Page 98 of Diamond In The Rough

“Would you be so panicked if it was just a rock? An actual stone picked up from the ground?”

“When you were ten years old, wandering the forest as you tried to escape your family’s abuse? Yes! It would still be valuable. Because the story it comes with is what makes it so precious. Same with your desk. Same with the chest. It’s just wood, Micah. Screws. Nuts and bolts. A swatch of leather. Individually, it could all be replaced easily, and a piece of wood on its own, worthless. A rock on its own, worthless. But the journey makes it special. The desk’s trek across the Atlantic. It’s tryst with the pirates. The chest’s romance with a Mongolian warrior. And the pendant’s life, first with an eighteenth-century woman, and later, with a boy who craved peace. Every journey is valuable.”

“And now the pendant gets to spend time with a woman who deals in antiquities. A twenty-first century beauty who understands and appreciates history.” He leans across and presses a kiss to my cheek. “I’m not asking. I’m telling you.”

“Micah…”

“Go to work.” He nods toward the front of the car, just a single tip of his head, alerting the driver to slide out and head to my door. “I’ll come by the apartment around six. I won’t mind if you figure out the pendant’s history, Grá. But I’ll be pissed if you’ve had it appraised and placed for auction.”

“I would never—” A furious blush rushes across my cheeks. “Put it up for auction.”

He chuckles and glances over my shoulder when the driver opens my door. An already warming breeze wafts into the car, mixing with Micah’s aftershave until his scent settles in my nostrils and makes them twitch.

“Go.” He checks my hand and re-tightens my fingers around his gift, then he nods toward the sidewalk. “I’ll see you later.”

“You’re gonna be safe today, right?” Shut up, heart! Sit down you stupid, impulsive, dangerous organ I never invited into this car anyway. “It’s not so improper as to mention the very real elephant sitting on your chest, is it?”

“I’m always safe. Always have men watching my back.” He dips his chin when the driver reaches in, clearly tired of waiting for me to move, and wraps his hand around my bicep. He guides me away from Micah and into the summer sun, but then I hear my name again. A faint sound against the backdrop of New York traffic and a city abuzz with morning commuters. “Tiia?”

“Yeah?” I bend, despite the driver’s hold, and search for Micah’s lips. To watch them move. Because without that, my ears simply won’t pick up each individual word he speaks. “What did you say?”

Confusion makes way for clarity. His mind no doubt clueing in to my constantly annoying, but not yet disabling, hearing issue. But then he smiles. “Be good. I’ll see you tonight.”

The fact that my heart swells… nauseates me. That I swoon for a man I really, really, shouldn’t, makes me anxious. But looking into his eyes and being the recipient of his smile somehow creates a soothing balm.

It’s temporary.

A band-aid at best.

And when he’s no longer by my side and my brain has a chance to overthink, I know that sickness will grow tenfold.

This is how a trauma bond is created. To know something is bad, but you keep doing it because it feels so damn good.

The driver gives my arm a small jerk. Not painful. Not even startling. Just a reminder he’s here. That he’s waiting.

So I breathe out a sigh that assures me I’m screwed, then I straighten out and turn from the car. “Goodbye, Micah Malone.” I look to the driver as he leads me all the way to the door of my building and smiles. “Thank you.”

“Head straight in, Ms. Hale. Loitering on the sidewalk is not safe.”

“Of course.” I cross the threshold as he opens the door, and swallow the heavy ball of dread settled in my throat as I walk away. But then I look down at the pendant I carry, worth more than anything I will ever possess now or in the future, and as I climb the stairs in last night’s clothes, I study the bright green stones.

One. Two. Three. I count them out, but stop when I hit fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. There are so many. Clusters of green, surrounded by silver and gold. It’s shaped like a cross, and delicate enough a quick bend could snap the whole thing without a lot of force.

It’s worth a small fortune, and only growing in value as it moves from hand to hand.

And he found it… just… found it. In the middle of nowhere as a child, and even then, he had the forethought not only to hide it from his father and anyone else who might’ve wanted to steal it, but to hold onto it into adulthood.

Surely a ten-year-old can’t distinguish a plastic diamond from the real thing. But Micah knew anyway to hold onto it forever.

And then after all these years, more than twenty of them, he decided to give it to me…

“Tiia fucking Hale!”

I skid on the stairs and wrench my eyes up to the next floor, stopping on the strong, broad form of a man I’ve neglected this last week. On a pair of brown eyes that glitter with anger.

“Ipo! What have you done?”

“Roscoe…”

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