"Do you want this on your room tab?" the bar-ender wanted to know.
"Nah, I'll pay for it now." His voice was low and a little rough as he reached for his wallet in the back pocket of his Levi's. His elbow brushed hers as she ran her gaze up the green flannel of his arm to his big shoulders. The ceiling lights above shone down on him and picked out variegated gold in his brown hair. Unruly and finger-combed, his hair covered his collar and the tops of his ears. A Fu Manchu mustache framed his wide mouth, and he'd grown a soul patch just below his full bottom lip.
Her gaze continued upward to a pair of deep green eyes staring back at her across his broad shoulder, past all the greens on his shirt. His lids looked a little heavy, like he was tired or he'd just gotten out of bed.
She swallowed. Hard.
"Hello," he said, and his voice just seemed to pour through her like her hot buttered rum.
Holy Mary mother of God! Had thinking about her badass fantasy man conjured him up? He wasn't blonde, but who cared? "Hello," she managed, as if the hair on the back of her neck hadn't started to tingle.
"It's a beautiful night to hit the slopes. Don't you think?" he asked.
"Spectacular," she answered, although her mind wasn't on skiing. This guy was big. The kind of big that came from genetics and physical labor. She'd guess he was in his mid to late thirties.
"Lots of new powder."
"That's true." Kate pressed her fingertips into the warm porcelain mug and fought the urge to play with her hair like she was in the eighth grade. "Gotta love all that fresh powder."
He turned on his stool to face her, and her heart just about stopped. He was even better than her fantasy man, and her fantasy man rocked.
"So why aren't you out there?" he asked.
"I don't ski," she confessed.
Surprise lifted one brow and the corners of his mouth. "You don't?"
You'd never mistake this man for a male model. Never see his face pushing Dolce & Gabbana or him lying on the beach in a Gucci suit. He was too big. Too masculine. Too male. The full impact of him all too real. "No. Just passing through. It's been snowing so hard, I had to stop for the night." He had a tiny white scar just below his soul patch, and his nose looked like it had been broken. It was hardly noticeable really, but Kate was trained to notice everything about a person's face. And studying this man's face was pure pleasure.
"Hope it clears up." He snagged the beer bottle in his right hand. "I'm heading out for Bogus Basin in the morning."
"Are you a ski bum?"
"During the winter months, pretty much. After Bogus, we'll hit Targhee and Jackson Hole before heading to Colorado."
We'll? "Are you here with friends?"
"Yeah, my buddies are still out on the slopes." He hooked the heels of his boots on the bottom rung of his stool, and his wide-spread knees brushed the outside of her thigh.
The casual touch did something to her insides. It wasn't exactly instant, remorseless lust, but it was something. "Why aren't you out there with them?" Buddies. As in male friends. Men didn't generally refer to female friends as buddies.
He raised the beer to his lips. "Knees acting up," he answered and took a long drink.
But there was little doubt in her mind that this guy had a woman in his life. Probably more than one. "Skiing with buddies on Valentine's Day?"
He watched her through those green eyes of his as he lowered the bottle. "Is it Valentine's Day?" he asked and sucked a drop of beer from his top lip.
Kate smiled. The fact that he didn't know meant he probably didn't have anyone serious in his life right now. "Every year on the fourteenth of February."
He looked about the room as if really seeing it for the first time. "Ahh. That explains the hearts."
Her gaze lowered past the mustache framing his mouth and chin, down the wide column of his thick neck to the hollow of his tan throat. "I think we're the only two in here who aren't a couple."
"Don't tell me you're here alone?"
Kate returned her gaze to his and laughed. She liked the way he'd said that, as if he found it hard to believe. "Yeah, go figure." In her favorite fantasy, she was trapped with a hunk of man in Nordstrom's shoe department. "How about you? Anyone going to be angry with you for forgetting Valentine's Day?"
"Nope."