Page 18 of Fierce

And yet I wasn’t complaining. I was moving to the door as she hesitated, her gaze sweeping the crowded room and trying to penetrate the three-deep crowd at the bar, with far too many male eyes on her.

“You know,” I said in her ear, “if you’d let me collect you, you wouldn’t have had to walk in alone.”

“Oh!” She jumped and put a fluttering hand to her breast. “You startled me.” She smiled, wide and glorious, and I realized I hadn’t seen her smile like that nearly enough. “You’re lucky I came at all. I’ve been going back and forth all weekend about it.”

It wasn’t how most women said hello to me, and I had to smile a little myself. “You’re right. I am.”

“You are what?” She was looking a bit distracted now. My hand rested lightly on her upper back, and I was still standing close in the noisy, crowded bar. As I looked down at her, I could see that beaded bodice rising and falling.

I smiled a bit more. “Lucky.”

I nodded to the maître d’, and he stepped out from behind his podium and said, “If Madame et Monsieur will come this way…”

Hope turned and followed the man, the chiffon skirt swaying. Her hair was pulled up, and the delicate skin of her neck, glimpsed between the blonde tendrils that danced around it, gleamed in the soft lighting. Her hips swung in an irresistible rhythm as she ascended the staircase behind the maître d’, and she put a light hand out to the banister. A hand with no rings. In fact, she wore no jewelry at all other than a pair of slim white-gold hoops in her small ears.

She should have jewels. She’d been made to be adorned. And adored, my mind whispered, startling me, and I shoved the thought straight back again. I didn’t adore. That would have to be some other bloke.

No other bloke. Nobody but you.Not a whisper. A shout. The fierce voice of my ancestors telling me to hold hard to what was mine.

This time, I was more than startled. I was rocked.

The maître d’ opened a door and nodded her into the small room beyond, and she checked just inside and turned.

“I thought…” I could see the slim column of her throat working as she swallowed. “That we were eating in a restaurant.”

“And we are.”

“I mean—” The flush was mounting on her pale cheeks. “In a public area of a restaurant.”

“Louis will be with you immediately,” the maître d’ murmured, taking his hasty leave.

“Louis will be with us,” I told Hope as she continued to hesitate. “And I prefer privacy.”

I stood still and waited. I was better at waiting than most people. I was also blocking the door, but then, I said I’d thought about playing fair. I hadn’t said I’d do it.

She hesitated a moment longer, her eyes searching my face. I put out a hand and said, “May I take your coat?”

“Oh!” She jumped again. “Oh.” She handed it over, glanced at the smaller table that had replaced the normal seating for eight in the private dining room. The walls were paneled with wood, the overhead lighting was soft, tall white candles burned on the table, and classical music played lightly in the background. There was even a gas fireplace in one corner. Unnecessary on this warm September evening, but lit all the same.

“It’s dinner,” I told her, placing her coat on one of the hangers provided on a rack near the door. “It’s private, but it’s still dinner. And you’re very beautiful.”

She glanced from beneath her lashes at me. “Tell me you haven’t priced my dress.”

That made me smile again.

“And don’t tell me the shoes are wrong. I know they’re wrong. You said you wanted to see them.”

“I did.” I glanced down at them. Gleaming and elegant, pleasing my eye as the dress couldn’t.

She cocked a hip, rose onto a toe, and turned, looking back over her shoulder. “Pretty, huh?”

“Yeh,” I said, the Kiwi in me coming out under the influence of her smile. “Bloody pretty.”

“You aren’t looking at my shoes.”

“No. I’m not. I’m looking at you.”

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