She had the weirdest feeling. This all seemed fundamentally wrong somehow.
They should have been standing beside each other, not across from each other. He wasn’t supposed to be in chains.
Except he was supposed to be, obviously. He was a criminal. She was a Marshal.
“All right,” Gretchen said. There was an unusual creakiness to her voice, like it was a squeaky hinge in need of oil. “Then let’s get on the road.”
She stretched out her hand before she even thought about it.
Dawes almost didn’t respond. For a moment, her hand just hung there. The autumn air was chilly enough that her fingers felt a little cool. She would have had time to pull back.
Then his large, warm hand met hers.
It was a firm, friendly handshake, one of a thousand Gretchen had been lucky enough to have in her life from the kind of man who didn’t see the need to either go easy on her or pointedly test her. There shouldn’t have been anything more remarkable about it than that. It wasn’t that strange to think that if she’d met him under any other circumstances, she would have liked him.
What was strange was that she’d shaken his hand at all.
It’s his eyes, Gretchen thought. Even more than the lost prince look, it’s his eyes.
Dawes had green eyes that were almost as clear as glass. It was impossible to look at them and be even the slightest bit afraid.
He’d made her feel safe enough enough to do something daring—and he’d made it so that she hadn’t felt it was daring at all.
The air was colder than ever when he was no longer holding her hand.
4
She shook my hand.
It felt like some electricity was still trapped in his fingers, making his skin tingle and his blood pound.
Cooper couldn’t remember the last time he had felt a friendly touch. It made him feel like he was coming undone.
He didn’t even think Gretchen Miller had done it deliberately. She didn’t look like someone who would showboat to prove how brave she was. It was almost like she had shaken his hand by reflex, like she still recognized him as a fellow Marshal. Even with the handcuffs, leg shackles, and prison khakis, she’d seen someone worthy of respect and common courtesy.
He didn’t think he would ever be able to tell her how much that meant to him.
Of course, now she practically had oops written all over her face. And no wonder, given how her partner was glaring daggers at her from the passenger seat.
Gretchen opened the back door for Cooper and loaded him in, gently sheltering his head with her hand as he ducked inside.
He caught the faint scent of her perfume. It was unshowy and fresh, like green apples and cedarwood, and it reminded him of the morning sky above the mountains. It seemed to fit perfectly with her short, sleek, dark hair and her falcon-like golden-brown eyes. It was like she was made to be outside.
He felt a twinge deep inside him. A rustle of feathers. Was his griffin stirring back to life? Had Gretchen’s fresh-air scent done what all his efforts couldn’t?
Then she closed the door and all he could smell was himself. He didn’t think anyone would be bottling the scent of prison infirmaries anytime soon.
And his griffin sure as hell wasn’t going to be drawn out by it. The sensation faded away, leaving only the feeling that he was missing something. No surprise there. He knew exactly what he was missing: he had a dark hollow inside his soul where his griffin was supposed to be.
Gretchen slid into the front seat. Her voice was clipped and matter-of-fact now, much more official now that she was under the hard, colorless gaze of her partner.
“This is Deputy Marshal Keith Ridley,” she said without looking back at Cooper. “Keith, this is Dawes.”
He wished he could ask her to call him Cooper. Well, he could ask, but there was no reason for her to say yes. Especially now, because she was embarrassed, and Cooper couldn’t even blame her for it. Shaking hands with him had broken every Marshal protocol in the books, and it had technically put her life at risk. It had made her vulnerable, and there were a lot of people willing to take advantage of that kind of split-second weakness.
He didn’t even like to think about what could have happened if someone like that had been in his shoes.
But he had the funny feeling that if that had been the case, Gretchen wouldn’t have made the mistake in the first place.