Total pages in book: 26
Estimated words: 24637 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 123(@200wpm)___ 99(@250wpm)___ 82(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 24637 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 123(@200wpm)___ 99(@250wpm)___ 82(@300wpm)
And for one long sweet treacherous moment he forgets every word of his own cold logic and kisses me back like a man gone under for the third time and glad of the water.
He’s the one who breaks it. He’d always need to be the one who breaks it.
“That,” he says, his voice gone to gravel, “isn’t how mature adults conduct a sensible agreement.”
“No,” I agree, climbing off the bed before my own heart can file an objection, reaching for yesterday’s clothes with all the dignity a barefoot woman can muster. “It’s how the rest of us conduct being alive. You ought to try it sometime, when you’re feeling brave.”
I’ve made it all the way to the bathroom door, almost clean, almost out with the last word for once in my life, when he says my name, and something in how he says it stops me with my hand on the frame.
“Blythe.” A pause, the rails filling it. “I don’t know how to do the thing you’re asking. I’ve never once in my life known how.” Another pause, longer. “But I lay awake last night after you fell asleep, and I have to tell you, it’s becoming a genuine problem that I want to learn.”
Chapter Ten
THE TROUBLE STARTS, as most of my troubles do, with me being good at something.
We’re in the lounge car after dinner, the whole investor crowd of us, brandy going round and a card game I don’t know the rules to and the lamps turned low against the dark sliding by outside, and I’ve been parked on a velvet bench beside a man I’ll spare the naming of, he not deserving to be a footnote in what comes after, a younger rancher with an easy laugh and kind eyes and four thousand head of cattle up near Amarillo.
He asked me, an hour ago, what I actually do, not what a Karalis fiancée does but what I do, and made the fatal error of seeming to mean it, and so I’ve been telling him about the birds.
I forget myself when I talk about the birds. That’s the trouble with me. I forget the borrowed dress and the borrowed name and the man across the car, and I light up, I know I do, I’ve been told, and the young rancher’s leaning in with his chin in his hand asking real questions about jess and creance and why a one-winged kite is worth saving.
And somewhere in the middle of explaining how you imp a broken feather, I notice the whole car’s gone a little quiet, and I notice why, and the why is standing by the bar with a brandy he isn’t drinking and a look on his face I’ve never once seen there.
Loukas Karalis is jealous.
It’s so absurd I nearly laugh. This morning the man recited me a whole philosophy over the eggs, how we were far too mature to confuse a storm with anything daylit, how nobody gets hurt, how sensible it all was, and now here he stands gone the color of his own brandy because a nice boy from Amarillo wanted to know about my birds.
He’s no right to it. He bought my company for a week and swore the rest meant nothing, and a man who means nothing doesn’t get to look at me like that across a crowded car, like he’s working out whether the velvet bench will hold his weight if he comes over and removes the competition by hand.
So I do the unforgivable thing. I let it run a little.
I lean toward the young rancher and laugh at something only medium-funny and lay my hand on his sleeve for half a second, light and friendly and nothing at all, and I feel it down the whole length of the car the instant I do it, the temperature of one particular man dropping straight through the floor.
He’s at my elbow inside a minute.
“They’re calling it a night,” he tells the rancher pleasantly, which is a lie, the cards are still going, and his hand settles at the back of my neck, warm and heavy and entirely proprietary, his fingers spreading to claim the bare nape of me. “My fiancée tires easily these days. The planning. You understand.”
The young rancher understands. The young rancher has eyes, and what they can see is a man staking a claim in front of witnesses, and he makes his excuses with the grace of someone who’d genuinely rather keep his teeth.
Then Loukas walks me back through the swaying carriages, his hold never once leaving my neck, not gripping, just there, a brand laid on without the heat, and neither of us says a word until the cabin door shuts behind us and the lock turns over loud in the quiet.
“You’ve no right,” I tell him, rounding on him, and whatever’s roughening my voice isn’t fear. “You don’t get to do that. You told me this morning, over the eggs, that it was nothing, that we were too grown to make it anything, and then you cross a room and put your hand on me like a deed of sale the second another man is kind to me. Pick one, Loukas. You don’t get the cold philosophy and the warm hand both. You don’t get to keep me at arm’s length and on a leash at once.”