Total pages in book: 164
Estimated words: 156728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 522(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 522(@300wpm)
A beat of silence before she carefully clarified, “A dress?”
“Sized to tribute 1922. And flats. Something comfortable.”
The pause that followed was dense with questions she knew better than to ask. But he could hear them accumulating in the silence, stacking like cards in that shrewd mind of hers.
“I’ll have it sent within the quarter hour.”
“Leave it outside the door of my suite. Don’t knock.”
“Understood.” Another pause. “Jack?”
“Yes.”
“She’s a good one.”
He ended the call without responding.
He returned to the bed. Daisy lay on her stomach now, cheek pressed to the pillow, arms folded beneath it. The blanket barely covered her hips, the shifting light from the balcony doors traced the valley of her spine in liquid silver soon to become gold.
“Daisy.” He spoke her name the way one speaks in churches, softly, with reverence.
She stirred, murmuring something unintelligible, burrowing deeper.
He brushed a strand of hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “It’s time to wake up.”
Her lashes fluttered. A crease formed between her brows as consciousness returned in reluctant stages, and then her eyes opened, unfocused and warm with sleep. She looked up at him and smiled.
That smile.
Every single time, it detonated something in his chest. Not because it was beautiful, though it was. Not because it was kind, though that too. But because it was reflexive. Involuntary. She saw his face, and her first instinct was joy, and no amount of self-loathing or logic could reconcile that with what he knew himself to be.
“Is it morning?” she murmured, voice raspy with sleep.
“Almost.” Leaning closer, he pressed his lips to hers.
She tasted like champagne and warmth and a future he hadn’t earned.
When he pulled back, her hand found his jaw, her thumb grazing the stubble there. “How much time do we have?”
“We have a little while still, but not much.”
He slid one arm beneath her knees, the other around her back, and lifted her from the bed. She made a small, startled sound, then relaxed, resting her head against his shoulder. Her bare skin was warm through his jacket and shirt.
The scent of her hair filled his lungs. He could drown in that scent and die a happy man.
“Where are we going?” she asked, the words still sleepy.
“Shower.”
He carried her into the bathroom, set a folded, heated towel on the marble vanity, and sat her down gently. Her bare legs dangled like a child’s.
She looked up at him with sleepy curiosity, her gaze tracking him as he reached into the enclosed shower and turned the taps. Water thundered against stone as steam climbed, stealing the chill from the air.
Jack turned his back to the shower and faced her with unflinching purpose. This room seemed to be a temple of truth for them, a place where they faced the wreckage and learned how to move on. Together.
He shouldered off his jacket and draped it over a hook. His fingers found the top button of his shirt, and the tremor started immediately. Not in his hands, but deeper, in a place where muscle met bone and memory lived like rot in the walls of an old house.
He knew what she’d see. Every ridge of raised tissue, every discolored patch where healing never quite completed its work. The puckered, round cigar burns that stippled his shoulders. The long, silvered marks that raked across his back in parallel furrows. The claw marks and half-moons where teeth had punctured skin.
And the brand.
Two letters seared into the hollow of his hip with the permanence of a tattoo. A dead man’s autograph forever carved into ruined flesh.
She’d already seen it all. But forcing himself to show her again was like swimming against the tide with his arms and legs bound. He couldn’t control what would happen next.
Jack unfastened the second button. The third. His jaw locked, and his molars ground together as the shirt parted, revealing the undershirt beneath. He stripped it over his head without ceremony because ceremony would have given him time to reconsider.
Cool air hit his scarred torso as steam from the shower curled through the bathroom, blurring the edges of things, but not enough. Never enough.
He dropped the undershirt to the floor.
The silence that followed was a living thing. Her gaze landed on his chest, his shoulders, the terrain of damage only a tailor could disguise.
He didn’t look at her. Couldn’t. Instead, he stared at the fogged mirror behind her head and worked his belt buckle free, then the button of his trousers, then the zipper. Fabric pooled at his ankles, and he quickly kicked it away, stripping off his socks in the process.
He stood before her in nothing but his briefs.
“Jack.” Her voice was quiet and steady.
He forced himself to meet her eyes.
She didn’t flinch or try to look away. Her placid features gave nothing away as she met his stare. Even professionally trained surgeons and doctors he’d hired privately over the years struggled not to pity him. But not her.