by Avery Flynn
“What do you think? Which one speaks to you?” Ingrid asked from her position behind his and Ruby’s chairs at the dining room table.
Glancing back at her face, rapturous as she clapped her hands together and looked at him expectantly, his still half-empty stomach grumbled. He flashed her a quick smile that probably looked as fake as it felt before turning his attention back to the photos. The images lying above his plate of rye bread, cheese, and jam looked like those find-what’s-different pictures where you had to find the sixteen differences between two almost-identical photos. “They all look nice.”
Ingrid’s mouth firmed into a line and she let out a quiet, if distinct, exasperated huff. In her defense, it was the twelfth time he’d uttered those words since he and Ruby had walked into the dining room expecting breakfast and finding Operation Wedding’s HQ instead. Next to him, Ruby covered a quiet, better-you-than-me giggle with a bite of cheese.
Lucas struggled for something, anything, else to say about what looked like an explosion of feminine fluff around him. From the photos of the flowers to the different colored fabric samples to the fifteen options for wedding programs to the tasting slices of possible wedding cakes to the list of hairstylists, it was like Ruby’s mother had whacked open a wedding piñata that had dumped out everything over the dining room table. How she’d managed to pull it all together in less than twelve hours escaped him, but it was a logistical and supply line miracle impressive enough to make him wish he could recruit her into the Silver Knights.
“Mom, give him a break,” Ruby said, rescuing him once again from a total brain breakdown. “Number one, he doesn’t know a marguerite daisy from a red clover. Number two, we just came down for breakfast twenty minutes ago, we’re barely awake.”
It was the most she’d spoken since they’d left the bed, tossed on their special hand-binding accessible shirts, and hurried downstairs, hoping for breakfast before everyone else in the house had woken up. They’d been greeted by a full buffet of breads, cheeses, jams, and coffee as well as Ingrid in her wedding-planning glory.
“I suppose I’ll take that lack of sleep as good news.” A faint blush turned Ingrid’s cheeks pink, but she powered on. “But with only a few days until the wedding, we don’t have time for you to be sleepy. Your father is insisting on only the best for your big day. He’s already sent out the call for everyone to attend. I hate the lack of invitations, but there really just wasn’t time. You know Rolf, lots of activities, trips, and plans had to be moved around so he could be here for the wedding. He can delay, but some things can’t be postponed forever.”
Lucas forced himself not to react to that bit of intel. Their information was that the exchange with Gregers Henriksen would happen soon, within the week. Instead of checking out flowers, he should be searching the grounds, breaking into Rolf’s study, figuring out how to tap into the encrypted phone the crime boss never took a step without, but it looked like there was a possibility of gaining something out of breakfast after all. All he had to do was prod Ingrid a little.
“It can be crazy,” Lucas said, keeping his voice light as he picked up one picture, pretending to examine it while he was really watching Ingrid. “Did he have a trip planned for this weekend? I hate that we made him rearrange his schedule.”
“No, thank goodness,” Ingrid said, anxiety pulling her features taut as she placed a shaky hand on Ruby’s shoulder as if to steady herself. “He has a very important off-island meeting early next week, but Saturday’s festivities will be over before he has to go.”
Ruby’s head snapped up. “Who with?”
“Some man named Gregars, I think. Or was it Gandry? You know me, always forgetting these things.” She chuckled and shook her head. “This is why your father never tells me anything. I just forget.”
The photo crinkled in his tight grip but he schooled his face not to betray the frustration bubbling to the surface.
Ingrid peeked over Lucas’s shoulder at the picture he held. “Oh, I so agree. The rose and orchid bouquet is the perfect one.” She squeezed her daughter’s shoulder. “And you thought he wouldn’t have an opinion.”
“Where is Rolf?” he asked, being sure to keep his tone casual as he laid the photo on the table, smoothing its bent corner flat. “I should apologize for upsetting his schedule.”
“Oh, don’t you worry about that,” Ingrid said, crossing to her chair and sitting down in front of her uneaten breakfast. “He loves the chance to throw around his weight a little and get people to jump to his command.” Her tone was joking, but the teasing didn’t reach her eyes which had lost a little of their spark. “Anyway, he’s locked up in his study with Joey for the day. The good news is Antoine Alstar should be here in a few hours to start your dress.”
“So soon?” Ruby asked, keeping her gaze locked on the bits of breakfast she’d pushed around her plate instead of eating.
“It’s Tuesday,” Ingrid said. “Saturday is only four days away.”
The clock was ticking for Elskov. If the Americans were right, and he had no reason to doubt them since their information in the past had always been spot-on, the exchange was supposed to have happened this week. The question was, had the wedding moved the timeline up or pushed it back? Either way, he didn’t have time to waste on flowers and ribbons.
“Mom, you know you’ve always been so much better at all of this planning than I am,” Ruby said. “I’d like to be able to show Luc a bit of the island, not to mention take a shower, before Antoine and everyone else shows up and things get crazy.”
Disappointment and hurt flashed across Ingrid’s face but disappeared almost so fast, he could convince himself he’d been mistaken if it hadn’t been for the way Ruby flinched next to him. The door opened, and a painfully thin man with sharp, glaring eyes and a murderous expression walked in. The Sparrow was back and he was pissed.
…
Ruby should have expected it. The Sparrow wasn’t one to pussyfoot around anyone, not even her father. That made him not only rare but a one-of-a-kind commodity on Fare Island. Add to that the fact that he was the closest thing she’d ever had to a protector, and she couldn’t do anything but sit there with her mouth sealed shut as he stalked into the dining room.
The Sparrow took one look at all of the wedding paraphernalia and let out a snort of disgust. “I don’t like it.”
Her mother sighed. “Now, Hamish.”
Hamish? She’d grown up with the man and had never known his first or last name. Everyone simply called him the Sparrow—except, it seemed, for her mother.
“I know it’s not my place to say, but somebody has to.” Like always, his gaze pinned her to her spot. “I thought you were getting out. Marrying this one just pulls you in even deeper.”
Not telling him this was her escape from this life seemed like a betrayal, but she couldn’t, not yet, maybe not ever. The guilt stole the words from her mouth.
“You say that as if you don’t appreciate the kind of life we live,” Lucas said as he toyed with one of the emerald fabric swatches with his unchained hand, letting the silky material slide through his large fingers.
Everything about him seemed calm, from the placid look on his face to the nonchalant slouch of his shoulders, but it was a lie, a con. The orgasm last night and all the talk of the wedding must have twisted together inside her because despite the visual proof to the contrary, she couldn’t help but feel the conflict pulling at Lucas. He may not think he was a good man, but he was an honorable one, and the lies he had to tell were starting to take their toll. It must be difficult to only see in black and white in a gray word like theirs.
“It’s good enough for me and you,” The Sparrow snarled. “But not her.”
“I know that,” Lucas said.
The quiet, simple response made the Sparrow ratchet up his volume. “Do you? I know all about you and the things you’ve done to get where you are. You use people and leave them struggling to survive wherever they happen to land. You’re a cold-bl
ooded bastard without a heart.”
The material Lucas had been toying with slipped from his hands, and he straightened in his chair, fury coiling his body tight. The Sparrow dropped a hand to the knife sheathed on his thigh.
It was as if the world stopped rotating. The only sound in the room was the blood rushing in her ears. “That’s enough,” she said, her voice a stone weight, slicing through the air in the tension-filled room. “You know his reputation, but you don’t know him.”
The Sparrow’s tone softened. “And you do?”
Did she? Her brain said no, but some underlying, more primal instinct said she did, that they were more alike than either of them cared to admit. “I do.”
The Sparrow opened his mouth to respond but the dining room door burst open before he could. Antoine, dressed in head-to-toe orange strolled in with a three-person entourage, oblivious to the tension sparking in the air.
“Madame and Mademoiselle Macintosh,” he called out in his truly horrible fake French accent. “I cannot express how excited I was to receive the call. You know how I adore weddings, even the last minute kind.”
“I’m so sorry about that.” Ingrid quickly got out of her seat and hustled around the table to the designer. “But you know what a hurry young love is always in.”
“That it is.” Antoine delivered a pair of air kisses to Ingrid and then turned to face Ruby and Lucas. “Now stand up, my dear, and let me get a good look at what we have to work with.”
Surrendering to the fact that her life was becoming one awkward moment after another, she sighed and stood up. Because of the hand-binding chain, Lucas stood up with her, taking her hand in his like a good fraudulent fiancé should. What wasn’t fake was the sizzle of desire that rushed across her skin from even that simple act of intertwining her fingers with his.
Antoine’s gaze dropped to their joined hands, and his face light up with joy and he clapped. “I love that you are following the old traditions. Oh the stories I’ve heard about what happens during the hand-binding.”
“It was supposed to stay on until dinner, but obviously we’ll cut that short so you can get what you need from Ruby for her dress,” Ingrid said, her words spilling out in a rush as the two talked as if Ruby and Lucas weren’t even in the room.
“We can’t have that,” Antoine exclaimed. “We will work around the hand-binding, and after I get the measurements, we can send the happy couple on their way to do whatever it is they want to do while I sketch a design.”
Chapter Nine
An hour later, Lucas couldn’t get the designer’s words out of his head.
Whatever it is they want to do.
Lucas doubted the designer had meant suffering through tragic, brain-draining levels of sexual frustration staring at the thin silver chain curled around the partially-opaque, glass brick wall separating him from where Ruby stood naked under the shower spray.
What Lucas should be doing at that moment was banging his head against a wall until he figured out a way to separate Rolf Macintosh from his encrypted phone long enough to get the location of the arms deal. Short of getting the crime boss to let the meeting information slip, which he was too smart to do, Lucas was circling the drain on ways to get the date in time to stop the exchange. He’d pressed Ingrid as much as he could for information, but she hadn’t added anything. He had to think of something before it was too late.
That’s what he should be doing.
Instead, he stood in the bathroom, gripping what was probably the shredded remains of his special hand-binding shirt in one fist and holding one arm aloft inside the shower—the one chained to Ruby—while fighting every urge he had to touch the woman who was wet, naked, and within reach. He clamped his jaw down hard and finished grinding down the top layer of his molars. He couldn’t see her, well, not exactly. Any time he stupidly opened his eyes, his gaze was drawn to the vague outlines of her body as she moved under the spray. His memory of last night filled in the details. The peach color of her nipples. The full roundness of her tits. The flare of her hips. The rise of her ass. The curve of her thighs.
That was it. His jaw wasn’t the only thing aching. Shifting his stance to accommodate the tightness of his pants, Lucas stifled a groan. At least he meant to. Of course the bathroom’s acoustics exaggerated his quiet, unfulfilled misery.
His chained hand jerked upward as if Ruby had tugged her arm closer to her body to cover it from prying eyes, and she gasped, as if she’d forgotten he was waiting outside the shower.
“Now who’s the one making noises,” she teased, unable to cover a husky tremor to her question.
Remembering that sound she’d made as she came all over his tongue made his cock jerk against the confines of his pants. Fuck. He never should have tasted her last night. Now he couldn’t forget her sweet taste. She’d brought color into his black-and-white world. That was dangerous to his mission and his very precise, self-prescribed life.
The mission.
His life was only about the mission.
This one.
The next.
It didn’t matter.
He was his work.
Without Elskov, he was nothing, a fact that had never made him flinch until now, until Ruby.
He fisted the shirt tighter in his hand and squeezed his eyes shut to keep himself from watching the frustratingly vague glimpses of her through the glass blocks. “Are you going to be much longer?”
“Why?” Her arm connected to his moved again, stopping at the height of her shoulders and then slowly in broad circles lower. “Do you need time to set yourself to rights?”
The image of her washing herself, the soap bubbles covering her tits, clinging to hard nipples, sluicing down her belly to the soft, pink cleft between her legs. Set himself to rights? His cock ached, the tip already wet for her, and it took every bit of self-control to stop himself from barging into the shower, pressing her wet, naked body against one wall, and giving them both exactly what they wanted.
Set himself to rights? She knew better.
“I’m not sure I can do that while you’re this close to me.” Or farther away. He’d wanted her since she’d strolled past him into Moad Manor smelling like sunshine and looking like sin.
She stilled her arm for a heartbeat before taking it lower. “Watch out, Lucas, that sounded an awful lot like the truth.”
“It slips out every once in a while.” What was the use in denying his hunger for her when she’d see the truth pressed against his pants as soon as she stepped out of the shower? For that matter, why was he denying it? He opened his eyes and turned to face the glass bricks separating them, giving in to the want making his body tight and his dick hard. He could watch without touching, without falling. The entire world shrank down to the flashes of her creamy flesh, distorted as they were, as she turned under the warm spray. It didn’t matter that the view was partially obscured. His brain filled in what was missing and his desire added in the fantasy.
She tilted her head back, the long column of her hair became a partially obscured multi-colored rainbow down her back. “Do you ever get tired of it? The lies? The pretending?”
Deflection came naturally. “I could ask the same of you.”
“If you did, I would tell you I am tired of it. I’m tired of it all—the manipulations, fake emotions, hidden resentments, secret agendas.” Weariness crept into her words, marrow-deep exhaustion at the bullshit of it all. “At least you were up front, in your own weird way, when you blackmailed me into coming back here.”
“That’s…” He searched for a word, but everything he came up with sounded harsh about her family, her circumstances, her life, and he drifted off.
She let out a wry chuckle. “Pathetic, I know.”
The shower turned off.
His breath caught as he watched her wipe a palm across the glass bricks, clearing away some of condensation fogging them up. It wasn’t a clear view, but her faint outline became more prominent. Cursing the still indistinct vi
ew, he couldn’t look away.
“Can we be honest with each other?” she asked as she reached up, curled her hands around the length of her hair and squeezed out the extra water.
The warning sirens went off in his head, but he ignored them. “To a point.”
She grabbed the thick white towel draped over the wall and rubbed it across her wet skin. “I won’t see you again after this is over.”
“No.” The single word jabbed into him like an ice pick to the kidneys, and he closed his eyes against it, a reflexive move to block it out.
“Then see me now.”
The taut line of the chain binding them became loose. His eyes snapped open. Ruby stood in front of him, the towel at her feet. A few stray drops of water clung to her creamy skin, calling out for his tongue to lick them up. The damp tendrils of her hair hung down past her shoulders and curled around her impossibly hard nipples, begging to be rolled between his fingers. All of that was mind blowing enough, but then his gaze managed to climb upward, and he saw the challenge in her eyes and the daring smirk curling her lips upward. God she was astounding.
“I always see you.”
“Good.” Her gaze dipped down to the outline of his cock. “Is all that for me?”
Tossing aside any pretense that this wasn’t going to happen, that he was going to fight the attraction holding them together more securely than the chain wound around their wrists, he let the shirt drop to the floor. He held her gaze as he flicked open the top button of his pants.
“I don’t know if you can take it all.” But he wanted to see her try, needed to see her lips wrapped around him as she sucked him in deep.
Something sparked in her eyes at his acceptance of her challenge, and she shook her head while whispering a quiet tsk, tsk, tsk. She closed the distance between them and trailed her fingertips across the bare skin above his waistband.
