Page 5 of Blood of the Thistle

If he found her slip amusing, it didn’t show. His expression remained unreadable as he inclined his head once more and continued on, leaving Anna standing alone on the sidewalk outside a little bookstore.

She watched him walk away, resisting the urge to groan aloud. Flirt with a handsome Englishman, Mallory had said. Well, he hadn’t been English, but apparently that wasn’t the problem. She’d managed to turn a perfectly ordinary conversation into an exercise in social awkwardness.

He turned at that moment, their eyes meeting immediately.

Caught staring after him, Anna’s face went hot, and she whirled toward the bookstore’s display window just as he began to retrace his steps.

Her peripheral vision showed him coming closer, but Anna kept her attention fixed determinedly on the window until his voice came from just a few feet away.

“I’m sorry... I didn’t get your name.”

Anna turned back, unable to disguise her surprise. “My name?”

He grinned—like really smiled—and oh, boy, it was pretty disarming for how attractive it was.

“Yes, your name,” he confirmed, the distracting grin still in place.

“Anastasia—I mean, Anna.”

The grin actually widened. “Do I just pick one?”

She slapped her hand onto her cheek in mortification and somehow managed to hold his gaze. “Anastasia is my name, but everyone calls me Anna.”

“Hi. I’m Ryan,” he said, extending his hand to her.

His handshake was firm but brief, and when he released her, he appeared sheepish or unsure for one spectacular moment.

“So, Anna,” he said, trying the name out, “how long are you in York?”

“Just today. Well, tonight too. I leave tomorrow morning.”

“For?”

“London again, and then Rome.”

“Ah.” He nodded, and something about the way he said it made Anna wonder if tomorrow morning had somehow disappointed him. “So it seems I have a very limited window in which to redeem myself.”

She cocked her head, not following. “Redeem yourself?”

“I wasn’t exactly friendly back there.”

Her lips formed a drawn out, Ohhh. “You weren’t unfriendly,” she offered.

His smile returned, and for a moment he seemed to consider her. “I apologize. I had something on my mind.”

Anna shrugged and smiled, dismissing it politely. “No harm, no foul.”

Ryan looked briefly toward the street and then back at her. “All right, since you’re leaving tomorrow and I apparently have only a few hours to improve your opinion of me, would you have dinner with me tonight?”

Anna blinked, fairly certain she’d misheard, or had misunderstood. At the same time, she thought rather ridiculously that she was certainly glad she’d spent a little extra time on her hair that morning and, after nearly talking herself out of it, that she’d even applied the false eyelashes she’d bought specifically for the trip. Mallory had insisted they made her eyes look bigger. Anna wasn’t entirely convinced, but they hadn’t seemed worth peeling off after she’d gone to the trouble of putting them on this morning.

“Oh, I...” she began, frowning a bit in her confusion. “I would—” the response died in her throat.

Without warning, an icy pressure seized her chest, stealing the breath from her lungs, filling her with a sharp, visceral certainty that something was wrong. Her hand rose helplessly. Was this a heart attack?

Ryan frowned and reached for her.

“Anna?”