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“Mmm. Lie,” he said blandly.
“I’m not even attracted to you.”
“’Nother lie. This is fun. Keep going.”
She wanted to slap the stupid baiting smile off his lips.
“I am unaffected by you,” she said, looking away.
“Lie.”
“Stop! You beast! You are being ghastly!”
He reached for her so fast, he blurred. Eliza yelped as he yanked her against him. Her arms were folded between his chest and her breasts, and she was mere inches from his face.
His eyes lightened to a brighter, inhuman blue, and from this small distance, she could see that the inner color of his irises was almost white as snow. Her breath caught in her throat.
“What did you do that night?”
“I…” His hands were so strong on her arms.
“What?” he growled.
“I went back inside. I went to my mother’s room and got so dizzy I thought I would be sick. I feigned a headache and danced no more that night. My mother was very sick. I cuddled in bed with her, and she guessed. She could smell the brandy on me. She laughed and hugged me close when I told her of my aunt’s insults, and she told me she thought I should come here. She knew I was unhappy, and she knew she wouldn’t be around. She said when she was gone, I should come here.”
“There. There’s the truth.” Garret’s grip on her arms softened, and he leaned down, angled his face and pressed his lips to hers more gently than the prior kiss. She stayed frozen there for two breaths before he eased back with a soft smack of his lips. Those wild-colored eyes of his blazed even brighter as he searched her face. “It’ll be work getting your aunt’s voice out of your head, I think.”
“How…how do you know that?”
“Because my pa is still talking in mine. Sometimes those big voices don’t leave us easy, even after they’re gone.” He pushed her back and settled her onto the blanket, then picked up his hat and dusted it off, settled it on his bent knee and leaned back against the tree again, watching her. “You’ll drink like that again, and it’ll be with me. It’ll be cheap whiskey. Fuck that fancy brandy. You won’t have to run away, and you won’t be sick. You’ll have a safe place to relax. I’ll invite Lenny. You’ll make a new memory, so that won’t be the only one you have of drinking.”
“This is the memory I’ll think of now,” she whispered, her hand on the canteen.
The very corner of his lip quirked up into a crooked smile. “There’s a smear of flour on your face.”
With a little gasp of mortification, she wiped her cheek.
“Other one,” he directed, pointing.
She ran her sleeve over her other cheek, and yep, there was a smear of flour.
“What have you been doing today?” he asked.
“Making a pie. Or trying to make a pie. I upset Lenny. I thought if I made her a pie, she would forgive me.”
“She don’t get upset,” he told her.
“She’s upset with me.”
His dark eyebrows drew down. “What did you do to her?”
Eliza hesitated, plucking at a loose thread on the edge of the blanket.
“Eliza,” he rumbled.
“I mentioned what you told me. About the wolf.”
He inhaled deeply and exhaled a frustrated sound.
