Page 18 of Strict Confidence (Rochester Trilogy 2)
“No, I’m fine.”
A dark look. “That wasn’t a suggestion. It was an order.”
I remember Mrs. Fairfax’s words. I see the way you look at him. And more importantly, I see the way he looks at you. He’s looking at me now, his gaze a dark pool of secrets. What does he really think about me? What does he want from me?
The same thing I want from him, possibly.
Or nothing at all.
I love you, damn you. He said the words to me when we were inside the burning house. And the worst part is, he meant them. He told me his love is dangerous, but he’s wrong. His love didn’t start that fire. His love didn’t kill Emily Rochester.
“A boss couldn’t tell me to rest,” I tell him, almost gentle in my rebuff. “Only a lover could do that. And you’ve already made it clear that you won’t be mine. Your love is dangerous, remember? Your love starts fires and wars. Your love is a category five hurricane.”
His gaze turns sharp. “This isn’t a game.”
My cheeks heat. He’s going to break my heart. “Even if you don’t want me, you can’t go on believing this. Forget about me. Paige needs you.”
At the sound of her murmured name, she rustles. There’s a murmur, and then her eyes flutter. She’s coming awake. Beau looks at her, and in his dark eyes, I see the love he has for her. The fear he has for her, because he believes it. My love is dangerous.
He walks out of the room before Paige stretches and sits up. I feel rejected all over again—the same way I felt in the hospital bed. Embarrassed and small. Most of all, alone. Except I have a small child with me now, one with rumpled hair and sleepy eyes. She needs me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jane Mendoza
I feel slightly more normal the next day. More like I’ve been hit with a regular hammer instead of a sledgehammer. The bruises on my body from falling debris turn an ugly green.
“More syrup than that,” Paige says.
She’s sitting at the kitchen island, her gaze glued to the mini pitcher in my hand. Amber maple syrup spills down onto the stack of pancakes I’ve made her. Marjorie took the morning off—an appointment, she said—so it’s just us in the kitchen. “More than that.”
“Your pancakes are going to float away.”
“Then make them float,” she says, expression serious.
I tiptoe right up to the edge of floating the pancakes on the sturdy china Marjorie uses, then stop pouring it with a laugh. “Let’s save a little bit for me.”
“Is it all gone?” Beau asks from the doorway. He has a stack of paper in his hands. I don’t know how he could be reading it, what with all the pacing he’s doing. He keeps looping back to the kitchen, pausing in the doorway, and going away again.
“Not quite.” I cut my glance toward the cupboard. Marjorie is too competent of a bed-and-breakfast owner to actually run out of syrup. “But we might be getting close if Paige needs her pancakes to sail away on a syrup ocean.”
She grins at me through a mouthful of pancakes. My heart squeezes. She’s been so pale and quiet and unsettled since the fire, but this morning she seems like she’s starting to get used to it. Maybe we all are. As soon as I think it, I become aware of my clothes again. Thick, expensive fabric, and soft. Not the sturdy cotton that most hand-me-downs are made out of.
From the outside, no one would be able to tell that I don’t really belong here with Beau and Paige. All they’d see, if they looked in the window, is a woman and a little girl making breakfast, and a man hovering around like a moth drawn in to a flame again and again. They’d probably see a little family.
There’s nobody out there, but when I turn back to flip the pancakes I check the window. Nothing but a fresh, clean day. Warm out already. Buttery sunlight. Plants tentatively starting to bloom. It’s unseasonably warm, according to Marjorie. Warm enough that people are swimming in the ocean. Not me. I’ll go to the beach with Paige, but we’re sticking to sandcastles away from the cold water’s edge.
Beau leans against the doorframe and scans the papers he’s brought with them.
“Do you want any pancakes?” Paige cranes her neck to look at him.
His eyes come up from the papers to meet hers, and then they move to mine. My pulse ticks up. Is that longing in his eyes? Does Beau Rochester want to be invited to sit down to breakfast with us? That’s what would happen in that picture-perfect family. I would serve them pancakes at the kitchen island. He’d sit there next to Paige and tease her about the lake’s worth of syrup on her plate. I would laugh. We would be happy.
