Page 124 of Bought for Blood

He rubs his face with one hand. “For how long?”

“A few days.”

“Bastien.”

“A few days, Crowe.”

I know exactly what those days cost the woman on that mountain. I’m asking for them anyway.

He puts the keys in his pocket and goes out to the car. He doesn’t say goodbye. He doesn’t say he’ll do it either.

I stand in my own hall until the sound of the car is gone off the drive. Then I go up the stairs to my own room, where she’s asleep in my bed, and I sit down to work out how I’m going to tell her what I’ve just done.

Chapter 36

Bastien

On the third night, she comes into the study and takes the papers out of my hand. I don’t hear her on the stairs. I have heard that woman moving around since she got here, and now she’s right here in one of my shirts with the sleeves turned back four times, and I never heard a step of it.

“You’re supposed to be resting.”

“I am resting.”

“You’re at a desk.”

“I’m sitting at a desk. It’s the same thing with better light.”

Whatever Ecaterina put in me finished burning out sometime in the second night. I spent the worst of it in a chair, alone, with the door locked, and nobody knows how close it came. I intend to keep it that way.

She comes around to my side of the desk. Her hair is loose, and she’s moving carefully on the right. The collar of the shirt sits open enough that I can see the mark under her collarbone.

Three days. It’s the size of a coin.

“What are these?” She has the top sheet before I can put my hand on it.

Two pages. A designation typed at the head instead of a name. A countersignature at the bottom in fountain pen. Her deed. My letter. My signature on both.

She reads four lines.

“This is me.”

“Yes.”

“You kept it.”

“It came from Vasile’s desk in a leather folder. I put it in a drawer the night I signed it.”

“And now it’s out of the drawer.”

“Yes.”

She holds it a moment longer. Then she turns it face down on the pile and squares the edges with two fingers.

“Come upstairs,” she says.

I don’t argue with that.

She shuts the bedroom door and starts on my shirt.