?”
“I’m good. Just going over there to meet my friends.” She pointed toward the spot where she’d seen them, only Emmitt grabbed her finger and turned it in the opposite direction.
“Seriously?”
“Afraid so. The guys and I have been watching you walk around in circles for about ten minutes. There’s even a betting pool on how long you’d last before you started throwing your shoes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’m not surprised.” He looked down at her very high, very red, very sexy stilettos, and when he grinned, it was pure sin. “I see you came armed.”
“I heard there were pizza thieves afoot.” She batted his hand off her waist. “And I was not circling.”
His hands went around her waist again with startling speed. She couldn’t even protest before he lifted her off the ground as if she weighed twenty pounds and turned her to see his friends. A group of men waved back.
“You’re a jerk.”
Then he swiveled her to her friends, who were—farther away from her than when she’d started—giving her the A-OK on the hottie.
“Fine, I was a little lost. Can you put me down?” It was hard to appear tough when you were being carried like a child.
He set her down, ever so slowly, their bodies sliding against each other. By the time her feet were on the floor, her entire body was humming. “You did that on purpose.”
“Did what?”
“That whole slide me down your body move. Is that how you get women? Pretend to save them, then get all handsy?”
Emmitt glanced down at her hands—which were pressed, fingers spread, across his pecs, her body leaning in to his. Even worse, his hands were in his pockets. “Who’s getting handsy with who, Nurse Annie?”
She jerked her hands back and, well, she didn’t know what to do with them. She was a little light-headed from all the touching and arguing, and she was hyperaware of her body.
“I didn’t come here to argue,” he went on, “but since you seem so bent on it, want to argue a little more over there, on the dance floor?”
Wanting to test Beckett’s “Lure of Unrequited Love” theory, Annie said, “Maybe later. Tonight I’m hanging with my friends.”
He gave a well-practiced pout, his hands sliding around her waist yet again. “I thought we were friends.”
“Friends don’t steal friends’ leftovers. Now shoo.” She was about to swat him away when the big guy behind her was shoved by an equally big guy, who nearly toppled over Annie. Had Emmitt not curved his body around hers like a cocoon—a warm, manly, yummy-smelling cocoon that was actively shielding her from the world—she would have landed on her butt.
Old-fashioned or not, there was something sexy about a man who placed himself between you and danger. Even if that danger was just a two hundred pound beer bottle with limbs. There was also something almost intimate about the way he held her. Not so much sexy, but as if there were a deeper connection forming between them.
He felt it, too, because that playboy grin faded and his eyes became warm and melty. Which was okay with her, because she was going warm and melty as well—in too many places to count.
“You okay?” he whispered, and he was so close she could hear. She nodded. “How about I help you to your friends, and we never have to speak of this again.”
“Agreed. Whoa—” She clung to his neck as she was suddenly airborne. “What are you doing?”
With one arm behind her back, the other beneath her knees, he had her in his arms, as he did a convincing An Officer and a Gentleman reenactment through the bar. “Getting you safely to your friends.”
“I didn’t think you’d carry me. I thought you’d clear a path or something.” She squirmed, but he only pulled her closer.
“Give up, Goldilocks,” he said. “Clearing a path would have been easier, but then I wouldn’t have had the chance to carry you. And I must admit, you look good in my arms.”
“Enjoy it, because this is the last time it will ever happen.” Damn, why did she have to sound so breathy? Bad girls definitely didn’t do breathy.
“Oh, I intend to enjoy it. And Annie, it will happen again, only we’ll be doing a hell of a lot