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He needed to help her.
With real intention.
Today.
That was the only way to take this brick out of his chest.
His long legs went into full stride and he caught up to her in seven paces before she stepped onto the busy side street.
He grabbed her shoulder, pulling her to a stop as he rounded her and planted his feet in front of her. “I’ll find a carrier to bring the package to Hampshire.”
“No, I cannot ask you to do that.”
“I’m doing it.”
“I will find a way, Strider. You don’t owe me anything. I can see how wrong it was of me to approach you—to invoke the memories of your parents to get you to help me in the first place.”
“But I have time to travel to Bedfordshire today and into next week. I won’t by the time you figure out whatever it is you’re going to figure out and deliver that package. It could be another month before I can help.”
She looked off into the street for a long moment before shaking her head. “Just forget all of it, Strider. Forget I ever came to you. I’ll be gone in another month—back to Belize. That is Mrs. Flagton’s plan, to sail back to her home there as soon as possible. So just forget you ever saw me. What I had—asking for your help—was a silly dream that I had no right to imagine.”
“You sail back to Belize and you’ll be trapped there for the rest of your life.”
Her head gave one tense nod. “And I just have to accept that. Accept what comes.”
“Or you can let me have the package delivered and come with me to Bedfordshire to find your family. It’s the most efficient solution.”
Her lips pulled inward, tight to her teeth, and she stepped to the side to go around him. “I need to leave now, Strider.”
He jumped in front of her. “You only have one chance at this, Pen. Don’t waste it with pride.”
“Pride?” She scoffed, her arm with the bag lifting. “I haven’t been afforded the luxury of pride in a very long time, Strider.”
“Well, it has certainly reared at this moment. Apparently that luxury rears easily enough when I’m involved.”
She looked to the street, her jaw shifting back and forth, indecisive.
“I’ll get your package delivered, Pen. It is what I do, the moving of goods. This is nothing to me. Let me do this and we’ll leave today for Bedfordshire.”
She fought it for a moment, but then her eyes lit up, grateful, hopeful as she looked up at him. “Fine.”
Still so damn naïve.
He wasn’t her savior and that she even dared to look at him like that just proved how ignorantly innocent she was.
And how utterly striking when her face wasn’t long in worry, her eyes squinted to the point where she could barely see the world around her.
Beautiful, with the sliver of sun cracking through the cloud cover reflecting a bright streak of light in her green eyes. The edges of her lips lifted in a hesitant smile.
The brick lodged in his chest shifted slightly.
Guilt. Guilt was the only spur to his actions.
Not this. Not her smile that conjured up memories of a distant past that he’d buried a long time ago. Not her eyes that had once looked to him as her partner in everything when they were children.
For how much she’d changed—grown beautiful in the years—her eyes were still the same. Canny on him, not streaked with the wary fear that everyone looked at him with.
No, she’d always studied his every movement like he knew all the secrets in the world. That she still did so was unnerving in ways he didn’t care to explore.
