Chapter 25
The instant the shop bells stopped ringing, and he knew she was gone, Nigel emerged from the storage room in a dark cloud of wrath, stormed to the counter nook, and swept up the pruning shears from the floor. He marched across the shop, turned the sign to CLOSED, bolted the door.
Then he turned. Lifted his gaze to the ceiling pipes.
“All right, buster,” he snarled. “It’s just you and me. Get your berries right with your gods!”
A scuffle of movement overhead.
The next moment, the mistletoe dropped to the floor and, in a flurry of leaves and little white berries, fled across the shop for the passage.
Nigel was on its tail in a trice, pruning shears snapping.
It beat him to Garden’s door by a hair’s breadth.
The door swung open, and it vanished into the vastness inside, but Nigel charged after it, weapon brandished high.
He pursued it right across a broad green lawn, but just in the nick of time, the little bundle of leaves vanished into a dense grove of gorse, which Garden seemed to have grown up spontaneously just for its protection.
“You’re MULCH!” Nigel bellowed, hurling his voice and a series of curses into the gorse bushes. “If I ever see so much as a leaf of mistletoe in my shop again, I’ll burn this whole place to the ground!”
Garden shuddered. The delicate, dawn-lit sky overhead became dangerously overcast. After what had happened with the Shadowbane Lady, it didn’t take kindly to such threats.
But Nigel, undaunted, shook his pruning shears one last time.
“That’s right!” he roared. Though he wasn’t entirely certain what was right.
Particularly when everything felt so, so wrong.
With a final expletive, he turned to retrace his steps to Garden’s door, arms dropped heavily to his sides.
The pruning shears dragged along the ground behind him, bumping close to his feet.
He stepped back over the threshold and slammed the door behind him, blocking out the fresh scents of open air and a hundred thousand blossoms in exchange for the close atmosphere of the passage.
Then he slumped heavily, back against the door, and buried his face in one hand.
Oh gods.
Why did he grab her like that? Why? Why?
Who did he think he was? Some kind of barbarian?
Grabbing her arm, yanking her around. And what was he going to do?
What was his big plan? Smash a kiss on that sweet and lovely and entirely kissable mouth of hers?
Not just an accidental bump, no, but a real, toe-curling, heart-burning, blood-thumping, give-it-all-up-for-love kiss such as the mistletoe never dreamed to inspire!
Oh gods.
Oh gods.
It was a good thing Ward arrived just then.
A very good thing. Yes. Because all those weeks of absence had lulled Nigel into a false sense of security.
Without realizing what he was doing, he’d let himself feel as though Luna was his.
Simply because she was there. With him. All day, every day.
That mere proximity, with nothing to call it into question, had built up a sort of .
. . of . . . proprietorship in him. Which had absolutely no right to be there.
He shuddered. After all, he hadn’t forgotten what it was like to love Jastira. To belong to Jastira. To so desperately try to make her belong to him.
So much grasping. So much desperate control.
So, so, so much fear.
He never wanted to do that to Luna. Never.
But then . . . he went and yanked her like that . . .
“Oh gods,” he whispered.
Dropping the pruning shears, Nigel sank to the floor.
Elbows on knees, hands in fists, he gritted his teeth and hit the back of his head rhythmically against the door.
He didn’t believe in the Green Mother, but perhaps he should.
Because surely it was Divine intervention which sent Wardsman Ward strolling into the shop just in that exact moment.
Just in time to remind Nigel that Luna was not his, that he had no right to take her kisses.
That she, as a woman, and particularly as his employee, deserved his respect, his consideration. His distance.
“Hands off, Grimm,” he growled. Closing his eyes, he breathed out a long gust or air. “Hands off.”
He would do better. He would be better. Better than he once was.
He would prove Jastira’s influence on him did not extend beyond the grave.
He would be the friend Miss Talbot needed, offer her his support as it was appropriate, and .
. . and . . . and find a way to move on.
That bit about asking out Miss Braithwait, that was a stroke of genius, wasn’t it?
A nice little way to let Luna know she needn’t concern herself with any untoward incident between them.
It was nothing. She had no reason to worry, no reason to give her notice.
And she needn’t ever know that he would carry the memory of that all-too-brief brush of lips in his heart to the end of his days.
With a rustle of wings, the raven flew into the passage. She landed on the floor in front of him, strutted over to his feet, and plucked at his shoelaces. Tilting her head, she looked up at him from a beady black eye. “Never mind.”
“Thanks, Debbie,” Nigel said. He hung his head. Then: “I just want her to be happy. That’s all. Just let her be happy. And safe.”
The bird hopped up onto his shoulder and stayed there with him in the dark passage until closing time.
Nigel did not rest well that night.
He kept seeing images of The King’s Crown, playing out in his mind’s eye.
All suffused in the golden glow of chandeliers gleaming on holiday florals.
It was a nice restaurant. The kind of restaurant a man took a woman to when he wanted her to know he was serious.
The sort of place that would make her feel special. Like the angel she was.
It was also adjacent to a hotel.
With rooms.
Bedrooms.
But no. Surely Officer Ward wouldn’t have designs like that. Not for a first date.
But was it their first date? Ward had spent all day dancing attendance on Luna at Saint Jollify. Buying her food, paying for her tickets. He’d won her a pink unicorn, for gods’ sake!
Pink unicorns didn’t automatically entitle a man to hotel rooms, however. Not even dangerously good-looking men like Officer Ward.
But what if that’s what Luna wanted?
“If that’s what she wants, so be it,” Nigel muttered to the poinsettias the following morning, as he absently overwatered them.
A puddle formed around their pots and his feet, to which he was completely oblivious.
“Miss Talbot deserves every good thing in this life, including . . . including glamorous hotel rooms. If that’s her choice. ”
His stomach knotted itself several times. Then turned over and knotted itself again.
It was all too easy to picture them. Laughing together over the gold-crown tablecloth.
Clinking long-stemmed glasses of sparkling wine.
In Nigel’s imagination, the light from the thaumatic chandelier caught in Luna’s hair and transformed her simple workday blouse into something far more sophisticated than she actually owned.
Something satin, perhaps. Slinky. Fitted smoothly to her curves.
All while her feet remained safely ensconced in her nice, warm, new boots.
“You know,” Ward would say, leaning a little closer and trailing a finger down her wrist, raising the fine hairs on her arm, “I could speak to the manager. Get us a room for the night.”
Luna, of course, would flush and lower her gaze, dark lashes falling across pink-stained cheeks. Then that smile of hers, pulling at the corner of her mouth . . .
Only, as the image progressed in Nigel’s mind, that smile became wider, fiercer. Wolfish.
It became Jastira’s smile.
Suddenly, it was Jastira he saw, sitting across, not from Ward, but from himself.
And the chandeliers in the room were snuffing out, replaced with burning orbs of anti-glitter.
The Shadowbane Lady, clad in clinging black, gripped his hand in hers, her long, sensual fingers toying with him.
“I’m going to take hold of you, like this,” she purred, her hooded eyes burning into his, causing his blood to boil.
“Then I’m going to make you beg for mercy—”
A knock sounded behind him. Nigel startled, straightened up, spilling the last of the water from his watering can all over his shoes. He turned to the door. His heart dropped.
Ward.
Wardsman John Ward, of all people, stood under the awning. He nodded and waved at Nigel through the square glass in the door.
Nigel stood as though rooted. Mouth gaping. Only after several breaths did it occur to him that his hand—the one not holding the watering can—was starting to form a Dire sigil, all on its own volition. Hastily, he squeezed his fingers tight.
“Never mind?” said Debbie, flapping from the counter to perch on Nigel’s shoulder.
Nigel frowned. “I know, right? What in the gods’ names . . . ?”
Ward knocked again, brows rising. He made a motion for Nigel to let him in. Which was the last thing Nigel wanted to do. What, was he supposed to exchange pleasantries with the wardsman, the morning after he took Luna on a date? But he couldn’t exactly pretend he didn’t see him.
Biting down on a curse, Nigel set aside the empty watering can, stomped across the puddled floor, unbolted the door, and flung it open. He tilted his head back—farther back then he liked—to look the officer in the eye. “Miss Talbot isn’t here.”
“She’s not?”
“No.”
Ward looked concerned. “What time does she start?”
“Eight-thirty.”
“It’s eight forty-five.”
Nigel frowned. He pulled his pocket watch from his waistcoat, flicked it open. Then turned to look at the clock on the back wall.
Sure enough: 8:45.
Luna was never late. She was often early. Never late.