His fingers tightened around her elbow.
“Corin—”
His name on her lips broke the spell. He let her go—quickly, as though she burned.
Then he stepped away. “Until tomorrow.”
That evening, she was still breathless.
Everything else in her life was back to its usual routine. Tomás was in his bath, piling up bubbles and then blowing them down. They’d had exactly the slow, silly evening they both needed: he’d ‘helped’ her cook dinner, stayed human-toddler-shaped for most of the meal and then transformed and gobbled the rest as a dragon, and now he was battling bubble-towers in the bath. She would tuck him into his crib with tonight’s choice of treasure. Ifshe was lucky, he would sleep through most of the night and in the morning—
In the morning, she would wake up in the same town as Corin Blackburn. A few minutes’ walk away from whatever bed he had slept in.
Thank goodness he’d made other arrangements and wouldn’t be staying in the bed-and-breakfast. If she knew all that was separating them was a wall, she—
She would have a very disturbed night, that’s what she would have.
Bad enough that he would be in town. They might pass each other in the street. Grab coffee from Tess’s or a bite to eat at Caro’s at the same time. He would be the subject of every breath of gossip from one end of the cove to the other, and she would…
Her stomach turned over. She would be, too.
“That’s nothing new,” she muttered to herself. She and Tomás, and the storm of excitement they rode into town on, had been the subject of practically every conversation she’d heard the edges of as she got to know her new home. Corin being here was like the sequel to the most hotly anticipated soap opera of the year.
The woman who’d run away to Hideaway Cove with a dragon on her hip and another one at her heels.
The heat in his gaze still seared through her. It was a good thing she’d said no to dinner. Because she had a strong suspicion she wouldn’t have said no to anything else.
He does want me.
She’d had no idea he felt anything for her. She hadn’t seen the extent of his self-control until the thread of it had almost broken.
How much further would he have gone, if she hadn’t broken the spell?
If she’d kissed him instead of breathing his name like an idiot, would he have let her?
She groaned as she imagined him kissing her. Making her body feel all the things it desperately wanted to feel.
His self-control hadn’t broken—but she’d seen what lay behind it, now. The desire in his eyes.
Later that night, when Tomás was finally asleep, and she had an hour or two to herself, she found herself wondering… How much would it take to snap that thread?
Corin was here in Hideaway. And for the next few days, he wasn’t going anywhere.
She had wanted him for so long. And now—he wasn’t her boss anymore.
He wasn’t anything to her. And she wasn’t anything to him—except that he wanted her, physically, and was clearly concerned that want would distract from the important business of hunting down the jewel thief.
If she thought about it like that … they could both really do with getting it out of their systems.
It was reckless. It was maybe—probably—very likely the worst decision she could make, out of all the bad decisions she’d made these past few years.
But they hadn’t been all bad, in the end. Her thoughtless one-night stand had given her Tomás. Running away to Hideaway had given her this new, safe life. And this…
A thrill went through her, hot and slippery and tempting.
Was she really considering seducing Corin Blackburn?
6
