Show Me a Hero
Page 20
For the better part of a week, he’d been avoiding every marriage-minded single woman in Manhattan. But the knife-wielding goddess had gotten under his skin instantly. He wasn’t even sure why.
Yes, she was pretty. More than pretty, actually. Beautiful, with full red lips and long, spun-gold hair—the kind of hair that made him hard just thinking about what it would feel like sliding through his fingers.
But it had been more than her looks that had him spellbound from all the way across the crowded room. He’d felt an inexplicable pull deep in his chest when he looked at her. And as he came closer, there’d been something else. She’d had secrets in her eyes.
“It’s not a party trick,” she’d said, looking him up and down. A scarlet flush made its way up her porcelain face. “It’s called sabering.”
She’d gone on to explain that French cavalry officers had used their swords in a similar manner to open champagne during the Napoleonic Wars. Which didn’t explain in the slightest why she was doing it in a wine bar on the Upper West Side, but Ryan hadn’t cared.
It had fascinated him. She’d fascinated him...
Fascinated him enough that he very purposefully neglected to mention his last name.
A car rounded the corner. Ryan turned in the direction of the sound of tires crunching on packed snow, but it wasn’t the Bennington limo. Where was the damned thing? He was freezing.
He bowed his head against the wind and walked toward the newsstand, hoping the old man could sell him some coffee.
He felt bad about the name thing, even now. Even after she’d shown him the door within minutes of waking up in her bed. It wasn’t as if he’d lied to her. He’d just left off his surname.
Call me Ryan.
Thinking about that made him wince. It made him sound like a player, when in actuality, he was anything but.
That was the big irony of his current situation. Practically overnight, and through no fault of his own, he’d developed a reputation. A reputation that had no basis in reality.
It had been a relief when he realized Eve had no idea who he was.
Eve, with her butcher knife and lovely head full of history.
“Excuse me,” he said.
The man behind the newsstand looked up. “Yeah?”
“Have you got any coffee back there?”
The man nodded. “Sure do. Extra hot.”
“erfect.” Ryan opened his wallet and removed a few bills. As he handed the old man the money, his gaze snagged on a magazine.
Gotham. But the title didn’t matter. It was the image on the magazine’s cover that gave him pause.
A man’s face.
His face.
If Evangeline Holly hadn’t known who he was last night, she would now.
Copyright © 2018 by Teri Wilson
ISBN-13: 9781488093777
Show Me a Hero
Copyright © 2018 by Allison Lee Johnson
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