by Rebecca King
But I will one day, Pheony promised herself. I will make sure that the truth is told to the people who matter no matter what it takes.
But as Pheony followed everyone back inside the tavern she glanced back at Bert who was still working underneath the carriage, and she realised then that there were very few people who truly mattered to her anymore.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dean clamped his tongue between his lips to steady his shaking hand as he reached out to pick his tankard up. He was thirsty although Heaven only knew why. He had lost count of how many tankards of ale he had consumed.
“Damn,” he hissed when his hand missed the tankard and nearly knocked it off the table.
“I have to get some sleep,” Hamish moaned. He shook his head but clutched it when the room swirled alarmingly, and he nearly fell off his stool. “Damn, what’s wrong with me?”
Dean grinned at him. “Too much of this,” he whispered because talking loudly made his head hurt. Squinting at a spot above the bar, he waited for the room to stop spinning. When it eventually settled, he glanced around to make sure that it was going to stay where it should be. It was then that he noticed a stunning young woman standing in the doorway. He had seen her before somewhere but for the life of him couldn’t remember where. She was oddly familiar though, and simply gorgeous.
“What?” Hamish demanded loudly only to wince and try to shove his finger against his lips only to end up poking himself in the cheek. “Sshh!”
“What?” Dean squinted at him.
Hamish grinned goofily at him.
Dean rolled his eyes, but immediately regretted it when the room swayed again. He blinked at his friend. “I need to get some sleep. I was tired.”
“Was?”
“I think so.”
“I need to find my bed. It’s around here somewhere.” Hamish patted his pockets as if his bed was in them.
“I can’t remember where mine is. It was upstairs somewhere.” As he spoke, Dean’s gaze swept around the room again, this time in search of the stunning young woman. He had to know who she was. “I don’t know yet.”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” Dean replied because he couldn’t remember what he didn’t know.
“I am off.” Hamish forced himself to his feet. To remain upright, he needed the solid support of the wall which he clung to as he sidled around the room until he reached the doorway. Only then did he lunge toward the stairs. Once there, he clung to the bannister and began to haul himself up the mountainous stairs.
“Night then,” Dean muttered, wondering how he was going to manage to do something like that.
“Hush,” Hamish hissed from half-way up the stairs. “You’ll wake us all up.”
“Yes, you will,” Dean muttered when Hamish stumbled, landed with a loud thump on the stairs, and then cursed bitterly when pain ran down his shins. Dean grinned at his colleague until Hamish disappeared. It was then that he realised that he too should do something about getting to bed, especially seeing as the inn keeper was locking the front door behind the last of his customers.
“Do you mind if I join you?” Pheony waited nervously beside the table, staring hopefully down at the man who was quite obviously drunk. Her worried gaze flew to the inn keeper who nodded his understanding and promptly left her to speak with the operative from the Star Elite alone. Because he knew why Pheony was talking to the man, even drunk, the inn keeper didn’t advise the young woman to head off to bed. Nor did he linger in his now empty tap room in case she needed help. He knew the man from the Star Elite wouldn’t pose a danger to her. She was safe with him – unless he decided to return her to that odious woman upstairs.
Dean leaned back in his seat and waved a hand to the stool opposite. He squinted at her but for the life of him still couldn’t remember who she was. “Have we met before?” he asked suspiciously.
“No.” Pheony was physically shaking as she slid into the seat opposite him.
“Drink?”
“No, thank you,” Pheony murmured politely. “Wait. No. Yes, please.” She knew it was wrong to drink but she was curious to know what it tasted like. If she wanted to be treated like an adult in her own right, she had to start to act like one.
Dean squinted at the bar but suspected that he wasn’t going to be able to reach it much less successfully carry a tankard and more ale back to the table. He looked around at the tables around them, but they were all empty now having been wiped down for the evening.
“I’ll go and get one,” Pheony offered when she saw the confused look on his face. While she didn’t expect him to sneak her out of the tavern, mostly because she doubted that he was capable of it, Pheony needed his advice. Drunk or not, he was a Star Elite operative and likely to be able to advise her of her best options.
Hopefully, he won’t remember anything about it in the morning as well, which will help me when Augusta realises that I have gone and causes chaos.
When she returned to the table, Dean poured her a drink, or tried to. He winced and looked ruefully at her when his aim proved to be off and he poured ale all over the table instead.
“Thank you,” Pheony murmured when he plonked the jug onto the table. She didn’t pick the tankard up. Instead, she watched him take a long sip of the amber liquid in his own tankard before wiping his mouth. He then grinned goofily at her.
“What’s your name? And why are you in this tavern all alone?” Dean asked, amazed at how lucid he had sounded. He had struggled to get the words out, but she didn’t look scared, or confused, so he must have made sense.
“Are you drunk?” Pheony asked, inwardly cringing at how stupid a question that was. She could smell the ale on him and knew that he was unlikely to be aware that he was physically swaying in his seat.
“A little,” Dean replied, running a suggestive gaze down the length of her. “Does it matter?”
Pheony’s cheeks heated. She was oddly thrilled that he found her attractive. It was the first time that any man had ever looked at her – truly looked at her – as if she were a real, living person who was appealing.
“No,” Pheony whispered, eventually deciding that she had to put his apparent interest down to the amount of ale he had consumed. She knew that if he had been sober, he would have paid her little interest.
Like he had out in the yard earlier.
“Rumour has it that you work with the Star Elite,” Pheony began.
“Don’t believe everything you hear.” Dean ruined his warning by smiling. “Been gossiping about me, have you?” He was rather pleased that someone as gorgeous as her was so intrigued by him.
“The inn keeper told me about you. He said that you might be able to help me,” Pheony edged.
Dean leaned backwards, but not too far in case he fell off his stool again. “Are you in trouble?”
“Would you help me if I was?”
Dean squinted at her. Despite inner alarm bells ringing, he leaned forward. “What kind of trouble are you in?” If he had been sober, he would have told her that she should go and see the magistrate before he left the table, but he suspected that even if he did try to make his way to the stairs, he would end up flat on his face before he got half-way across the tap room.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Pheony stated before he could ask her.
“So why would you need help?” Dean took another slug of ale because he suspected he was going to need it. His concern grew when he saw the furtive, almost worried look she slid toward the stairs. “Is your husband going to come down and demand to know why I am talking to his wife?”
“No, God no.” Pheony scoffed, but her gaze sharpened on him as she asked: “Do you really think that I could have a husband?”
Dean snorted. “It would be damned odd if someone as pretty as you weren’t married.”
“I am not married,” Pheony whispered.
Dean leaned back and squinted at her. “What do you want from me?” Now that he had covered whether she was married
or not, and learnt that she wasn’t really in any trouble, he wanted to know everything there was about her. His interest was piqued. He knew he should go to bed because his exhausted body craved sleep but if he went without getting facts off her, he was going to end up just lying awake all night wondering about her.
“I want to know how I can escape,” Pheony began only to realise that to feel the need to escape somewhere hinted that she had done something wrong. As she usually did when she was mulling over a complex problem, Pheony began to mutter to herself. “No, that is wrong. I don’t need to escape. I need to leave, but I do have to get away.”
She froze when a masculine hand reached across the narrow table and settled itself firmly over hers. Her fingers felt small and fragile against his broader, coarser palm. Again, her cheeks flooded with colour. It was instinctively to want to snatch her hand away, but something compelled her to remain perfectly still. It wouldn’t do her any good to offend him or annoy him. Besides, this was the first time anybody had willingly touched her since her father had died. It was intriguing, especially when it was this man who was effectively holding her hand. Her heart began to pound wildly as she stared deeply into his eyes.
“I need your advice,” Pheony whispered, watching him to make sure that he was lucid enough to be able to understand her. But when their eyes met, Pheony realised that she couldn’t tear her gaze away again. The room they were in, although large enough to accommodate forty or so people, suddenly shrank until there was just the two of them seated before a crackling fire. It helped that the light within the room had been reduced to two candles and the roaring fireplace which cast the darkest shadows in an orange glow that was intimate. Pheony briefly wished that they were seated like this in better circumstances. The somewhat romantic atmosphere that settled about them was something she hated to have to break. But as the silence lengthened, she became painfully aware of the rhythmic ticking of a clock.
“You are gorgeous,” Dean murmured gently, meaning every word. Despite the ale making his mind sluggish, he could still recognise a beautiful woman when he saw one. He had never seen one as stunning as the young woman before him. It was as if she had been sent from Heaven to torment him. “What’s your name?”
“P-” Pheony hesitated. She knew that the man would probably not remember their conversation in the morning. “Abigail.”
“Abigail what?” Dean pressed, rolling the word around in his mind. He squinted at her but no matter how much he tried to make it stick, she didn’t look like an Abigail. Deep in the back of his mind the name ‘Pheony’ rolled around but he couldn’t even start to understand why he should want to name her after a flower. “Have I met you somewhere before?”
Pheony shook her head. “I have never met you before today.”
It took her a moment to realise that they were still holding hands. She looked down when she felt his thumb move and watched it along the length of hers. She felt a faint shock of something slide up her wrist and into her arm. It then joined the pounding of the blood in her veins and settled somewhere deep in the centre of her chest. A shiver slithered down her spine. The warmth emanating from his palm was slowly but surely working its way through the entire length of her. She was enraptured.
“Let me stay with you tonight,” she pleaded, a little stunned by her boldness. It was thrilling yet shocking that she had uttered that phrase aloud.
Dean’s lips twitched. He would have believed she wanted to had her voice not quivered when she spoke. He was struck by how little he wanted to deny her. “Why did you want to speak to me? What do you want from me?” He hated to ask it but knew that it was a wise man who would. “I don’t have any money to pay you.”
Pheony blinked at him. She leaned forward to ask: “Pay me for what?”
Dean knew from the blank look on her face that she had no idea what he was talking about. “It doesn’t matter. Who are you here with? Are you here alone?”
“Yes,” Pheony lied even though she was essentially all alone in the tavern. While she had arrived with Augusta, she could never really call her legal guardian her family or claim to be really ‘with’ her. She usually was dragged along by them because she couldn’t be left behind.
“I thought I saw you with someone earlier.”
Pheony mentally cursed. “It was the inn keeper. We were talking about that horrible woman in the back room who kept shrieking for someone.”
Dean squinted at her, but his mind refused to unravel the intricacies of what she was saying. Something warned him that she wasn’t being honest with him. It might have been the way that she kept glancing nervously at the stairs as if she was afraid of someone coming down them. Tipping his head to study her closely, Dean decided to test her. Boldly, he flipped his hand over until their palms were together, but with their fingers touching each other’s wrists, it was impossible to interlace their fingers. So, Dean suddenly stood up, leant over the table, cupped the back of her head, but only to place a searing kiss onto her lips.
The second his lips touched hers he felt as if he had kissed her before. He struggled to remember where he might have been at the time, though, or why he was foolish enough to not remember. He sensed from the awkward way she lifted her hands to his shoulders only to hesitate, as if she weren’t sure if she should touch him or not, that she was untried. She certainly didn’t seem to know if she should kiss him back or not. At first, she remained frozen in her seat, as if stunned.
But then she wasn’t expecting me to kiss her.
Dean decided to give her the benefit of his vast experience in kissing women and edged around the table, but only so he could tug her out of her seat. Once she was standing before him, he slid his arms around her and hauled her against him until every breath she took pressed her more tightly against him. His body leapt to life in response. It was his mind that was sluggish. If he had been able to focus properly, he would have felt the faint hitch in her breath, and her physical trembling in his arms. He would have stopped to question why he had to tighten his hold on her to stop her putting distance between them. Instead, he deepened the kiss. When he heard her moan, and shift against him, Dean’s body tightened even more. He began to have visions of being able to back step her to the nearest table and lift her skirt but needed to get her upstairs. He couldn’t remember where the inn keeper had gone and didn’t want to be interrupted. He didn’t want this to ever end. The sweetness of her mouth, the tentative pressure of her fingers exploring the bone and muscle of his shoulders, her softness against him, was addictive. A few moments ago, wild horses couldn’t have forced him to touch her, but now that he had broken down both their barriers, Dean couldn’t find the will to rebuild them again. Consequently, when he finally lifted his head several minutes later, and looked down into her lambent eyes, he read an acceptance in the depths of her green eyes that made the decision about what to do next for him. He didn’t listen to the doubts that hovered in the darker recesses of his ale-soaked mind asking if it was a wise move or not.
“Let’s go upstairs. Yes, you can stay with me tonight,” he promised.
Pheony shivered. She stared at him in surprise because she hadn’t expected him to agree so quickly. When she had foolishly asked him if she could stay with him, she hadn’t expected him to kiss her, but he had, and now she was faced with a different problem.
Like how I am going to stay in his room but not go anywhere near him.
“Let’s have another drink first,” she suggested in a voice far louder than she had intended. She tried to pretend that she wasn’t as panic stricken as she felt and offered him an overly bright smile. To try to hide her awkwardness, Pheony hurried off to the bar and rummaged around on the shelves until she found a bottle of wine. Removing it, she snatched two goblets and returned to him. By the time she looked up again, Dean was propping up the bar, looking appreciatively at the delicate curve of her derriere. Inwardly thrilled yet terrified, Pheony lifted the goblets up and said: “Wine?”
Dean, who wasn
’t one who usually drink the stuff, nodded. “Lead on,” he murmured, waving one long arm out toward the stairs.
With more boldness than she truly felt, Pheony dutifully headed toward the stairs. She tipped her chin up, squared her shoulders, and forced herself to remember that the tavern was now quiet because most people were already in their beds. Even the inn keeper had retreated to his bed, apparently. There was absolutely nothing to fear so long as she stayed calm and waited.
She could go through with her plan. She had to.
She glanced back at the man behind her and watched him stumble.
It shouldn’t take too long.
From the way that he was clinging desperately on to the bannister as he climbed the stairs, Pheony began to wonder if he was going to make it all the way up to his room. It seemed to take an age before they eventually reached the landing.
“Which room?” she whispered.
Dean grinned at her but couldn’t resist tugging her into his arms for another loving kiss.
This time, Pheony willingly complied because she wanted to kiss him. It felt rather nice to have someone show her that she mattered, for a little while at least. While she knew she should be horrified, Pheony needed this man to help her. What she hadn’t expected was to enjoy being with him, being the sole focus of his attention, his touch, his gentle hold. When he looked at her it was as if he couldn’t see anything else. She was the centre of his world. She loved it. She revelled in the wonderful exhilaration that suffused her. It was hedonistic, wildly reckless, but addictive to the point that she couldn’t stop. It didn’t matter that they had only just met, that she knew little about him – the man. He was an investigator with the Star Elite and therefore had to be trustworthy – didn’t he?
