“Where are they?”

He shrugged. “Might be in their rooms. Maybe they went out. Not sure. It’s not my day to keep tabs on them.”

“Is this a trap?” I eyed him with mock suspicion.

“Do you want it to be?”

“Of course not.”

Axel’s pouty face made me laugh. He moved into the kitchen with his usual catlike grace, while I took a seat at the counter and watched him pour two glasses of Chardonnay from a bottle in the refrigerator.

He sat down beside me and offered me a glass. He held his up, so I did the same. We eyed each other over the rims, our gazes burning with pent-up desire.

“To a great evening with a beautiful woman.” He winked at me, and I did the unthinkable—I giggled. I never giggled. I sounded like such a girl, which I was not. I was a hardened woman who’d been around the block several times and knew how to take care of myself. I didn’t need anyone or anything, yet here I was, giggling like a teenager when the hot guy noticed her.

“To a great evening,” I said as we clinked glasses. “You sure you’ve never been on a motorcycle before?”

“Positive.”

“You were right at home.”

“That was easy to do since I had a competent driver and anywhere with you is a good place to be. After the season is over, I’m buying my own Harley, and we can spend the summer exploring the great Pacific Northwest together.”

“That’s a little premature, don’t you think? We’ve only had one date.”

“No woman can settle for just one date with me.” His grin grew mischievous. “Admit it. You expected me to be a duck out of water at the bar, and I wasn’t.”

“You were at first.”

“Yeah, well, it took time to adjust, but I did, and by the time I left, I had those bikers eating out of my hands,” he said smugly.

“Some of them. The few that were hockey fans.” I shrugged, not willing to give him that much credit, even if he was right.

“I beg to differ.”

“You can beg all you want but you’re not getting in my pants if that’s your end game.”

His gaze heated up to the point he appeared almost feral. “You underestimate me. I thought you would’ve learned your lesson earlier tonight.”

I’d underestimated him, and I’d been pleasantly, if not disturbingly, surprised. Disturbing because his newfound fondness for Harleys made it doubly hard for me to resist him.

Our gazes met, and that time-standing-still thing happened again. I shook it off quickly before I was sucked in by the sheer power of the unseen to the land of the unknown. I liked my feet to stay on familiar, solid ground where I had the upper hand or close to it. With this man, we were too equally matched for me to be safe. He wasn’t a physical abuser, but the damage he was capable of doing to my heart chilled me to my bone marrow. On the other hand, the fear of not taking a risk on what might end up being the best thing that ever happened to me paralyzed me with uncertainty. Did I take the safe way out or take that chance?