The husky murmur slid caressingly down his spine. “Mmm?” was all he could manage to say.
“I’m hungry.”
It took him a moment to change mental gears. “You’re hungry?”
She smiled and nodded. “Starving. Want to go get something to eat?”
He glanced around the dance club. He spotted plenty of drinks, but no food. “You mean, go somewhere else?”
She seemed to be swallowing a laugh at his still-dazed expression. “Yes,” she said gravely. “Somewhere else. Unless you’re too tired?”
Tired? He’d never been more wide-awake. His pulse was still racing, and every nerve ending was on full alert. “No. I’m not tired. Let’s go.”
It took them nearly twenty minutes to get away. Nicole finally said her last farewell—to Tommy, the doorman—and escaped with Andrew in
to the cool night.
Laughing and shivering, she huddled against him for warmth as they hurried to his Range Rover. With her so close to him, Andrew didn’t feel the cold. He was more likely to overheat, he thought wryly, wondering again at his atypical responses to this woman.
He bundled her into the passenger seat and hurried to start the engine. “It’s forty degrees out. You really should wear your coat.”
She only laughed and tossed her hair away from her face. “Probably.”
He drove out of the club’s parking lot and toward the main intersection. He glanced at the dashboard clock. It was nearly 2:00 a.m. “Where would you like to eat?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just cruise around until we find something that looks appetizing.”
He didn’t expect to find many restaurants open at this hour, even for New Year’s revelers. The usual twenty-four-hour places would probably be their best bet. Traffic on Poplar was still heavy for the hour, and some of the vehicles were weaving suspiciously. Andrew passed two unhappy-looking motorists who’d been pulled over by patrol cars.
He kept his own speed down, his driving careful, and his eye peeled for less cautious drivers. He had to make more of an effort than he would have liked to keep his concentration on his driving rather than his passenger.
“Nicole?” he asked without looking away from the road.
“Nicky,” she offered. “Yes?”
“Who’s Stu?”
He hadn’t really planned to ask the question then, but he’d known he had to ask since he’d realized the name meant something to her.
“He’s someone I used to date,” she said evasively. “It didn’t work out.”
“Did he hurt you?” Another question he hadn’t meant to ask.
“I was more disappointed than hurt.” She didn’t bother to elaborate.
“Was he the reason you left town?”
She shook her head. “I needed a change. And then I needed to come home.”
Before he could ask for any more details, she turned the questioning smoothly on him. “What about you, Andrew? Haven’t you ever had your heart broken?”
“Not broken. A little bruised, maybe,” he said, thinking of the discouragement he’d felt when he’d realized that his carefully orchestrated engagement had been a terrible mistake.
“Then you’ve never really been in love,” she pronounced knowingly.
His eyebrow rose. “And were you?”
Again, she shrugged. “Unfortunately, I was in love with an illusion, not the reality. When I realized that, it was easier to let it go.”