“I wasn’t looking where I was going.” She let herself look at him then, having regained control of herself.
And then she lost it again. Her composure flew away.
It was like coming face-to-face with an angel. Dropped from sky to earth, he stood right in front of her.
Her mouth sagged a little as she drank him in—the deeply set indigo eyes, the square jaw and perfectly carved lips. Fascinating creases carved into each cheek just alongside his lips. Lips made for kissing. She swallowed past the sudden thickness in her throat.
“It’s okay,” he murmured in a distracted manner, looking more at the crowd than her … which was a relief but also a blow to her ego. “Quite a show going on, huh?”
If his face didn’t push her over the edge into infatuation, then the voice did. The sound of it stroked her like satin on naked flesh. There was an accent there. She had no idea of the origins. Faintly crisp and rolling. British maybe? Her toes curled inside her boots.
She gave herself a mental shake to snap out of her stupor. She’d been fine these last few years without a man in her life. She didn’t need one now.
She didn’t want to need one now.
She looked with longing across the street to the sidewalk that would carry her home. Home to safety and solitude. The two were dependent upon each other.
“It’s a circus all right,” she returned, recovering her voice, the well-worn indifference. She shifted her weight on her feet, anxious to be on her way.
He looked at her then, truly looked at her, and she wondered why she’d said anything at all. Why didn’t she just take her bag and go, flee, instead of lingering here?
What was she hoping for? God, was she even hoping? When she’d given up on hope years ago?
“Yeah,” he returned, looking her over with slow appraisal. Those impossible indigo eyes of his altered, became something … unnatural.
She struggled not to fidget beneath their regard. It seemed that they almost glowed, lit from within. She shook her head, convinced she was going crazy. Just desperate and lonely enough that her imagination was running wild.
“A real circus,” he said, echoing her.
Something shivered its way inside her at his drawling voice that said nothing remarkable and yet did.
Even as she told herself to break away—walk, run even—she couldn’t budge her feet. His eyes spoke to her, told her to stay put. It was almost as if he mesmerized her … trapped her in a spell.
When he glanced back to the milling people, a breath escaped her that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. With those eyes off her now, she felt more in control of herself.
“They’re definitely not a fan of wolves around here, huh?” he asked.
“You could say that,” she hedged. “They don’t have the most open minds around here. Just be glad you’re not a wolf,” she joked, but something came over him, a sudden tensing of his broad shoulders that she didn’t miss.
He looked back at her again, expectantly, as if he waited for her to continue, to say more.
“There’s been a few alleged wolf attacks,” she elaborated, compelled to fill the awkward silence. “Lately everyone’s armed to the teeth around here.”
“Ah.” He nodded in the direction of the truck. Hair that was a myriad colors, several shades of gold and brown, fell across his brow. Somewhere, not in towns like this, women spent thousands of dollars in a salon to get hair like that. Something told her this guy didn’t do a thing except shampoo. He was effortlessly gorgeous. And her throat felt suddenly tight and dry with this realization. “Then those are the fearsome animals responsible for the alleged attacks?”
“Those two?” She snorted against the bite of cold air and pulled the hood of her coat closer around her face, swiping at her red-tipped nose. “Unlikely. Those wolves hardly look like they’ve eaten all winter. I don’t think they’ve attacked anyone. But no one’s convincing the local rabble otherwise.”
His well-carved lips twitched and she thought he wanted to smile, but then the hint of curving lips was gone, replaced with the stoic mask again.
It was as though he forgot her presence. His gaze traveled over the locals, assessing, almost as if he were looking for someone, marking each and every one of them.
With his attention removed from her, she finally turned and hurried away, her steps crunching quickly over the snow-covered sidewalk. She felt like a criminal on the escape. Silly,