“And whose fault it that?” She was too tired to question how unwise it was to travel down this particular lane of conversation. “One minute I thought we were becoming besties. You’d chuck me under the chin or throw your arm around me. The next minute you were all irascible and irritating. And you treated me like I was a plague carrier, always staying five feet back.”
He tilted his head and regarded her with a look she couldn’t name. “And ya got no idea why that is?” His voice had dropped an octave, so she felt the rumble of it low in her belly.
“No.” She shook her head, trying not to let him see how that bedroom voice of his affected her. She was glad for the long sleeves on the robe that hid the goose bumps peppering her arms. “Please. Enlighten me.”
“So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay,”he quoted. And then, as he always did, he credited the poet. “Robert Frost.”
She frowned. “Meaning what? Everything is fleeting? Including our camaraderie?”
“Somethin’ like that.” He turned to retrieve the mug of hot chocolate. “Drink up. Doctor Britt’s orders.”
“You know that thing I said about you having the perfect line or stanza for just about every situation? I take it back. That last quote was irritatingly unsatisfying.”
“Drink, Eliza.” He nudged the mug in her hand toward her mouth.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re changing the subject?”
“Probably same reason you’re avoidin’ takin’ a drink of that there hot chocolate. Because we’re both stubborn as mules and neither one of us likes being backed into a corner or told what to do.”
To prove him wrong, she haughtily took a large sip.
The hot chocolate wasn’t hot anymore. At least not temperature-wise. Taste-wise? Oh, taste-wise it wasstraight fireas Hannah Blue, the purple-haired girlfriend of their resident sharpshooter, would say.
Eliza gulped down half the mug’s contents before sighing and wiping the back of her hand over her mouth. She hadn’t realized how dehydrated she was. Crying was thirsty work.
“Britt added a dash of cinnamon.” The sweet, rich liquid had soothed her throat. She no longer felt like her larynx had been scoured with a bottle brush.
“Did he?” Fisher stole the mug and took a tentative sip.
Her gaze was automatically drawn to the spot where his lips wrapped around the rim. She wanted to place her mouth there the next time she had a drink. It was probably the closest she’d ever come to kissing him.
“Tastes the same to me,” he said with a shrug.
“Says the man who thinks margarine and butter are interchangeable.”
He took another sip and a drop of liquid clung to the line delineating his plump bottom lip. She couldn’t stop her eyes from tracking down to that drop. And it took all her self-restraint not to lean forward and lick it off.
When his tongue darted out to do the job for her, she stopped herself from groaning by dropping her eyes to her duvet cover and picking at a piece of lint.
“Fisher, I?—”
What? What had she started to say?
That he was the reason she’d felt only sadness when Charlie had gotten down on one knee? That he was the first thing she thought of when she woke up in the morning and the last thing she thought of after laying her head on the pillow at night?
That she loved him?
Talk about the cherry on top of this craptastic sundae, she thought with no small measure of misery.I’ve already witnessed a massacre and the brutal murder of the man who wanted to marry me. Why not add in a little rejection too?
Fisherwouldreject her.
She knew it as surely as she knew her father would have his assistant send her yet another silk Ferragamo scarf for Christmas.
When it came to sexual congress, Fisher had made it abundantly clear he’d be more than happy to be her huckleberry. How many times had he offered her“some horizontal refreshment”or jokingly assured her he’d like to“add his banana to her fruit salad.”
But when it came to love?
Oh, when it came to love, he’d sooner cut off his own balls.
