Sophie sighed. She could have left her glasses in the car, making the world into a soft fuzz much easier to deal with, but then she’d be half-blind. She probably should have left them, this was just the sort of crowd who would accidentally knock them off her face and step on them, and there went two hundred bucks’ worth of frames she couldn’t afford to lose. They were cute, yeah, and they didn’t require the care and expense contacts did.

I’m all new now. Except the inside, where I’m the same old Sophie. Scared of my own shadow. She took another gulp of gin and tonic, and someone bumped into her from behind. The drink slopped, splashing, and cold liquid landed on her cleavage. The pins and needles swept over her skin and retreated.

Sophie sucked in a breath, nearly choked, and looked up as the person bumping her settled against the bar less than a foot away.

Oh, wow.

He was tall, and dark, and rough-looking, stubble crawling on his cheeks under high arched cheekbones. His mouth was a little too thin, as was his nose, but his eyes—so dark pupil blended into iris in the uncertain light—were nice. And the shelf of dark hair falling stubbornly across them looked like it was just waiting for fingers to smooth it back. A streak of pale blondness winging back from his temple should have looked ridiculous, but didn’t.

Hello, stranger. Sophie quickly looked back down at her drink. Lucy would have grinned at him and said something witty. Jeez. I’m such an idiot.

“Sorry about that,” he almost-yelled in her ear, easily heard over the music. His breath touched her hair, and a bolt of heat went through her. It was the closest she’d been to a man since…oh, two months before she filed for divorce?

The tingling feeling had gone away. It was probably just the weak gin.

“No problem.” She pitched her voice loud enough to be heard, as well, but yelled into her drink. Being this close to anyone made her nervous. And he was big. The physical size meant danger, and she nervously checked where his hands were with quick little peripheral glances.