“Pardon me?”
“Music is forbidden,” she said with an authority she did not possess.
Part of her wanted to cringe.Forbidden?She might have been channeling the 1910s, but she didn’t have to adopt their lingo.
“Forgive me. It wasn’t in the employee handbook,” he replied, too dry to be serious. “Is this a new rule?”
God, he recovered quickly. One minute, his jaw was on the floor, the next he was back at arms, ready to rip off Sam’s armor and expose her.
“It’s an old rule. We were”—Sam swallowed, grasping for a lie and finishing it with complete, incorrect certainty—“Puritans.”
“Really? Because…” Daniel moved the guitar away from his chest. “I think you made it up on the spot because you think it’ll get rid of me.”
Yep.
“If I need to get rid of you, Mr. Best, I’ll fire you,” she said.
“Will you?”
She tried not to watch his imposing body rise to its full height or his lightning eyes flash or his smile shoot shivers down her spine. But… She was only human. A human woman who found him undeniably attractive. It was lust, all right. Lust she could have easily shaken off if he hadn’t been so damn nice to her the other night.
His smile was like the second sip of hot cocoa after being outside in a blizzard all day, warming from the inside out. She turned away, busying herself with a glass of water so she didn’t have to look at it. The cold tap sprung to life and she filled the glass, gulping back its contents to extinguish the warmth blossoming within her chest.
“You give yourself more credit than you’re worth.” She returned the glass to the counter, a little too hard. “You can barely play.”
“Did I… Did I do something wrong?” he asked.
“You broke the rules,” she snapped, without thinking. And he had. Oh, how he’d broken the rules. She was supposed to be the one with power. In the pursuit of the Mud Duck, the Animos was supposed to pull the puppet strings. So why did she feel so out of control? Why was she struggling to keep her breath in check every time he so much as glanced her way? She amended her statement, gluing up the cracks beginning to form in her plastered-over defenses. “You can’t play music in here.”
“I can’t break rules you made up,” he said.
How was he so optimistic? Why was he still smiling when up against her cold-as-ice debating skills?
“I’m the lady of this house. I can do anything I want.”
She should have shut him down, but again, the conversation took an unexpected turn. He maintained cheerfulness, though he didn’t dare approach her. He kept his distance as though the lady of the house was something of a wild, wounded animal he didn’t dare get too close to.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“What?” Sam spun on her heel, facing him again. She was going to get whiplash if this conversation kept going any longer.
“After you left, and not hearing from you, I started to get kind of worried. I thought maybe you’d caught a cold or pneumonia or the plague or something.”
It was, weirdly, maybe one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to her in her entire life. Her brother goaded her about surviving Animos. Doctors asked her about her health. This was different. Genuine. She coughed, clearing her throat.
“I’m fine,” she said, tightly. “And yourself?”
“Actually.” He took his first brave steps toward her at a stroll, like he was approaching her in some dive bar in New York and not her family’s ancestral home. “I’ve been feeling a little under the weather. See, I gave this beautiful woman my coat and now I can’t seem to get the chill out of my bones.”
“That was silly of you, wasn’t it?”
“I thought it was chivalrous.”
“Impractical.”
“Potato-potahto. Do you still have my coat, by the way?”
By then, he was near enough. Near enough for what, Sam didn’t give herself time to imagine. Her rapidly racing heart gave her enough of a hint. She couldn’t let herself get too close. Pushing away from the counter, she fled her place.
