Page 9 of Star-Crossed
Like the man had done anything other than sit around with his thumb up his butt trying to steal glances at Lyra as she rearranged the chaotic herd of fall mums around the firepit on the back patio.
“My honey-crisp lavender mead,” Gemma announced as Cy took the other. “I figured since the sun’s over the yardarm and all.”
Watching over the rim of his glass, Cy didn’t miss the greedy flick of the plumber’s dark eyes toward Gemma’s chest.
“This is delicious,” Guillermo said after taking several lusty and very audible swallows.
Cy knew instinctively the man would be hitting on her if Gabe Kelly hadn’t already staked his claim. And even ancillary figures in Townsend Harbor’s network knew that crossing Gabe Kelly put you at direct risk of becoming orca chowder in the Puget Sound.
“So, you and your sister are twins, huh?” The plumber’s question dripped with suggestion that Gemma didn’t seem to register.
“Yep,” she answered. “Seven minutes apart.”
“Oh wow.” A sneaky glance at Gemma’s legs in their knee-high argyle socks. “Is it true what they say about twins? That special bond thing?”
Cy’s knuckles whitened around the cool, condensation-kissed surface of the glass. He wanted to take the mead from the man’s hand and smash it against the nearest tree trunk. Followed by the plumber’s thick skull.
He hadn’t felt this sort of acidic, blood-boiling anger since right after the accident that ended his college football career. Then, it had been throwing himself into work that proved the best therapy.
Cy would dearly like to do that now, if he could somehow send this human shit-fly packing.
“It sure is,” Gemma said. “Sometimes we can even feel each other’s emotions.”
If that was true, it was a wonder that Gemma wasn’t also eyeing Cy with outright hostility.
“Okay, okay,” she said, holding her hands up in mock surrender. “I’m not saying that we’re, like, psychic or anything—I mean, Lyra probably is, even if she’s still in denial—but we’ve definitely picked up on each other’s thoughts, and feelings, and sometimes even physical sensations.”
Heat crept up the back of Cy’s neck.
“Do you have to be physically near each other for that kind of thing to happen?” he asked.
“Oh, no,” Gemma said brightly. “One time, I had this very…um, intense, uh…experience, and Lyra flew all the way home from Philadelphia because she thought I was in trouble.”
“And were you?” Guillermo asked.
“Oh, I was in trouble all right,” she said with a saucy smile. “The best kind.”
“I’ll bet.” The plumber’s oily smirk made Cy’s pulse begin to pound in his ears.
The air felt suddenly charged, as if some invisible force was gathering around him. His nerve endings tingled like forked lightning.
Uh-oh.
Cy remembered this feeling. It usually preceded his knuckles being split on someone’s teeth.
The sensation was familiar but also strangely foreign at the same time. He wasn’t this guy. Hadn’t been this guy in years.
Why now? And why, when it was Gemma—
He hadn’t even been able to finish the question in his own mind before the answer came to him by way of visual aid.
Lyra stepped out onto the back patio. Gone was the sleek business suit she’d been wearing when they arrived. In its place were a pair of faded jeans and an old t-shirt. Her hair was tied back in a simple ponytail.
And despite himself, Cy couldn’t keep from drinking her in.
The way the jeans clung to her curves in all the right places. The hint of cleavage peeking out from beneath the V-neck of her t-shirt.
For a moment, he forgot about Guillermo entirely and just stared, unable to look away.
