keep it light and easy, Marc made his way across the bar, slid onto the stool next to Lexi’s empty glass, and watched patiently as, dart after dart, she carefully aimed, drew back, threw—and hit the wall, a chair, the floor. By the time she had cleaned out her ammo, she’d also cleaned out the entire section of customers.
She slowly backed away from the dartboard, stopping abruptly when she turned and found Marc waiting for her, glass of water in hand. She still held a single dart, which she pointed in his direction.
“You.” It came out part greeting, part accusation, and completely slurred.
“Me.” He flashed his best bad-boy grin. The one that showed all his teeth and made his normally hidden dimple stand out. The same one he’d learned early on that no woman could resist.
“God, it’s like I stepped in a big hunk of…of you and everywhere I go it stinks up the room.”
No woman except Lexi.
“And that”—she motioned to his face with the dart and continued—“is insulting. I’m not one of your women, so the charming little smile and flash of dimple won’t make me forget that you’re trying to screw with me.”
Marc didn’t know what had happened to make that sweet Lexi from three hours ago, who had waved and smiled to him through the window, vanish completely. In her place was a woman with a dart aimed to lodge in some poor guy’s jugular.
“And you chased my date away!”
“I did.” No point in lying. Sure, she was mad, but not about Vince’s departure. Just in case, Marc covered his neck when he said, “Cream puff, if I’m screwing, there won’t be any trying about it. And trust me, you won’t forget.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re in my seat.”
“So I am.”
“Move.”
“As you wish.” He scooted back—an inch—braced his feet on either side of the stool, and patted the now vacant part of the seat. “We can share.”
To his surprise she didn’t toss the dart to maim, nor did she shove him off the chair. Instead she walked forward, wobbling a little, to right between his legs, nudging them farther apart with her hips and stepping so close he could smell her perfume. It was light and floral and it took everything he had not to lean in for a better whiff. He worked hard to ignore just how far the vee of her top dipped into her glorious cleavage.
But when she looked up at him, her eyes full of hurt, all he could feel was the way his chest clenched up on him and his heart kicked into a painful overtime.
“So what? So you can share with Jeffery exactly where I am and how he can serve me?” Her eyes never left Marc’s as she drew her hand back and, steady and sure, chucked the dart. Marc leaped off the bar stool, narrowly dodging the pointy tip, which wasn’t aimed at his jugular but at somewhere much more tender. “Or wait, he already did that. Maybe this time you just want to laugh with him about how easy it was to chase off my date so I’d sit here looking like a fool in front of everyone, waiting for him to come back.”
And with that she stormed out of the bar, leaving Marc checking for puncture wounds. His goods were still intact, but he wasn’t so sure about the rest of him.
Dropping enough money on the bar to cover her drinks, he followed her out the door—because when it came to this woman that’s what he did: followed and watched. He’d spent the past fifteen years watching her from a distance without getting caught, and he was tired of it. She was upset and probably embarrassed about being stood up, but he’d be damned if he would let her walk out of there thinking he’d set out to purposefully hurt her.
It didn’t take him long to catch up; her legs were short, the drinks were straight up, and those heels were slowing her down. She was just rounding the corner of the bar when Marc reached her.
“Look, I might act like an ass sometimes.” He took her hand to slow her down.
“Sometimes?” She tried to break free, but he held firm, trapping her hand against his chest and bringing their bodies flush.
One hell of a zing shot through him, and he had a hard time remembering how to breathe. When he saw Lexi’s chest doing a dance of its own, he knew this crazy attraction had sucked