Page 51 of Woods of the Raven

“Actually, could you bring it down and hang it by the front door? We need some extra protections until the house locks itself.”

“What does locking itself mean?” Lorne asked, leaning forward to brush a stray piece of hair out of my eyes and then tuck it behind my ear.

Did I think it was odd that he was touching me? Not at all. We’d stood earlier by my stall at the festival in full view of anyone who bothered to look, with my hand on his chest and his over mine.

At the moment, he was being so gentle with me, his voice sultry and sexy, his eyes heated pools of cobalt, that I was losing track of our conversation. “What?” I whispered.

He chuckled, and his smug laughter was all male because he knew—no way to miss it—that he was having a brain-numbing effect on me. He got up and sat down beside me, took my wineglass, and set it down next to his beer. He then looked at his niece. “Go hang the bells, please, then move the witch’s ladder and check on your father.”

“I—yes. Okay.” She darted from the room.

I could barely breathe as he took my chin in his hand, lifting it so I had to look up into his eyes from a very short distance.

“This might come as a surprise to you, but the day I was introduced to the town, I noticed you in the crowd and decided right then and there that I was going to talk to you.”

His words made no sense, so it took me a moment. “You did?”

“But while I was looking at you and thinking how you stuck out from the crowd with how luminous you were—”

“You thought I was luminous?”

“—all you did was scowl at me.”

I couldn’t have heard him right. “I’m sorry?”

“Are you apologizing for the glaring you were doing that day, or do you have no idea what I’m talking about?”

“I certainly did not scowl at you,” I assured him, wanting to be closer, pressing, trying to move my leg without him noticing, thinking maybe I could get into his lap. “You’re the scowler, not me.”

His lazy, sexy grin brought a sound out of me, from deep in my chest, that I wasn’t proud of—a whine and squeak simultaneously.

“Well, from that first day on, I have stopped to talk to you a million times, and not once have you ever seemed happy about it. And I wave whenever I see you, and get nothing back.”

I squinted at him. “Why would I wave at you when you might give me a ticket for endangering your life by distracting you while you’re driving?”

“What?”

“You say you stop to talk to me, but you’re always scolding me or warning me or threatening me.”

“No.”

“Yes,” I insisted.

“I just worry about you, is all.”

He worried? All that grouchiness was concern? I was supposed to be perceptive, but somehow, I’d missed that. “You do?”

“Of course. You think you can carry six-foot pieces of plywood on the front of your bike, but you can’t. Why don’t you ever ask for help?”

“From you?”

“Yes, from me. I tell you that all the time.”

He told me all the time? He’d offered his help? “Are you sure you were conveying that, or was this happening in your head?”

The chuckle was filthy, and his warm hand moved from my chin to around the back of my neck.

“I…if I would have gotten any of that, the concern, the offers of help, I certainly would have been different with you.” I could barely form words, as breathless as I was. “I will wave from now on, because really, I’m a nice person, and I want you…want to be nice to you.”