“You look cold. You’ll…” He paused, managing to avoid using his grandmother’s catchphrase,you’ll catch your death, but only just. “You could get ill.”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
There it was again.I’m fine. Thanks.Maybe it was her catchphrase. He wondered where she’d learned such a sad phrase. A denial of one’s misery to keep someone else happy coupled with gratitude for actions not taken.
“I’m warm blooded.” He offered her the coat with a smile, careful to keep the coat’s flaps clutched in his hand. He didn’t want it to unroll and release all of his body heat before she had the chance to put it on. “Take it.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t cover myself,” she said. “It’s part of the thing.”
That was all? No problem.
“Well… Here.”
In a few long steps, he circled her, laying his long brown coat over her shoulders. With only a few inches’ difference in their height, it hung around her well, falling to her knees. The worn fabric covered most of her back, but Daniel was willing to wager the guys in her stupid society were more interested in her chest than in her backside.
“You’re going to be cold,” she protested.
Daniel’s heart tugged. For a woman who lived in a house with at least twenty servants and a father who owned half of the country, Sam acted like someone for whom no one had ever done something kind before. She was a puzzle.
“I’m more worried about you. You really can’t cover yourself?”
“Not if I want to be in Animos.”
“Why do you want to be?” he asked, his words too curious.
“It’s none of your business.”
Shit, you’re losing her. Stupid shit like this is why you haven’t met the right girl. You scare them all the hell away.He turned to humor, the one standby he could cling to in any situation.
“Any club that makes me strip isnotone I want to be part of. Except a strip club, of course.”
“They’re a prestigious society,” Sam sniffed, but Daniel got the impression it was false, hollow. Like she didn’t believe it any more than he did.
“A prestigious society of people who left you to freeze in your pants.” His guitar returned to its rightful place on his body.
“It’s the rules.”
Rules. That’s all this town was. Rules. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, maybe Angie was right. They were all stuck in a Victorian time warp, where class mattered and people tortured themselves for the privilege of wearing a ridiculous blue uniform.
Dragging his case along the stone, he stopped in front of her, turning his back to her and facing toward the street separating the church’s land from the sanctuary. His fingertips started to pluck at the strings, waiting for a tune to find him. He never did find the pick he’d been searching for.
“What are you doing?”
Her hot breath hit the hairs on the back of his neck in soft pats, and he got the sense she knewexactlywhy he was standing there, hiding the curves of her body with his own broad frame. She might not be able to cover herself up, but no one saidhecouldn’t.
“I’m busking,” he said.
The opening chords of Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire” echoed through the empty yard. Daniel flushed. Sometimes the music came through him, saying exactly what he was feeling. He didn’t realize he was feelingthat.He swallowed hard.
“But you’re blocking me,” she reiterated.
Did he hear hope in her voice? The flutter in its strength knocked against Daniel’s chest. How bad did these Animos assholes treat her that she would be surprised at a gesture so small?
“Any requests?” he asked.
