LITMIR.BIZ

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      Thank God.

      Sanity. Reality.

      He stepped back from her, leaving her with the glass.

      She switched off the hot plate and turned to him, holding out the tumbler. It was expensive-looking cut crystal, but it had a chip in the rim, and that one tiny flaw twisted something in his chest.

      He took the glass and their fingers touched again, and her smile faded.

      There were dark smudges under her eyes—he wanted to run his fingertips gently over them. A blush—he wanted to lick the heat of it from her cheekbones. And there was something shimmering in the stillness of the moment that told him she’d let him do both those things. But how did a guy go from an accidental finger graze to such intimacy?

      He didn’t. He couldn’t.

      One of her hands came up to press against her cheek, as though to control the flush of blood beneath her skin, and she let out a laugh that was different from usual—disbelieving, a little embarrassed—and he felt that twist in his chest again.

      “Go on out to the courtyard,” she said, and returned her attention to the counter, picking up a cloth as though preparing to wipe it down, only to knock a spoon onto the floor.

      He bent to pick it up for her but she stiffened and said, “Leave it. Please just...leave it. I’m going to make myself a cup of coffee so go on out. Two minutes. Give me two minutes.”

      He nodded even though he knew she couldn’t see it and carried his glass and the bottle of whiskey outside. Looking around, he decided “courtyard” was an optimistic description. It was a small paved rectangle enclosed by a border of potted plants, with a barbecue in one corner, the rickety table with those mismatched chairs in the center and a gaudily painted garden gnome that was missing a hand plonked seemingly at random.

      He chose one of the chairs for himself and positioned it to face the apartments, away from where he could see Frankie in the kitchen, and poured a generous finger of whiskey.

      A minuscule sip had him sighing in appreciation. It was piney, creamy—wonderful. He wondered how Frankie remembered he liked a whiskey straight off a flight; he couldn’t remember ever mentioning it. Hell, he wondered how she knew he liked whiskey, period, given he hadn’t been a regular at Flick’s. Veronica would have said it was because she was a “booze whisperer.” Ha. She’d reminded him of that at Matt and Romy’s wedding, where he’d been best man and could have been excused for feeling like crap. Veronica had said something about him being—hello—perfectly behaved.

      “Beneath this urbane exterior is a seething mass of violent contradiction, ready to go on an imperfect rampage,” Teague had told her.

      “It’s a shame you never got together with Frankie, in that case.”

      “Frankie?”

      “Frankie—sexy Aussie, Flick’s booze whisperer by day, exotic dancer by night.”

      “Yeah, right!”

      “Why not?” Veronica had queried.

      “Because... Just because.”

      A prophecy of sorts—gee, thanks, Veronica!—because here he was, five months later, drinking Frankie’s whiskey. He was pretty sure he wasn’t about do any rampaging, though.

      He screwed his eyes shut, put his elbows on the table, clasped his head in his hands and dug his fingers into his skull. Tried to breathe out some agitation.

      “Need some painkillers?” Frankie’s voice.

      He opened his eyes, gave himself a moment to set his face, then looked over his shoulder to where she was standing, framed in the open doorway.

      “You look like you have a headache,” she said.

      “I don’t.”

      “Do you want a cup of coffee instead of the whiskey?”

      “No.”

      “Tea?”

      “Whiskey’s fine.”

      With the shrug of one shoulder—which almost dislodged that damn robe again—she came over to sit opposite him, her back to the block of flats.

      He topped up his barely touched whiskey to give himself something to do as Frankie raised her mug and inhaled the steam wafting up from it.

      “I’m a philistine, I know,” she said, “but that year in the States got me hooked on crappy coffee. Do not tell any of my Australian friends—they’ll disown me if they discover I drink instant coffee instead of going to a café every morning for a cappuccino-piccolo latte-macchiato-whatever.”

      “I don’t know any of your Australian friends.” Stating the fucking obvious as he tried to not anticipate another slinky fall of that robe.

      She took a dainty sip of her coffee before answering. “We can rectify that, if you like. Sydney’s buzzing with summer parties, there are two and a half weeks until Christmas, and on Christmas day if you’re not doing anything there’s a thing on Bondi Beach for all the orphans, so—”

      “I’m not an orphan.” Boorish.

      “‘Orphans’ is more of a state of mind for this gig. What it really means is—is loners, I guess,” she said.

      “I’m not a loner.” No, I’m a block of fucking wood.

      “I mean people who are in Sydney with no one to spend Christmas with.”

      Silence.

      And then she cocked her head to one side, examining him. “Not a loner?”

      “No.” Granite. Not wood, granite.

      “’Cause you always seemed to like to be alone. Even when you were with the others you were...well, alone.”

      How to explain that it wasn’t that he liked to be alone, he just was alone.

      Impossible.

      Because then he’d have to talk about the grief. He’d have to admit that he’d lost more than a sister when Cassandra died twelve years ago—he’d lost part of himself. And he didn’t want anyone else to know that, because they’d want him to find it again, and it was too late to look for it because that wasn’t him anymore.

      Yep, impossible.

      And so he raised his glass to take a sip of whiskey and said nothing.

      “Or maybe it was that you just did your own thing,” she mused. “You never let yourself be pressured into any of Matt’s crazier schemes, at least not until n—” She stopped abruptly, but Teague finished the sentence in his head: not until now.

      Slowly, deliberately, he put his glass on the table. “Am I—are we—in one of Matt’s schemes?” he asked. “Is that why I’m here?”

      She put down her mug, licked her bottom lip. “You know why you’re here, Teague. At least, you know part of it.”

      He reached into his shirt pocket for the small velvet he’d shoved in there before disembarking from the plane. The bag he’d scrupulously not looked into the whole damn flight. He held it out to her.

      She watched him, not her hands, as she took the bag and unzipped it. It wasn’t until her eyes dropped that he let himself look down to see what was so important it had to come with him rather than be sent via a courier.

      A ring.

      His vision narrowed to the glitter of the platinum band in the sunlight, the cool glow of the emerald center stone, the intense sparkle of surrounding diamonds. But the telling thing was that she’d slipped it onto the third finger of her left hand.

      “It’s prettier than I remembered,” she said.

      White-hot rage coursed through

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