Page 4 of Tempt

Sam exhales roughly. “Well, if we’re going to be here for a while, I’ll take a rye on the rocks. Make it a double.”

That’s more like what I expected. Investment banker. Make it a double. There’s something reassuring there. I know what to do with a man like this. Play with him, have my fun. Under no circumstances will I trust him, but that’s all right.

Trust is overrated.

Once we’re alone again, Sam lifts his glass in a toast. “To comfort while we wait.”

I drink to that. “I hope nobody is hurt too badly.”

“Same.” He takes a big swallow, his throat working quickly to down the fiery alcohol. No hesitation. Then he gestures to the window, where it’s started snowing. Big, fat, swirling flakes of white brush against the window. “Maybe the tweets are wrong. Maybe the train is stopped for another reason, like the weather.”

I’d like that. No injuries, no accident that’s ruined a family’s night.

“A storm,” I murmur, my imagination twisting the newly swirling snow into a monster. “Ice demons.”

I love the look of surprise on Sam’s face as his brows hit the roof. “Ice demons?”

“I like it better than an accident three days before Christmas.”

He shrugs. “Fair enough. There you go. So they’ve whipped up a weather system right in front of us? Iced the tracks and now we can’t move forward?”

“Something like that.” I hadn’t meant to say ice demons out loud.

But Sam is rolling with it. “Are they angry at the train for some reason, or are we caught in between a battle between foes?”

And because he’s into the story, so am I. “They could be fighting over a woman on the train? Or maybe it’s one ice demon, and his beloved is on here somewhere. She’s the only one who knows why we’ve stopped. And she’s…” I lick my lips, trying to get it just right. What would she be feeling?

“Torn?”

“Terrified,” I correct him. “This is the end of their story, maybe, and it feels like a life-or-death flight on her part. Now he’s stopped her, trapped all these people.”

“She’s scared of him?”

I shake my head. “No. But she’s scared of what he makes her feel.”

He smiles. “You’re a romantic.”

“Only on the page.”

“Ah. Touché.”

Sorry to disappoint, buddy. I live in the real world. “How about you?”

He rolls his shoulders back, flexing inside his three-thousand-dollar suit jacket. No, he doesn’t like romance. The jacket, the wolfish smile, the practiced way of offering to buy a woman a drink just to pass the time by—this guy is just as jaded about people as I am. He knows what’s what. “I like the idea of it,” he finally says. “In theory. But I think there’s a solid chance the big scary demon is, in fact, the bad guy. I guess I hope that it all works out in an unexpected way in the end. Maybe the romance is—” He cuts himself off.

I’m not sure what we’re talking about anymore. What happened to dirty flirting?

He immediately looks sideways, releasing me. He’s good. Knows just how far to push, then pulls back. He wants to keep this fun, and frankly, I’m grateful for that. We could be here for hours.

His gaze locks on something—nothing, but he’s pretending—out in the darkness. Beyond the sleeting white stuff, past the tree line.

To our imaginary boogeyman. To the territorial hero, stalking the train out of misguided but romantic affection for a heroine.

“What happens next?” he asks, his voice low enough that this is just for us. The other passengers can’t hear it. “On the page. With this ice demon and his beloved, stuck on the train.”

“She knows the ice demon is upset. And she’s worried that he doesn’t know the strength of his own abilities.” I like the way Sam leans in as I start weaving the story. I don’t want to like it too much, but there’s something about the look in his eye that emboldens me. Like he’ll like anything I say here, I can be as wild as I want with this fantasy tale. “Maybe he doesn’t know that a storm can interfere with travel plans, cause car accidents, or down power lines.”

And that’s when the lights in our car flicker and go out.

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