She put her fingertips to her temples and rubbed. “I think I need something to eat,” she said. “I feel a little dizzy.”

“Good idea.” He looked around for a waiter, not seeing a single one in the thickening crush of people. The place was jammed and the music cranked up to deafening levels. “There has to be a menu around here somewhere. I’ll grab one. Be right back.” He stopped for a second after he got up. “What’s your name? You never did say.”

“No. I didn’t. Just get a menu. Please.”

Exchanging vital information like that would just have to wait. She was grateful for a few moments alone, which she desperately needed, to think about just what the hell she was doing here. With him.

Whatever his name was.

Mary Beth sipped her Coke, which had lost most of its fizz, and watched him shoulder through the crowd.

He had to turn around once to get past an entwined couple who’d just set down their cocktails to smooch and cuddle, generating the usual friendly advice to get a room.

None of her business. She just hoped other hearts weren’t being broken.

The look on his craggy, masculine face as he eased by the oblivious pair was priceless, though.

He wasn’t really handsome. More like rugged. The waitress he asked for a menu perked up when she handed him one, obviously just as attracted to his jewel-brown eyes. Even from this distance, his eyes sparkled with devilment. She felt a tiny pang of jealousy that she instantly dismissed.

But he didn’t seem interested in the waitress once he had scored a menu. Good. She kept on studying him as he got closer, which was taking a while.

His features were too roughly hewn, his nose too hawkish for him to be considered classically good-looking. He was a real man in every sense of the word, hard, tough, maybe even a little too masculine.

If there was such a thing, she couldn’t help thinking.

The revolving spotlights that pierced the dim atmosphere of the lounge touched his hair now and then, making it gleam darkly. She wouldn’t mind doing the same thing. That thick sable hair looked extremely touchable. She suppressed a smile of admiration when several guys stepped aside, consciously or unconsciously ceding their turf to him. He was big, so very big. The kind of man who looked as if he could carry the burdens of the world on those massive shoulders.

And he’d been bold enough to say he needed her.

Hmm. Although it was possible that it was a pickup line, it actually hadn’t sounded like one. More like a statement of fact.