Page 4 of Floored

"Not a fan of football?" he asked me.

Straight, unfettered energy pulsed under my skin, and it took everything in me not to look too eager for interaction. But honestly, I was. After the icky feelings of the entire day, I probably would have been this excited if Carl, the old bartender, had made small talk.

Instead of turning fully to see if his face was as hot as his voice and hands and forearms, I kept my eyes forward, just as he seemed to do.

What had he asked me again? An exclamation from the announcer on the screen, something about offsides, pulled my attention back.

"Am I a fan of football?" I mused. His finger drummed lightly on the side of his glass. "Yes," I said. "The real one."

He whistled at the jab. I tried to hide my grin by taking another sip of my beer.

When he replied, his voice was dry, mild amusement hanging off every deliciously spoken syllable. "Hate to break it to you, love, but that sport you Americans call football is not the real one."

Oh boy, Mr. Hot Voice and Muscley Forearms didn't want to go down that road. Not like he could know the brother who raised me was a Super Bowl winning football player, now one of the best defensive coaches in the league. If he wanted to talk football, I'd run his ass into the ground without breaking a sweat. So, I turned slowly in his direction, and when I did, I froze.

The face matched the voice. The hands. The muscles and ink. It matched, surpassed, blew the voice and the hands and muscles out of the water.

And when a slow smile pulled at the edges of my mouth, he did some turning of his own. It took everything in me not to climb into his lap where he sat on that stool.

I'd been around some hot men in my day. Kissed a bunch. Slept with a couple who I really, really liked.

And Mr. Hot Voice with the Hot Face and dark hair and knife-sharp jaw just made every single one of them fade into oblivion.

His gaze studied my face carefully for something. Whatever he saw caused him to relax. "What?" he asked.

I pointed at the TV. "I don't think this is an argument you want to have with me."

He licked his bottom lip, and reflexively, I felt my thighs clench together. His eyes, an indecipherable color in the dim light of the bar, never strayed from mine. "Carl, put another drink for the lady on my tab, if you please."

I raised an eyebrow. "Who said I wanted another one?"

Under the guise of looking out the street-facing windows, he slid to the stool next to mine, his shoulder brushing my own. "Well now, it's raining out, so I reckon you won't be in a hurry to leave. Besides, I think this is exactly where you need to be right now."

Lifting my beer to my mouth, I took a sip to hide my growing smile, but his eyes dropped to my lips regardless. As I set the pint glass down, I crossed my legs and set my chin in my hand. "Why do you think that?"

"There's a look on your face that intrigues me."

I snorted. "Is there? I can't wait to hear this."

"You're missing something."

My face went slack with shock, but I blinked, recovering in the next breath. "Why on earth would you say that?"

When he lifted his chin in a blatant study of my face, the light of the room caught the hard edge of his jaw. Seriously, a man who looked like him should be illegal.

"Because any time a beautiful woman is drinking alone in a quiet bar, and she has the terrible misfortune of telling me she hates the beautiful game, then she's clearly missing a screw or two."

A shocked laugh burst out of my mouth. His answering grin was belly-flipping gorgeous.

I did a little leaning of my own. "And let me guess, you're just the man to help me find them."

His thumb tapped the surface of the bar. His lips curved into a devious smile that made my toes curl inside my shoes. "No."

My eyebrow lifted in question.

What he said next were words I'd replay a thousand times over the next few months, when I had no idea how true they were. In a rough voice that pulled goosebumps up along my arm, he said, "I'm the man who's about to give you an education, love."

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