He glared at me a moment before he asked quietly, “What’s the matter with you? Have you gone mad?”
“I don’t think so,” I replied because I wasn’t certain. Everything around me felt mad but I didn’t feel mad.
Then again, I’d never been mad. How would I know?
Something about him changed and I watched it with fascination. He wasn’t any less scary; he was only a different kind.
“We’re not a love match, we both know this, but I would never have suspected you’d do that to your sister,” he said softly.
“We… we…” I couldn’t finish.
A love match? What was he talking about?
“You care for her, deeply, or so I thought. And if you didn’t care about her,” his face got hard, “we both know you care for Dash.”
Uh. What?
He kept talking. “Your feelings for them, my feelings for them, that was why we wed in the first place.”
Uh. What!
“Wed?” I whispered.
He glowered at me then warned, “Don’t try me, Cora.”
“We’re… we’re… you and me… we’re… married?”
He leaned his face into mine again and growled, “Don’t try me, Cora.”
Holy crap!
I was married to this guy?
“So… uh, where were you last night?” I asked what I thought was a pertinent question, considering he was my husband and I woke up alone, and his face got even harder.
“You’re trying me,” he stated.
Oh dear. I was trying him.
Damn.
I studied him. He was a big guy. Very big. Very tall. Very broad. He wore black. All black. He had a scar. His horse was enormous and powerful. He carried a knife on his belt. He scared me just the way he could look at me and he had no problem with shaking me so my head snapped around.
I was thinking I didn’t want to mess with this guy.
I was also thinking that maybe I shouldn’t tell him that I was actually not his wife but a single girl who worked for an ad agency and lived in Seattle. I was thinking that wouldn’t go down too well.
The problem was, I was in a fantasyland, he was the only human being around me, I needed him to talk to me, I needed him to get where I was coming from which was definitely not here and I didn’t know what to tell him.
What I did know was that it appeared he didn’t like me too much and so I figured my best bet was not telling him anything at all.
Which meant I was screwed.
Damn!
“I… I think I need a minute to, uh… get my head straight,” I told him the God’s honest truth.
We were just inside the mouth of the cave and the storm and trees outside meant the light coming in was dim but I saw his hard, glittering, dark eyes examine me, travelling down my body. They stopped midway and his jaw clenched.