Sharply, I spin around, catching him off guard. We’re close. Close enough that my hands land on his chest and I look up, I see more of his face than I have all night. His features . . . they’re familiar.
Strangely so.
“Ninety-five,” I counter weakly.
His lips press together. “Tacked on another five percent, did you?”
“Collateral damage that you can earn back.”
“Yeah?”
Maybe it’s just me, but Iswearhis voice just dropped an octave. Could be the Guinness talking. My tipsy, sex-starved body hoping. Either way, I rise up on my toes, putting our faces as close together as humanly possible, considering our height difference, and murmur, “Never mention thatmomentfrom inside again, and you’ll be set to go.”
His chest shakes with silent laughter. “You’re assuming we’ll be running into each other again.”
“If you’re living in London, we’ll be lucky if we’re not neighbors.”
Leaning down, putting his mouth next to my ear, like he did when he first sat down next to me, he husks out, “Might want to give me a perfect score, then.”
I squeeze my legs together. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.” He steps close, one foot in my direction, but it’s enough to bring our chests flush together.Oh, boy. “I’m a guy who can’t walk away from a challenge. So unless you want me goin’ out of my way to look for you all over town . . .”
He lets the threat dangle out in the open.
He’s flirting again, and I . . . I swallow over the thick lump in my throat. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
A car honks its horn behind me.
My ride.
I stumble back, gravel crunching beneath my shoes. “See you when I see you?”
Moonlight splices across his face as he lifts his ball cap for the first time all night, and for a moment—a split second in time—my heart stutters in a quick tattoo that echoes to the beat ofoh, God no, because the Hulk, the stranger whose jean-clad crotch I met without preamble, looks awholelot like Dominic DaSilva.
I scrub my eyes with the heels of my palms, disregarding the makeup I’ll be washing off as soon as I walk through my front door in ten minutes.
There isno wayit’s him. DaSilva, I mean.
A famous, former football player camping out in London, Maine—population three thousand at the peak of tourist season?
Impossible.
Blearily, I blink my eyes open.
His hat is back in place, and he’s standing there watching me, feet spread wide like a cowboy ready to wrangle a steer. “Forget something?” he calls out, that gravelly voice of his surrounding me like dark smoke.
It’s not him.
It can’t be.
Go home, brain. You’re drunk.
Beyond drunk, apparently. There’s no other explanation for me closing the blinds of my new home an hour later, only to see a truck pull in next door . . . and the Hulk-Definitely-Not-Dominic-DaSilva clamber out.
With my hand pressed to the cool glass window, I watch, slack-jawed and swaying on my bare feet, as that now all-too-familiar massive body strides up the driveway to the house that’s had U-Haul trucks parked outside it all week.
He pauses at the front door.