“Thank you,” she murmured stiffly.
Abruptly, her gaze lifted to the skies and her expression lit with wonder. “Oh. Oh,my. A shooting star. Howmarvelous.” She steepled her fur-lined, gloved fingers under her chin. “I’ve never seen one. And the sky. So many stars…it’s like someone scattered a bushel of priceless diamonds.” A laugh of sheer delight spilled from her lips, the sound tinkling and innocent.
“I agree,” he said in a low voice, unable to look away from her rapt face. “A magnificent sight, indeed.”
Something in his tone, the tell-tale gruffness, if he had to guess, must have struck her because her eyes snapped to meet his, then, lashes fluttering, lowered to his mouth. Her lips parted.
Holy hell. He did not need the repeat evidence of her interest in him as a man. The episode this afternoon was more than enough fodder for his own sexual hunger.
He told himself he was glad when she looked away and pulled the edges of her cloak more tightly around herself.
“You’re freezing,” he half accused. “You should go back inside before you catch your death.”
“I could,” she drew out. “But shouldn’t I make a wish or something? On the star?”
He huffed out a laugh. “If you like.”
She closed her eyes, then, and unable to resist, he stared at her face in helpless fascination. She was so damned riveting. All her expressions. Her fire. Her unexpected sweetness. Her secrets.
At the moment, she looked quite serious, formulating her wish. He wondered what it was she hoped for.
She opened her eyes and caught him watching her. “Do not even think of asking.”
He snorted.
“What were you doing out here, in the cold?” she demanded a moment later. “Babette mentioned something to do with you ‘playing with your apparatus’.”
He coughed into his fist, staunching a laugh.
“Perhaps you should heed your own advice, and cease loitering in the cold.”
“No doubt,” he murmured, aware what heshoulddo was step aside and clear a path for her to go inside, as the biggest obstacle to her going was his body, blocking her egress. Instead, he stayed where he was. “I have an interest in astronomy. I came out here at dusk, hoping to glimpse a particular light display that manifests, on rare occasions, at this time of year.”
And, to put as much distance between Annabelle and himself as possible.
“Oh? And did you see these lights?”
He shook his head. “But the night is clear after days of dense cloud cover, and I thought to make use of my grandfather’s old scope.”
She turned her head and eyed the telescope as if seeing it for the first time. “Is that it? Your ‘apparatus’?”
Hisapparatus.Good God. “It is. More aptly, it’s a telescope.”
“Of course,” she murmured, flippantly. “Though I’ve never chanced to look through one.” She sent him a doubtful look, clearly not anticipating he would extend an offer for her to do so now.
He nearly didn’t. He had no business engaging with her, and knew he was playing with fire.Nevertheless.“Would you like to, now?”
A slow, almost shy smile curved her lips. But it was the way her eyes lit with wonder that hit him like a punch to the gut.
She shifted toward it. “Where…how should I…?”
Grasping her shoulders, he guided her into place behind the telescope, then moved in close to position the sight for her.
She pressed her eye to the eyepiece. “I don’t see anything.”
“Nothing at all? Perhaps it’s too magnified. Let me…” He ducked his head to her shoulder and drew the telescope to his own eye to fiddle with the magnification in search of a cluster of stars.
Impatience practically vibrated through her, like a child awaiting her turn at the candy shop counter.
