Page 130 of Without a Clue

“I didn’t know you danced,” I whisper lowly.

“There was a girls’ camp down the road. They always needed volunteers for the final ball. Let’s just say, my mother was awfully generous with her five boys.”

My laugh is warm, rich, and foreign to my own ears, it’s been so long.

I feel his hand pull me in closer in response.

“What a kind mama,” I say.

He smiles, and we spin again.

“They were all beautiful, I’m sure,” I say. “Probably all quite smitten with you too.”

“Who was?”

“All those pretty girls dancing with the charming and mysterious future writer in the cowboy hat.”

“Them? Sure,” he says, and I feel a twinge of heat despite myself. Don’t ask a question if you can’t bear the response. “But I have a type.”

“Which is what? A penchant for girls in cardigans?”

“Sure. Who doesn’t appreciate a good cardigan. And—”

“The kind who hates spiders?”

“A girl with survival skills. Very attractive.”

“The helpless type high in self-loathing and poor self-esteem?”

His expression becomes puzzled. He pulls back to scan my face fully. “No, not that one. I’ve never met that one. I mean the brilliant, down-to-earth one who keeps an unruly group of literary fools in line and has a heart too big for her own good and makes me laugh and has an unnerving ability to break into places.”

“Oh.” I purse my lips. “That one.”

“Yes. That one.”

Nash’s eyes are tender.

He doesn’t pressure, doesn’t pull.

There’s never an urgency with him.

He just . . . waits, perfectly content to just be in this moment.

He has the self-assurance to look at me without wavering, to be confident in who he is and what he wants.

I grit my teeth.

It’s painful.

It actually feels like my heart is ripping apart, longing so much to trust him with my whole person and yet forced to withhold.

On the one hand, to kiss him right here, right now, so hard the chandelier falls, and on the other, to sleep at night with doors locked and both eyes open.

To fall in love with a potential murderer.

But who are we kidding? I fell in love with him a long time ago.

I can’t live like this. I can’t live like the others.