Her voice was…melancholy? Wishful? Showing signs of a chill? “That makes you sad,” Gabriel hazarded. If he was right, then forget crocodiles.Poisonous spiders.Large, black poisonous spiders with incurable venom. Even better, he’d toss George into a pit of crocodiles for making Elodie sad, and then toss poisonous spiders in after him for daring to even think of Elodie at all.
“I’m only sad insofar as I wish I could study in Australia myself, and South America, and really the whole world,” she replied. “But I’ll never leave Oxford. I love…teaching.” She shook her head. “It was better that George took the position Uncle Jasper had to offer, rather than me. And Clifford was happy about it too.”
“Clifford?” Gabriel had been with her for half that speech, but all the human names at the end bamboozled him.
“George’s particular friend.”
Oh.He knew what that meant. Well then, perhaps this George wasn’t so bad after all. In fact, one might even call him an excellent fellow for ensuring Elodie had shelter from the rain. Gabriel would buy him and Clifford coffee, should they ever meet.
“Goodness, aren’t the stars so beautiful,” Elodie murmuredcomplacently, even while Gabriel strove to regain the inner balance that jealousy had so profoundly rocked. He considered the inky vista with mild skepticism. The rain had stopped while they’d been talking, and the sky stretched clear into forever, blue-black, littered with stars.
“I suppose if I point out a constellation, you’ll insist on telling me the whole mythology behind it,” he grumbled.
Elodie tipped her head against her knees so that she was smiling at him. “You know me well.”
Bloody hell, could a man cope with any more temptation?Kiss her,his body exhorted. His mind, however, began supplying reasons why such an action was inadvisable, from (1) she might reject him to (12) he hadn’t been able to clean his teeth after eating the corned beef.
Kiss her anyway, fool!his body insisted.
His mind muttered and writhed and finally decidedfine, he could attempt one small kiss…
And she looked away.
Everything inside Gabriel slumped. Scowling at himself, he pointed skyward. “Pleiades,” he said.
“The seven sisters,” Elodie responded as he expected. She began to unfurl one, then another tale, her voice warming Gabriel until he forgot he was sitting damp-haired and cold beneath a tree, lulling him until he felt half-inside a dream. Gradually her voice slowed and she began to sway with tiredness. So Gabriel grunted at her that he’d had enough, and she came back to reality with a quiet sigh.
“Do you think the village is safe tonight?” she asked.
“I see no fires,” Gabriel replied.
“We need to establish a baseline for—”
“Tomorrow,” he interrupted. Even if Elodie weren’t half-asleep, he himself felt utterly exhausted by all the feelings he’d suffered this evening.
Elodie murmured something grim beneath her breath. Hearing his own name, Gabriel turned his head to ask her what she was saying. At the same moment, she turned hers, no doubt to tell him.
And somehow, completely by accident, or perhaps some conspiracy between fate and physics, their lips met.
Could he call it a kiss? It was barely more than the soft touching of mouths. Even so, a powerful sensation rushed from his lips to the pit of his stomach, where it set off a number of small explosions. He watched Elodie’s eyes widen. He felt his heart do the same. With tender gentleness, the kiss began to warm…
And they pulled away, both of them blinking wildly in panic.
“Sorry,” Elodie said, peering up at the leaves.
“Sorry,” Gabriel said, glaring at the horizon. He heard Elodie’s breath hitch. His pulse raced. From the corner of his eye he noticed her glance toward him. He lifted a hand…
And the panic slammed through them again. Nine years of shyness, and of watching the woman run away from him again and again, pushed Gabriel’s hand down so hard, it smacked against the ground. He wanted her so much, his heart cringed and his eyes grew heavy, forcing him to employ an emergency scowl. Elodie, for her part, was looking so far in the opposite direction from him that her neck must be hurting with the effort.
“It’s been a frazzly day,” she suggested.
“Our nerves are overexcited,” Gabriel contributed.
“We should sleep.”
“Yes.”
They lay down, back-to-back, in the leaves.
