Wicked Truths (Hunt Legacy Duology #2) - Jodi Ellen Malpas Page 0,44

at me like you want to eradicate that risk?’

A smile breaks from nowhere, throwing me for a hoop. ‘I knew you’d found it, Eleanor.’ He takes a step towards me, and I instinctively retreat.

‘How?’

‘I could smell your perfume on the wood.’

‘Are you serious?’ Like a twat, I bring my wrist to my nose and sniff.

‘Plus you didn’t engage the catch just so.’ Becker raises his eyebrows. ‘If you’re going to be my girlfriend, princess, you need to work on your sleuth skills.’

‘Fuck off, Hunt,’ I retort, full of indignation. Goddamn me, I thought I hid my tracks well.

He chuckles. ‘I would have told you, had I not known you’d found it. But you did. So I didn’t.’

‘Really?’ I ask.

‘Yeah. Because loving is trusting, right?’

My mouth goes slack, dropping open as I regard him. ‘You showed me the secret entrance to The Haven weeks ago.’

‘I guess I was trusting you before I realised I was in love with you.’

My thudding heart skips a few beats, my teeth sinking into my bottom lip. ‘God, you’re adorable sometimes.’ I say, moving in and hugging him as he laughs. All of my striving for a happy-medium place where work and personal are defined and understood just isn’t going to work. I reach up on my tiptoes to sink my face into his neck, syphoning off the warmth of his skin.

‘This isn’t very professional,’ Becker mumbles into my shoulder, keeping his hands to himself.

‘Shut up.’

‘Okay.’ He quickly seizes me and lifts me to his chest, squeezing the life out of me.

We feel free and easy right now, but would I be a fool to assume that this is it, that this is how it’ll always be? Becker’s inexperience and his self-admission, the one that sees him immune to heartbreak, have a small space in the back of my mind. I’ll never break his heart. I just fear what preventive measures he’ll take in order to eliminate the risk completely.

‘Gramps doesn’t know about that hiding place,’ he says out of the blue.

‘Oh . . .’ Of course he doesn’t. If Mr H knew where the map was, he’d have given it to the museum himself. ‘And you don’t want him to know because he’ll get rid of it.’

‘Precisely. Then God knows whose hands it could fall into. It’s safer with me.’

‘But you don’t want to find the sculpture?’ I ask, narrowing my eyes and refusing to acknowledge the little voice in my head that’s begging him to say yes. Yes, he does want to find the sculpture.

‘No, I don’t. If it’s even anywhere to be found.’ He releases me and raises his eyebrows, as if he’s reading my mind.

‘Good.’ I say decisively, moving back, smiling sweetly. Besides, it’s a known fact that it could be a myth. There are even tales of Michelangelo destroying it himself. ‘But if it is out there, you don’t want to find it but you don’t want anyone else to find it either?’ Namely, Brent Wilson.

‘Precisely.’ He curls an arm around my waist and hauls me back into him. ‘The map stays with me.’

I’m kind of glad. Why? ‘Okay,’ I agree, and he wrinkles his nose, rubbing it with mine.

‘Okay,’ he counters, and we stare at each other for a while, both of us narrowing an eye on each other. I want you to find the sculpture! ‘I’m glad you’re at peace with your decision.’

He laughs, hugging me, as the library door opens. I look over Becker’s shoulder to see Mrs Potts hovering at the entrance. ‘Am I interrupting?’

I don’t scramble free of Becker’s embrace, and Mrs Potts doesn’t eye us despairingly. In fact, there’s a certain fondness on her old face. ‘No,’ I answer when it becomes obvious that Becker isn’t going to, choosing to keep hold of me with his face hiding in my neck.

‘Oh good.’ She pats down the violet bomb on her head and purses her lips at Becker. ‘I have a call you might want to take.’

I try to break free, but he’s having none of it. ‘Take a message,’ he orders flatly.

‘It’s Brent Wilson.’

That soon gets Becker moving, along with my heart rate, which goes from content and settled to speeding and stressed in the space of a second. And it pisses me off. Just the mention of Brent’s name pisses me off, as well as the natural reaction it spikes in me. Becker looks at Mrs Potts. ‘What does he want?’

‘He wouldn’t say.’

My eyes bat back and forth between them. ‘I’m busy,’ he spits,