Edge Of Darkness

23

She bit her tongue. He leaned slightly forward when he spoke and she felt his warm breath brush her cheek. “Ember. Admit it.”

There was fire in his eyes, fire in her blood, fire in the air all around them. She breathed fire into her lungs with each breath, and with each breath felt it scorch through her body, consuming. Dangerous.

She whispered, “I’m not looking for any complications in my life, Christian. And that’s not a lie. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point, where I’m…” She faltered, because he was watching her lips as she spoke, looking at her mouth in total concentration. And somehow he’d moved closer. “Where I’m safe.”

The word safe affected him, made him hesitate. She felt it in the tension in his body, the slight twitch in the hand he’d pressed over her heart. He closed his eyes for just longer than a blink, then withdrew his hand. The sudden loss of heat against her skin was jarring.

“Of course,” he murmured. He exhaled. “You’re right.”

He didn’t say I understand. He said you’re right. The difference struck her as important, but she couldn’t pinpoint why.

He stepped back, turned to the door and gave her a small, apologetic smile over his shoulder. “I’ll have to ask you to forgive me again. It seems I’m always off-balance around you.” He exhaled again, ran a hand through his thick black hair. Then with a quiet, “Good night, Ember,” he slipped through the open door and silently, swiftly, disappeared down the stairs.

Ember closed the door and stood in the darkness for long minutes, unseeing, her blood and nerves and thoughts frenzied, her hands shaking at her sides.

I’m always off-balance around you.

Well, that definitely made two of them. And despite feeling very clearly he was somehow dangerous, despite her resolve to dislike him and keep it all business, she was equally certain there was something going on between them. Something her body recognized and to which it responded. Something her mind—always so careful, always so calculating—was doing little to counteract.

“Christian McLoughlin,” she whispered to the dark, empty room, “who are you? And what the hell have you done with my brain?”

The room had no answer.

In spite of his promise, Christian didn’t come into the bookstore the next day.

Ember arrived to work early—successfully avoiding Dante—and spent the day in a state of suspended animation, both hoping he’d walk through the door and dreading it.

Because what exactly was going on here? In the clear light of day she determined it was nothing, that’s what. He was toying with her, he was indulging in some kind of macho ego-trip, the knight in shining armor winking at the poor, mud-splattered village girl before riding up to the castle on his steed to ask for the hand of the princess in marriage. She was a diversion, that was all. A momentary blip on his radar.

At least, she’d convinced herself of that until precisely five minutes to six, when the door to the shop opened and a man walked in carrying the most enormous bouquet of roses she’d ever seen in her life.

Ember couldn’t even see his upper body behind the mass of foliage and flowers spilling voluptuously from the vase. The thick, etched crystal vase, no less. The man took half a dozen careful steps into the shop before halting in the middle of the floor and announcing loudly in Spanish, “Flower delivery!”

Certainly he’d been hired for his acute grasp of the obvious.

“Yes, over here!” Ember called, waving from behind the counter though he couldn’t see her. After several unsuccessful attempts to determine her location by peeking over and around the voluminous spray, he finally turned sideways and addressed her, his face strained with the effort of balancing the enormous arrangement in his arms.

“Roses for a Miss Jones.”

“That’s me.”

His expression registered gratitude. “Where you want it?”

“Uh…” She looked around for a space large enough and spied the round table where Sofia’s book club met each week. “Over there. That would be great, thanks.”

He made his way slowly to the table, going sideways like a crab, until finally he’d deposited his burden to the wood tabletop with a relieved sigh. He turned to look at her, a canny smile on his face. “Somebody is in love, eh?”