“I came to speak with the princess.” More of him channeling the James Bond thing, which Jayd feigned not to care about. Surely the man could not know she had watched the films a dozen times each. Yes, even A View to a Kill.
But maybe he and Jagger had bonded that tightly.
A musing for another day. She could not entertain, even with fleeting attention, the idea of Brickham forging new friendships across the island. What was she going to do if everyone around here got morose when he had to leave?
The imagining lasted long enough to push irritation into her tone. “Obviously your timing is not convenient,” she commented, keeping her lips tight. “Requiemme was just helping me with a proj—”
“I can see that,” he inserted, smoother than a chef slicing into butter cake. “And I won’t be long. Perhaps I can even help?”
He finished that off by scooping the dye brush off the floor. The whole time, her maid pinned him with an indicting look. Neither Mother Abbess or Ceresi Lannister had anything on the woman.
“Let us just agree you will not take long.”
Ohhh, goodness. Perhaps Captain Von Trapp and Jon Snow needed to worry too. Emme’s protective claws were out in force, but Jayd could not do much to shove them back in. The woman was feeding off her tension, which had already razed her cocktail buzz like a blow torch through a cotton field. Where was the Stanford how-to guide for the moment when one was no longer toasting to their dismissive douchebag, but confronting him in the all-too-real, all-too-close, all-too-magnificent flesh?
Flesh that looked even better as soon as Emme departed the room.
And Brickham moved in closer.
Angels and demons have mercy.
How had she so easily forgotten what his proximity did to her? How small yet sheltered she felt when he loomed over her? How glaringly spotlighted but infinitely special, feeling like the man erased the rest of the world when studying her like this? Impaling her, heart and soul, with the power of his twin blues…
Oh, dear heavens!
His devastating, decadent eyes. Were they why she had gravitated toward the similar color for her hair?
Impulsively, she snapped a hand up to her head. “Damn it,” she mumbled at her turquoise-tinted fingertips. The bright color would be muted after her wash-out, despite how the box touted the process as an all-in-one deal. She might have less hair now, but it was still the stubbornly dark stuff of her Cimarron genes, not her LaBarre side.
Juuust lovely.
Out of all the mental prompts she needed right now, a reminder that her illegitimate rump should not even be in this chair was not one. But processing that, on top of all the synapses Brickham had charged by merely entering the suite, had her more winded than a sprint on the beach against the wind. At this moment, she was even ready to lace up her runners and go for that option…
Oh, especially now.
As a clean wad of tissue, offered by a huge, firm hand, appeared before her downcast eyes.
As she grabbed it with her clean hand but let her nerves take over her other one—just in time to drive her shaking fingers to her forehead.
“Oh fff…” She saved herself from spewing the world’s favorite F-word, but not from replacing it with equal ire. “Almighty on shit toast!”
“Well.” To his credit, her intruder did not opt for an obvious gloat. His tone was gruff but kind, caressing her in much the same way that he took over wiping her goop-covered fingers. “As long as it’s blue shit, I think you’re okay.”
“That would make me an alien tree frog or a Smurf,” she countered. “And since both sound just fine compared to my own skin…”
Skin she was blisteringly aware of now, as the man began dabbing the tissue at the splotches on her face.
Her pores had no defense against the heat that flowed out from him, decimating the paper swifter than his gaze had gone through her initial defenses. Against every protest in her head, Jayd replied with a shivering sigh. Surely that would have the man indulging a small crow, but when she dared a glance up, his expression was just as earnest as before.
Earnest—and all-too authoritative.
She could not look away. Suddenly and terrifyingly, she did not want to.
“You’d be a pretty adorable Smurf, sweet girl.”
Maybe she could look away, after all. That was only because of the tightness up and down in her throat, oxygen battling feelings for control, until she was force-feeding gulps just to keep everything working right. Whatever right was anymore…
What it was not, was ongoing silence. So she gritted her teeth, pushing words to her lips. Hard, determined, get-to-the-point-before-I-jump-you-like-an-alien-tree-frog words.
“What are you doing here, Brickham?”
His features tautened. As she watched the readjustments of muscle and skin against his prominent bones, he also angled his backside more fully along the vanity counter. Somewhere in those moments, he also got rid of the soiled tissue wad, since his fingers were laced when he refocused fully on her.
Making her sit through more of the unnerving silence. And his unblinking scrutiny.
Finally, thank the Creator, he drew significant breath to speak.
“I didn’t like the way we ended things. A few days ago,” he qualified. “When you came to visit me.”
“Yes, sir.” In her mind it was no longer capitalized, though she could not tell if he discerned as much. “I am fully aware of when it occurred. And also of what ending things means.”
He grimaced. “I didn’t mean to imply that you don’t.”
“So that’s why you crept across the palais and found a way in here? To imply something else?”
“No,” he bit back. “No implications, okay? I just think that some things didn’t get communicated right. They weren’t…clarified.”
“Oh, they were perfectly clear.” She folded her arms, leaning as far back in the chair as she could get. “And so were you.”
“No, damn it. I wasn’t. And—fuck.”
That part was tangled deep in his larynx, muffled even more when he dipped his head and scraped a hand across the top. Some of her aqua dye had somehow gotten onto his palm, which wound up in his self-created mohawk. She said nothing because she liked it. If nothing else still bound them, at least they could be blue-topped twins for a little while.
The thought should not have given her so much comfort, but it did. Apologizing for the fact would have to happen later too.
“Look. What I wanted to say is…I’m sorry.”
So the maddening man went and dragged in the remorse theme anyway. With all his figurative guns blazing.
“When you walked into my room, I was still trying to process the fact that I was actually here, not some French hospital with guards outside the door. I’d just woken up from a three-day nap but felt like a wall of the Alamo, post showdown, with Santa Anna still cackling over my carcass.”
The metaphor pushed reluctant humor to Jayd’s lips. “Only he looked like my brother Samsyn. And he was not cackling.”
Brick parked his hands on his thighs and slanted her a matching smirk. “Oh, I’m sure he was inside. I mean, somewhere.”
“Mmmph.” She snorted. “He is an ass. I doubt they know how to cackle.”
“Well, he’s an ass who cares about you.”