His misery hung in the air. Was this the same guy who had ripped into her in Christian’s office last month? Instinctively, she moved to him. Somehow, her arms put themselves around his waist and her cheek got itself on his shoulder.
Am I doing this?
she wondered, inhaling his scent. Soap and cinnamon.
I’ve lost my mind.
His warmth seeped through his soft t-shirt. Gray in a t-shirt and jeans was so different than Gray in his expensive Italian suit. Why wasn’t he pushing her away?
This wasn’t like The Kiss on the photocopier. Back then, her hormones were running the show. There was something more here. Two people connecting. It was scarier than any lust-induced sex frenzy.
“I don’t want your pity.” But he shifted, wrapping a solid arm around her hips.
Her heart pounded like thunder in her chest. She felt his breath as his lips nearly touched her hair.
“Then what do you want from me?” It took all her breath to force the words out.
He didn’t answer. She stared at the steel wall of his chest. His knuckles traced a shivery line between her jaw and her black turtleneck. She let him lift her chin. There was heat in those smoky eyes. And something more. His lips parted.
He lowered his mouth.
Slam!
Sterling,
she remembered.
They both jumped back. Gray cleared his throat. She inhaled. When the breath of sanity returned to her lungs and her heart felt like it might not explode, she opened a cupboard.
“Now where is the pasta sauce? No, it’s grilled cheese, right?” She gave Gray a tight smile.
He grabbed her arm and growled at her. “If you ever tell anyone about this, they will never find your body, do you understand?”
*
***
******
****
*
I can’t take much more of this,
thought Sadie.
I’ll melt into a gooey puddle.
Gray was cooking. She’d never even seen dirt on his shoes and here he was up to his elbows in sticky dough.
He’d opened her fridge with a manly growl and another death threat. She’d cursed herself for deluding herself again.
But he hadn’t been talking about their near-kiss. He’d ravaged Aunt Pippa’s kitchen for ingredients and shown Sterling how to make a flour volcano on the countertop, cracking eggs into the crater one-handed. With precision, he’d stirred the eggs into the flour and kneaded it smooth.
She was frozen on the spot in the kitchen doorway. She couldn’t take her eyes off him as he took a wad of the dough, flattened it in one big hand and wrapped it around the handle of a wooden spoon to make a sort of rough tube.
He was making—making—pasta.
He’d lectured Sterling about the proteins in durum flour being superior for pasta, and the albumin in the egg doing something something something. She was too busy drooling to pay attention to the chemistry lesson.
Chippendales be damned. She’d never seen anything sexier than Gray wearing Aunt Pippa’s frilly apron over his gray t-shirt, showing his nephew how to make pasta from scratch.
His fiancée was lucky. At the thought, Sadie grabbed at the sudden pain in her chest.
“And that’s how you please a woman,” Gray joked.
“I’m bored,” Sterling announced.
Gray’s eyes narrowed. “There’s always your homework.”
“Wait,” she said. “I have a game. In the living room. Second shelf on the left.”
Sterling jumped down from the chair he’d been standing on and raced into the other room in a fit of ten-year-old energy.
“If you ever tell anyone about this...” he threatened again.
“Your secret’s safe with me, Naked Chef.” She rolled her eyes at herself. “Okay, the Naked Chef joke was cheap.” Hmm. Gray making pasta naked. Now there was a thought.
His eyes darkened. A quirk of a smile lifted one corner of his mouth, sending bubbles of awareness popping over her skin like champagne. He rolled a bit of dough in his fingers in an un-pasta-like way. With one hand, he made a suction cup shape and pinched a little nub in the center of it.
Sadie’s ears popped. It was magic, she realized. She’d never seen it close up. Intrigued, she leaned forward.
Gray ran his finger over the little nub. She gasped as her left nipple hardened. Rough pressure flicked the nub, exactly in time with his caress of the pasta nipple.
“Fun with alchemy.” He gave her a wicked half-smile.
*
***
******
****
*
“I’ll beat you this time.” From the kitchen, Sadie heard Sterling trash-talking his uncle.
“Talk is cheap.” She could almost hear a black eyebrow lift.
As it turned out, Sterling had an insatiable appetite for the tiddlywinks game Aunt Pippa had left her in the big box o’ mysterious items. And Gray had infinite patience for his nephew. They’d played for an hour after dinner as she cleaned. Both males had offered to help wash up—Sterling with a little prodding—but she kicked them out, wanting alone time.
One pot still bubbled on the back burner of the stove.
Odd
. Gray hadn’t mentioned it. Sadie threw the damp dishtowel over her shoulder and lifted the lid. A thick, slightly pink liquid gave off a mouth-watering citrusy smell. She dipped a fingertip in and licked it clean. The sour taste was cut by just enough sweetness to keep her cheeks from puckering.
She walked to the living room. The tip of Sterling’s tongue stuck out of his mouth in a look of concentration. One of his eyes was closed as he sighted the cup with his tiddlywink.
“Gray, there’s still a pot on the stove.”
A smirk played at one corner of his lip. “Leave it.”
“It tastes like lemons.”
Gray nodded, his chest shaking with contained laughter.
“Can I have some, Uncle Gray?”
“No,” he said. “It’s for the adults. For later.”
Plonk. Sterling’s wink landed on the line between the red area worth three points and the blue area worth six points. “Six points,” he said.
“The Gray House plays by the rules.”
Sterling stuck out his chin. “Fine. Three.”
Gray made his shot. His wink plunked against the side of the box, not making a single point.
“Ha!” Sterling said.
Gray didn’t sneak a glance at her or show any indication he’d thrown the game.
“Are you going to play, Miss Strange?”
“Of course.” She joined them at the table.
About every other game, Gray managed to miss that all-important shot. Making Sterling earn his victories made them sweeter to the kid. She didn’t have to worry about letting Sterling win. She never knew where her winks were going to go. Instead, she concentrated on absorbing the happy atmosphere.
After one of Sterling’s victories, she picked up a wild shot of Gray’s that had landed in her lap and held the tiddlywink out to him.
Their fingers touched on the game piece.
A flash of dark light. Her ears popped. She looked at the world through eyes that weren’t her own.
Pippa Strange studied the smoky-eyed young man sitting stiffly across from her on the Persian carpet she’d bought in Damascus last year. It was impossible to think of the ten-year-old as a child. She gathered up the game pieces.
Time for you to go to bed, said Pippa. Or Santa won’t come.
I don’t believe in fairy tales, young Lorde Gray said, looking down his little Roman nose at her.
Pippa fought the urge to smother this young man in pity and love. Her heart broke for this abandoned boy who didn’t have enough magic in a childhood that would end far too soon. Such a contrast to her own niece, or what Sadie had been like before—
“Sadie?” a deep male voice said.
Sadie blinked, coming back to herself. The past, momentarily superimposed over the present, faded.
Gray’s smoky eyes narrowed in concern. “You went off there for a second.”
She swallowed to clear the pressure from her ears. She looked at the red tiddlywink both she and Gray held.
These are things you’ll need,
Dream Pippa had said.
Need for what?
“Bah, humbug!” said Alastair Sim, with Scrooge’s enthusiasm. Sadie snuggled under the blanket as Pippa’s tiny TV lit the room with a ghostly flickering light.
She had watched Sterling fall asleep in front of
The Muppet Christmas Carol
. At the time, he’d been sitting next to Gray on Aunt Pippa’s brown-swirled couch. Sadie had watched the increasing yawns, then the drooping eyes. Eventually, Sterling had folded over onto his uncle’s shoulder and started snoring.
Poor kid
. But he had his uncle. And for now, he had her. Tomorrow, under a non-existent Christmas tree, he’d find a box of tiddlywinks and
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
.
No,
she thought.
The Magician’s Nephew.
After a while, Gray had picked him up. She couldn’t keep her eyes off the sight of the sleeping kid caught up in those strong arms. Gray left without a word, as if she wasn't even there. Of course. He hasn’t stayed for her, after all. All of this was for Sterling. As it should be.
She ate another one of the chocolates her mom had sent. It was her favorite, caramel. It tasted like sawdust in her mouth. “Bah, humbug,” she said to no one.
On the television, Scrooge watched his nephew’s party, standing apart from the festivities. Sadie felt like rubbing her eyes, too. She’d fooled herself again, deluded herself into thinking Gray was feeling the same things she was.
The smell of the cookies Gray had whipped up after dinner wafted in from the kitchen. Sweet cinnamon. His smell. She smiled.
Then she whipped back to reality. She couldn’t get caught up in this game of house they were playing for Sterling’s benefit. Gray wouldn’t be here if Sterling hadn’t had a tantrum about Paris.
Nope,
she thought.
From now on, I’ll just play my part. I’ll be the good little substitute mommy and keep my mind off the substitute daddy and any substitute conjugal activities implied by the imaginary substitute relationship.
And then after, I’ll just go bash my head against that wall. Because it will feel really good when I stop.
The door creaked.
Every muscle in her body tensed. She pretended to pay attention to Scrooge’s denials to the Ghost of Christmas Present.
She heard someone pouring something in the kitchen.
A tall, broad figure came around the corner of the couch with the lithe grace of a panther on the hunt. Or a man who wanted something. She shook that thought out of her head and concentrated on the television, but the black-and-white picture turned to fuzzy lines her eyes couldn’t interpret.
Two people who didn’t want to be alone could watch television, couldn’t they? It didn’t
mean
anything.
Gray placed something on the coffee table and sprawled over the other end of the couch. He took up entirely too much space there; she curled up so she wouldn’t touch him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him spread his legs wide in the easy sensual way of men. The vee of his inseams drew the eye exactly where she didn’t want her eye drawn. She looked straight ahead and willed herself not to feel anything.
“You came back,” she said.
“You left the door open. Didn’t you just watch this?”
“We watched the Muppets. This is the 1951 version. It’s black and white.”
“So is the TV,” he said. “Why do you want to see Scrooge’s mental breakdown again?”
“Best character arc in all literature. He has to see the past that made him what he was, visit the present he’s missing and follow his actions to their logical conclusion. Then he can really change. A perfect hero’s journey. I could put it on as a Christmas play next year.” She paused. “But I’ll be gone by then. I’ve decided to leave.” It felt like betraying Pippa, but it was obviously the right thing to do. The revelation of the memory-erasing spell had made the decision for her. Her only regret would be forgetting the truth about Pippa and Chloë. And she wouldn’t remember to regret it. Cross had told her not to bother writing emails or notes to herself. Her things would be searched and her email deleted. She wouldn't have done it anyway—Strange Academy might have treated her like crap, but these kids deserved security. She wouldn't put them in danger by putting what she knew in writing.
“When will you go?” he asked, his tone flat.
She turned to look at him. Her breath caught. A flash of light from the TV crossed his face, and for an instant half of his profile was light, the other shadowed. He looked nothing like the man who had rolled pasta like Play-Doh with his nephew.
He looked predatory. And there was only one deer in his headlights.
“At the end of the spring term. It leaves Christian time to find a replacement. I didn’t intend to stay here after I found out about Pippa’s death. I’ll get my Ph.D. and be Dr. Strange.” Staying a few more months would give her time to find Eton English and ask him a few relevant questions.
She felt Gray watch her. A million silent years passed. Or it could have been a second.
“Black,” he said. “Definitely wearing the black ones.”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t mean to say it out loud.” But his tone of voice said he didn’t give a damn.
The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood to attention like good little soldiers.
“Who’s your favorite spirit?” she asked. Maybe she could distract herself. Maybe she’d forget his left hand had just come to rest on his inner thigh, about halfway up, his thumb on the inseam.
“Red,” Gray said. “I like red.”
She didn’t understand his answer. “I love Christmas Yet to Come. The most frightening ghost does the most good. Fascinating how Dickens built the symbol of the future out of the ancient archetype for Death.” She bit her tongue to stop from babbling about Albrecht Durër woodcuts and the misinterpretation of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
“No. I think it’s the pink ones.”
“What are you talking about?” she blurted.