Daisy frowned and mentally deducted those points he had just gained. Didn’t he know he shouldn’t crowd people? She scooted her chair a couple of inches away and chalked up “bad manners” in his debit column.
She took the required information from him, entered it into the system, and gave him his password. All the time she was aware that he was still too close; she glanced several times at that muscular thigh right beside her. If she scooted any farther away, she wouldn’t be able to reach the keyboard. Irritated, because he had to know he was crowding her personal space—cops in big cities studied things like that, didn’t they?—she shot an exasperated look at him and almost jumped, because he was staring at her. He wasn’t trying to hide it, either.
She felt a blush heating her face. Ordinarily she would have finished as soon as possible and scurried back to the safety of her office, but today was a new day, a turning point in her life, and she decided she’d be damned if she’d let herself be intimidated. She’d already been rude to Mrs. Simmons, so why not the chief of police, as well?
“You’re staring,” she said bluntly. “Do I have a smudge on my face, or do I look like a dangerous criminal?”
“Neither,” he said. “Law enforcement officers stare at people; it’s part of the job.”
Oh. She supposed it was. She ratcheted her indignation down a few notches—but just a few. “Stop it anyway,” she ordered. “It’s rude, and you’re making me uncomfortable.”
“I apologize.” He still didn’t look away from her, though; he probably didn’t respond well to orders. His eyes were kind of an odd gray-green, more green than gray, and a tad out of place with his olive skin. Of course, she didn’t have any room to comment on anyone else’s strange eyes, since her own were two different colors. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, Miss. . . Daisy, isn’t it?” His full lips quirked. “May I drive you somewhere?”
Her face went way past blush, straight into tomato red. Since the movie Driving Miss Daisy had come out, countless people had thought it funny to make the same offer. She hadn’t laughed yet. She gave him two more checks in the debit column, because making fun of someone’s name was rude and deserved extra deductions.
“No, thank you,” she said in such frigid tones he couldn’t miss the fact that she didn’t think he was amusing. She got to her feet and handed him his plastic card with his password written on it, then without another word marched back to the checkout desk and pulled down the countertop that closed her off from him. Thus barricaded, she faced him across the wooden expanse.
“Sorry,” he said, which was the second time he had apologized in as many minutes. The problem was, she didn’t think he’d meant it either time. He leaned on the checkout desk and flicked the plastic password card in his long fingers. “I guess you get that a lot, huh?”
“A lot,” she echoed, keeping her tone deep in the arctic.
He flexed his shoulders, as if settling his shirt more comfortably, but she had read magazine articles about body language and thought he might be trying to impress her with his physique. If so, he had failed.
After a long moment in which she remained stubbornly silent, refusing to acknowledge or accept his apology, he gave another shrug and straightened. He tapped the plastic card on the desk—goodness, what kind of signal was that? She tried to remember if tapping meant anything in body language—and said, “Thanks for your help.”
Darn it, now she had to reply. “You’re welcome,” she muttered as she watched him leave. She was fairly certain she heard him snickering.
Damn Yankee! What was he doing down here, anyway? If he was such a hotshot big-city cop, why wasn’t he in a big city? What was he doing here in Hillsboro, population nine thousand and something, tucked away in the north Alabama mountains? Maybe he was a dirty cop and had gotten caught. Maybe he’d made a terrible error in judgment and shot an unarmed innocent. She imagined he was capable of all sorts of things that would have gotten him sacked.
Well, she wouldn’t waste any more time fretting about him. In the grand scheme of things, rude patrons weren’t important. Mentally she settled her ruffled feathers. She was a woman with a mission, and she wasn’t going home today until she had found a place of her own to live in.
She sighed as she remembered her short list of choices. If she kept that vow, she might be sleeping in her car tonight.