Page 49 of The Librarian Spy

“It was moving,” Ava said.

“It isn’t common for most refugees to enjoy the sadness of it. Not when they have enough sorrow already.”

Ava nodded in understanding. “Lamant sees things differently than others.”

“Which is why I knew you two would get on well.” James tossed her a grin.

Clipped footsteps sounded behind them. James put a hand to her lower back, nudging her to walk a little faster. Not that she needed the encouragement. The steps mingling with theirs in the thin, October night air held a note of authority and importance. This was no drunk staggering home from a late night of imbibing.

James turned abruptly down a narrow alley, then up a flight of stairs and through another slender alley. Lukas entered Ava’s thoughts once more. How he had shown up that night, how he’d been so fixedly watching her.

Though Portugal was neutral, it did not mean an undercurrent of clandestine activity didn’t happen beneath the government’s nose. Nazis still found ways of making people disappear.

James pulled Ava into an alcove, so her back was against the wall, and he was covering her with his own body. They were face-to-face. Close. His features half-shadowed, his eyes dark in the late night, his jaw smooth from a recent shave.

But he wasn’t studying her as she was him. His head was tilted, tense as he strained to listen.

Footsteps echoed in the distance. Whoever chased them knew Alfama as well as James.

“It’s the PVDE,” he whispered.

His attention shifted and suddenly he was noticing her, his eyes sweeping over her face like a caress. He lifted his hand and let his fingertips whisper over the edge of her chin.

Ava’s pulse quickened and left her head spinning.

The footsteps grew louder.

“Kiss me,” James said.

She gazed up at him in surprise. She hadn’t kissed a man before. Her studies had occupied her life, and then the library and the war effort. Men’s advances had always come on too strongly, their eagerness so plain, it left a wariness in her veins and a refusal on her tongue.

This was not how she wanted her first kiss, in an alley, evading someone chasing them down, like some ridiculous spy film.

“You’ve been to too many cinemas,” she replied.

The clip of stiff-soled shoes came from the top of the street now.

James turned his gaze to the right, where the sound came from. “Haven’t you at least read enough books to be tempted?”

She had. And he was no Darcy.

No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than he leaned closer, his eyes holding hers.

“‘And the sunlight clasps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea. What is all this sweet work worth if thou kiss not me?’” His fingertips brushed her face. “You aren’t the only reader,” he murmured.

As the footsteps neared and Ava tilted her head, her heart pounded like a drum as her eyes fell shut. She wasn’t yielding her first kiss to a coworker trying to escape a bit of trouble in a foreign country. No, she was being wooed beneath a starlit sky, in the most romantic city in the world with a man who recited poetry.

He had won and she was happy to reward the victor.

His mouth lightly touched hers, just enough to hint at its warmth, the smoothness of his lips. The footsteps stopped near them, and the man grumbled about foolish youth or something along those lines before departing.

James pressed his mouth to hers once more even as the echoing click of hard soles departed from them. The taste of tart cherry liquor and excitement lingered on her tongue.

Only when silence blanketed them once more did James lean back with a lopsided grin. “I dare say you have saved us.”

“Byron?” she asked in a bid to guess the author of the poem he’d delivered so beautifully.

“Percy Bysshe Shelley,” he gently corrected her. “From ‘Love’s Philosophy.’ However, if you’re partial to Byron, I have somewhere I must take you one of these days.”