“I don’t know. I can’t read that expression. Ever since I was a kid it’s been what I can do. Playing hockey. Focusing. Reading people. Put those skills together and I’m a natural goalie. But what you’re thinking in that head right now, I can’t figure it out.”
For a smart man he was quite thick.
Her head was no mystery. It was a swamp of wanting, mixed with a thousand half sentences trying to find a way to ask him to kiss her again.
“I’m trying to be the good guy here.” His voice was strained. “You don’t deserve to have me pawing you until I leave.”
She sighed inwardly. He hadn’t done anything she hadn’t wanted. And rather than simply ask her, here he was telling her how she felt. What she wanted. What she was allowed to have. The exhaustion of the last two weeks sank in, and she glanced at her bed. Sleep would help clear her head, and suddenly she wanted space.
She went to the wall and pulled a discreet cord.
After a moment, the door opened and a servant entered.
“Please take Mr.Taylor to the blue room. And ensure that he has a supper tray sent up.” She gestured to his travel case. “I hope you sleep well.”
Tuck’s gaze was shuttered as he grabbed the leather bag. “And you too.”
She shut her eyes as the door snicked shut. Listened to the small sounds of the house. The distant voices in the hall. The wind against the panes. The flicker of the candlewick in the lamp near her mirror. So many words were in her head, but maybe he was right. Silence could be a virtue when thoughts were better kept to themselves—not every wish deserved fulfillment, and not every inclination should be explored.
The emptiness of the room loomed, and she tossed her head, refusing to be beaten. She had been managing quite well on her own. And she would persist in doing so. Perfectly well.
Alone.
Chapter Twenty-One
A stony-faced servant escorted Tuck to his chamber, also on the third floor but at the opposite end of the townhome—as far away from Lizzy as possible.
The spacious room had one of those gloomy, empty feelings, the way rooms get after hardly ever being used. From the shadows emerged a four-poster bed, its polished mahogany gleaming in the lamplight. Two large windows, draped in beige and indigo, overlooked the street. Everything else in the room that wasn’t wood was navy—the thick rug, the lace doily on the table beside the bed, and even the ornate wallpaper. And the furniture, like the bed, from the desk to the wardrobe to the chairs, was all built from the same dark wood. No paintings. No personalization. Just deafening silence, as if it was only ever disturbed when maids entered to dust.
He ignored the bed altogether. For once, he sensed sleep wouldn’t come easily. He hated to toss and turn and rubbing one out wasn’t going to help—not now. Even though his stolen moments with Lizzy had left him turned on. Christ, if electricity had been invented, he could probably power half of London. But that wasn’t the point—at least not the only one. He wanted her,but he wanted to hold her more, to feel her body folding into his, to enjoy what it was like to lie there and listen to her breathe.
So instead of spending the night in an empty bed with the absence of Lizzy, he dragged a chair to the window to stare out over the dark London streets and gather his thoughts.
When he’d had the accident back in Hallow’s Gate, losing control of the car, trapped in that frigid water, lungs burning, unable to see a goddamn thing—his life had never flashed before his eyes. There’d never been a moment when some grand comfort enveloped him in peace.
There was only bewildered fear, and a determination that he wouldn’t die, not like that.
He wasn’t embarrassed to admit to panic. Fuck. He’d been under ice. It was the only logical emotion. Death had come so damn close before retreating in the jumble of darkness and indescribable noise, combined with a dizzy, nauseated loss of balance—up went down, left turned right. Before he could unscramble his brain, sunlight warmed his skin, cattails bobbed overhead, and an apple core smacked him in the face and his life changed.
In all that chaos, only Lizzy’s big blue eyes had made any sense.
It wasn’t that he accepted being in this world. But what was the option? To walk around every minute mumbling “I can’t believe this happened, this is wild”? He was here now. And that meant he had to deal with life as it was, not as he wished it would be.
He wasn’t meant to be in 1812, but under different circumstances, he might be meant for Lizzy. They had chemistry. He sensed they both wanted more.
Dust motes floated in the air, directionless. Stuck in the pastwith a wife he’d caught feelings for—genius-level decision-making. Looked like he was on his way to being the Einstein of clusterfucks.
He stood and cracked his back. There was no one in this whole damn city able to shoot two pucks toward his head, a ritual he’d made Regals’ forward Gale Knight perform before every game to silence his mind.
The only other way he knew to tamp down his thoughts was to sweat.
Not the same as a hundred-mile-an-hour rubber biscuit flying at your face, but it’d do.
He ripped off his shirt and started doing reps of single-leg, opposite-side reaches, slow and controlled to focus on balance and ankle stability. Then the half kneel to double jump. Coach always said “reload to explode.” Gotta always have the power to be ready to make a second jump with the same leg. Squats. High reps for endurance. He groaned. These routines sucked, but he’d be glad he did them come a 5–3 power play in the third quarter. Because he’d play again. Because he’d get home. Jane had seemed sure of it. Lizzy believed. And they were both smarter than him. He had to trust the process.
Life had to return to normal eventually—to a world that made sense. In that world, his job was to soak up the electric charge of the crowd without getting overwhelmed and to keep an eye on game plays while maintaining a laser focus on the puck. If he ever let one in, he’d have to let it go, funneling all his energy into stopping the next one.
After busting out lunges, side planks, sit-ups, and push-ups, he was breathing hard, sheened in sweat.
