Page 15 of Frozen Heart
He nodded, still watching me over the top of his hands. “You’ll find a way.”
I blinked. He sounded so certain.
“You don’t let anything beat you,” he said. “I can tell.”
It might just have been the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me. “Thank you, for what you did,” I said earnestly. “I’d be out of business if it wasn’t for you.”
He looked away and adjusted his tie. “It was a sensible investment,” he muttered.
I stared at him. Was he...embarrassed?“It was kind,” I said firmly.
It was like I’d woken a sleepwalker from a dream. He glared at me, his eyes suddenly so cold that I jumped.What did I say?He knocked back the rest of his Scotch and put the glass down with a barely perceptible clink: even furious, he was socontrolled.“Thank you for the drink, Miss Hanford.”
He stood and I scrambled to my feet, panicked. If he left now, like this, I might never see him again. “I told you all about me,” I said. “I don’t know anything aboutyou.”
“You know who I am.” His voice was ice-hard, like he wanted to push me away. “You know what I do.”
“Is that all there is to you?” I asked quickly, “What they say in the news?”
He tugged his waistcoat straight. “What else would there be?”
“Your family,” I tried. “What are your parents like?”
He drew in his breath and, just for a second, his icy mask fractured. I saw what it hid: deep, soul-scarring pain.
Then the mask refroze. “My parents are dead.”
He took the keys from the table and stalked out. A moment later, I heard the bell on the door jangle as it closed behind him.
8
BRONWYN
“Oof.”I set down a carton of books, stretched my aching legs, and looked around for my box cutter. “How’s the sign coming?”
“Great,” mumbled Jen. I’d asked her to put together a display table of her favorite detective novels and she was biting her lip in concentration as she drew on a blackboard.
I found my box cutter and sliced open the top of the carton, then sighed as I looked at the stacks of books inside. I was restocking all the books I’d sold off cheap when I thought I was shutting down and shelving them all would take forever. It was already nearly eight in the evening and there was a lot more to do. At least work stopped me thinking abouthim.
It had been a week since I’d had the drink with Radimir. The next day, Jen had showered me with questions. I’d told her, truthfully, that nothing had happened, but I hadn’t told her who Radimir was.
I kept rerunning our last conversation and wishing I could undo it. I’d been getting somewhere. I’d glimpsed something more than a cold-hearted monster. And then I’d said the wrong thing, and he went right back to icy and distant. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever even see him again.
Maybe it’s for the best. Me,and a mafia boss? I was a nerdy bookworm, not a gangster’s moll. He was wrong for me in every single way…
Except the one way that mattered. When I thought of him, when I guiltily buried my nose in the jacket he’d left behind and inhaled his scent, it triggered a dark, forbidden ache right at the core of me that twisted down to my groin.
I sighed, made a stack of books and headed towards the shelves. On my way past Jen, I stopped and looked at the sign. “What are those?”
“Handcuffs,” she said proudly.
“Nice. But can you add some red and blue lights or something? Otherwise, people are going to think this is the BDSM Romance table.”
Jen smirked. Then she saw something over my shoulder and her eyes widened. “Um. Someone’s here.”
I drew in my breath. It could only be one person. I put the books down and spun towards the door?—
It wasn’t Radimir.