LITMIR.BIZ

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his. She saw the man, and then looked around the shop, her eyes desperately flitting this way and that. “I can’t just pick up and leave without notice. I have a business here. I have partners. My cousins.”

      “You have to. There’s already one out there.”

      “They can’t see us beyond the crystals.”

      “Maybe not. But they know we’re around here somewhere. I was still bleeding when I got here. They can smell my blood. Soon there will be more. Then what will we do? Never leave again? Stay in this shop for the next year?”

      “I still have my bracelet.”

      He stared at her, then sat in a corner chair. “You’re right. You can leave. This isn’t your problem. I’ll move in until you’re ready to go. Do you have somewhere for me to sleep?”

      Her gaze hardened. “Fine. I’ll call the twins.”

      He smiled. “I thought you’d come around to my way of thinking.”

      “Don’t kid yourself, Malcolm. I’m not doing this for you. I couldn’t care less what happens to you. I’m doing this for the others. And I will come back one way or another. My life is here.”

      Was here. He’d make her see that, because if there was one thing Malcolm was good at, it was getting people to come around to his way of thinking.

      * * *

      Celia climbed the stairs to her bedroom above the shop. Unfortunately Malcolm was right on her heels.

      “There is no reason for you to come up here,” she called behind her.

      “Call it curiosity,” Malcolm said, suddenly too close for comfort.

      “We both know what that did to the cat.”

      He smiled at her. That wide, charming smile of his that had made her fall in love with him in the first place. She took a deeply annoyed breath and stepped into her small one-bedroom apartment.

      “Wait here,” she muttered, and went into her bedroom and pulled down an overnight bag from the top of her closet.

      “Nice place,” he called from the front room.

      It wasn’t nice; it wasn’t not nice. It was convenient.

      She stepped into the bathroom, collecting her makeup and toothbrush. When she walked back into the living room, Malcolm was standing by the window, his smile replaced with worry.

      “There are three more.”

      “Surely not hovering in front of the shop.”

      “No. Walking up and down the street. They know I’m here, they just don’t know where.”

      “It’s the blood on your clothes. Here, take that shirt off.”

      “What will I wear?”

      She hurried back into her closet and pulled his T-shirt down off the shelf.

      “You kept one of my shirts?” he asked, surprise lifting his voice.

      “It was an accident. Don’t read anything into it,” she said drily.

      But he wasn’t buying it. A huge smile filled his face as he took the shirt. He stripped out of the dirty one and she couldn’t help staring. She’d always loved his chest, sculptured and bronzed. She knew every plane, every soft spot, intimately.

      And dammit if a part of her didn’t still long to reach out and touch him once again. To run her fingers over the hard ridges of his muscles and feel them flex beneath her touch. He might be an ass, but he was a damned good lover. And they had been real good together.

      She looked up and his eyes caught and held hers. He knew what she’d been thinking. He knew her that well. Too well. She might be a fool where Malcolm was concerned, but she wasn’t a pushover. “Just because things didn’t work out for you with that woman doesn’t mean you can come running back to me and I’ll take you back.”

      “Never thought you would,” he said, then broke into that easy smile. “Though a man can hope.”

      “Are you ready?” she asked, losing her patience.

      “Baby, I was born ready.”

      “Then let’s go.”

      With his dirty shirt in her hand, they went back down the stairs and into the shop. Even more men were in the street. Malcolm hovered by the window. “Any chance you have another bracelet?”

      “Nope. There weren’t a lot of them to begin with. Besides, honestly, with that many out there, I’m not sure how well the bracelet will work.”

      “What are you saying?”

      “We’re going to have to make the change. They can’t smell us in our true from. We can run out the back, down the road to the hills beyond.”

      “But it’s only dusk and there are people everywhere. We will be seen.”

      “What choice do we have? If we wait any longer, as soon as we walk out the door they’ll pounce.”

      “Have you changed here before?” he asked.

      “No.”

      “Have you hiked up into those hills? Are they very secluded?”

      “No, and I don’t know.”

      “Well, we can’t very well run all the way back to the Colony.”

      “I’ll have Jade meet us in the canyon with your truck.”

      “What about your car?”

      “I’ll leave it here. I’m coming back, Malcolm. This is my life now. This is where I belong, and you and the others are just going to have to accept that.”

      He nodded, but she could see in the stubborn glint in his eyes that he wasn’t accepting anything. She picked up the phone and called Jade, telling her what she needed her to do.

      “Does she know about us?” Malcolm asked.

      “No.”

      “Then how are you going to explain this?”

      “I have no idea. We’ll need to put our clothes in a bag on the counter next to your keys and my overnight bag. She’ll take them and drive your truck into the canyon and leave it there for us. Her sister, Ruby, will follow her and bring her back.”

      “What if they hang around and wait for us? What if they see us?”

      “We’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

      He glanced once more out the window at the growing number of Abatu walking up and down the street. “You realize there are a million ways this can go wrong.”

      “Yep. But we only need one way for it to go right.”

      * * *

      “Here, give me the shirt,” Malcolm said, and dumped the trash out of the metal trash can onto the floor. Celia threw the shirt inside the can and then he doused it with the oil from her oil lamp on a nearby table and set the shirt ablaze.

      “Make sure you don’t burn my shop down,” she said.

      “You just get undressed and leave this to me.”

      “Fine,” Celia said, but she wasn’t fine. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to leave and she certainly didn’t want to strip in front of him. It was stupid, she knew that. She’d undressed in front of Malcolm a hundred times before, and yet this time it was so much harder.

      She tried to be nonchalant, to act as if it were nothing as her fingers fumbled over that first button of her shirt. But it wasn’t. Without looking at him, she pulled her shirt off, folded it and placed it in the bag. Next came her skirt. This was no big deal, she told herself, even though she knew

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