With luck, a bear would pop out of the bushes right now and eat her.
The ludicrous thought put a quick stop to the pity party that she was spiraling into, and she stopped her walking and her wallowing at once.
Take a second to breathe in the fresh air,she counseled herself.
But it didn’t work.
Without the self-pity she was free to feel the fear. She was about to get fired. And if the owner of the Faire fired her, her future at Staff Childcare was probably over as well, even as short staffed as they were. Her car would be on perma-hold at the auto-repair shop, and she still had less than two hundred bucks.
Actually the pity party would be preferable to her stomach turning in on itself.
“Please do not be angered with us.”
She let out a shriek, as she jumped out of her skin. It was the last person she expected —that she wanted to see, calmly walking up behind her.
“How did you—how did you come up so silently?” Her eyes lit on Col’s large, broad-shouldered form.
In the quiet of the woods, he seemed to fill the space around her, his nearness waking up all her senses.
“Perhaps you were lost in thought,” he said. His voice was rich and smooth, flowing over her like warm honey. The concern she heard in it disarmed her. “Mayhap it would help to share the burden of what troubles you.”
He was…he was offering to talk with her about why she was freaking out in the woods? Did the world turn upside down while she was beating herself up?
“Why do you care?” she asked bitterly.
He seemed to be taken aback by her question.
“I—I do not wish to see you ill at ease because of our malefactions.” The earnestness in his voice touched her.
She quirked a sad smile. “Good vocabulary, although the word malefaction might be too formal. It’s a bit outdated. That’s the sort of thing I was hoping to help with, but it turns out that I’m just hopeless at it. I don’t want to waste everyone’s time. I’m sure Simon’s drawing up my walking papers as we speak.”
“Walking papers—I do not—I do not understand?” Damn, up close when he wasn’t an asshole, he was devastatingly hot. And that quizzical look on his face just made Lily want to cuddle him and let him know everything was okay.
Yeah,cuddle.That’s what she wanted to do with him.
Wait—she wasn’t supposed to want to do anything with him at all. What the hell? She was apparently losing her mind, along with her job.
“Sorry, that’s an idiom. It’s a phrase meaning that Simon will be ending my job, given how bad I am at it.”
His quizzical look deepened, along with her urge to—yeah, sure cuddle.
“That will not happen. Even if he were to do something so ill-advised, I wouldst not allow it.”
Wouldst? These men had the oddest way of speaking. Where did they learn English from, anyway? A discarded Renn Faire pamphlet?
She forced herself to focus on what he was saying, even though her senses were buzzing “You? You were the one dead set against my being hired.”
“That was because—” he struggled for the right words, while she patiently waited. “That was due to my own shortcomings. When you are near, I find it impossible to focus my thoughts. It has been that way since the first moment I met your eyes – in the parking lot. But that is my own burden to bear. You have been a great boon to all of us, and particularly a salve to the prickly natures of Barric and Merek.”
Shock jolted through her.He felt the same thing that she had, when they’d first locked gazes.
And she didn’t expect to hear such a positive assessment coming from Col of all people. The one who seemed to have it in for her from the beginning.
Maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t total garbage at what she was supposed to be doing.
And then he surprised her further.
“In fact—,” he held out his hand, and she tentatively placed her smaller, much smaller hand in it. His fingers closed around it, enveloping it in its warmth, a heat that radiated up her arm and to the rest of her body. “—Please instruct me on how to behave as a modern male.”
