“You won’t find your Calla here,” Nora told Brady. “She will not come to you. One way or another, that is certain.”
“You’re leaving town.” Rohan did not phrase that as a question. “Do you have somewhere else to be, Nora?”
Nora, true to her word, did not answer that question. “I’m not going to fight you this time,” she promised instead. “If you touch me, if either of you so much as shift your weight, I’m going to scream the most piercing scream you or anyone in this town has ever heard, and someone will come running to my rescue. You see, the ability to engender sympathy,to make others want to protect you—it is, in many ways, the most potent weapon there is.”
“That’s why Calla picked Gigi,” Brady said suddenly. “Isn’t it? You said you weren’t going to give us anything else, but you just did.”
“That,” Nora told Brady, “was for you, not him.”
And then she walked away, and Rohan let her.
Chapter 42
ROHAN
When they got back to the bayou, Rohan went yet again to check on the Grayson sisters, and the moment he crossed the threshold of the shack, he found himself slammed back against the wall.
“We have to quit meeting like this,” Rohan quipped.
“You have to stop,” Savannah said.
“Stop checking on you?” Rohan leaned his head forward enough to whisper directly into her ear. “Stop making plans in which there’s a role for you to play? Plans that will take you exactly where you want to go?” He looked down at the hands digging into his shoulders, harder by the second. “You’re the one who’s touching me, rule breaker—but certainly, say the word, andIwill stop.”
Cut me loose. End this. Push me away once and for all.
Savannah dropped her hands from his shoulders but didn’t pull back even a fraction of an inch. “You’re finally ready to go to England, and you need an accomplice.”
“It doesn’t have to be you.” Before, Rohan had confined that sentiment to his thoughts. This time, he murmured it directly into her ear, less a whisper than an invocation. He could see her pulse in her neck.He could feel it, could imagine exactly how the rhythmic beat and her soft skin would feel beneath his lips.
It doesn’t have to be you.
“Yes,” Savannah said, “it does.” She pushed him back again, slowly but none-too-gently, spreading his arms, pinning him like a specimen to a board. It was a good thing that Brady Daniels had not bothered to so much as climb the ladder, a good thing that Gigi Grayson was apparently a very heavy sleeper, and that Knox Landry was somewhere outside.
Rohan leaned his head back, offering up his own neck, wondering if the winter girl could see andfeelhis pulse the way he’d felt hers. Lips met skin—her lips, his skin. Then his and hers. She went in for the kind of kiss that wasn’t delicate—or merciful—in the least.
“No biting,” Rohan murmured. “Unless the other person really deserves it.”
“You always deserve it.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“New rule.” Now it was Savannah’s turn to speak directly into Rohan’s ear. “Ican touch you.”
Rohan smiled—with teeth. “You drive a hard bargain.”
Savannah trailed her fingers up his arm, along the top of his shoulder, up his neck, and then she pushed his face roughly to the side, moving his lips away from hers—away fromher. “You have a plan.”
Right now, Rohan was nothing butplans. “What would make you think that?”
“You always have a plan.” She seemed to be reminding herself of that.Clever girl. Clever, brutal, merciless winter girl.
“A private jet will be waiting for us at dawn.” Rohan’s voice entered a lower register. “There’ll be a six-hour time difference to contend with between here and England, so we’ll need to make haste. We’ll fly into a private airstrip just outside of London.”
“Definewe.”
“Plural noun. You and me.” Rohan paused. “The scholar, who now finds himself entirely amenable to coming with us.”
Savannah processed that. She did not askwhyBrady was amenable—or where he and Rohan had been. Instead, she cut straight to the heart of the matter. “If Brady’s on board, we don’t need Gigi. And now that she’s saidno, she should be safe enough if we leave her here.”
