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“Heff you lost something?” Droog asked, bending to help. He was very tall.
“Um, no, no. I just dropped my keys.” Right. So she should pick them up and not just stand here, hunched over like Quasimodo. She squatted down and reached under the car, feeling only gritty pavement. Took a peek. Great. She’d effectively kicked them out of reach.
“I vould help you, but dee cartilage in my knees has torn and shredded, and I can no longer kneel. Eh heh heh heh.”
One! One beeg mistake! Two! Two bad knees!
“Hallo, Droog. Hallo, woman on the pavement.”
She sighed. Busted.
“Tom, Tom, how are you, my friend?” Droog asked. “I vould like you to meet my date, Mees Honor Holland.”
She looked up. Tom raised an eyebrow, a small smile playing around that mouth. “Oh,” she said flatly. “Hi.”
“Lovely to see you again,” he said.
“Heff you met before?” Droog’s eyebrows rose way, way up on his giant forehead.
Tom just kept looking down at her. “We both live in Manningsport,” he said after a beat, and his accent was so much more appealing than the Count’s. “Met at the pub one night, had a bit of a chat. Small town and all. Have you dropped something, Honor?”
“Um, my car keys,” she said.
He knelt down next to her, and she caught a whiff of his soap. He hadn’t shaved recently, and his jaw was bristly with stubble. Or maybe it wasn’t bristly. Maybe it was soft. Those lips would be soft, that was for sure.
Give us five minutes and we can be ready, the eggs said.
Tom leaned over, and something surged inside her. For one nanosecond, she thought he was going to kiss her, and yes! That would fine! Her eyes fluttered; the left one got stuck, thanks to the clumpy mascara. But no. Of course he wasn’t going to kiss her here on the pavement (or ever). He was reaching for her keys.
Which put his head very close to her, um, special places. Her uterus wobbled, and she pictured the eggs taking up a battering ram.
“Everything all right with your eye?” Tom asked with a knowing grin.
“Everything’s fine.”
She could probably hate this guy, if they spent much more time together. With superhuman eyelid effort, Honor managed to unstick her lashes as Tom groped under the car, then straightened up and handed her the keys. “There you are,” he said, his eyes filled with laughter. Gray eyes.
Kind of a gorgeous color, really. The lake in November, dark and deep.
“So you’re on a date with Droog, are you?” he asked. “Great guy.”
“Yes,” she said briskly. She’d almost forgotten about the Count. “Droog, sorry about that. Let’s get going, shall we?”
“Have fun,” Tom said.
“Tom, I veel see you tomorrow,” Droog said, opening the door of his rusting, maroon-colored Dodge Omni.
“Thank you,” she said to Tom. He smiled over his shoulder as he headed for his car, and damn. That was a Mack truck of a smile. And by the way, he was not built like Ye Typical Math Teacher, no sir. Broad shoulders. Rather perfect ass.
Then he glanced back again, and Honor was abruptly aware that she was still staring after him. He cocked his eyebrow as if knowing she was ogling him. He was probably used to it, she thought as a young (and beautiful) woman cantered to his side. Why didn’t he marry that one, huh? Why meet Honor if women were throwing themselves at him?
The man was not particularly likable. Droog, on the other hand, thought she was luffly. It didn’t make sense to let Down Under start getting all tingly and warm when the man causing those feelings had been such a boor.
* * *
“DO YOU LIKE bowling?” Droog asked a half hour later as they sat in the little restaurant. “I luff eet. Dee crash of dee pins, dee joy on the dee faces of dee cheeldren.” He smiled. “Perhaps we may try it sometime.”
There would be no bowling.
Honor had definitely ruled out marriage and children with Droog Dragul. In addition to the faint fear that he was going to throw his head back and start howling, or start counting things. (One...one pointy knife! Two! Two major blood vessels in dee neck!) Droog had wiped down everything at their table with antibacterial wipes he produced from his purse, including their chairs and the floor around them. “Now I heff created clean space,” he said, smiling.
Dexter the serial killer leaped to mind.
Then Droog ordered water and took a sandwich from his purse. Baloney on white bread.
It was a long eighty-three minutes.
To his credit, when he asked her for a second date, Droog took her rejection well. “Ah, yes, I understand,” he said. “Vee don’t have the cleek.”
“The cleek?” she asked.
He snapped his fingers. “The cleek.”
“Oh. Right. The click.” Honor forced a smile. “But it was very nice meeting you, Droog.”
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