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  I had no idea what to make of the directness of his stare and had the feeling that his leaning forward again, grinning, was his way of breaking the spell he kept weaving. I’ll say something to make Reece uncomfortable, then pretend I didn’t, just to keep him on his toes. I’m Daniel Cross. I’m in charge. “Yeah, uh, is it all right if I show this to Georgia as well?” I laid my hand atop the book as if to remind myself it was there.

  “Here you go, gentlemen. Well…” Piper paused by our table before laying down the plates. “Gentleman and Reece. Bugger, I forgot the cutlery; gimme a minute.”

  “Are you allowed to say ‘bugger’ to a customer?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t saying it to you. I was saying it towards you.” Seconds later, she returned with our knives and forks, grinned at Daniel, then stuck her tongue out at me.

  “That makes all the difference. Shouldn’t you say ‘bon appétit’ or something?”

  “Shut up and eat your egg salad, bitch. I’ll get your coffees.”

  “You know,” Daniel gestured at her retreating back with his fork. “I like her. I like her a lot.”

  “Fancy yourself as a ladies’ man, do you?”

  “Ladies, men, anything with a pulse,” Daniel shot back. “And feel free to pass the book on to Georgia after you’re done. If I’d known there were two of you, I would have brought another copy.”

  “It’s all right. We share everything.”

  He looked up. Smirked. “I’ll just bet you do, Hutton. I’ll just bet you do.” Those perfectly arched eyebrows lifted, and he threatened the ghost of a smile, instead licking his lips. Slowly. “I know what you meant. I’m just being a slut again. I’m also an attention whore, so I’d love to know what you both think. I just hope you don’t hate it.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll sit you down and get you drunk before telling you which parts sucked.”

  “Cool. I’m always up for a drunken session of…criticism.”

  “Jesus, Cross.”

  “What? What?”

  “If I was a woman, I’d think you were—” Suddenly my throat dried, closed up.

  “You’d think I was what? Flirting? Here’s the thing. Do you have a pulse?”

  Oh fuck, yes. Judging by the pounding in my ears, yes. “Of course.”

  “Then I’m flirting.”

  “Coffee, coffee, coffee. Get that down your necks. No wisecracks from you, Hutton,” Piper warned.

  I don’t think I’m capable.

  “Daniel, enjoy your coffee. Reece, I don’t much care. Enjoy your meal, or whatever bollocks polite waitstaff come out with. Ciao.” Piper gave a demure finger wave and disappeared, leaving us to it.

  Whatever “it” was.

  “What a woman,” Daniel said, looking after her. “So, Georgia.”

  “Christ, do you ever switch it off?”

  “You think I have an off switch? Aw, does this mean you won’t speak to me anymore?” He pouted. “And I so need your approval.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, well, if it’s approval you’re after, I’m sure Georgia will want to meet you after she finds out I’ve been gifted a paperback from a real live novelist.”

  “I’d love to meet her. You could always invite me round for dinner and spend the evening stroking my”—he reached for his coffee mug, downed a large gulp, and set it down again. He paused—“ego.”

  “You…”

  “Yes?” Those raised brows, the wide smile. Daniel Cross couldn’t look innocent if his life depended on it.

  “Nothing.”

  “Anyway, won’t Georgia mind about you inviting me round without her say-so, if she’ll be there too?”

  “When did I…?”

  “Just now.”

  “I did?” I felt like I was on a runaway train with no emergency stop. “Well, maybe dinner.”

  “Dinner?”

  “Yes. It’s that meal between lunch and supper. One evening. And no, she won’t mind at all. She’d love to meet you.”

  “As long as you don’t talk me up, make me seem all glamorous. I’ll turn out a disappointment when I show up on the doorstep looking like a normal human being. But be warned. I drink like a fish, and I won’t do the washing up afterwards.”

  “Ah, that’s the price of my lamb casserole. You’re not vegetarian, are you? You do eat meat?”

  “I definitely do.” He laughed.

  Well done, Hutton. Completely the wrong thing to say. The undercurrent was there.

  “Just don’t go silent on me again, even if you are occupied with fucking your girl’s friends; I’ll get paranoid about what you think of Contrition.”

  “I told you. We’ll get you drunk.”

  “And take advantage?”

  “No off switch. Of course,” I muttered.

  “Alcohol helps any situation, Reece. Whether it’s taking advantage or soothing my bruised writerly ego.”

  “Good. We’ll do that then.” I laughed, comfortable and jittery in his company. “I’ll speak to Georgia. See what she says. We’ll arrange a date.”

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  Ah. There it was again. That undercurrent.

  I just hoped I was a strong enough swimmer.

  Chapter Four

  “So.” Georgia speared the last piece of lamb with her fork and jabbed it in midair in my direction before eating. “Are you gonna tell him what we’re really thinking?”

  Bitch, I said with my eyes. You deliberately waited until I was sipping my wine before you said that.

  “Pardon?” I cleared my throat and took another sip before she could speak again, this time to fortify myself rather than wash down the last of dinner.

  Daniel, also seated at my small—intimate—dining table, looked from Georgia to me and back again.

  Georgia’s gaze met Daniel’s, and she smiled, licking her lips. Ostensibly to taste the last of the casserole sauce, but she knew damned well what she did to me.

  And with any luck, Daniel too.

  “Yes. I think we should tell him why he’s really here.” She spoke to me but looked at Daniel, and his eyebrows lifted…in expectation? Curiosity?

  He definitely wasn’t bothered if his barely there smile was anything to go by. A vague twist of his lips spoke of amusement rather than discomfort. And the fact that he didn’t break eye contact with my girlfriend spoke a thousand words.

  Not yet, Georgia, I silently urged. Not yet, for God’s sake.

  “Sure, we’re being friendly. Reece invited an acquaintance round for dinner.” Georgia’s voice trailed away, and she lifted her wineglass to her lips, drained it in one go, and set it back down again.

  The way she stroked the stem between forefinger and thumb made my eyes water.

  If I wasn’t mistaken, it drew Daniel’s attention too, if only for a split second before he returned to maintaining some semblance of respectability. The waver in his posture was gone so quickly I wondered if it had ever occurred at all and if he, too, felt the need to cross his legs.

  “Specifically so we can all get to know each other better,” Georgia drawled, resting her elbow on the table, cupping her face in one curved palm. Ever the coquette, she inclined her head and—dear God, Georgia, did you just bat your eyelashes?

  Daniel cleared his throat, leaned back in the dining chair, and ran his hands along his legs. Just once, but enough to tell me Georgia had aroused his interest.

  Not scared him, no. Daniel Cross was too secure to be unsettled by some mild flirtation, but this change from genial dinner companion to wineglass-stem-stroking vixen probably made him wonder when the switcheroo had happened.

  I doubted very much that a glance from Georgia’s baby blues had his palms sweating, so I put it down to a desperate need to do something with his hands. But even that need would suggest she’d riled him. Shaken, if only temporarily, his rock-solid foundations.

  I caught a glimpse of the way his fingers curved over his thighs, and something flickered in the back of my mind, one s
tep away from enlightenment.

  Daniel’s hands completed their slow reach to his knees and paused. Turned, fingers to the insides of his thighs, elbows slightly bent as his hands returned, but only halfway. He stopped, fingertips playing against the seam of his inside leg. Barely. Only enough to be noticed by someone who was desperately trying not to notice.

  “Hmm,” was all he said, breaking a silence I hadn’t even noticed had descended.

  Startled, I flicked a glance at Georgia. Her eyes met mine, but I knew she’d been looking at Daniel’s hands too. Her gaze had lifted to look at me, so they must have previously been scrutinizing something lower.

  And that teasing enlightenment finally revealed itself in the knowledge Daniel had done it deliberately. Unsettled? No. Aware of Georgia’s flirtation? Of course. Possessed of the ability to respond in ways so subtle I questioned my reasoning on the matter? Definitely.

  Something told me Daniel was keeping the rest of himself still so our attention would be drawn to the most restrained of movements, even if the only movement came from his hands on his thighs, fingers leading the way to—

  “But…” Licking her lips with noticeably more relish than when she’d had food in her mouth rather than Daniel on her mind, she closed the gap between herself and my other guest by little more than an inch.

  But I saw it. And Daniel would too if he had a writer’s attention to detail. If he knew how these things advanced by degrees.

  “There’s something we’ve been skirting around all evening that none of us have tackled head-on,” Georgia said in a not-whisper. Quiet, low, seductive. This was her “I’m talking to you and only you” voice. The one that could have formed any words known to man and made them all sound like you are the center of my universe.

  “Oh?” Daniel’s eyebrows lifted, defining amusement. “Enlighten me.”

  Georgia’s smile grew wider, and her gaze dipped—no doubt to Daniel’s mouth; she had a thing for lips and what they could do to her and oh God, she’s thinking about him in that way; she wants him.

  “Your book, of course.” The smile became a grin, and she sat back, body language shifting in an instant to nonchalant, carefree, playful. The grin she bestowed on me like a badge of honor marked the switch back to whatever had come before this interlude.

  I could barely remember. I thought we’d been a civilized couple entertaining a guest. Then she’d cast a spell and just as easily broken it.

  “My…book?” Daniel dipped his head during the pause, emphasizing that it wasn’t born of uncertainty about what to say next. No, he was questioning us—mainly Georgia—about her motives. Are you sure that’s what you wanted to discuss?

  “Yep. We’ve both read it. Haven’t we, Reece?”

  Startled by this summoning, I jerked upright, laying one hand on the table to ground myself in reality. “Yes. Yes, we have.” I drummed my fingers on the table. They fascinated me as if they belonged to someone else. Disembodied.

  “You sound a bit uncertain there,” Daniel teased, looking at me with hardly any movement elsewhere in his body. Just a tilt of his head, gaze focused on me.

  “Are you going to test me on it?”

  “No, no. I believe you.”

  “He read it first,” Georgia put in. “Whizzed through it. Kept trying to tell me about it, but I forbade him because that would have spoiled it for when I read it.”

  I felt my cheeks burn, tried not to catch Daniel’s eye again, but inevitably did so, and above the stubble peppering his jaw, a faint blush colored his cheeks. Maybe the wine, maybe bashfulness about his work. “I have a fan?” He raised his glass, toasting me with the last few drops of wine before he drained them. “Makes it all worthwhile.” A dimple showed on that same blushing face, a wink punctuating his sideways glance with momentary flirtation.

  Georgia had ramped it up a few notches. Daniel had risen to the challenge admirably. It was only I who held back, not wanting to seem out of my depth.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised Daniel was going along with this. Whatever undercurrents there were in the room—and there were definitely some—he wasn’t fazed in the slightest.

  I knew what Georgia and I had “discussed” in the sense of skirting the issue, dancing around it, hinting, articulating with nothing more than a glance, a smirk, an unspoken suggestion. We had mastered wordless communication as a couple, and something told me Daniel wouldn’t take too long to interpret those wordless words too.

  “Well, I liked it. A lot,” Georgia added, lowering both her lashes and her voice, laying a gentle hand on Daniel’s forearm, fingertips grazing the inside of his wrist.

  I shuddered as if it was me she’d touched. Seduction by proxy.

  “Especially the conversation in chapter seventeen. The way Wes spoke to Father Thomas, I knew the priest was hiding something.”

  “Ah, the ecclesiastical equivalent of the doctor-patient privilege.” Daniel nodded. “I was a bit concerned about making a man of the cloth a baddie, in case readers thought I was picking on all priests.” He shrugged. “Not all. Just this one.”

  “And even then he wasn’t all bad. I prefer ambiguous characterization. I’m sick of reading books where people wear black hats and white hats.”

  Daniel burst out laughing. “You’ve heard that saying too? Yes. No one’s entirely good or evil. We all have faults.”

  “Not everyone’s covering up a decades-old murder though,” I pointed out.

  “True, true.”

  “Unless there’s something about yourself you’re not telling us?” I teased, falling into the easy conversation—or if not falling, then jumping and hoping for the best.

  “Absolutely not.” He touched a hand to his heart in mock offense. “I’m an angel.”

  Georgia snorted with laughter. “I’ll believe that when I see it. How a… How old are you?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “How a twenty-nine-year-old man could write a fifty-six-year-old murderer so well unless he’d sold his soul, I don’t know.”

  “Ah, you got me. Didn’t get much for it though. A farthing, a groat, and some milk bottle tops. The writing talent? Oh that’s all mine.”

  “Cocky shit,” I murmured, picking up the wine bottle. “You’re still nervous about letting people read your work, and you know it. More wine?”

  “You got me again. Well, as long as you liked it and you’re not buttering me up, I can afford to be cocky. And yeah, fill ‘er up. I’m not driving. I can afford to get as drunk as a lord this evening.”

  “Thank God for taxis,” I said, filling his glass to the brim.

  “Unless I pass out on your couch,” he said with a wink before taking a sip. “Cheers.” Turning to look at Georgia, he added, “And you must promise not to take advantage of me.”

  Georgia leaned both elbows on the table, fingers interwoven as a place to rest her head. “You know what they say about promises and piecrusts.” She lifted her eyebrows, and I returned her stare with a frown of vague confusion, waiting for the penny to drop.

  Daniel set his glass down, a satisfied smile curving his lips. Either he appreciated my choice of red or some other thought amused him. His gaze flicked up, caught mine. “Made to be broken,” he said quietly.

  * * *

  “So.” I stopped, one hand on the front door handle, and looked over my shoulder at Daniel. That smirk had barely left his lips all evening, and the wine hadn’t done anything to dilute his inherent flirtatiousness. An entire vineyard of chardonnay, merlot, and paint stripper couldn’t drown that out, I suspected.

  “So,” he echoed.

  A crash from the kitchen interrupted us, and Daniel rolled his eyes, allowing himself a quiet laugh at the profanity that reached our ears. Georgia in the kitchen was a sight to behold and best beheld from a distance sometimes. How one woman could make so much noise washing the dishes I didn’t know, but suspected part of it was her not-so-silent signal. I’m still in the kitchen. Out of earshot if you speak quietly en
ough. Get to it, Reece.

  Our body language had communicated encouragement on her part all evening and a request for confirmation that she was sure on mine. Do it, her every move had said. Are you sure? I’d asked in return.

  Daniel cocked his head. “Reece?”

  I caught his eye and tried not to shiver. “Nothing, nothing.”

  “Are you all right?” He took a step closer.

  I let go of the door handle. “Your taxi will be here soon.”

  “Not immediately. And it would be rude of me to jump in a cab home without saying good-bye”—he licked his lips and I swallowed, hard—“properly, don’t you think?”

  Clearing my throat, I looked down, my gaze skirting his leather jacket, its snug fit around his waist. The way it sat just so on his hips. I looked up with a nervous smile twisting my lips. It probably looked more like a grimace.

  He’d said good night to Georgia properly, kissing her on the cheek. A hairbreadth away from her mouth, and I’d seen. Georgia had almost turned. Just enough to have caught his breath on the corner of her mouth before giving him that look.

  And Daniel had looked at me, as if checking my reaction. Is this all right?

  More than all right, I’d wanted to say. Please. Go ahead.

  That nervous twist became a smile of something like anticipation. But it couldn’t possibly have been, because I wasn’t thinking of Daniel kissing me good night. Nor wondering what it would feel like, or how far either of us would turn to the other. “Let’s shake hands like gentlemen.”

  He gave a sharp burst of laughter, too quiet to be mocking. The sound was conspiratorial. Listen to us. Bonding. Dancing around the border of whatever hasn’t happened yet. “I don’t know who told you I was a gentleman, Reece.” Another step closer. One of us could touch the other without much effort. “But they were lying.”

  Don’t stare at his lips, Hutton. Don’t stare at his lips.

  His voice dropped still further. “But it’s one of my more endearing qualities, don’t you think?”

  Jesus, don’t touch me. Please touch me.