Page 491 of Summer Heat
The bell above the door rang, and Tamara glanced up without much interest. Long fingers of buttery light slanted through the big front window and door, skidding off varnished yellow pine walls. The man in the doorway stood there silhouetted against that gold, as if allowing his eyes to adjust. For a single, fanciful moment, Tamara thought he looked as if he wore a halo.
There was a scrape of a chair toward the back, and Tamara glanced in that direction automatically. Only then did she become aware that the room had gone quiet. The knot of construction workers had come forward to stand in a ragged line in the archway to the back room, their attention focused on the new customer.
She looked back at the man with a frown, alert for trouble. He moved into the room with a marked lack of concern, as if he didn’t see the burly group eyeing him.
His lazy stroll took him from the shadows into the flat square of sunshine spilling over the flat pine dance floor, and Tamara, almost without realizing it, caught her breath.
The dark gold hair was windblown and untidy and too long, but it caught the light in sinful, banded streaks. His face was sun-lined and high-planed. His eyes twinkled, and the lips almost smiled, as if he had a secret. There was cockiness in that expression, the kind of brash confidence some men seemed to own from birth.
Her gaze traveled downward, over his body. All man, one-hundred-percent American made: broad shouldered, with solid biceps and the hardy sort of forearms that came from swinging tools; lean hips and long legs, slightly bowed.
Against her will, Tamara found a half grin of her own forming. If he wasn’t a man without a care in the world, he sure gave a good imitation.
What she wouldn’t give to have that feeling again!
The dancing eyes fixed without worry on the burly line of men at the back room. “Hi, boys,” he drawled.
Not one of them replied. Tamara thought of the television commercials when a stranger came into a rundown, hot place and opened a beer, and the whole room filled with a snowstorm. That was the kind of wary, intense attention these men gave the newcomer, and he bore it with the same singular lack of concern.
He dropped onto a barstool, shoved untidy, wind-blown hair from his face and smiled. “I’ll have a beer, sugar.”
The endearment shouldn’t have been a surprise. It went along with everything else. “What kind of beer?” she said, calmly meeting his eyes. Men knew the rules. If a woman wasn’t swayed by pretty little gestures or outrageous flirting, they moved on fast enough.
The dancing in his eyes—dark blue—increased. “Cold one,” he said.
Tamara sighed. Why did men always think that was so clever? Contrarily, she opened the cooler and pulled out the most expensive import. “Glass?”
“Just like that will be fine.”
Even the most cynical of women would have had a hard time resisting that relentlessly good-natured al-most-smile. Tamara looked away, trying to find something to do with herself. This was the hardest part of the job for her—when someone sat down at mid-bar and showed every sign of wanting to talk. She wasn’t a chitchat sort of person.
“What’s your name, darlin’?” he asked.
She plucked a snowy white bar towel off the sink and wiped the necks of the liquor bottles in the well. If she told him, maybe he’d stop the annoying endearments. “Tamara.”
“Tamara, huh?” He took a sip of the expensive brew straight from the bottle, and inclined his head. “That can’t be right.”
“I’m afraid it is.”
“Anyone call you Tammy?”
She lifted her brows. “Not if they wanted to live to tell about it.”
He grinned widely, and Tamara saw against her will that there was an honest-to-God dimple deep in the left cheek. “Good,” he said. “I used to know a real mean Tammy. She put pig piss in my thermos once.”
Even the taciturn salesman looked up at that.
“That’s disgusting,” she said.
“Yep, it was. Luckily, my brother found out about it before I actually drank it.”
Warning herself that it was a mistake, Tamara smiled.
“That’s better,” he said. “Always consider the day a success if I can make a pretty lady smile.”
Tamara shook her head. “If you talked to Tammy like this, you deserved the thermos trick.”
He chuckled. “I didn’t say I didn’t deserve it.” He inclined his head. “You know, you make me think of…” The glinting eyes narrowed. “A cat I used to have. Big calico, with green eyes, just like yours.”
