He was carefully carrying an object wrapped in cloth, held with both hands. His expression gave away nothing, as usual.
“I found this at the construction site,” he said and set it on the coffee table between us. “There was a debris pile and a shelf probably fell on top of it during the fire. Kept it mostly protected.”
I unwrapped the cloth.
A journal.
Leather-bound, smoke-stained, the corners curled from heat exposure. The pages were wrinkled but mostly intact.
My journal.The one I kept behind the register at the shop.
I’d written in it during slow afternoons when the store was quiet and my thoughts needed somewhere to go. I thought I’d lost it along with my false beginning and everything else in the fire.
My throat tightened.
“The pages were wet,” Solomon continued. “Smoke and water damage. I dried them. Pressed each one so the ink wouldn’t bleed.”
He dried them.
Took my ruined journal home and spent days carefully pressing each page between books, preserving my words.
Nobody had ever done anything like that for me.
Nope. No, I wasn’t doing this. I wasn’t going to cry in front of a man who’d just casually wrecked me with thoughtfulness and was now standing there looking very casual about it.
Still, my body moved before my brain could intervene.
I launched myself at him, a grin splitting my face. My arms wrapped around his neck, face pressed against his chest, and I held on with a ferocity that surprised us both.
Solomon was solid and warm, warmer than he should have been, his body radiating heat through the thin fabric of his shirt. He smelled of winter mornings on a mountain.
“Thank you,” I whispered into his chest. The words came out cracked. “Thank you.”
Solomon went rigid.
Utterly still. For three full seconds, he didn’t move, didn’t breathe or do anything with the frozen posture of a man who’d read about physical affection in a textbook and never expected to encounter it.
Then his hand came up, landed on my back. One palm, tentative, barely making contact. The warmth of them seeped through my sweater into my skin.
A feeling bubbled up in my chest. Unfamiliar and dangerously close to joy.
I pulled back just enough to see his face and rose on my toes before I could talk myself out of it.
My lips pressed against his cheek. A thank you that words couldn’t carry.
Solomon stopped breathing.
I dropped back to my heels, grinning up at him. His expression nearly sent me into hysterics.
He wasblushing.
Solomon. The man with the scar and the pale silver eyes that could freeze a room. He was blushing. A dull flush spreading across his high cheekbones, his gaze cutting sideways, refusing to meet mine.
My heart did a dangerous little flip.
God, he was adorable.This giant, terrifying guy who could probably kill someone with his pinky finger, completely undone by a kiss on the cheek.
He cleared his throat and removed his hand from my back before taking a step backward. But his foot caught on the coffee table leg.
