Just One Night - Carolyn Faulkner Page 0,2

pronounced her name in what must have been the European fashion, accenting the middle syllable and making it sound so much better in that seductive tone of his! He could call her anything he wanted in that voice. She'd have to be on her toes with this one.

Why she found herself at his table was a mystery to her. She'd heard the scraping of the chair as he got up, and had turned—as slowly as she could make herself—suddenly alarmed for some unknown reason at the idea that he was leaving. He was just heading to the gents', but that made her wonder if she wouldn't come to regret it if she just let him walk out of the bar. He'd kept his word about the drink he'd bought her. He hadn't said anything to her since then, allowing her to enjoy it uninterrupted and unmolested, which was eons ahead of so many men.

And—even against her will—Andrea had to admit that she found him attractive, in an unusual sort of way. So, while he was gone and couldn't watch her approaching him, she'd walked over and stood behind the seat opposite the one he'd vacated and waited nervously for him to return, debating with herself the entire time about whether she should dart back to her stool before he even knew she'd been there. But she'd stuck around, although she wasn't at all sure she should have.

"Please, sit down."

He let go of her hand, and Andrea realized that she'd been standing there like a dolt for Lord knew how long, just holding onto his hand and looking up into his eyes like some star struck idiot.

"Thank you." He held her chair for her—not going the full route of tucking it up against her, but he did touch the back of it as she sat, then took his own. "Unless I miss my guess," he began in that buttery soft voice of his, "you don't go to bars very often. So what brought you here this evening, Andrea?"

"Oh dear. Is it that painfully obvious?" she asked, poking fun at herself.

He gave her a barely-there smile. "You just seemed a bit uncomfortable is all."

"No, you're right; you're very right. I don't go to bars. I don't go out much in general. I don't watch TV, and I don't do much on social media, either. I'm a walking antisocial anachronism. But my friend Linda wanted to meet me here. She comes here often, and she's trying to get me to be more social after my divorce."

"I'm sorry for your loss."

It was an unusual statement, rarely heard outside of death.

It caught her by surprise, and her eyes found his. She saw nothing insincere in them at all. "Thank you. That's an excellent way to put it, by the way, although no one seems to say it."

"How long were you married, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Eight—no, nine years."

Rad nodded slowly. "Yes, it's definitely a loss—loss of companionship, lover, often financial security, just the loss of the presence of that person in your life. It must be very painful."

"It is." Andrea lowered her head as tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them back.

"So your friend was trying to get you back into the dating world?"

"Yeah." She couldn't possibly have sounded less reluctant about it.

He grinned—really just a slash across his face. "Such enthusiasm!" he teased.

She laughed at herself. "Yeah, well. I'm not in any hurry to get into another relationship, Rad."

"Understandable. But then, it's 2020, and you can get what you want—what you need—without all of those entanglements."

"You mean a one night stand?"

"Netflix and chill. Booty call." He changed his voice to a dead on impression of a very old man, saying, "I don't know what the youngsters are calling it now."

That got her laughing, and he knew he had to hear more of those loud chuckles. She was so ingenuous, so real. Almost dangerously so, as if she had none of the walls most people had built around themselves by the time they were that age. Andrea was like a babe in the woods, and he found himself glad that she was so socially reticent. She could find herself badly hurt by some of the assholes out there, and that idea troubled him much more than he wanted it to.

Utterly without guile or intent on her part, she was inspiring protective feelings in him. They were so rare that he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt them. He'd always had them, but