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“You okay in there?”
“Just… catching my breath.”
He looks over his shoulder down the hall. “I said I’d go check on you because you left so quickly and?—”
I slap my hand to my face. “I made things worse, didn’t I?”
“No, no, no. Not worse. Not at all.” Rory touches my shoulders. “It’s okay.”
I shake my head. “This was a mistake.”
“No. It wasn’t. You’re about to give the best tour of your life. You’ve already got Liliana hooked,” Rory says with a half-smile.
My breath is coming quick and shallow. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t make them care. Can’t make them change their minds if they don’tcare.”
Rory’s eyes harden in mine. “Chaplin, you need to breathe.”
“Can’t. I can’t.”
“Focus on your breathing. This isn’t life or death.”
“But it feels like it, it feels?—”
Rory yanks my shoulders toward him and suddenly, not only do I feel my chest pressed against his, but his mouth… is on my mouth.
He’s kissing me.
Hard and unyielding.
I don’t move a muscle. Don’t make a move to hold on to him. Not because I don’t want to. Because I don’t knowhow. It’s been so long since I’ve been kissed. And while I might be taken off-guard, I’m not mad about it at all.
I want more.
Rory pulls away, looks me dead in the eye. “You go in there and give them everything you got, Chaplin.”
I nod, my lips still parted in shock. “Okay.”
“If there’s anyone for the job, it’s you. You care so much and if they can’t feel it, if they don’t get it, then it’s their problem.”
“Okay.”
“You ready?”
Miraculously, I nod even harder. “Yes. I’m ready.”
“Yeah, you are,” Rory says with a smile.
I understand now. He kissed me to get me out of my head, to put my mind on other things. Charge me up with a different kind of fire.
Well, Rory McEvoy, it worked.
I tear away from him just as Fred Frederickson walks out of the dining room, head held high, arms crossed over his chest. “Ready for us, Constance?”
I puff up my chest. “Absolutely.”
“This original Rumfordfireplace is in perfect condition,” I say, pointing down to the fireplace across from the master bedroom. “You shouldn’t be afraid to use it because it’s been designed to reflect heat and not smoke. Very ingenious.”
The group nods, Rory the most so from the back. He gives me a thumbs up, like a dad at a ballet concert. I can almost hear him saying,“Doing great, sweetie!”
