Chapter One #3
I spun to face them with the keys looped over one finger, and Miss Whitstone jumped so rigidly I had to assume I’d caught her stealing a glance at her companion.
Mr Fox, on the other hand, had dropped all flimsy pretense in favour of gazing at her with acute, uninhibited desire.
When I’d broken the news, he had offered her the room and steeled himself to head back out into the night – but she had grabbed his arm before he could walk away.
Fox, you’ll be buried in that snow, she’d said.
We can put a pillow between us.
It’s just one night.
At that point, with Miss Whitstone in danger of swallowing her own tongue, and Mr Fox watching her with such heat it was a wonder she didn’t have steam billowing from her ears, I had tactfully stepped away to find Sorcha.
Ten minutes later the blood had yet to drain from Miss Whitstone’s face, but when she stepped forward to take the keys from my outstretched hand her lips curved beneath the still-burning apples of her cheeks.
Fox was grinning openly as he swaggered after her to the stairs and didn’t bother to hide it when she turned to him at the landing, a forcibly stern look on her face.
“You don’t snore, do you?” she demanded. “I don’t want you keeping me up all night.”
Fox chuckled. He reached for the banister behind her and leaned in close.
“You sure about that?”
Sorcha made an odd choking noise and twisted in place to avert her eyes, lips tight against a giggle.
I didn’t look away, though I absolutely should have.
There was too much intimacy in his eyes; in the way they moved slowly over her face, and came to rest on her mouth, where her teeth dented her bottom lip.
Gods, how long had it been since someone looked at me like that?
I’d had time for it once; fun, romance, a life.
Before Magnus had left, before our mother had passed, before I’d made my way home to Stormsby.
Now running The Mage and Rose, keeping the family business afloat and my head above water was my life.
So how long had it been? How long since someone had looked at me with that open longing in Mr Fox’s eyes, that dark and heated promise?
Miss Whitstone stared up at him for a long moment, still absently biting her lip.
Then she shoved him back, gently, and disappeared up the stairs.
Fox stood at the bottom of the stairway and watched her go, beaming like a fool.
He turned to us, Sorcha seated on the desk and me behind it, and gave us a merry wave.
“Night,” he called, then bounded up the stairs after her.
I released a long breath through my teeth, but it wasn’t until Sorcha gently cleared her throat that I realised just how long I’d been staring after them.
She was smiling sweetly – too sweetly.
“What?” I asked. My cheeks were oddly warm.
She shrugged a delicate shoulder.
“Awfully kind of you to find them a room,” she said brightly. “Since we’re all booked out, I mean.”
I mirrored her shrug, though mine was a little stiff.
“They would’ve ended up in the one room anyway.”
“Mmhmm.”
She was still smiling at me.
“What?” I said again, a little more exasperated this time.
“You need bedding.”
I choked on a breath, spluttered, and then choked again.
“Sorcha!” I managed finally. With a huff, I set about shuffling an old stack of paper on my desk as though that might help me appear more dignified. Unfortunately my stammering rather ruined the effect. “That is entirely – why would you – it has not been that long! Besides, who would I even–”
At the slow tilt of Sorcha’s head, I cut myself off. She widened her eyes at me, blinking like a fawn with one hand clutched demurely at her chest.
“Whatever can you mean, dear cousin?” She nodded behind me, at the door to my bedroom. “I was speaking of fresh sheets, for your bed. It’s laundry day, remember?”
She managed to hold it in for another moment, but when I crumpled up a scrap of parchment and lobbed it at her, Sorcha finally broke, collapsing in on herself with laughter.
Amusement swelled in my own chest as I rolled up another scrap of paper and she backed away toward the stairs, hands thrown up in defence.
“You said it, not me!”
I hopped to my feet and took aim, the paper ball arcing across the room just as Sorcha turned and scurried squealing up the stairwell.
“Goodnight, you little miscreant,” I called after her.
I dropped back into my seat and let my posture fold in, relief engulfing me almost completely.
Almost. Because for all my eagerness to fall into bed myself, I found myself staring up the stairs a moment longer.
Not after Sorcha, but the pair of supposed enemies whose unchecked spark had threatened to burn my establishment to the ground.
It was strange; the heat stirring in the pit of my stomach had nothing to do with the sleeping Flame in my chest. I felt like a lecherous cad, with this uncomfortable longing and lust that didn’t belong to me at all, borrowed from two strangers who couldn’t keep their eyes off one another.
Perhaps Sorcha had a point.
How long has it been? I asked myself again.
Too fucking long.