“What?”
“I think you quite extraordinary.” He used the action of pulling off his undershirt to hide his face. Bare to the waist, he didn’t feel as naked now that there was more exposed than just his expression.
“I don’t understand. I thought you said I was judgmental and harsh.” The little bob in her throat betrayed her nerves and calmed his.
He tossed the shirt aside. “Those qualities combined with your others make you more extraordinary, not less.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You told me I used my sexuality against others.” He changed the topic and leaned against the press, his fingers touching the tops of his trousers.
“You do,” she whispered, her body framed for flight. Or framed to stophimfrom flight.
“It is a very useful weapon. I learned to use everything at my disposal.” He slid a finger along the button at the top.
“But you have plenty of weapons at your disposal now. You don’t need to use it, if you don’t want. If it bothers you, and I can see it does.”
Something thrummed through him. Excitement. Increased nerves. “You are still watching me, reading my eyes. I don’t know whether to be pleased or worried.”
“It depends on what you have in mind.”
“Yes, I suppose it would at that.”
He undid the button and ran his fingers along the second.
“Gabriel, I—I still want to be part of the search. I know you told me to leave…” She looked at her hands. “I don’t think you know how hard this is for me to say.”
“I told you to leave if that is whatyouwished.”
She looked up. “You said I was a little rich girl gone poor and tattered.”
He saw the hurt in her eyes and wanted to soothe it, but honesty kept him still. “Aren’t you?”
Her mouth set in a straight line and she rose gracefully. “It’s hardly a flattering description.”
“It won’t take much for you to turn the poor and tattered aspect around. To be what you were bred for.”
“Highly doubtful.”
“That you have overcome your circumstances shows you are a survivor.”
She searched his face. “And you prize that trait, don’t you?”
“I do. That is why I help those who come looking for it. Those who are fierce in wanting it.”
“And you saw…this fierceness…in me?”
He took in her bedraggled appearance. Bonnet askew, hem muddied, dress creased, just as she had looked that first night. Not pretty in the conventional sense, though there was something about her that he found beautiful. The set of her shoulders, her determined expression, the way her body reacted to his. The way his reacted to hers. How he felt when she was near, or when she spoke. Something indefinable. Something beyond appearance and determination. Something elemental.
He cocked his head back to rest against the press. “I still do.”
She wet her lips. “Why?”
“Do you trust me?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Do you trustme?”
“What happened at the market?”
