Love Lies (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery #3) - Cynthia St. Aubin Page 0,17
of an eyebrow that could signal the difference between boredom and irritation.
Now, Abernathy’s face was completely and utterly inscrutable. Deadly flat and calm.
“It’s not that I don’t want to be a werewolf—”
“Then what?”
“You talk about this like you’re so certain, but I have a very vivid memory of someone stopping short at the mention of marriage the last time we were naked.”
Mark’s eyes sought the display of first edition tomes on his gleaming bookshelves. After discovering some of them had been inscribed by the likes of Charles Dickens, it had been all I could do not to set up an altar and dance naked in front of them, seeking favor.
“I have no use for binding papers,” he said. “Nor do I care to appear in human government records.”
“Let me make sure I’m understanding you correctly. You’re willing to make me a werewolf, thereby binding your soul to mine for the rest of your unnaturally long life, but you don’t want to be connected to me on paper?”
“Yes.”
This single word sailed a rock at the glass pane of my ridiculously squishy heart.
“Bonds are only as good as the men who make them,” he said, as if this would somehow salve the wound.
“That’s such an Abernathy thing to say.”
“What did your marriage to Dave buy you, save more paper to undo it and a mountain of debt and regret?”
“You’re just going to say his name like that? I’ve got a paper cut here.” I held out my hand. “Wanna rub some lemon juice in it? Maybe some salt? Battery acid?”
“It’s a valid question given the circumstances.”
I really hated it when he was right.
“It didn’t buy me anything,” I said. “But that’s not the point. Marriage is an outward symbol of an inner commitment.”
“Symbols?” Abernathy raised an eyebrow at me. “What about me says I’m a man who needs symbols? I do what I want, when I want. The show, the display, they’re for everyone else.”
“What’s so wrong about wanting everyone else to know?” A familiar, sinking feeling spread in my belly. The sure and sudden knowledge that I was losing ground, sliding backward.
“Why does everyone need to know?” Abernathy asked. “Who are you trying to convince?”
“It’s not about convincing anyone.” My scalp prickled in that special way that only Abernathy-directed irritation could produce. “It’s about making it official.”
“According to whom?” he asked.
“According to...to everyone!” Even as I heard myself say it, it sounded lame and pathetic. Which, to be honest, was the way I almost always ended up feeling after a verbal tussle with Abernathy.
“How did that work out with your ex-husband?” The corner of his mouth quirked up into his I am totally winning smirk. “Making it official?”
“I really don’t like your face right now,” I said. “You know that?”
“Your body...”
“Fine,” I agreed. “Marriage aside, are you saying you’re ready to be bound to me for life?”
“Yes,” he answered without hesitation.
It’s possible my heart stopped. Or my soul left my body. “Really?”
Abernathy’s eyes moved from my body up to my face like fire licking up a trail of gasoline. “Hanna, I have to be with you.”
My heart thundered in my chest. “You do?” I asked.
“Yes.” He hesitated, glancing down at his desk then back up at me. “It’s the only way to keep you safe.”
The fluttering bird of my hope ran smack into a windowpane.
“You, sir, can fuck all the way off,” I said.
“Is that an offer?” His eyes flashed with dangerous hunger.
“It’s a suggestion for self-improvement,” I said. “I’m not your project.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You didn’t need to.” A total brat move, stealing his earlier statement, but I wasn’t exactly feeling at the height of my emotional maturity at that precise moment. “I have work to do,” I said, pushing myself up from the couch.
No sooner had I settled at my desk than the sound of a gasp and a sob echoed through the gallery.
Shayla.
I erupted from my chair and tripped down the stairs toward the oddities shop attached to the gallery through a door beyond the artists’ studios. I found her bent behind the counter clutching the plastic-lined wicker basket I’d designated as the trash bin on my first day as Abernathy’s assistant.
Her back arched as a fresh wave seized the curving cage of her ribs and racked the contents of her stomach upward from her scooped waist.
My hands found the damp strands of her cobalt blue hair and drew them back from her face and lifted them off her burning neck.