The question should have startled him, but after what she had asked in the diner, he already knew how much she saw. That was why she was here and it was why she had caught his attention the first time he’d seen her almost a year ago exactly.
A beautiful woman in a scarlet dress with the saddest eyes he’d ever seen.
“That’s a dangerous question,” he said at last.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t think you’d like the answer.”
She wasn’t quite close enough to kiss but his breath stirred the loose hairs around her face, disturbing her look of composure. “I don’t—are you saying you’re dangerous?”
“Yes.” He didn’t hesitate.
She gulped. “To me?”
“Especially to you, little sparrow.”
Perversely, this nearly seemed to sway her. He saw it—the desire to yield warring with her contrarian nature, and the way she looked at his mouth. It seemed that brutal honesty could affect her like a hand around the throat, and that was the one thing he could not afford to give her.
If she had moved towards him, he would have kissed her. He would have gripped her by that fall of rich, luxurious hair and pulled until she bent her neck, taking her mouth as roughly as he longed to take the rest of her. If she had given him an inch, he would have taken it.
Instead, he took her home.
C H A P T E R
S I X
pain will be a mercy
There was always a glut of desperate young lawyers looking for jobs. Cal was neither desperate, nor in particular need of a job, and that, plus his Harvard degree and prestigious-sounding legacy, were enough to secure him a six-figure salary while the ink on his diploma was still wet.
When the partners of Stafford & Benson had looked him up, they had found his family history, rife with tragedy, accidents, and oppressive class warfare, utterly fascinating. On his first day, Malcolm Benson had taken him out to a chintzy Michelin starred restaurant that served Middle Eastern fusion in a bid to impress with his own wealth and worldliness.
“You have such a colorful family,” his new employer said, as their starters were placed before them. “Even the name—Cullraven. It’s like something out of a gothic novel.”
“Ah.” Cal had smiled tightly. “You must have seen my sister’s website.”
“Tell me more about this festival,” his boss had said, in a way that felt like a command.
Cal had felt his jaw tense further. He had smoothed out his expression into what he hoped was an elegant smile as he broke the glistening surface of his golden lentil soup with the side of his spoon. “My father enjoys a loophole almost as much as he does hunting. When he found he couldn’t legally hunt the local wildlife, he decided to import new blood.”
Malcolm had laughed appreciatively. “How can he be sure he’s hunting the right deer?”
“He marks them.”
That had satisfied Malcolm’s curiosity but word had eventually trickled down to his colleagues that his family was thrice-removed English nobility living in the middle of the woods like refugees from a dark fairytale. Cal heard the whispers stop when he walked into a room, which he was used to because Argentum was very much the same. But he didn’t like it.
No paper trails, he’d said, but Odessa insisted on hanging a colorful shroud over their family’s horrors. And what had happened? Because of her little archival project, someone had come looking for that telltale heart.
Nadine.
Odessa was enjoying herself immensely at his expense.Your little sparrow has been asking about you, she texted him.Rael said she even ventured into the lion’s den to speak to his father.
Why was she talking to the sheriff?What did she want to see him about?
There was a pause before his phone chimed.What do YOU think?
Cal knew better than to say what he really thought.Has she been to the house?
