Page 59 of Conrad

Shoot,he’d gotten into her head, clearly.

“I’ll get creative,” she said now to Mystique. “You can count on me.”

“I know.” She hung up.

Emberly pulled out the earwig, pocketed it, and then watched as Stone got up, the choir having finished, and followed his tour group out of the cathedral.

They stopped outside, where a light rain drizzled, and she pulled on her own baseball cap, sunglasses (just because), and her black rain slicker. Even managed to sidle up to the group and hear the guide talk about the brutal modernist sculptures on the back of the cathedral, depicting the Passion, the final days of the Gospel.

Around them, tourists stood in a line, waiting to enter, and across the street, buses splashed through puddles. Bicyclists pedaled, heads down, along bike lanes, barely looking up.

“The facade is intentionally severe,” said the guide. “Designed to depict the suffering of our Lord, the severity and pain of the crucifixion.”

It did appear cruel, the sculptures almost austere, bare stone, with relief in places to represent body parts, faces. A stark, grim contrast to the Renaissance paintings that hung in the Louvre and other art houses around Europe.

These people got it—no romance in death. It was ugly, horrid business, and she turned away from the depiction.

A scream lifted and Emberly held in her own shout when a bicyclist slammed into one of the tourists who had stepped out from the line to capture a picture. The woman flew, hit a bus, thankfully stopped, and more people started to scream.

Blood ran into the street, the drizzle turning it into watercolor.

Declan and Stein had turned, along with others, and of course, Stein stepped up to his man, put a hand on his back.

Maybe he thought this was a distraction.

And it hit her then.

Yes, a distraction.Something that would make Stein think Stone was in trouble. . . .

Maybe even an accident of his own.

Take out Stein, and she got to Stone.

The thought put a fist into her gut, thickened her throat, but she couldn’t help it that he’d changed sides.

All was fair in . . . war.

And love could have nothing to do with it.

SEVEN

Coach Jace was right—Conradjust needed to get out of his head. Which meant a good sweat or, in this case, a cold plunge.

“That’s nearly three minutes, Con.” This from his trainer, a man named Ethan Parker, who stood near the tank in the Blue Ox training room with a watch. He pointed to the next tank, where Wyatt Marshall shivered. “And you have another four.”

“I can’t feel my body,” Wyatt said. He sat, teeth gritted, his head back on the stainless-steel surface, eyes closed. “I love it.”

Conrad, also shivering, laughed. “Why?”

“My hip doesn’t hurt, my knees aren’t swollen, and just maybe by Sunday, I’ll have my racing body back.”

“I get you,” Conrad said and held out his fist. Wyatt met it. Third day back to practice had him feeling like an eighty-five-year-old man. But the pain made him focus, get his head in the game, and frankly, he needed the distraction.

Off the ice, he simply spent too much time dissecting Penelope’s crazy end to their nondate.

Maybe he needed to put in some time in the weight room, purge her from his brain, again.

But her dismissal sat under his skin, and maybe a little in his chest, the way she’d gone from warm and friendly on their drive to her house, to downright arctic during their drivebackto his place. She’d dropped him off, barely a goodbye. And no amount of dissecting the disastrous Blue Ox games or working out in his home gym or even pushing himself in practice could dislodge the questions.

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