She pushed the air from her lungs in a huff. “I can’t hear you!”
He rolled his eyes and stepped into her space, leaning down until his lips came dangerously close to brushing her temple. “I said, the storm is terrible. You need to leave now if you’re going home tonight.”
A shiver ran down her spine and settled low in her belly. How did he always have this effect on her, the disconcerting ability to unnerve her with the simplest gesture? Those wicked winks, devastating dimples, salacious smirks.
Sadie was spending too much time at the printing press if all her naughty thoughts were alliterative.
With a shake of the head, she stepped back. “I’ll be fine. I don’t live far.”
She couldn’t hear his disdainful snort, but she saw the flare of his nostrils. “If you wait any longer, you won’t be going anywhere.” He punctuated each word with a related gesture, and Sadie felt a giggle rising in her chest.
Yes, the man made her giggle. Thenerve.
Because Garrett MacInness had no right to make her feel things, nor was her treacherous body justified in experiencing flutters at the hands of—or proximity to—the bounder. Because he caused every woman to feel flutters, therefore the flutters flipping were fundamentally—
She dropped the tray ofFs back in on the shelf next to the press and squeezed her eyelids shut.
Because Garrett MacInness had no romantic interest in Miss Sarah Wilton, formerly of the Upper West Side. Because he saw her as a friend, notevena friend. A colleague. His secretary.
Her throat tightened at the memory of the night a month ago. A dozen or so members of the suffrage society had worked late planning, and Garrett had stayed behind to help her clean up. As they locked up the firehouse, he caught her elbow.
“Would you like to get something to eat with me?”
She’d nearly stumbled down the stairs in her haste to agree. “I’d like to change, if I may.” She wasn’t about to step out with this man, the man she had been secretly pining for since she attended her first rally the previous fall, in ink-stained trousers. When she left her family—or they asked her to leave, depending on whom you asked—she wanted to avoid any reminder of the constraining, joyless life she left behind on the Upper West Side. Knowing her parents would flinch at the sight of her in trousers or outdated fashion, dining with a man who worked instead of living off inherited money, added an extra thrill to her step, even as she worried she’d forgotten how to be a lady.
They’d agreed to meet at a small restaurant halfway down the block, and when she’d arrived in the periwinkle dress that always made her feel pretty beneath her serviceable-but-outdated wool coat, a light snow was falling, softening the glare of the gas lamps lining the street. There he was, framed by the plate-glass window at the entrance, a brilliant red amaryllis in his hand.
Her breath had caught at the sight. Was the flower for her? Her heart raced at the confirmation of her hope—that the invitation had meant somethingmore, and this magical snowy night could be the start of the type of love she had always wanted but never dared to dream of.
Summoning her bravery, she’d stepped inside just in time to see him tuck the amaryllis behind the ear of a lovely strawberry-blond woman before pressing a light kiss to her cheek. He plucked another bud from the arrangement on a console table and tucked it into his lapel, fixing the woman with a wide grin.
His eyes, those splendid hazel irises with flecks of gold, had brightened when he saw her over the woman’s shoulder. “Sadie,” he beamed. “You’re here!”
Her lower lip caught between her teeth as she held back a scream. “I am.” She gestured toward the woman, horrified to realize just how dowdy and silly she looked by comparison. “Is your friend joining us for dinner?”
He hesitated, his gaze darting between the women. “She’s not—yes, she is—”
Sadie hummed loudly enough to cut him off as the reasons she’d pilloried the institution of courting and marriage came rushing back. “How lovely.” She stepped past him, slowing to pat him on the chest just below the amaryllis. The bloom she’d thought would be a gift for her, but was meant for another.
She looked for some escape, something she could say to break the ice settling in her rib cage, and fixed her attention on the approaching waiter, who wore a similar flower in his lapel. She’d chuckled, though it made her stomach ache. “You look like one of the help,” she said, giving Garrett a weak smile.
His eyes had darkened then, something she’d seen so rarely she hardly recognized it through the veil of her hurt. His mystery woman opened her mouth, but Sadie pressed her hand to her forehead, complained of a headache, and darted back into the street.
They never spoke of that night again, certainly because it had carried no significance for Garrett. She wasn’t about to tell him she’d returned home and cried until her eyes burned, then shoved the dress into the bottom of her closet. How foolish she’d been to think he wantedher, that he saw her as anything but the petulant girl who set the type and opened letters.
And now he dared to feign concern for her welfare. “I can sleep here if need be, but you should go home. You have further to travel.”
His lips twisted as he leaned close again, the heat of his body warming her far better than any coal furnace could. “I’m not leaving you here alone.”
She planted her hands on her hips and fixed him with what she hoped was a deadly scowl. “Then help me so we can both leave together.”
So she could return to her room, hike up her skirts and touch the place between her legs that was wet and aching, working her bud until she arched off the bed and cried out his name before falling into a fitful sleep.
“Right,” he said with a nod. “Tell me what to do.”
With that command, he rolled up his sleeves, exposing his muscled forearms.
Thatbastard.
