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From that spark in his eyes, one she wouldn’t want to cross too.
Brains plus brawn made for a dangerous breed, and that didn’t even account for the fact that he was easy-on-the-eyes. Not her type, personally, but still alluring.
And caring.
Like Jace, even if he was rough around the edges.
She let out another long sigh.
“I guess witches are your specialty then?”
He nodded.
A moment of silence passed.
“He’ll change his mind, you know.”
“What do you mean?” She tilted her head to the side.
She wasn’t certain how much of her and Jace’s conversation he’d heard exactly.
“Jace is stubborn, but he’s not a bad person. What happened to those women will motivate him, and if it doesn’t, David will get Jace to agree. He’ll shift.”
“And he’ll hate me.” She sighed, deflated. “I didn’t want to lie to him, but in the beginning, I thought he might take advantage of that knowledge, if the opportunity presented itself. Once we started working together, I guess I thought...” She inhaled a sharp breath. It was the first time she was fully admitting it, even to herself. “I guess I don’t know what I thought...maybe that the truth would cause things to end between us?” She looked down into the cocoa again. “Guess I was right.”
“Jace won’t be deterred so easily.”
She lifted a brow.
“If he cares for you, he won’t allow this to stand in his way.” Shane extended a hand toward her, offering to help her stand again. “But trust is a two-way street.”
She accepted the gesture and he helped pull her to her feet, but it felt like more than a helping hand. It felt like an offer of friendship, despite everything.
“The question is, Frankie...” Shane asked, “are you willing to meet him half-way?”
Jace barreleddownthe stairs despite the pain in his leg and out into the street. David and Damon were standing outside, talking in low voices. When he burst out the front door, they both glanced in his direction. Damon didn’t say anything, before he cast a parting nod toward David and Jace a look of pity, then disappeared into the ether, swallowed up by the shadows of the city, but David stood his ground. Jace perched on the edge of the stoop, reached inside his coat for a Marlboro and lit up.
“I thought you were tryin’ to quit?” David asked.
Jace nodded. “Would you try to quit through all this?” He gestured around them as if to indicate all the shit they were dealing with lately. “Quitting ain’t going so great.”
The sweet smoke filled his lungs, but nothing could calm him now. He thought back to the other night when he’d found Francesca…Frankie…whatever…in that alleyway, the way she’d reacted to the sight of his gun. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t even count how many things had gone wrong since then. Where was his head at?
Nestled into the part of his heart she’d laid bare, that was where.
He swore under his breath as he remembered how her body felt pressed against him. The taste of her lips. It’d taken everything in him to pull away from her then. But he’d thought she trusted him. Boy, what a fool he’d been. In more ways than one.
A deep growl rumbled in his chest, and he sucked hard on his cigarette in a vain attempt to drown out the memories. If he was going to get her out of his head, he would need something a lot stronger than a nicotine, but even he wasn’t enough of a fool for that.
“You need a minute to yourself? Or can I pick your brain?” David said from behind him.
Jace nodded to the empty space on the stoop next to him. “Be my guest.”
With some careful maneuvering, David lowered himself down to Jace’s side and nodded at the cigarette. “That’s gonna kill you some day, you know.”
The orange glow of the streetlights was illuminating, and the concrete beneath them was cold enough to make a man shiver. Jace was used to the cold. He could handle that. What he wasn’t used to was having this much conflict thrown at him. Being this hung up on a woman.
He’d never had that problem before.
