Page 10 of Edge of Darkness (Night Prowler 4)
“Oh. Yes, good morning.” Ember cleared her throat. “Sorry, I’m just really busy at the moment,” she added lamely. Christian and Asher glanced around the store. The customers who’d been browsing a few moments earlier had left, and there wasn’t a soul in sight aside from the three of them. Asher cocked an eyebrow and looked at her as if she were insane, then turned to Christian with a wide smile.
“It’s nice to hear someone other than me and my girl here speak English.” His voice dropped, and he batted his eyelashes. He actually batted them. “Though of course I’ve always said a British accent makes everything sound so much more refined.”
Oh, God, she thought, cringing. He’s really going to make a meal of it.
“I’ve always preferred American accents, myself,” Christian replied, returning Asher’s smile. His gaze, electric green, flickered to Ember. “They’re so…invigorating.”
She’d never seen anyone appear so at ease in his own skin. He didn’t cross his arms or fiddle with car keys—he wasn’t holding car keys—or do any of the other little things people did when having a standing conversation. He simply stood, with his legs slightly apart and his arms hanging loose at his sides, taking up more space than he should have with the simple fact of his presence. There was a strange magnetism about him, a pull, something that made her want to reach out and touch him, something that surrounded him like an energy field, forceful and electric.
As he looked at her, Ember felt again the weird tingle of fear that had raised the hair on the back of her neck yesterday. But now the fear slid closer to a dark kind of excitement, a hum in her blood, like the threatening rumble of thunderclouds just before they discharged a bolt of lightning. He was so beautiful…she wondered absently what he might look like without clothes.
Then she stiffened, aghast. Oh, no. I do not like him. I DO NOT!
Unbelievably, horribly, Christian’s eyes went wolfishly bright and narrowed on her face. His nostrils flared with a tiny inhalation and the smile faltered, replaced by a look of…what?
Hunger?
No, it must be anger, or something else—she didn’t
know what—but she sure as hell wasn’t going to ask. This man was proving to be a little too sharp for comfort. She had the eeriest feeling he could read her like a book.
Time to move him along.
“I’ll just be a sec,” she said to Christian without introducing him to Asher.
He seemed to take it as a personal affront to his manhood because he put his hands on his hips and muttered to her with a glare, “Rude.” He then turned to Christian with his hand out and introduced himself. They shook hands—Asher glowing, Christian bemused—while Ember made her way around the counter. She silently willed Asher not to say anything too embarrassing, or to kiss Christian on the lips and try to pass it off as the regular greeting of people from Boston when meeting those from another country.
When she came back from retrieving the two copies of Casino Royale a minute or two later, she found Christian and Asher engrossed in a serious discussion about the merits of Ian Fleming versus Ernest Hemingway.
“The Sun Also Rises!” Asher insisted vehemently. “For Whom the Bell Tolls! A Farewell to Arms!”
Clearly unimpressed with the litany, Christian returned, “The Old Man and the Sea?”
“Well,” Asher replied after a pause. “You’ve got me there. That one was a little…astringent.”
“Astringent?” Christian laughed, while Asher watched in slack-jawed admiration. In spite of herself, Ember had to agree; laughter on Christian was like gilding a lily. You didn’t think it could get any more perfect, but then…voila.
Stunning.
Asher regained his composure enough to offer a faint, “But still, Ian Fleming. Ian Fleming?”
“You can’t seriously think Ian Fleming was a better writer than Ernest Hemingway,” Ember cut in, siding with Asher, who smugly pointed a finger at her as if to say, See? Proof!
Christian turned his attention to her and it felt as warm, focused, and bedazzling as a shaft of sunlight through clouds. He tilted his head and sent her a small, intimate smile that managed to bring a flush of blood to her cheeks and unsettle her in a way she definitely did not like. God, he was starting to get under her skin.
He said, “I have three words for you, Ember.”
Ignoring the traitorous little butterflies dancing in her stomach, she cocked a brow and waited.
“Double. O. Seven.”
The way he was looking at her—hot and half-lidded—was intimate, too, and she sternly reminded herself that this man was in all likelihood very, very practiced at giving women intimate looks.
Remembering how he’d looked at her when he first came in the store yesterday, how his keen gaze had travelled over her plain clothes, her unkempt hair, she decided it was much safer having him look at her that way, than this new, disquieting, butterfly-stirring way.
Time to remind him he couldn’t melt the panties of every woman on planet Earth, even if her stupid butterflies wished he would melt hers.
In a light, mocking tone Ember said, “I hate to break it to you, but those are three numbers.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked him up and down. “All beauty and no brains, hmm? Well, it’s not exactly a shocker. With that face, you probably haven’t needed to think too much.”
