to wait it out.
Emily wished everyone were that way. The drama gearing up around them was ridiculous. While the men all puffed out their chests and claimed they could have done something if they’d needed to, a group of girls hung all over each other, sobbing, not two feet away. Emily found their drama even worse than the men’s bragging. She just couldn’t summon up any sympathy for perfectly healthy, perfectly capable women who acted like they were dying.
“Did you see how close they got to me? I swear to God, I thought I was going to die.”
Emily glanced at Graham. He’d crossed his arms against the cold, too, but he was watching her instead of the crowd, for once. Great. She’d probably been rolling her eyes or wrinkling her nose in disapproval. Her family teased her about the faces she made all the time, so it was entirely possible that she hadn’t been keeping her thoughts to herself.
She could pretend she wasn’t embarrassed, but it was harder to pretend she wasn’t cold. The breeze was pretty brisk, but surely the police were on their way. It took a little while for them to get this far out of town, but they’d be here soon to sort out the action inside. Maybe the patio crowd would be stuck out here for another half an hour, tops. She’d survive.
The cluster of girls weren’t cold. They had each other to hug and weep upon, of course, but some had a different strategy. One woman chose a man from the crowd and zeroed in on him, tiptoeing over to him in little baby steps. She clasped her hands and blew on them like they were already frozen solid. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but could I borrow just the edge of your coat? Just to tuck my hands under the hem for a minute? It’s so freezing out here.” Within a matter of seconds, she had the man eating out of her cold hands, taking off his coat and laying it over her shoulders while she thanked him as if he’d done something extraordinary—as if she hadn’t maneuvered him into doing just that.
Emily knew how to play that game, just as she knew how to flash some cleavage to catch a bartender’s attention. She simply didn’t want to. It took too much energy to keep up the golly-gee-whiz facade. It felt a little demeaning to her, to have to act like an innocent child in order to be thought of as cute. She hadn’t been able to sustain it very long with Foster, and Foster hadn’t liked her much when she’d acted more like herself and less like a helpless doll.
Still, the girl in the borrowed coat was undoubtedly warmer than Emily at the moment. Girls who acted cute got all the attention.
Not from Graham.
Emily had given him a hearty handshake instead of a cute tilt of her head, and yet, for whatever reason, Graham had gotten her to safety first before helping anyone else.
No wonder Graham was so darned appealing. She hadn’t asked him to step in when Foster was harassing her; he just had. She hadn’t felt helpless when the fight had broken out, but he’d protected her, anyway. He had to be interested in her, didn’t he?
Graham walked a few steps to stand on the other side of her, just close enough to be in her personal space.
“Here, try turning this way,” he said. With one hand on her arm, he angled her so that she was once more standing with her back to his chest, but they weren’t touching this time. The ruffles of her dress fell still.
“What—what are you doing?” she asked.
“It feels less cold if the wind’s at your back.”
But of course, he’d blocked the wind for her with his larger body without her having to pout or flirt or even flatly ask him to.
If the man was trying to seduce her without touching her, he was succeeding. Now that Emily thought about it, the literary Jane wasn’t a cute or adorable character. She never manipulated anyone. She’d just been herself, lost in a jungle, and a man had swooped in to save her because he’d wanted to, not because she’d flirted with him first.
She looked at Graham over her shoulder. “Now the wind’s not at my back. It’s at yours.”
“That was the idea.” The ghost of a smile touched his lips. He looked so unconcerned, standing behind her, but he had to be cold. It was forty-something degrees out, and he was human.
“You’ll freeze to death,” she said.
“That’s doubtful.”
She did roll her eyes then.
He shrugged, a small movement of his shoulder. “It’s not that windy. More of a brisk breeze.”
“It’s still cold, no matter how much wind there is or isn’t.” She hesitated, all her thoughts about not being fake or manipulative swirling in her head. She hoped she wouldn’t come across that way. “I know we don’t know each other, but if you put your arm around me again, it would keep us both warmer.”
He didn’t move for the longest moment.
She hadn’t played the game right. She should’ve smiled when she’d said that and tilted her head just so, maybe run a finger over his arm. Or she could’ve just said she needed to warm up and then leaned into him with a giggle and puppy dog eyes.
Too late now. She’d been straightforward, and it would be too psycho if she suddenly switched gears. So she shrugged her own shrug, as casual as his had been. “I’d feel a little less guilty if I was helping to keep you warm, too. That’s all.” Pretending her pride wasn’t stung, she crossed her ankles the other way and studied the pattern of swirls that had been tooled into the pointed toes of her leather boots.
His arms came around her so gently, the only thing startling was how very warm he felt. He stepped closer, so his chest touched her back. His square-toed boots mingled with her fancy ones.
“Nothing to feel guilty about,” he said. “There was no sense in both of us getting windblown, so I thought I’d stand on this side.”
“But this is even warmer, for both of us.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
His voice was close to her ear. No, not his voice—his lips. His mouth. She hadn’t meant to use near-freezing temperatures to indulge in a little fantasy with this man, but being wrapped in his arms was delicious.
“For the record, I wouldn’t normally put my hands on a woman in the first half hour that I’ve met her,” he said. “My mother would call it ‘getting handsy.’”
He had a deep voice. She shivered, and pretended it was from the cold. “It’s forty degrees out. Believe me, all I’m thinking is that you’re warm, not handsy.”
He chuckled, which surprised her, because his expression hadn’t been anything but grave from the hallway to the bar to the patio. “My mother drilled it into my head that girls don’t like guys who get handsy. I should have dated more in the winter.”
“Look how we’re standing. We look like a prom photo. You’re not being any more handsy than a boy who gets to put his arms around his prom date for the camera while his teachers are chaperoning. Pretty innocent stuff.”
“I don’t know about innocent intentions at prom,” he murmured from his prom position behind her. “I think I was a pretty handsy date. Yours wasn’t?”
“I’d had my hair done at a salon. I didn’t want him to mess it up.” She loved this, being able to just turn her head a little to the side to have a private conversation with Graham, cheek to cheek. “I think I scared him off early in the evening when he went in for a kiss. I said, ‘Don’t touch my hair.’ Maybe it was more like a shriek. Don’t touch my hair. He barely touched any part of me after that, not even for the slow dances.”
She felt Graham’s smile even before she peeked at him out of the corner of her eye. He held her just right, his arms loosely crossed over hers, hands resting at her waist, no awkwardness in trying to avoid touching certain parts of her, no accidentally-on-purpose brush against her breasts, either. It was heaven to be with a man who knew what he was doing.
“Whoever