Scarlet (The Lunar Chronicles #2) - Marissa Meyer Page 0,10
halfway to the stars in less than two minutes, and she’s just outside the city limits. Easy to get to. What do you say?”
“I say if you don’t stop talking and let me work, we won’t be getting halfway to anywhere.”
“Point taken,” Thorne said, holding up his hands in surrender. “You just think it over in that pretty head of yours.”
She tensed, but kept working.
“Now that I’m thinking of it, there used to be an excellent dim sum bar just a block away too. They had mini pork buns that were to die for. Rich and succulent.” He pinched his fingers together, salivating over the memory.
Face scrunching up, Cinder started to massage the back of her neck.
“Maybe if we have time we could stop in and pick up a snack for the road. I could use a treat after suffering through the tasteless junk they call food in this place.” He licked his lips, but when he refocused on the girl, the pain on her features had tightened. Sweat was beading on her brow.
“Are you all right?” he asked, reaching for her. “Do you need a back rub?”
She swatted him away. “Please,” she said, hands braced between them. She struggled to draw in a shuddering breath.
As Thorne stared, her image wavered, like heat rising off maglev tracks. He stumbled back. His heartbeat quickened. A tingle filled his brain and raced down his nerves.
She was … beautiful.
No, divine.
No, perfect.
His pulse thumped, thoughts of worship and devotion swimming through his head. Thoughts of surrender. Thoughts of compliance.
“Please,” she said again, hiding behind her metal hand. Her tone was desperate as she slumped against the wall. “Just stop talking. Just … leave me alone.”
“All right.” Confusion reigned—cyborg, prison mate, goddess. “Of course. Anything you like.” Eyes watering, he stumbled backward and sank blindly down to his cot.
Five
Scarlet’s thoughts seethed as she hauled the empty crates out of the back of her ship and through the hangar’s yawning doors. She’d found her portscreen on the floor of the ship and it was now in her pocket, the message from the law enforcement office burning against her thigh as she mindlessly traipsed through her evening routine.
She was perhaps most angry with herself now, for being distracted, even for a minute, by nothing more than a handsome face and a veneer of danger, so soon after she’d learned that her grandma’s case had been closed. Her curiosity about the street fighter made her feel like a traitor to everything important.
And then there was Roland and Gilles and every other backstabber in Rieux. They all believed her grandma was crazy, and that’s what they’d told the police. Not that she was the most hardworking farmer in the province. Not that she made the best éclairs this side of the Garonne River. Not that she’d served her country as a military spaceship pilot for twenty-eight years, and still wore a medal for honorable service on her favorite checkered kitchen apron.
No. They’d told the police she was crazy.
And now they’d stopped looking for her.
Not for long though. Her grandma was out there somewhere and Scarlet was going to find her if she had to dig up dirt and blackmail every last detective in Europe.
The sun was sinking fast, sending Scarlet’s elongated shadow down the drive. Beyond the gravel, the whispering crops of cornstalks and leafy sugar beets stretched out in every direction, meeting up with the first spray of stars. A cobblestone house disrupted the view to the west, with two windows glowing orange. Their only neighbor for miles.
For more than half her life, this farm had been Scarlet’s paradise. Over the years, she’d fallen in love with it more deeply than she’d known a person could fall in love with land and sky—and she knew her grandma felt the same. Though she didn’t like to think of it, she was aware that someday she would inherit the farm, and she sometimes fantasized about growing old here. Happy and content, with perpetual dirt beneath her fingernails and an old house that was in constant need of repair.
Happy and content—like her grandmother.
She wouldn’t have just left. Scarlet knew it.
She lugged the crates into the barn, stacking them in the corner so the androids could fill them again tomorrow, then grabbed the pail of chicken feed. Scarlet walked while she fed, tossing big handfuls of kitchen scraps in her path as the chickens scurried around her ankles.