“It’s not a problem,” he said, a Southern drawl to his voice.
Well, that was obviously a total lie, given that he looked like he’d taken a bullet to the chest and bled out, but she appreciated the effort to make her feel better. “I am really sorry. I’ve totally ruined your shirt. Let me replace it, pay for dry cleaning, do something,” she babbled, reaching out with the napkin in her hand and brushing at the stain. Which was a complete and total mistake since he had a rock-solid chest under that wine-splattered shirt and she was suddenly very aware of the fact. She paused with her hand on him and felt her blush deepen.
Great, now she was groping the poor man. Tamara dropped her hand and winced.
“That’s really not necessary,” he said. “And honestly, you did me a favor.” He nodded toward the room at large. “Perfect excuse to ditch this thing early, since I only know about four people and they’re sick of me dogging their footsteps.” His mouth turned up in a small smile. “If I’d been thinking, I would’ve spilled wine on myself an hour ago. Course, I have to be drinking wine.” He lifted his Bud bottle and shrugged. “I’m no more a wine guy than a tie guy.”
Tamara relaxed a little. He was already tugging at his neck to loosen the tie, and he did look like he’d be more comfortable in the garage than at a corporate party. Maybe she hadn’t exactly ruined the man’s night, given that he kept glancing back at the room at large like it was going to pursue him, and he’d clearly been inching his way toward the door. She smiled back, and surprised herself by flicking her hair off her shoulder in a coy gesture she couldn’t remember the last time she had used. “Are you telling me that you’re not enjoying standing around making small talk with strangers and eating appetizers the size of your fingernail, when even after swallowing three of them, you still can’t figure out what they are?” She could certainly sympathize with that. It had been a few years since she’d attended this kind of event, and she didn’t miss it one bit.
He whipped his tie completely off his neck with a brutal tug and stuffed it into his pocket, looking relieved to be free of it. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. So I owe you a big thank-you . . . what’s your name?”
“Tamara,” she said, surprised to hear that her voice sounded a little breathy. God, she was flirting, wasn’t she? He was too young for her. He was probably a pit crew member. And she was technically still with Geoffrey, yet she was flirting with this man, because he flipped her switch. Plain and simple. That chemistry that had been so elusive with Geoffrey had been there with this guy from the very second she had turned and laid eyes on him, and there was nothing wrong with a little flirtation, was there?
“Tamara . . . that’s a beautiful name.” He leaned a little closer to her and those deep, brown eyes swept over her. “Perfect for a beautiful woman.”
Uh-oh. He felt it, too. Tamara swallowed. “Thank you. And you are . . . ?”
“Elec.”
Damn it, even his name was sexy. She struggled against the urge to run her hand down his chest again. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Elec, despite the circumstances. And I really am sorry. I should have been paying closer attention.”
“No harm done. And a wet shirt was worth the opportunity to meet you. It’s been a pleasure.”
It was just good Southern manners. That’s all. He was trying to put her at ease, but Tamara felt warm in previously dormant places, and she was fairly certain it had nothing to do with the slightly excessive amounts of wine she’d tossed back. She wasn’t drunk and she wasn’t imagining the look he was giving her. Good manners didn’t dictate he stare at her like he was picturing her naked, and she was not imagining the way his eyes kept darting down to her mouth then back up again. Elec was as attracted to her as she was attracted to him, and it felt . . . bewildering. She had no clue how to deal with it, given that she’d married Pete at twenty-one after a two-year courtship and had only recently ventured back into dating, with the dubious choice of Geoffrey.
This intrigue, this interest on both their parts, this sort of anticipation hanging in the air between them, was something she had zero experience with. So she stared at him, totally flustered, for a long, drawn-out second, then said, “Yeah. You, too.” Which made no sense at all, which embarrassed her and confused her even more. Feeling like she’d suddenly regressed to the shy sixteen-year-old she’d been, she gave him a quick smile, turned, and tried to walk, not run, away from him, with her heart pounding and her palms sweating.
“What the hell was that?” she muttered to herself in complete disgust.
That was her libido leaping back to life without warning for the first cute guy who looked her way.
She suddenly knew that there was no putting off dealing with Geoffrey. Given that in two minutes standing next to Elec, a man she didn’t know from Adam, she’d had more sexual stirrings than she had in a solid month with Geoffrey, including the times he’d been pulling out all the stops à la o**l s*x, she couldn’t even wait until tomorrow to break up with him.
Geoffrey had been a colossal mistake and she needed to rectify it, immediately. Then get her own hotel room so that she could stare at the ceiling and picture what it would be like to have Elec over her, naked, his dark eyes flickering over her body, his fingers trailing across her . . .
Lord. Tamara fanned herself. What the hell had she been doing?
Right. Finding Geoffrey.
TAMARA waited for Geoffrey to say something to the careful words she’d just delivered to him, explaining how she wasn’t ready to date after all, that she respected him as a friend, and felt she’d made a mistake in rushing their relationship. It had sounded good to her.
Believable. It was the truth, if not the whole truth.
But Geoffrey was staring at her like she’d just said something in pig Latin, and she stared back, itching to take tweezers to those gray eyebrow hairs that poked out at random intervals from the rest of his brown brow. One, two, three, four . . . Tamara lost her place and started counting again. Dang, that was a lot of hairs that needed yanking.
“It’s the money, isn’t it?” he asked. “I should have expected that, but I confess, I’m still disappointed.”
“What?” She dragged her eyes from his runaway eyebrow hairs and met his disappointed gaze, wondering what he was talking about.