15. CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 15
A s they gathered their belongings, Gideon reminded Lexi to check her timer. She had less than an hour before needing to return home. He gathered all the books in his arms, and together they stepped out into the night.
“It’s so lovely tonight,” he said. “Would you prefer to walk back to the club or take a carriage?”
Her eyes lit with excitement as she surveyed the streets, but she settled her gaze on the pile of books in his arms. “It’s gorgeous out, but you’re lugging seven or eight hard-cover books. I’m sure you’d rather ride, wouldn’t you?”
“Nonsense,” he said as he nodded for her to continue down the sidewalk. “I don’t plan on lugging anything. And these books are half the fun.”
She gave him a questioning side eye. “Huh?”
Without answering, he shifted the books into a cradle of both his arms, tested their weight, and then tossed them all straight into the air. Lexi gasped, her hands flying up in reaction to catch them. But as they fanned out, they slowed their fall… and then held, hanging in the air like a sphere of books, some wide open with pages up, some hanging with pages down, others tilted at odd angles.
With his left palm facing the sky, as if he were a waiter holding an invisible tray, he directed the books to a place up and off to the side, out of their way, and held them aloft. With his right hand, he guided them into a swirling motion. A giant gyrating globe of tomes.
“Oh my God!” She clapped and jumped. “That’s fantastic, Gideon. But I’m slightly freaked out that all those beautiful old books are going to come crashing down.”
He flashed her a smile. “Not a chance. A few books? Light as a feather.”
As they strolled down Chestnut back to the club, the orb of books spinning over them, Lexi nearly floated above the ground herself, buoyant as she was over their evening, and her chance to dig into some real sources of knowledge. Her enthusiasm was as sexy as the rest of her. Without even trying, she was wrapping around his heart like a velvet ribbon. It tickled, it scratched, it warmed and caressed.
He shook his head even as he smiled at her prancing on the cobbles while she chatted before him. The heart was a dangerous place for a binding, even a velvet one.
When they rounded the corner to Fourth Street, a block from his club, activity across the street caught his eye and he pulled them to a stop, letting the books fall back into his arms. Standing in front of a shop, Matthew spoke with two other men, all three looking far too intense for his liking. Matt held what appeared to be a map, and he alternately pointed at the paper and then out towards various directions, the other men nodding their heads in understanding.
Lexi placed a hand on his arm. “What are they doing? Matthew looks so serious.”
Gideon shook his head. “I don’t know. And I don’t recognize those men.”
She slid her gaze from the men back to Gideon’s face. “I keep getting the impression that you don’t particularly trust Matthew.”
Gideon grumbled under his breath in response.
“May I ask why? Margot really seems to be taken with him, and I trust her instincts. ”
“Hmm,” he muttered. “Alana’s had some vague concerns lately. Nothing tangible.”
“I think you’re worrying too much. How long have you been working with him?”
“A couple years now. You’re probably right.”
She shrugged. “Look, let’s just go over there and you can ask him what’s going on. He’s your partner in this portal venture, after all.”
He turned back to face her, those pink lips and blue eyes—eyes that darkened to midnight in the evening dusk—gentling his suspicions. He smiled. “You’re right, of course.”
Books tucked into one arm, Gideon clasped her hand and checked the road before crossing, but as he stepped off the curb, she groaned, slipping from his grasp as she collapsed, hitting her head on the cobblestones.
“Lex!” He dropped the books and knelt next to her, cradling her head and checking for a wound. No blood, but she was out cold. He touched her face and…
… was pulled into her vision. She opened her eyes as if waking from a deep sleep. Her body lay cramped in the rear of one of her world’s motorcars, a little hump on the floor dividing the sides was crammed into her back.
As she struggled to sit up, the skies beyond the window glass lit up in a burst of colors, giant blooming flowers of light, followed shortly by thundering pops. Fireworks. The car door pulled open beside her. “Out of the car. Now!” a man’s voice shouted as he reached in and grabbed her arm. She stumbled out, tripping and landing on black asphalt.
Still holding her head as he knelt next to her on the sidewalk, her eyes fluttered open.
“Gideon?”
She tried to sit up, and he encouraged her to take it slow, pressing her shoulders back down. “Hey, sweetheart. Relax a minute.” His hands moved back to her head, her arms, checking that she was unharmed. “You took quite a tumble. Are you hurt?”
She studied his face, taking stock. “No, I don’t think so. Did you see?”
He nodded, his face grim.
“Fireworks,” she said. “In my world.”
Lexi pressed up onto her hands, and Gideon helped her to stand, though he felt a tremor ripple through her limbs as she added, “The Fourth of July is in one week.”
Gideon glanced across the street, but Matthew and the other two men were gone. Turning back to her, he studied her face. Every cell in his body demanded that the only way to keep her safe was to keep her by his side. Every cell also insisted that ultimately, the only way to protect her was to keep her out of his world, away from him and their obviously growing feelings. Feelings which had nowhere to go except a possible date with her death shroud.
Choices.
He made one. “You won’t be there,” he said. “You’ll be safe, right here in my world on the Fourth of July, instead.”
The decision, at least on that score, was made. Though he couldn’t help but hear the echo of her own words: Doing something to try and avoid a vision is just as likely to be the path that causes it to occur.
A tear slid down her cheek. “We need to get me home. I’m almost out of time.”