“No, you seem more the Rhett Butler type.” Her body began to shift to the rhythm that the others inside siphoned from the Rolling Stones.

He stepped from the shadows into the moth-diffused ring of light from the bulb over the back door; she stared at him. His shadow swallowed hers, overcame it, and she couldn’t find her own outline on the yard underneath his bulked shape. A shiver trailed down her legs.

His brown hair fell to the side—curly, hiding his left eye. She wanted to brush the curl aside so that she could see where the black of his pupil ended and the deep copper color began. His stance was wide—his legs apart as if he were leaning back against an invisible wall. His jeans were ripped at the knee and he wore a wrinkled white button-down shirt, a jean jacket.

A moth flew into his hair and she reached to shoo it away. He didn’t move.

“Well,” she said when she felt she could speak again. “I don’t believe real Southern gentlemen lurk outside back doors.”

“They do if they’re protecting the innocent girls inside. I was instructed that no true Southern belle leaves unescorted. It is my assigned duty.” He bowed, revealing the hair at the back of his neck. She almost reached to touch it—discover what it felt like, if it was bristly or fine.

“You mean making sure they don’t escape.”

“You.” He lifted her chin so she directly faced the light. “I won’t let you escape.”

Her blood ran thicker, warmer, in the instant his finger touched her face. The cloying warmth of the basement party seemed to return. She pulled her face away from him. “I guess you’ll just have to tell the troops that you failed in your mission. I’m leaving.”

She walked away from him, feeling she was escaping some potential danger; a parachute jump where the chute wouldn’t have opened.

He called after her. “Don’t go without telling me your name.”

She kept walking, digging the car keys out of her purse.

“Ah, but tomorrow is another day,” he called after her, repeating the final line of Gone with the Wind.

How unoriginal, she thought—just another frat boy trying to get laid. “That’s my line,” she called back, without turning around.