Page 2 of Frozen Heart
Up into those amazing, pale gray eyes. The scalding lust was gone. Wait: no. Not gone.Controlled.Locked behind bars of ice.And he was frowning at me, demanding to know how I’d made his control slip.
I shifted from foot to foot, feeling small and vulnerable...but in a way I wanted more of. I wanted to drop my eyes to the floor but at the same time, I couldn’t look away. I pressed my fingertips against the wood of the counter to anchor myself. Then I took a breath and forced my voice almost level.“Welcome toAll You Need is Books. How can I help you?”
He glowered down at me. God, glowering wasinventedfor this guy. Scowling, too. With those dark brows and the gray eyes and the way those gorgeous lips tightened...it was pure sex. A memory scratched at the back of my mind. I’d seen him before, somewhere.
“I need a book,” he told me.
I blinked. Normally, I would have made some crack likewell, you’re in the right placeorunfortunately, we don’t sell those.But I was busy dealing with his voice. The words were heavy and cold as hunks of ice. And they’d been cut from a glacier by his accent, a silver axe that left the edges of the words wonderfully rough in places and silky smooth in others. I wanted to rub my mind against his voice. His accent fitted his cheekbones: somewhere cold and distant, but I couldn’t place it. “For yourself?” I managed.
“A gift for my cousin’s daughter. She’s fourteen.”
I nodded. “Well, okie dokie.”What? Since when do I sayokie fucking dokie?! I flushed all over again, then rallied. “I’m sure I can suggest something. What does she read?”
This timeheblinked. He glanced around the store, then back to me. “Books.”
I stared at him.He doesn’t read!For him, this must be like when I went to a sports store with my former boyfriend and they had two hundred badminton rackets that all looked identical. I tried to imagine what it would be like to not love books. Tonever have the glorious anticipation of taking a new book home, desperate to start it. To never open a book to chapter one and let your mind sink into the story.
He was scary, rich, and intimidating...but I felt sorry for him.
I forced myself to focus on the task. Luckily, recommending books is what I’m best at. There’s nothing I love more than pointing someone at a book and then a few weeks later having them come back into the store, grinning and floaty, having devoured it. I turned and marched over to a bookshelf, ignoring the pain in my legs. I plucked out a white-and-gold hardback and held it up. “Thisis a great book. It’s about a girl who finds out she only has six months to live...”
His lips tightened. “I want to give her a birthday gift, not traumatize the child.”
“No, no, it’s okay! Because she finds a portal to the Fae world, and time passes more slowly there, so she can live out her whole life.” I walked back to him, running my fingers lovingly over the embossed title. “And then she meets the Fae king, and they fall in love, and she learns how to shoot a bow and fights in a war, and—” I’d started grinning and couldn’t stop: I always get this way when I talk about books I love. “It’s got everything, adventure and emotion and romance—I mean, teen appropriate but it’sso good. She’ll love it.”
I looked up. He wasn’t looking at the book, he was looking at me. Watching me get stupidly carried away. I felt the heat start to creep into my face…
But then I saw how his eyes had softened.
He tore his gaze away and nodded. “I’ll take it.”
I nodded and scanned the book’s barcode. He moved closer and I caught a hint of his cologne. It was like nothing I’d ever smelled, citrus and vanilla but with an undertone of something darkly intoxicating, and I couldn’t get enough of it. If there wasa magical, dark amber fruit that put you under a spell with just one bite, it would smellexactlylike him.
He held out a glossy black bank card and I grabbed the card reader and went to tap it against the card…
And that’s when I read the little silver letters that saidRadimir Aristov.
My stomach plunged like an elevator with its cables cut. I suddenly knew where I’d seen him before. On the TV, tugging his waistcoat straight as he told a reporter that his property company was a legitimate business, and that he was a legitimate businessman. I knew why two of my customers had fled when he’d walked in: because they werefucking terrifiedof him.
Radimir Aristov.Some said he was the city’s most powerful criminal since Capone. That nothing happened in Chicago without his say-so. That the foundations of his buildings were dug extra deep, because that’s where he put the bodies.
His aura made sense to me now: dangerous and irresistible.Power.
I looked up at him. Now that I was looking for it, I could just make out the shadowy shapes of tattoos under his white shirt.A Russian mob boss. A Russian mob boss is in my store.
His eyes hardened again. He knew I’d recognized him; he could see it in my face.
There was a shrill electronicbeepas the card reader accepted his card and I jerked and nearly dropped the thing. I kept my eyes on the counter as I put down the card reader, picked up the book and put it in a bag. Except my hands were shaking and the bag wouldn’t open and every time I tried to push the book inside, it caught on the edge and?—
His hands came into my view and closed around mine. I stared at the backs of his hands, my heart hammering. His hands dwarfed mine, his fingers strong and thick.He could kill me.Just wrap them around my neck and—But he was surprisingly gentle as he guided my hands and slid the book into place.
He released me and picked up the bag and I tentatively met his eyes again. He nodded to me, his expression unreadable. “Goodbye.” Then he hesitated. “Miss…?”
“Hanford,” I managed.
“Goodbye, Miss Hanford.”
It was strangely, wonderfully, old-fashioned: I felt like I should be in a corset. I was so off balance, I gave it a go. “Goodbye...Mr. Aristov.”