The Secret Wallflower Society - Jillian Eaton Page 0,63
scarves neatly inside. He straightened, then looked over her shoulder. “We should continue this conversation elsewhere.”
Following the direction of his stare, Helena felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach when she saw that her little fit of temper had attracted quite the audience. It was, of course, precisely what she hadn’t wanted to do. But then, when had anything ever gone according to plan?
“Why do we have to continue our conversation at all?” she muttered, nudging a stone with the toe of her shoe.
“Because there are things we need to discuss. Preferably without an arsenal of boxes at your disposal,” he said wryly.
Helena peered up to see a relaxed, unguarded grin play across his lips. It was there and gone again in the span of a heartbeat, but the warmth it invoked inside of her took much longer to dissipate. Because it wasn’t just a smile. It was a reminder of the man she’d fallen in love with in the moonlight. The charming, handsome rogue that had dazzled her so completely she would have promised him the stars if he’d asked for them. Instead the only thing he’d wanted was for her to wait, and she’d broken that promise as completely as he’d broken her heart.
“There is a small coffee and tea shop around the corner,” she said stiffly. “We can go there.”
He held out his arm. “Lead the way, lamb.”
As Stephen followed Helena into a small, cozy tea parlor that smelled of coffee beans and cinnamon, he steeled himself against the urge to sweep his fingers through her hair. He could have touched her if she were his. Could have trailed his hand down the nape of her neck and pressed his thumb against the tiny little bone at the top of her spine. Could have discreetly cupped her bottom as he pulled out her chair, then pressed his lips to her cheek before she sat down.
He could have done all those things if she were his. But as they took their seats on either side of a table in the back of the room, like two soldiers squaring off on opposite ends of the battlefield, Stephen was reminded of a single cold, hard fact.
Helena wasn’t his. She’d never been his. And she never would be his.
No matter how much he still secretly desired her.
Gritting his teeth, Stephen picked up the menu and glared at the handwritten list of baked goods. He was here to square a debt. Nothing more, nothing less. And once he walked out of this little shop with its large windows overlooking the street and eclectic mixture of paintings on the walls, he wouldn’t ever have to think of Helena ever again.
He wouldn’t have to look at her.
Wouldn’t have to inhale her scent.
Wouldn’t have to – what was the perfume she was wearing? It was different from what she’d had on yesterday. Not heavier, precisely. Just more…wild, he decided as his nostrils flared. Like a rose blooming in the middle of a meadow, instead of a carefully tended garden.
“Do you know what you’d like?” Helena asked.
Yes, Stephen said silently as his gaze met hers over the edge of the menu.
She’d always had the most extraordinary eyes. Pure green, without any brown or hazel. Except when she was annoyed, as she was now, and in the sunlight shining in through the windowpane her irises glittered with a hint of gold.
He’d never met another woman with eyes like Helena’s.
Most likely because he’d never met another woman like Helena.
In all his travels, in all the countries he’d visited and the grand manors he’d stayed in and the ballrooms he’d danced through, he had never come close to experiencing the same pull of temptation he felt whenever he was in Helena’s presence. She was a rare and true beauty. The kind that brought men to their knees and invoked wars that lasted lifetimes.
If only her beauty were more than surface deep.
Behind those exotic jade eyes was a woman who had sold her soul to the devil. But even knowing that, even having experienced the pain of her betrayal like a knife through the heart, there was a part of him – more than a part, really – that still found her stunning.
He had thought it would be different when he saw her again. He’d thought three and a half years of torment would have been enough to harden him against her captivating allure. But like a sailor to a siren, he found himself climbing across jagged