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“Why do your eyes change color like that?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” He looked down at the hand that shook Mr. Lancaster’s. “I felt something when he touched me.”
“Like what?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Like his blood was flowing through mine. It’s like, if I hold your hand—” he reached for her hand and entwined his fingers through hers. “It feels…really pleasant.”
Really pleasant. Didreally pleasantkick the world’s axis on its butt? As she wondered about that, she tried to concentrate on what he was saying, and why she was still here. Didreally pleasantsnatch her traitorous breath away by the simple act of holding her hand? She didn’t know what he felt with Lancaster, but she felt something now.
“But it feels like your hand,” he continued, letting her go. “not you as a whole. When I shook his hand, it felt as if my blood naturally began to flow with his, like two pieces of a puzzle coming together.”
“That’s strange,” she said softly. “Do you think it means something?”
“I don’t know. I also felt angry. Even betrayed. It’s odd.”
Odd. Yes, the same word Mr. Lancaster had used. Not strange or weird. But odd. “Sebastian, do you think you could be related to him somehow?”
“Aye. Somehow, when I was born almost three hundred years before him. A descendant, perhaps.”
Noelle put her hand up to her head. This whole thing was making her head spin.
He looked back into the shop. “Perhaps there is unfinished business between us.”
“You’re not going to kill him, are you?”
He flicked his gaze to her and let his reply dangle there between them for an instant like the peppermint scent coming from his mocha, and his mouth. She thought about kissing him, about his warm lips on hers. Then his smile widened into a grin as she admired him. “No. I’ll remember that I’m here in the twenty-first century, where there are laws against such things.”
She nodded. “Yes.” Why was she still here talking to him? “Well—”
“Noelle, please listen. Just give me a moment. Let me explain. I don’t think you are rash or condemning. Let me explain.”
She knew she was crazy, but he was right. She wasn’t rash or condemning. She tried to be fair. She might regret it, but…“Go on.”
“Watching you on the news while I recovered helped me. I came from the past that night. ’Twas as if I were newly born in that store. Everything here overwhelmed me. The lights, the noise…but your voice was like an anchor, keeping me steady. After I was hit, I clung to the only thing I knew. Your face. It delights me. Your kiss haunts me.”
She almost closed her eyes and sighed in agreement. It haunted her, too. “But you don’t know me,” she argued softly. And she didn’t know him.
“So tell me everything. Spend time with me and let me learn about you.”
She felt a slight smile tug on her lips at the way he spoke. He certainly was a smooth talker. And a killer. “No. You’re a killer. I can’t.” She turned to leave. His hand around her wrist stopped her.
He spoke quickly and passionately. “Preston ordered families killed. He had almost everyone in his pocket. Judges, justices of the peace, all of them. Either he paid them, or he threatened to kill their families. Everyone was afraid of him. When he ordered the death of a woman I cared about, I knew I had to do it. So I did, while he held a blade to her throat. Flinging my knife into his back was the only chance I had to save Charlotte’s life.”
She stared up into his eyes ringed by thick black lashes and eclipsed by soft, black waves. He did it to save someone he cared about. Did it change things for her?
“I come from a different world than this one,” he told her. “It doesn’t mean I liked it. In my century, you cannot rely on the law to keep you safe. You either kill or, if you came against someone like Preston, are killed.”
He was so convincing. Oh, she wanted to believe everything he said. But there was no real evidence of any of it, except for the riders she’d seen. She had to go on the assumption that he was delusional.
“Goodbye, Sebastian.”
She pulled softly on her wrist and he released her. She took a step and was almost overcome by the smell of apples.
Almost instantly, she felt Sebastian’s hand clamp onto her wrist again. “Run!”
She turned to look at what he was looking at and quickly did as he said. The two horsemen had returned. Their horses’ hooves were touching down a block away when she saw them. She let Sebastian pull her, but before she could go anywhere, the Starbucks door opened, and a hand reached out and snatched hers, spilling her Toasted White Chocolate Mocha on her coat. She was pulled hard enough to sever her connection to Sebastian. Once back inside, she turned to glare at Mr. Lancaster. “Why did you—”
The door opened and Sebastian stood in the entryway for an instant. His gaze raked over Mr. Lancaster like molten gold, and then he hurried to her side.
