Page 618 of Flirting with Darkness

At his blank look, she smiled.

“That’s the main reason I got the coat, dummy,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s eighty degrees out. I just figured you wouldn’t want to go in there unarmed.”

Ghost’s jaw and shoulders loosened as he thought about her words.

She was right.

He still didn’t know exactly what she wanted at the auction, or what they were really doing there, but if she suspected there might be some risk of danger to either of them, he definitely didn’t want to go in there unarmed.

He removed the jacket and pulled on the scabbard.

Re-sheathing the sword, he put the leather jacket over both.

She had him turn around a few times, then nodded approvingly.

“It’ll work,” she pronounced.

Looking in the mirror as she looked at him, Ghost agreed with her.

The coat’s dark brown material hung straight and open, falling to the tops of his thighs. It worked better than the more fitted, wool jacket to conceal the sword, just by the way it was cut.

Once they were ready to go, he gave her a deadpan look.

He’d partly meant his next words mostly as a joke.

Still, he never should have said them.

“You distract the proprietor with your womanly charms,” he’d said, smiling at her wanly as he adjusted the leather jacket around the sword. “I’ll take the clothes and go out the back. We can meet at the corner of the next street.”

Truthfully, in thinking about it, he’d half-meant the offer, joke or no.

After all, he had no money here, and couldn’t ask her to pay.

Stealing the clothing wasn’t totally outside his normal way of doing things, anyway.

After he spoke the words, however, she gave him an odd, openly puzzled look.

“Ha, ha,” she said. “Very funny.”

“What is funny?” He smiled. “That you have womanly charms? I assure you, you do. An overabundance of them, really.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, leaving aside the part about how muchmoreinterested he is in your verynon-womanly charms, husband… I meant the stealing thing.” She frowned harder. “I meant ha-ha on you stealing anything.”

He shrugged. “While I am quite droll… I really could take it. We could pay them back later, when I have my own money again. If that reassures you.”

There was a silence.

That silence felt very full.

It felt like a lot lay behind it.

He knew he should probably break it, but he wasn’t sure how.

Then she frowned for real.

“What did you say?” She stared at him, her eyes openly disapproving. “What?”

“It was just a thought. An offer, I mean.”

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