No man had ever done that when I’d been seated at his table and there was a beauty to it that seemed to seep into my soul too.
My heart stopped again and, fortunately, because I didn’t want Sampson Cooper to see me panting, so did my breath.
The maitre d’ and waiter whisked themselves away.
“You figure they needed your table?” Sampson Cooper asked dryly and, considering my present circumstances, I had no idea how I managed to loosen up enough to do it, maybe because the situation was so bizarre, so extreme, so frightening, I had to let some tension go but at his comment, it was my turn to burst out laughing.
And, God’s honest truth, since Cooter died I’d smiled more than I had in years which might not say good things but there it was.
But I hadn’t laughed like that in so long I forgot how good it felt.
When I quit laughing, I focused on him to see him grinning at me but there was a look on his face, a warmth in his eyes, an intensity, it almost felt like… no kidding… like he found me fascinating.
Me.
Kia Clementine
And seeing that look in his eyes aimed at me, no one but me, a look I had seen in… never, never had I seen a look like that directed at me, I wanted to run. And I wanted to run because I wanted that to be it, my last memory of Sampson Cooper. I wanted to go somewhere and burn it into my brain. I wanted to keep it with me forever.
But I couldn’t do that so I forced myself to reply, “They are pretty busy.”
His grin faded but his lips still twitched when he agreed, “Yeah.” Then he sat back, snagging his coffee mug as he did and he asked, “Do you mind?”
“Mind?”
“Sitting with me,” he explained before taking a sip.
Uh. Yes! I was pretty certain my body needed my blood to flow through its veins and my heart was constantly stopping so I didn’t figure that was good.
But obviously I couldn’t tell him that so instead, I said, “Not if you don’t mind.”
His eyes changed again, they dropped quickly down my torso then up and he murmured in a sexy way that I was pretty certain made my nipples go hard, “Oh, I don’t mind.”
Oh.
My.
God!
Did he just do that?
And if he did, what did it mean when a man did that? The last man to flirt with me was Cooter and he did it by buying me extra tater tots at the local burger joint.
Did it mean what I thought it meant?
Oh.
My.
GOD!
He took another sip from his coffee, put it down and extended his big hand my way. I stared at it luckily not jumping ten feet and it was not my first time seeing his masculine, long-fingered, well-veined, strong-looking hand that I thought it was immensely attractive in a way that if I was just a shade on the sick side, I could create a religion based on it.
It was just the first time I saw it in real person.
“I’m Sam Cooper,” he introduced and I forced myself to lift my hand, put it in his and his fingers curled around instantly, warm and strong.
“Kia,” I told him, my voice softer because I was freaking out because he was holding my hand! “Kia Clementine.”
That got me another grin.
“Kia Clementine?” he asked.
I nodded.
He held my eyes.
He also kept hold of my hand.
My heart stopped again.
Then he murmured again in that sexy way, “Clementine.”
“Yep,” I said.
His head tipped to the side and he remarked, “Great name.”
“It’s my husband’s,” I told him stupid, stupid, stupidly.
His hand tightened in mine for a half a second then released it.
Oh yes.
Stupid!
His face was still friendly but now somehow a shade remote when he noted, “You’re married.”
“Not anymore.”
Luckily, this came out calmly not quickly or desperately.
Thank God.
“Divorced?”
“He’s dead.”
His back straightened and his eyes again grew intense, this time in a different way. There was emotion there, compassion, and it, too, was knock your socks off beautiful.
“I’m sorry,” he said gently.
And that was when, no joke, I blurted, “Four months ago, half his head was shot off in a motel room while he was boinking my high school arch-nemesis who remained my arch-nemesis long after high school, though I didn’t know that until her husband burst in on them in the local motel with a shotgun he was prepared to use. My husband got dead. Her husband got five to ten for involuntary manslaughter.”
Sampson Cooper blinked.
Okay, uh… what was that? Why did I tell him that?
Not only was I in imminent danger of having a heart attack, I was also clearly temporarily insane.
I needed to get out of there, like, yesterday.
“No shit?” he asked into my mental strategizing on how to beat my retreat.
I shook my head.