A Lady's Formula for Love

by Elizabeth Everett

  This close, he could catch a faint scent of orange blossom and something tantalizingly familiar. Leaning in, he closed his eyes and inhaled, lungs filling with the sweet scent of vanilla.

  How unexpected.

  Letty Fenley smelled like cake.

  “Are you smelling my hair?” she asked.

  He opened his eyes, disconcerted. “No. I’m not . . . smelling your hair? What are you . . . ? You’re simply so short that—”

  “So short?” Letty stiffened and tipped her head up at the same time Grey leaned down to make his point. “I am less than an inch shorter than—”

  “Are you standing on your toes to make yourself appear taller?” he accused.

  “If I stood on my toes, like this, I would . . .”

  Letty rose on her toes, and they both froze.

  For an endless moment, everyone and everything else ceased to exist as their mouths came so close they drew each other’s breath.

  Expressions slid like quicksilver across her face before he could read them. Was she repulsed? Angry? Curious?

  What might happen if he closed the distance between them another inch . . .

  A rock hit the wall above his head and jerked him out of the moment of madness. For it must have been madness, and not anything else.

  “Letitia, where are you? Come here now, or I will remove the heels from your boots,” a man shouted. “Then, when customers ask, I will tell them, yes, you are well-spoken for a ten-year-old.”

  “That is my brother. Let me go.” Letty pushed at Grey’s chest. Taking two steps back, he held his hands above his shoulders as though she’d threatened him at gunpoint, saying nothing as she bolted out of the passageway and into the street. Not even when he heard her mutter under her breath.

  “I hate you,” she’d whispered.

  Before he could decide whether that had been issued as a complaint or a challenge, she’d disappeared.

  Photo by Asa Shutts

  ELIZABETH EVERETT lives in upstate New York with her family. She likes going for long walks or (very) short runs to nearby sites that figure prominently in the history of civil rights and women’s suffrage. A Lady’s Formula for Love is her first novel, inspired by her admiration for rule breakers and her belief in the power of love to change the world.

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