An expression crosses his face for a moment, something that looks more like real concern than I’m comfortable with. “Show me?”
“No, it’s fine. I just need a little time to heal,” I say. And to relight my fire, eventually. It’ll be genuinely cold before too much longer.
“Tandy,” he says, and it’s the first time he’s ever spoken my name. I swallow, and tell myself that I’m being foolish and standing on principle for no reason other than that he’s too attractive and too flirtatious and it’s confusing.
I unwrap the binding from my hand and he takes it gently from me, then looks down at the blisters. They don’t really look any better.
“Downstairs,” he says, and I turn and lead the way downstairs, to my apartment.
“Sit,” he says, and starts poking around the supplies I have on my sideboard. “There are little spells that’ll help it hurt less, but without a healer who knows what they’re doing, you’re better off using a salve to help the burn heal,” he says, his back to me. I watch him—well, his back—and the way his hair flows as he moves. Finally, he turns back to me, holding a lump of something on a saucer.
“I know,” I say. “But I haven’t got any of the herbs that the book I found said are helpful, so I can’t make a salve anyway.”
“That’s why we’re using this,” he says, showing me the lump.
“Is that…butter?” I say, incredulous.
“And rosemary and dock and charis-root, which your predecessor had a fair amount of, for some reason. Give me your hand.”
“I’m sure I can apply a pat of butter to a blister myself,” I say, raising my nose in the air in a vain effort to calm my furiously beating heart.
“I’m sure you can,” he says, evenly. “You will find, however, that it’s significantly easier to let someone apply it for you, especially when you’re only working with one good hand.”
I take a breath, prepared to argue.
“I find it best to take help when it’s offered,” he says, his voice a little gentler. “It isn’t always.”
Chastened, I hold my hand out, and he drops to his knees before me. This, alas, does not do anything to stop my heart from beating furiously. He takes my burned hand very gently in his, then begins to massage butter—butter!—into my palm. His hand is calloused, but very warm, and the butter…heavens, but it actuallyhelps. I sigh, and he smiles, very faintly, which makes me straighten up and glare at him.
“Relax, Princess,” he says. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Your…what?” I don’t remember him asking any questions. Wait, perhaps upstairs—we were talking about a crab claw, for some reason. His mouth. The dimple. It was very distracting. Maybe he asked about the book club?
“Why the tragic romance?”
“The…what?”
“Why do people read tragic romances?”
“Are you serious?” He’s genuinely asking me why people—particularly people here in Little Pepperidge, but readers in general—like tragic romances?
I look down at his hand holding mine. Something inside of me is aching, pulsing; I don’t know what it is.
“I’m serious.”
Of course I think I know why everyone loves a tragic romance. I certainly know why I do. Though the idea of admitting it out loud…that’s not an easy thing to contemplate. He’s looking at my hand with an expression of profound concentration. When he feels me shift, he looks up at me, and I feel like I can sink into the dark pools of his eyes. A shiver runs across my skin.
I shake myself a little.
“We all lead such little lives,” I say, after a long moment. “Everyone wants to feel something big. Even if just vicariously.”
“Everyone here in tiny Little Pepperidge?” he says, his voice still oddly soft, intimate. The room is warm, silent. The sun has begun to set outside; the deep glow spreads across the hills outside town, fills the windows, casts us both in gold.
“Probably everyone everywhere,” I say.
“Did you lead a little life? Before you came here?”
I refuse to answer that question, since I’ve spent the last two weeks coming to grips with the reality of how small my life really is—and was, even before I was cursed to live in a bookstore and never leave. What is it Honey suggests for those awkward occasions when one doesn’t wish to answer an uncomfortable question? Oh yes: redirection. “Did you?” I ask.
