Page 33 of Taming the Beast (Fairy Tales of New York)

The only explanation he had for it was…well, he didn’t have an explanation and that was as bewildering as hell. Nothing about any of this made any sense and his only consolation was that Mercy looked as stunned at his presence as he was, which was sort of pleasing in its symmetry, he supposed.

Coming to a stop a couple of feet in front of her, Seb shoved his hands in the pockets of his trousers to stop himself from reaching for her because presumably that would not go down well given the context of the evening, and forced a smile to his face.

“Hello, Mercy,” he said, clearing his throat because for some reason his voice sounded odd.

“Seb,” she said and edged away from the people he assumed were colleagues. “What are you doing here?”

A very good question. “I was passing,” he said. “Thought I’d drop in. Say hi. And congratulations.”

“Right,” she said with a nod. “I see.” But it was clear she didn’t, and he couldn’t really blame her. “Well, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

There was a beat of strangely awkward silence. “So are you staying for the dinner?” she asked, not looking entirely happy about the thought of it.

Which was fine with him. An evening of excruciating small talk while trying to pretend he didn’t want to pull her to the floor and ravish her was not his idea of pleasant. “No,” he said. “Like I said I was just passing. I have plans for later.”

“Oh?”

Seb ignored the question in her voice because how could he expand on non-existent plans? “You look lovely,” he said instead, raking his gaze over her and feeling a sort of hunger sweep through him.

“Thank you,” she said, sounding a bit breathless.

“How was Saturday?”

Mercy blinked, as if coming to. “Saturday?”

“Your night out.”

“Oh, right. That. It was fun. There were ten of us in the end. We went for drinks, then dinner, then dancing.”

“Late night?”

She nodded. “Very. I went home at about four.”

At which time he’d still been tossing and turning and wondering what she was doing. “Alone?”

Mercy stared at him for a second as his idiotic question sank in. “No, Seb,” she said a touch tartly. “I picked up three guys at the last nightclub we went to and took them back to my place. Of course I went home alone.”

He frowned and whipped his hands out of his pockets to shove them through his hair. “I deserved that,” he said gruffly. “I’m sorry.”

Sighing a little, Mercy leaned in closer, turning her back on her colleagues, and lowered her voice. “What’s this all about, Seb?”

Bloody good question. “I missed you.”

Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened. “You missed me?”

Damn. He hadn’t meant it like that. “I mean, I missed the sex,” he amended because, of course, that was what had been driving him mad – sexual frustration. Obvious, now he thought about it.

“So you’re here for what? A mid-week booty call?” she said, her tone even chillier than it had been a second ago.

“No,” he said swiftly. “That’s not it at all.” Although if she dragged him behind the stand and decided to have her way with him, he’d probably not put up much resistance.

“Then what?”

How could he explain it? He didn’t even understand it himself. But he had to say something. And something that wouldn’t make him look like a completely smitten fool, which he very definitely wasn’t. “I came to tell you that I’ve made a recommendation for you to be added to the Foundation’s list of preferred suppliers,” he said, as inspiration suddenly struck. “For this wine.” He nodded over her shoulder, the sweep of his gaze encompassing the stand. “Possibly others. I thought you’d like to know sooner rather than later.” As, no doubt, would the people at the Foundation who were in charge of that sort of thing, which would mean a delicate phone call in the morning.

Mercy stared at him. “Really?” she said, sounding a bit shell-shocked.

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