The moment “Mrs. Black” echoed through the room, her eyes rolled back in her head.
“Laney!” I caught her right before she pitched into the coffee table, instead guiding her onto my chest instead.
Now I was the one who couldn’t breathe properly. Something was happening with my chest. A constriction. A tightness I didn’t recognize.
Panic, some small voice in the back of my mind directed me. Panic, for the first time in my life, over a woman I barely knew.
“Laney.” I tapped her cheek. That’s what they did to people in movies, right? Were smelling salts still a thing? “Laney. Ariadne. Wake up for me, okay? Please, baby, I need you to wake up.”
Married to a stranger and now begging for the first time in my life, I was trying to do the right thing. But it was no good.
Faced with the prospect of being Mrs. Black—myMrs. Black—my wife had gone and fainted. And I was completely at her mercy.
5
JUST BREATHE
LANEY
“Laney? Sweetheart? Fuck, fuck,fuck. Hey, you need to come back to me, Ariadne. I got you.”
As my consciousness gradually returned, the first thing I saw was a chubby gold baby with wings and ribbons wound around its thighs. I squinted—nope, that was a cherub carved into the crown molding.
The second thing I saw were the matching gold flecks in Ronan Black’s concerned eyes beneath a wayward curl that had fallen over his brow.
Unable to stop myself, I reached up and pulled the curl. When released, it sprang back to its original position with a pleasant bounce.
A surprisingly warm smile drew across his face as he stroked my cheek. “There she is. Welcome back, gorgeous. You had me scared there for a moment.”
“I fainted, didn’t I?” I didn’t know why I was asking. The answer was obvious. Especially as I registered the fact that my cheek wasn’t nestled against a pillow, but Ronan’s very warm, very muscular chest.
That cheeky grin broadened, revealing two dimples deep enough to poke with my finger. “Like the most graceful sack of potatoes on the planet. The Russian judge gave you a nine-point-five, but she’s always been tough on the Americans.”
He was joking, but something sharpened in the back of his expression. Something under that jester’s mask that looked oddly like genuine concern.
My husband cupped my face and brushed his thumb across my cheekbone. “Don’t do that again, all right? I can only take so many surprises in one day.”
Oh, God. Husband.
Just like that, the flutter in my chest returned, and my breath deserted me all over again. I pushed up to sitting too fast, which brought on a second, albeit milder dizzy spell.
“Laney, Jesus. I saiddon’tdo that again.” Ronan hovered an arm in front of my chest, clearly ready to catch me again if necessary.
“I need—my pills. There’s an emergency stash in my—my clutch,” I sputtered. “It’s—the gold?—”
“On it. Don’t move.”
Ronan settled me into a pillow, then left in search of my bag. I pinched my nose while I forced my breath out against the closed nostrils.
“What are you—ah, baby, I think you need toopenyour airways to breathe, not close them.”
Once again, I was gathered against that ridiculously broad chest, and oddly, I found it difficult to resist. There was something about him that soothed me better than any vagal exercise.
I released my breath, but didn’t answer him until I managed to sit back up, locate the little pillbox inside the clutch he’d retrieved, and toss back one of the pills.
“Not,” I said with another, shorter gasp, “when you’re trying to reset” —another breath— “your heart’s electrical signals.”
I proceeded to demonstrate the maneuver again, this time doing it hard enough that I knew my face turned red from exertion. This time, it worked. My breath returned to normal, and the flutter in my chest dissipated.
