Page 130 of Blood Stone
“Why?” she demanded, heading for the front door.
Roman caught up with her again and turned her to face him just as she got a hand on the door handle. “Youknowwhy.” His voice was low. Earnest.
Disappointment touched her. “No. I don’t.” She threw the door open and hit the security code for the gate and ran out.
* * * * *
Garrett got the door of the taxi open and was about to fold himself into the back seat when he heard his name called. It wasn’t just any name.
“Micheil!”
He shut the door and turned to face her, relief and happiness battling for first place in his chest. Kate threw herself at him, her whole body weight slamming into him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “That was such a shitty way to do it. But I couldn’t get past my own sense of betrayal. I just wanted to hurt you back. I never stopped to think how it must be for you,allthe time.”
“It had to come out sooner or later. You just beat us to it.” He lifted her chin, making her look at him. “We were trying to figure out how to tell you, Kate. You have to believe that. But it’s a hard thing to say. One of the hardest things to tell—” He glanced at the taxi driver. “Someone like you,” he amended.
He peered more closely at her face. “You’ve been crying?” He touched under her eyes and felt the dampness.
“It’s nothing.” She smiled at him. “Adr…Roman, all this time knew M…my movie guy. The time I could have saved.” She grimaced.
“But that’s not why you were crying. Really.”
She shook her head. “I feel like an asshole for this. I was angry. I reacted like a hormonal teenager. It was pathetically melodramatic. Micheil, I’m so sorry.”
He brushed her hair out of her face. The words were right there behind his lips. The love. He was afraid to speak in case the truth tumbled from him. Instead he bent his head and kissed her. He poured the words and the feelings into the kiss instead and it was a heady, thought-stealing one.
Kate blinked and pressed her hand against his chest. “I felt your heart…start,” she whispered.
“You did that,” he told her.
“But I normally can feel your heart.” She bit her lip. “More lying? You can control your heart?”
“We can control it under most circumstances. Highly emotional or physically taxing ones will take that control from us. Or we can simply surrender to autonomy. Let our heart beat as it will.”
“Is there a price for autonomous heartbeat?” she asked, her voice still low.
“More frequent feedings.”
Kate shook her head. “So much to learn. Torevise. I feel like I have to go over every conversation we’ve ever had and put it back into context.”
“That’s natural.”
She looked at his chest again. “Where is your shirt?” She pulled his jacket aside to look at his chest in the steadily darkening evening light.
“In your kitchen garbage can,” he told her. “I couldn’t walk around wearing it like it was.” He reached into his jacket. “There’s something I didn’t leave behind, though, that I wanted to.” He pulled out the chain and held it out. “Here.”
Kate rested the wooden pendant on her palm and peered at it. “It looks gorgeous. Like filigree, or lace, but it’s all wood. You can see all the way through the heart. It has two sides, like there’s…yes, there’s something inside.” She looked up at him. “Do you know what is in there?”
“Maybe.”
She rolled her eyes. “Where did you get it? It’s beautiful.”
“Before tonight, I would have given you a long story about Tiffany’s or a Sotheby’s auction.” He shrugged.
“Youmadeit?”
“I learned how to make pretty things with lumps of useless wood from sitting around camp fires at night on campaigns and wars and battles too many to itemize. And recently, I got my favourite whittling knife back. Remember a week ago, when some jerk sawed off the back inch of the arm of your chair on the set?”
Kate’s mouth opened. She held up the pendant. “This is it? My chair arm?”
