Author's Preface
My eyes catch something familiar-a blue and gold leather journal. The one I sold him this afternoon.
It's tucked into the wrought-iron scrollwork of the chair he'd been sitting in. Or maybe he dropped it in his haste to leave. My thumb hovers over the cover. I shouldn't open it.
I open it anyway.
I expect coordinates. Names. Cold, hard facts about the job he's here to fix. Instead, I find myself.
My breath hitches as I smooth the cream page. The handwriting is a surprise-dark, slanted, and aggressive, as if the pen were a weapon in his hand. But the words... the words are a prayer.
"Tuesday. The café near the archway," the entry begins. "She was there again. I stood in the shadow of the brick wall, half-afraid the sun would catch the silver on my sleeves and alert the girl to the monster in her garden. She wore rose today. I don't know the names of colors that soft."
A hot flush creeps up my neck.
"The wind was cruel to her hair, tossing it like raven silk across her face, and I found myself hating the breeze for touching what I can't."
My fingers tremble against the leather. My heart drums a frantic, shy rhythm against my ribs.
"She looks like a secret I'm not supposed to know. When she smiles at her coffee, the air thins. My hands-these hands that have only known grit and cold steel-ached just to reach out and catch one stray strand of that hair."
I swallow hard. What is happening?
"I am a fool. A stranger watching a miracle, waiting for the moment she looks up and realizes I don't belong in the same frame as her. I should walk away. I stay."
I close the book. The leather is still warm from his touch, searing his secrets into my palms. The yearning hits me like a physical weight in my chest. He's not just a rugged stranger. He's a man who looked at me and saw a miracle-a man whose brooding exterior hides a heart that is bleeding for me.
Suddenly, the air behind me turns cold.
A shadow-wide, dark, and imposing-falls over the table, swallowing the sunlight on my floral dress.
Before I can gasp, a large, calloused hand shoots over my shoulder. With a blur of charcoal fabric and a violent rustle of paper, the diary is ripped from my grasp.
I spin around, my chest heaving.
He's standing right there.
His breathing is ragged, as if he'd run miles to get back to me. His heavy brow is drawn into a deep, thunderous V. His eyes-the ones that wrote so tenderly about "raven silk"-are flashing with raw, predatory panic. He looks less like a man and more like a cornered animal.
"That," he rasps, his voice a jagged edge of gravel, "is not yours."
He clutches the book against his side, his knuckles white and scarred against the leather. His jaw is tight enough to crack stone. The soft atmosphere of the café is gone, replaced by the sheer, overwhelming intensity of him.
I look up at him, my lips parted. My breath comes in shallow, shy hitches. I refuse to look away. Instead of shrinking, I look at the tremor in his fingers-the grip that "ached to catch a stray strand."
"I know," I whisper, my voice a soft, steady thread in the wind. "But you dropped it. And I... I couldn't stop reading."
His eyes widen. The anger flickers into something more dangerous: exposure. The tension between us tightens like a bowstring. He's a foot taller than me, a rugged storm of a man, and yet he looks utterly defeated.
"Then you know," he mutters, his voice dropping to a low, shamed rumble. "You know exactly what kind of fool I am."