I have never been kissed, and I want you to be my first.
She’d said it so simply. As if it were a reasonable thing to ask of a man, as if she hadn’t turned everything over in himwith those two quiet sentences. She’d left it in his hands—not now, but someday—which meant she was waiting, and he was the one who had to decide, and every time he thought he’d talked himself out of it, she did something like this.
Stood on a ladder reaching for a book, her arse close enough to touch.
Wore his shirt.
Made a sound likeohwhen she found something wonderful.
“Here,” she breathed, triumphant, pulling the book free. She turned on the ladder to show him—no hesitation, no awareness of how small the distance was between them—and he didn’t move back.
He should have moved back.
Instead, he stood there as she opened the book to an illustration on the frontispiece, holding it up between them, her face bright with discovery.
“Look atthis. Lyon, this is another woman’s household account from the last century. Look at the notation here, she has written a margin note about the price of salt cod going up and she isfuriousabout it.”
Bonnie was laughing. She was six inches from his face, laughing at an ancient woman’s fury about salt cod, and he was looking at her mouth.
“I need to include her,” Bonnie said, still not looking at him, still pointing at the margin note. “I do not know her name yet but I need to find it because shemustbe included, Lyon, she is magnificent?—”
“Aye,” he said. His voice came out low, rougher than he intended.
She looked up.
The laugh faded, not into discomfort, but into something quieter. Her eyes were very blue in the firelight, and very wide, and she was utterly still, and he became aware all at once of how improper this was; her on the ladder, him standing so close he could feel the warmth of her, both of them suspended in a moment that had no good reason to continue.
He stepped back.
“Ye should read the full thing,” Lyon said, and it came out gruffer than he meant. He turned before she could see whatever was on his face and crossed to the nearest chair. He picked up the first book within reach—he didn’t look at what it was—and sat down heavily, opening it to a random page.
He stared at it without reading a word.
From across the room, he heard the soft sound of her descending the ladder. A pause. Then the rustle of her gathering more books from the lower shelves, the sound of someone building a stack with no intention of restraint. He heard her settle into the opposite chair.
And—damn him—Lyon looked up, despite himself.
She had arranged herself with the unconscious ease of a woman who had always believed armchairs were meant to be inhabited entirely; her legs tucked up, her notes balanced on one knee, the book from the ladder open in her lap. Around her feet, a stack of other volumes tilted at precarious angles.
He counted them:twelve.She’d swept through his library like a whirlwind, collectingtwelvevolumes she wanted to investigate. And he had to stop himself from asking her to read them out loud to him.
He had to stop himself from wanting desperately to learn more about her.
When Lyon looked up again, some indeterminate time later, the fire had burned lower and she hadn’t moved, except that her head had dropped against the wing of the chair. The book was still open on her chest, her notes still balanced improbably on her knee, and she was fast asleep.
She was smiling.
Not the bright, deliberate smile she wore when she was teasing him, or the friendly one she turned on Keith when the younger man did something kind for her. This was smaller than those.
The smile of a person who had, without fuss or drama, found exactly where they wanted to be.
He should wake her.
It was cold—no, it wasn’t, he’d lit the fire, and it was warm enough now.
She’d be stiff from the chair—perhaps, but she’d chosen it herself.
She should dress for dinner—she was his guest, stranded by the snow, and he’d already eaten dinner with her in far less formal arrangements than this.
