“Like this?” Her voice was husky, and her pulse fluttered at her wrists and temples as she slowly tucked the fallen strands of her hair behind her left ear. Tucker watched her intently, his eyes all smoky again. The charge between them started to hum.

Della had no idea what possessed her, but as her fingers slid from behind her ear, she toyed with her earlobe again, moving on to finger the stones in the earring. His nostrils flared, and the hum became a crackle.

“How was that?” she asked as her fingers slid away, wrapping around the frosty cocktail glass and drawing on the straw again. The sudden hit of iciness was sweet mercy to her overheating system, even if it barely took the edge off the heat coursing under her skin.

“Yeah.” He cleared his voice. “I think you’ve nailed it.”

The waitress interrupted them with their dinner, and Della was grateful for the distraction as she fussed around, putting their plates in front of them. “I’ll have another beer,” Tucker said, passing up his empty bottle.

Della sucked the rest of the daiquiri up her straw and handed her glass over also. “I’ll have another of these, too.” They could both use a cooling down. Or they were going to set the tablecloth alight.

She was pretty sure it was smoldering.

“That’s a rookie error right there,” Tucker said as he pointed at her bowl of spaghetti carbonara.

Della had forgotten what she’d ordered, and she glanced down at it, her brain still only at half power. “Pasta?”

“Spaghetti. Anything with spaghetti.” He reached for his napkin and spread it over his lap. “Unless you’re some kind of expert-level spaghetti twirler, it’s hard to eat without strands of it sticking out of your mouth half the time and getting sauce on your chin. It’s like ribs and lobster and anything you have to eat with your fingers. Not date food. Stick with things you can cut into pieces with a knife and fork.” He demonstrated by cutting into his steak and popping it into his mouth. “See? Easy.”

Annoyed that he could just switch back into wingman mode when she was scrambling to string words together, Della was not in the mood to be lectured about something as basic as eating. She’d been feeding herself for a very long time.

She picked up her fork. “Maybe I am an expert spaghetti twirler.”

He cocked an eyebrow, then dropped his gaze to her bowl as she twisted her fork through the strands of pasta heavily laden with a creamy sauce. It smelled wonderful—garlicky and divine. Bringing the loaded fork to her mouth, she popped it in, smiling at Tucker triumphantly when she executed the move perfectly.

“Mmm,” she said, savoring the explosion of flavors against her tongue. “So good.”

Screw the spaghetti police.