“How do you know my name?” I whisper.
SIX
POINSETTIA
NOELLE
Patrick’s mouth curves. It’s not a smile, though, not really. It’s too sharp to be one.
“I think you already know,” he says. “And I think that’s why you came up here. Because you figured it out, and I’m glad because I don’t want to play pretend anymore, Starling.”
Starling again.
No.
I shake my head. “No. I—” My voice cracks, and I’m instantly pissed that he can see me losing control. I shouldn’t care, yet I do, and he’s lucky that I don’t start screaming since that’s what I really feel like doing at the moment. “You’re a guest. I let you inbecause there was a storm and they fucked up the rental. That’s it. You don’t get to?—”
“Call you by your name?” he asks mildly. “Your real one, plus the one I gave you when I decided you would be mine?”
My heart skips a beat. My head thrums to a harsher one, brain slamming into my damn skull. The champagne… it has to be messing with me because there’s no way in hell I heard what IthinkI just heard… right?
Just like this man I’ve never met before couldn’t possibly know my name or be able to echo one of the thoughts in my private diary…
Right?
Shit. I can’t explain how much I hate the way he’s standing there so calmly, almost as though he’s giving me a minute to catch up to this new and unexpected reality. He’s not a cop, but a member of the local mafia. He’s not a stranger, not really, but a man who knows more about me than he should.
“You quoted me,” I tell him, voice trembling. “You said something I wrote. Something no one knows. That’s why I’m up here. Because it doesn’t make sense… none of this makes any fucking sense!”
Patrick’s gaze doesn’t waver from my panicked face.
“Is that so? The idea that life isn’t fair has been inside your pretty head for years, Noelle,” he murmurs. “You think you can pretend it doesn’t matter because there’s a Christmas tree in the corner? Christmasstarted this. It’s only fitting that we finish it this Christmas.”
Finish it? Finishwhat?
My throat burns as the one question I should’ve already asked explodes out of me: “Who are you? What do you want with me?”
Holding tightly to the towel around his waist, Patrick steps toward me.
Not close enough to touch me, but close enough that the heat of him reaches me through the last of the quickly evaporating steam. Close enough that I can smell soap and something else beneath it. Something sharp and clean and dangerous.
Something that is undeniably?—
“Patrick North,” he says. “I didn’t lie about that. So I’m not a cop. Honestly, considering you don’t trust the pigs, I would’ve thought you’d be relieved that I’m not.”
I look pointedly at his dragonfly tattoo. “Is that any better?”
He shrugs. “Depends on your perspective, sweetheart. I’d rather a loyal soldier like me to watch over you than a cop whose badge and gun is sold to the highest bidder.”
I don’t want him to watch over me. I didn’t want a guest at all, and now that I know he’s a fuckingliar…
I swallow hard, forcing my voice to go steady. “Get out.”
Patrick’s eyes flick over my face with clinical focus.The earlier affability is gone. In its place, a man who is practiced at reading one’s expression and taking their measure. He’s gauging how much I mean it, and I guess I fail because all he says is one word.
“No.”
My pulse spikes. “You can’t just?—”
