he needed to go back to work.
He jammed his hands into his pockets as his mind ran through possibilities, memories, fantasies. The fantasies were the worst part. He’d imagine Ruth smiling as she opened the door to him, not just because she wanted to eat or to talk, but because she wanted him. He imagined her touching him, not the way she had a few days ago, but the way a partner would. Casually, pointlessly, simply because she couldn’t stop herself.
Something about her made him hunger and thirst like an unnatural creature, as if she were more than addictive—as if she were vital. And yet, she was so fragile. The friendship they’d built would be so easy to shatter, if he pushed. He knew it.
So he wouldn’t push. He’d make his own position clear—not with words, because she’d hate that, but in any way he could. And then he’d let her do the rest. If she wanted him, eventually, she’d show it.
It wasn’t a solution, but then, Ruth wasn’t a problem.
Plus, it helped to have his feelings clearly labelled in his mind. He wanted her. He’d take her any way he could, and if that meant waiting a thousand years for her to trust him, he’d do it. And if he was mistaken and she didn’t want him at all, well, he’d think about that some other time.
He headed back to Burne & Co. and found Daniel hovering by the doors.
“Hey,” Daniel began. He moved forward with an apologetic look on his handsome, shitty face. “I’m sorry if—”
“It’s fine,” Evan said, walking past him.
“It’s just, I know it must be a shock.” Daniel hurried after him, voice painfully earnest. “And I know you like her.”
“Daniel.” Evan turned, looking the other man in the face, keeping his own carefully blank. “I said, it’s fine.”
Daniel studied him for a moment, green gaze clashing with blue. Then he shrugged and said, “Alright, mate.” From the sympathetic look on his face, he clearly assumed that Evan’s eyes had been opened. That he’d seen Ravenswood’s collective light and decided to avoid ‘that Kabbah girl’.
Nothing could be more wrong.
Chapter Eleven
“You can go now.” Ruth said the words because, if she didn’t, she might do something foolish.
But Evan looked up at her with a smile that seemed to encourage foolishness. It was too sexy, too sharp, too pointedly knowing, to be accidental.
Wasn’t it?
She didn’t know. She’d been asking herself those sorts of questions all evening, ever since he’d come over with dinner, and she still wasn’t sure of the answer.
“If you want,” he said.
She shrugged and held out the comic they’d been discussing. “This is for you.”
“You know,” he said, “it’s Friday night. Not that late, either. Maybe we could go somewhere.”
Go somewhere? What the hell did that mean?
Carefully, she said, “I don’t go out on Fridays.”
“That’s usually the day people do go out.”
“Exactly.” She waved the comic at him, and he finally reached out to take it.
Except, instead of taking the end held out to him, he reached higher. His fingers closed around the plastic sleeve protecting the cover, perilously close to hers. So close that his thumb brushed over her knuckles.
Accidentally, she told herself, even as her mouth dried and her breasts tingled and the steady ache between her legs sharpened. It had been an accident.
Dragging her gaze away from the sight of their touching hands, she said, “Goodnight.”
He gave her an unreadable look. “Goodnight, love.”
When he was gone, Ruth grabbed her phone and fell into bed. As usual, the bed frame creaked ominously. As usual, she ignored it.
She’d been mid-conversation with Marjaana when Evan had arrived and, because she was an awful person, she’d kind of abandoned her best friend in the whole world to talk comics with her next-door-neighbour.
In all fairness, Marjaana lived a thousand miles away—or however far it was to Finland—and they were each used to the other disappearing mid-chat. Such was the nature of internet friendship.
Marjaana: Where’d you go? Do you have deadlines n shit?
Ruth: Yeah
Marjaana: …
Marjaana: I’m gonna call you
Ruth: Please don’t call me
Marjaana: AHA! You are hiding something
Ruth: Suck a toe
Marjaana: Tell me.
Ruth stared at the phone. Surely one of the upsides of being an anti-social shut-in was not having people interrogate her about things?
And yet, if it wasn’t her sister, it was Marjaana. If it wasn’t Marjaana, it was…
Evan. Her friend. Her friend who had come over for dinner every day that week and kept his hands completely to himself.
The snot.
Ruth knew that she would regret it,