He raised one hand to rub a thumb over his lower lip. Back and forth, back and forth like a hypnotist’s pendulum.
“Have you ever heard the saying, ‘curiosity killed the cat’?”
I blinked owlishly. “Are you…threatening me?”
He blinked right back.
Fear knocked my heart hard against my chest, but beneath it, sunk beneath my skin and bones, deep in the synapses of my brain, intrigue tangled with a strange kind of lust that made my blood heat.
I stepped closer to him, cereal gone soggy in the bowl and forgotten. “What do you want with her?”
The scarred side of his mouth lifted in a little smile. “What does any man want with any woman?”
“Her body,” I guessed, deflated by his simplicity.
“Her secrets,” he amended in that rough rasp that was somehow also cultured.
Automatically, I crossed my arms over my chest, one hand reaching to clutch at the locket he’d grabbed, the silver still warm from his touch. His gaze flitted there, brows tightening, casting shadows over his eyes that made him look almost skeletal.
Demonic.
“Don’t worry, little girl,” he said, his words icicles stabbing deeply into my flesh. “You’re too young to be interesting enough to warrant my curiosity.”
I gaped at him for a moment as he turned and strolled fluidly out of the room, the skin between his strong shoulders marked with a long line of black tally marks.
“And you’re too old to make any sense of my secrets even if you could find them,” I called belatedly, color rising in my cheeks because he continued to get the best of me.
His soft chuckle wound like a ribbon of smoke back toward me from down the hall.
Angry, I grabbed my milk-logged cereal and a spoon before taking the snack back to my room. I ate it without tasting the sugary mush, waiting until the sounds of Tiernan leaving echoed down the hall.
I put the empty bowl on my nightstand, slid out of my twin bed, and stalked down the hall to the linen closet to grab a few things before I knocked at Aida’s door.
“Tiernanny?” she called sweetly.
I gagged at the nickname, unable to imagine Tiernan letting anyone call him such an atrocious endearment.
I vowed to call him by that name the next time I saw him.
“It’s me, Mom,” I called before pushing open the door.
The windows were open, a sweet breeze carrying through the room so that nothing of Tiernan’s masculine scent remained. It was all sweet, floral Aida, who lay in the middle of the unkempt bed on her side, one leg hiked up to showcase the roundness of her bottom, one hand playing with the edge of her lace nightgown. When she saw me, she blew an errant lock of hair out of her face with a loud huff and collapsed back against her worn pink silk pillows.
“Thank God,” she cried dramatically, throwing an arm over her forehead. “I don’t think I could have handled any more of that man.”
“Ew, Mom, please don’t talk about your sex life with that…” I trailed off, unable to think of anything nice to call him.
“That tall, dark, and handsome, drink of cool water?” she suggested, peeking at me from under her forearm.
I shot her an unamused look.
Simultaneously, we dissolved into giggles.
“Come here, sweet dove,” she beckoned through her dreamy smile, the same smile that had made countless men fall in love with her.
I was no different.
No matter her flaws, her self-centeredness, and her habitual neglect, I couldn’t do anything but love my mother when she shot me that movie-star smile. It didn’t help that she used the endearment my father had given me as a girl.
I hefted the sheets in my arms higher. “I’m not getting anywhere near the bed before we change the sheets.”
Aida’s delighted laugh rang through the room, as high and clear as music from a silver flute. I grinned at her and tossed the linens into her face. She sputtered dramatically as she pushed them off her face, then erupted out of the pale pink sheets to lunge at me. I yelped as she landed against me, stumbling backward. She righted me with both arms around my torso, clutching me so tightly for a moment that I couldn’t breathe. I held still as she pressed her nose into my hair, her sigh soft and dreamy after she breathed me in.
“My dove,” she murmured, squeezing me tight. “My sweet, sensible girl. What would I do without you?”
Truthfully, sometimes I wondered the same thing. I would graduate at the end of the year, and hopefully, I’d get accepted to the school I’d been dreaming about for years.
New York University.
It has a renowned Art History program and a seriously cool Sustainable Business program at the Stern Business School.
It had been my dream since I was six years old, and my dad brought me a purple NYU hoodie on one of his visits. I’d wanted to be an art conservationist at eight, when he took me to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston on a rare vacation together. He was an important man, so when I’d expressed curiosity over an empty frame with a placard that declared it was being treated by a conservator, he’d immediately secured us access to that department.