She opens her mouth like she's about to argue, then seems to think better of it. “Thank you.” Her soft smile does strange things to my chest that I don't want to acknowledge.
The teenager rings us up, then fumbles with the card machine. His eyes keep darting to Rory, and he's gone slightly pink.
“Sorry,” he mutters, pressing the wrong button for the third time. “I just— Sorry.”
“No rush,” Rory beams with a smile.
The kid's flush deepens, if such a thing were even possible. He finally manages to process the payment and hands us our sandwiches, his hand shaking slightly as he gives Rory hers.
“Thanks so much,” she says.
“Yeah, no problem, have a great day,” he says quickly, the words tumbling out.
I know exactly how the poor bastard feels. I'd been much the same last night, staring at her from across the bar like some sort of creep, utterly transfixed by her laugh. By the way she tuckedher hair behind her ear when she was thinking, and how she spoke with her hands. Every little thing about her.
I'm not much better today, to be fair.
Outside, the cold hits us again. A man in a suit shoulders past Rory without apologizing, nearly knocking her into a lamp post. I grab her elbow to steady her, and she turns into my touch, her face tilted up to mine as snowflakes catch in her long, dark eyelashes.
“Are you alright?” I ask, my thumb absently stroking the inside of her elbow through her coat.
“I'm fine.” She shakes her head, but doesn't pull away. Instead, she smiles up at me with a glint in those big blue eyes. “You and those heroic gestures. Keeping me alive seems to be your speciality today.”
“I have no doubt Smut Readers Anonymous will benefit from said gestures.” She grins when I throw back her earlier correction before my voice drops lower, rougher. “Though I'm not sure how the points system works on your compatibility rating spreadsheets.”
Her laugh is bright and unguarded, warming me from the inside out like the first sip of whisky. It's so quintessentially what drew me to her last night that I feel my chest ache with something I can't name.
“Oh, I can assure you, heroic gestures score very highly.” She leans closer, almost conspiratorially, and I catch another hint of vanilla and cinnamon. “Right up there with not judging my public smut reading habits.”
“Duly noted,” I say with a grin, finally—reluctantly—releasing her elbow.
She takes a bite of her sandwich, and her eyes widen with genuine delight.
“Oh, this is actually really good.”
“Told you,” I say, unreasonably pleased by her reaction.
“The pickle is so tangy. Are they a Pret thing or a British thing?” Practically bouncing on her toes, she takes another bite. “Can I buy a jar of these?”
“They’re Branston pickles. Every supermarket carries them.”
Her enthusiasm over a simple sandwich should be ridiculous. Instead, it makes the corner of my mouth twitch upward involuntarily, as if somehow the volume on the constant, low-level irritation I carry around has been magically reduced. Like she's turned down the noise of the world and left only this moment—standing on a snowy London street, watching her discover something as simple as Branston pickles.
She smiles around a mouthful of sandwich. “Perfect. I'll grab some this weekend.”
As we walk, she gestures with her sandwich, waving it about for emphasis. I keep waiting for pickles to go flying, but somehow, she manages to keep everything intact. She's clearly more coordinated with food than she is with London traffic.
“So what about you? Heading back to the office?”
“I have meetings,” I reply, coming to a reluctant stop outside the DeMarco Holdings building.
The sensible thing would be to say goodbye. To head back upstairs to my colour-coded calendar and predictable afternoon. To maintain the boundaries I've so carefully constructed between work and anything resembling a personal life. The walls I built after Charity walked out aren't just for show—they're what keep things manageable. Predictable.
Safe.
But then she tilts her head, snowflakes catching in the blonde hair spilling out from beneath her knitted cap. We're standing far too close for casual acquaintances, close enough that I can see the individual snowflakes melting on her flushed cheeks. Close enough that I can count her quickened breaths in the cold air.
And when her tongue darts out to catch a snowflake on her bottom lip, my entire body goes taut. All I can think about is how that tongue felt against my skin last night, the wicked things she did with her mouth that made me see stars. How she looked so fucking beautiful on her knees for me, those blue eyes locked on mine while she took me deeper into her warm mouth.
