He uses my name a lot. Every time, it’s like his voice plucks a too-tight string in a piano deep in my stomach.
What’s actually happening is my sympathetic nervous system has decided to reroute the path of my blood to my muscles. There are no butterflies fluttering through my gut. Just blood vessels constricting and contracting around my organs.
“Why not?” I ask. “Do you think they said something bad?”
His jaw squares, eyes back on the headlights slicing through the dark. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
He’s gone back to bouncing his knee, like there’s too much energy in his body and he’s siphoning it out.
“They told me it would be impossible to tell whether you were flirting or not.”
He laughs. “Now you’re trying to embarrass me.”
“Maybe.” Definitely. I’m not sure what’s come over me. “But they did say that.” In actuality, Sabrina had bemoaned not being able to tell, even while adamantly proclaiming that she liked him too much to make any kind of move anyway. It would’ve disrupted their living situation too much.
“Either way,” Wyn says, “I’m much better at flirting than that makes me sound.”
“Have you ever considered,” I say, leaning over to insert myself into his frame of view, “that that might be the problem?”
He smiles. “Flirting never killed anybody, Harriet.”
“Clearly you’re unfamiliar with the concept of the Regency-era duel,” I say.
“Oh, I’m familiar, but since I rarely find myself flirting with the unwed daughters of powerful dukes, I figure I’m okay.”
“You think we’re just going to skate over you being well versed in Regency customs?”
“Harriet, I don’t get the feeling you skate over anything,” he says.
I give another involuntary snort of laughter, and his dimples deepen. “Speaking of highborn ladies,” he says, “they teach you how to laugh like that at etiquette school?”
“No,” I say, “that has to be bred into you across centuries.”
“I’m sure,” he says. “I’m not like that, by the way.”
“Gently bred to laugh through your nose?”
His chin tips, his gaze knowing. “The impression you have of me. I don’t play with people’s feelings. I have rules.”
“Rules?” I say. “Such as?”
“Such as, never tell the rules to someone you’ve just met.”
“Oh, come on,” I say. “We’re stepfriends now. You might as well tell me.”
“Well, for one thing, Parth and I made a pact to never date our friends. Or each other’s friends.” He casts me a sidelong glance. “As for stepfriends, I’m not sure what the policy is.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I say. “You don’t date your friends? Who do you date, Wyn? Enemies? Strangers? Malevolent spirits who died in your apartment building?”
“It’s a good policy,” he says. “It keeps things from getting messy.”
“It’s dating, Wyn, not an all-you-can-eat barbecue buffet,” I say. “Although, from what I’ve heard, maybe for you they’re the same thing.”
He looks at me through his lashes and tuts. “Are you slut-shaming me, Harriet?”
“Not at all,” I say. “I love sluts! Some of my best friends are sluts. I’ve dabbled in sluttery myself.”
Another bar of moonlight briefly lights his eyes, paling them to smoky silver.
“Didn’t suit you?” he guesses.
“Never got the chance to find out,” I say.
“Because you fell in love,” he says.
“Because men never really picked me up.”
He laughs. “Okay.”
“I’m not being self-deprecating,” I say. “Once men get to know me, they’re sometimes interested, but I’m not the one their eyes go to first. I’ve made peace with it.”
His gaze slides down me and back up. “So you’re saying you’re slow-release hot.”
I nod. “That’s right. I’m slow-release hot.”
He considers me for a moment. “You’re not what I expected.”
“Three-dimensional and blue-haired,” I say.
“Among other things,” he says.
“I expected you to be Parth 2.0,” I admit.
His eyes narrow. “You thought I’d be better dressed.”
“Than a torn sweatshirt and jeans?” I say. “No such thing.”
He doesn’t seem to hear me, instead studying me with a furrowed brow. “You’re not slow-release hot.”
I look away, fumble the radio on as heat scintillates across my chest. “Yeah, well,” I say, “most people don’t start by seeing me naked before we’ve spoken.”
“It’s not about that,” he says.
I feel the moment his gaze lifts off me and returns to the windshield, but he’s left a mark: from now on, dark cliffs, wind racing through hair, cinnamon paired with clove and pine—all of it will only mean Wyn Connor to me. A door has opened, and I know I’ll never get it shut again.
Regency era or not, in a lot of ways, he ruins me.
5
REAL LIFE
Monday
WE’RE TRAPPED IN the kitchen for the length of three more toasts to undying love before Wyn finally asks our friends to excuse us and pulls me away to “settle in.”
Kimmy purrs throatily, and Parth high-fives her for it, which makes Cleo shudder because high fives are her personal fingernails-on-a-chalkboard.
As Wyn and I are all but running up the steps, we silently struggle for control of my suitcase.
By which I mean, I’m carrying it until he pulls it easily out of my hand and shifts it to his opposite hand, where I can’t reach it.
“I’ve got it,” he says.
“Stop trying to be charming,” I hiss. “No one’s watching.”
“I’m not,” he says.
“Are too,” I say.
“No.” He jerks my bag further out of reach as I lunge for it. “I’m doing this for the sheer pleasure of annoying you.”
“If that’s all,” I say, “then you don’t have to try so hard. Your mere presence is doing the trick.”
“Yeah, well,” he says, “you’ve always made me want to aim a little higher, Harriet.”
We’re nearly home free when Sabrina appears behind us at the top of the stairs. “I forgot to tell you. We put you in the big bedroom this time.”
Wyn and I not only screech to a halt, cartoon-style, but he snatches my hand, like if he doesn’t, Sabrina might scream and drop her champagne in shock at discovering us in a strange reversed flagrante delicto, everyone fully clothed and no one touching.
At least he didn’t go straight for a handful of ass.
“The big bedroom,” he repeats, his hand relocating to the small of my back. I lean into him so hard he has to catch the wall with his shoulder so we both don’t topple over.
I wonder if we look even one percent like a couple in love, or if we’re fully projecting “rivals in a spaghetti western showdown.”