by Cole McCade
Celeste London, the girl who wishes on stars.
He had a feeling she was full of surprises.
He fingered the business card in his pocket, then turned from the river and strolled down the sidewalk toward his apartment. He had hours until dawn and the words were finally loosening up inside him, milling against the block that had caged them, ready to break free.
And tonight his heroine would dream of the sky at night, dark and streaked with the light of the heavens.
CHAPTER FOUR
SHE’D HAD THE STRANGEST DREAM.
Celeste eyed the bleary numbers on the alarm clock—nothing but red blurs past the hillocks of the pillow and the ridges of her knuckles. God, she was so wrecked. Exhausted. Her subconscious had some serious issues.
Her brain had gone all Wizard of Oz on her, whisking her away to Paris where she’d met Ion Blackwell on a riverboat, all grown up and beautiful enough to melt her into her jeans. He’d picked her up and carried her like a prince. Then she’d gone on a mad quest to help a crazy pink pixie sort out her father’s Alzheimer’s medication¸ because the labels had come off and she didn’t know which was Namenda and which was Donepezil. She’d been up all night calming her sister while Ophelia watched their father for symptoms of an overdose and panicked about being a bad daughter. She vaguely remembered worrying about making some conference on time, as she’d dozed off near dawn.
The conference.
Oh.
Shit.
She shot upright in bed. Those red blobs resolved into numbers. Eight, two, and four, to be precise. Eight twenty-four a.m. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. She’d meant to get up an hour ago. Her first workshop was in thirty minutes, and she probably looked like a hobo. No, she probably looked like someone who’d spook a hobo. After she’d run from Ion last night to help Ophelia—
Ion.
Her stomach plummeted. Last night hadn’t been a dream. She’d run into Ion on the riverboat, and he’d—he’d—
“Oh, fuck me,” she moaned, and buried her face in her hands. That had really happened. She could still feel his strength wrapping around her as he’d lifted her into his arms. Her heart rabbited; she tucked her chin to glare at her chest. “Stop that.”
It didn’t listen.
She scowled. She was not getting twisted over Ion Blackwell again. Last night had been random chance, and it was over. She didn’t even have his number; just because he’d kept her card didn’t mean he’d call. She wasn’t thinking about this. The same way she hadn’t thought about the memories that had crashed down on her in Bayou’s End.
She sucked at this not thinking about Ion thing.
She needed a patch. Or a sticker. A chip. Something. JSNIB. Just Say No to Ion Blackwell.
No, what she needed was to get up, get dressed, and get the hell out of here. Yawning, she kicked the covers away, trudged into the bathroom, and eyed her reflection. Raccoon eyes. That’d make a great first impression: late on day one, a smudgy mess, completely unprepared. Today? Definitely a glasses day. Just another shield between the world and the bags under her eyes.
She lifted her chin and glared at herself. She was too professional for this. She loved her work too much, and had to think about a job. Her future, and her father’s. Not about a man who didn’t remember someone he’d shared classes with for four years. She’d been invisible to him then. He could be invisible to her now.
With luck, she’d never see him again.
* * *
Ion stood outside the main building of the Sorbonne’s Cligancourt campus, tapping his day pass against the inner fold of his program and scanning for Celeste’s name. She’d run off without his number, but five minutes on Google had unearthed the conference, her workshop schedule, and an online form to buy and print a pass. He still wanted to pick her brain, he told himself. This was strictly a business matter.
He wasn’t fooling anyone; especially not himself. He hadn’t gone through the trouble of finding her just to ask about atmospheric reentry vectors and anti-gravitational propulsion. He wanted to ask about her.
And what he’d done to make her fear him.
His phone buzzed against his jeans. As he stepped into the modern art deco building with its tiled halls, he pulled the HTC from his back pocket and glanced at the half-dozen notifications in the top bar—all emails from Madigan, E.—before checking the caller ID. Drake. If he didn’t take it he’d probably get another call from the ER later, after the man had a damned aneurysm. Ion considered himself driven and focused, but Drake took high-energy to the next level. The man needed a vacation. Or a Xanax.
He swiped the screen and lifted the phone to his ear. He didn’t even get to say hello before Drake snapped,
“Have you seen what hit the U.S. papers today?”
Already irritable. This should be fun. Drake refreshed his news feeds like a new author refreshing their Amazon rankings. “Can’t say that I have.”
“Do you even care?”
“Can’t say that I do.”
“Because you’re an asshole.”
“Could say that I am.” Ion flashed his pass at the registration table, then checked the room number against his program. “Or you could say I have it under control.”
“Like they had the Titanic under control. This company’s sinking hard.”
“No, it’s not.” Ion threaded through the stream of people, who parted into tributaries and flowed into different auditoriums. Not that one, not that one… “Unruffle your petticoats, Scarlett. It’s crass opportunism. Someone makes a mistake, we take the fall, the media gets their page views and ad clicks, it blows over.”
“And your books take a huge hit in sales, and this little privately-funded venture finds itself not so private and completely out of funds.”
“So little faith in me?”
“So little faith in what the public does with rumors. You won’t give them anything on you, so they seize on everything they can find. What they’ve found isn’t good.” Drake cursed under his breath. “If you want people to have faith in you, they need to see you as a person. Not a name on a book jacket.”
“My public career and private life have no bearing on each other.”
“Welcome to the world two-point-oh. With social media, there’s no separating the two.” The sound of typing came over the line. “This reporter says you refused to meet her. That you ‘sneered in her face with overwhelming arrogance, and walked away.’”
Madigan. He’d had a feeling that woman would plague him. “Last part’s true. She hunted me down, invaded my privacy, and threatened me.” He found the room number and strode for the door. “I don’t respond to threats.”
“You should have told me. Fuck, Blackwell. I could use this, spin the public response in our favor. Details. Now.”
Ion only half heard him. Celeste’s voice caught him, amplified by the auditorium’s echoes: strong, clear, confidence touched by wry humor, saying something about metal sublimation and the unexpected behavior of flame in a vacuum. The sound drew him, a tether reeling him into the room.
“Later,” he murmured into the phone.
“Not later,” Drake snapped. “Now.”
Ion’s gaze gravitated to Celeste instantly. Over a hundred in the auditorium, and he saw only her. He’d like to think it was her place at the head of the room, but his more honest side knew damned well he’d locked on the prettiest thing in sight. “I’m hanging up.”
“Ion, damn it—”
He swiped the screen with his thumb and slipped the phone into his pocket without taking his eyes from Celeste. She stood behind the podium, slim and stern and ramrod-straight and commanding the room with an air of quiet authority, her pinstriped pencil skirt lengthening her figure and emphasizing the flow of slender, shapely legs. A pencil pinned her hair into a messy twist of coiling black with loose tendrils that, as she gestured expansively and tinkered with a large glass bubble, drifted into her smiling, animated face. A pair of narrow glasses perched on the ti
p of her nose, stark severity contrasting the soft pink of laughing lips.
She’d been ethereal last night, against the backdrop of the Seine—but right now she was sexy enough to make his fingers clench against the program, crumpling it until the creased edges of the paper bit into his skin. The dark gloss of her stockings made him want to run his hands over those pretty legs until the sheer, silky sheen of nylon caught on his palms.
“While we can’t perfectly emulate results without a zero-gravity chamber,” she said, “and flame can’t survive in a vacuum without oxygen, we can—”
Her gaze swept the room and landed on him. She froze, fingers clamped around a valve attached to the globe. Her eyes rounded. Spots of dusky red rose high in her pale cheeks.
And the valve slipped free with a sputtering boom, releasing a cloud of thick gray smoke.
It billowed over the room as rapidly as a deploying airbag, blocking his sight and stinging his eyes; something noxious fouled his tongue, like burning tires. He coughed, choking, holding an arm against his mouth and breathing against his sleeve.
“Celeste,” he called, but his voice was drowned by the panicked cries filling the room, amplified by the fire alarm’s painful shrill. Someone stumbled into him, then reeled away.
“Everyone remain calm!” she said, voice echoing over the noise. “Remain calm and proceed toward the door.”
The door. Ion felt until he found it, then shoved it open. Smoke vented into the hall, streaming up to collect against high ceilings, raising worried cries from people pouring from other rooms. Through the thinning fog, he could barely make out confused shapes milling around the auditorium.
“Here,” he shouted, keeping his tone calm. “Follow my voice to the door.”
People straggled toward him clumsily, first a few, then more, collective awareness spreading until they flocked to the door. He kept his arm pressed to his mouth and watched for Celeste. She remained behind the podium, coughing as she fumbled with a canister.
“Cel!” He fought to be heard over the alarm. “Leave it. You can come back for it.”
Her head jerked up. She stared at him; her mouth set as she snagged her purse and darted for the door, pausing only to sweep him with a sharp look before stepping into the hall. Everyone had already cleared out, leaving the building door open, letting the smoke escape into the open air. He caught the distant howl of fire trucks as he followed her out, down the front steps. She edged past the crowd and around the side of the building, where she slumped against the brick and pressed her soot-stained face into her equally soot-stained hands.
“Jesus, Ion,” she mumbled into her palms. Her clothing was ruined. His too, coated in a clinging, gritty gray patina.
“You said not to call you,” he pointed out.
“So you just showed up?” She raked a hand through her hair, then pulled her glasses off, her brows knitting as she stared at the coated lenses. “God, they’ll have to shut down the conference for today. They might have to call in a biohazard team.”
“Biohazard?” He cocked his head. “As in…deadly. As in radiation. We were just breathing that. You’re remarkably calm for someone who’s about to either die or become Spiderwoman.”
“We’re not going to die, you big baby. It’s not lethal. You might cough for a few days until it’s out of your lungs. Food might taste funny.” She wiped her lenses on the hem of her shirt and succeeded only in smearing the grime around. “Biohazard protocol is just the standard respo—damn it, this isn’t working!”
The note of distress in her voice cut through him. He hadn’t meant to cause such a disruption. “Here,” he said softly. “Let me.”
He took the glasses from her. The soft brush of her fingers lingered with him, a spark of sweet awareness. He retrieved a cleaning cloth from his pocket and carefully wiped the soot and grime from her lenses and frames. She bit her lip.
“I’m getting it dirty,” she said.
Ion’s heart shook strangely. Right now—with her hair wild, with her glasses off, with the familiar way she bit at her lip and twined her fingers while the light slanted down along the crest of her brow just so—he could swear he’d known her before. Dreamed her. Like déjà reve: that experience of seeing something he’d only been able to grasp in his sleep, flitting at the edges of his conscious mind.
Did I dream you before I ever met you, Celeste?
She cleared her throat softly and lowered her eyes. Ion swallowed and looked away. He’d been staring like a fool, and he had to take several steadying breaths before he could remember to speak.
“Technically, I’m getting it dirty. Don’t worry about it.” He offered her glasses. She took them tentatively and slid them on; he bit back a laugh. He doubted she’d appreciate the two perfectly clean cat’s-eye spots standing stark and white against the gray soot covering her face. And she’d probably hate him for finding it entirely endearing. It just made him want to brush away the huge mark streaked down her neck, tip her face up, and kiss her.
She flicked him a sullen look over her glasses. “What are you staring at?”
“Nothing.” He allowed himself a smile and tucked the cloth away. “Just trying to figure out if you’re more upset or angry.”
“Flip a coin. You won’t be wrong.” She tucked her arms tight around herself and leaned against the wall. “The conference administrators will probably make me pay for damages.”
“They won’t. It was my fault. If they want someone to pay, talk to me. I’ll even pay for your dry cleaning.”
She flicked him a wary look. “Why would you do that?”
“I’m not the one who’s unemployed.”
“Consultant.”
“Consultant,” he amended, and leaned against the wall next to her. She went stiff; there was that carefulness again, that nervousness. What had he done? Other than ruining her presentation, her clothes, possibly her day…now that he thought about it, he was amazed she was talking to him at all. He watched the people milling around, fire teams moving in to investigate. “So I can assume you’re free for the rest of the day?”
“No thanks to you,” she muttered.
“Hm.”
“What?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t realize I had such an effect on you.”
Even under the soot, her blush stood out fierce and red. She scowled. “You don’t.”
“So the reason you froze was…?”
“I couldn’t believe you tracked me down. I was surprised.”
“I was serious. I want to hire you, but you ran off last night.”
Her lips thinned. “I had to take care of something.”
“I won’t press.” He brushed his hair back. His fingers came away grimy. “But I’d like to make up for the disaster by buying you lunch.”
Celeste lifted her chin. “A working lunch?”
“Could be. I’d rather it was a chance to get to know you.”
“You only need to know what I know about astrophysics.”
“Is that so?” What was it about her? Something about the line of her jaw, the prideful way she refused to look at him…it was almost familiar. Too familiar. “Are you seeing someone?”
“No.”
“Then you just don’t like me.”
Her head snapped up, eyes wide. There was that fetching blush again, peeking past the soot like a sunset through heavy clouds. “No!”
“Then you do like me.”
“I don’t even know you!” she sputtered.
“That’s what I’m trying to remedy.” He shrugged. “If you aren’t interested, tell me. We’ll keep it professional.”
Her eyes flashed. “I don’t respond to ultimatums.”
He repressed a smile. He could recall saying something similar not so long ago. “It’s not an ultimatum. It’s me saying I’ll respect your wishes and back off if you say so.”
“I’m not—I don’t—” She threw her hands up. “You’re really frustrating, you know that?”
“
I’ve heard that before, yes.” When her hair fluttered with her exasperated sigh, he itched to brush it from her face. He pushed his hands into his pockets so he’d keep them to himself. “That’s not an answer.”
“I’m not answering you,” she muttered.
“Then I still have a chance.”
“Do you want to talk about your book or not?”
“I do. Preferably over lunch.”
She groaned and tilted her head against the wall. “Fine. But you’re not paying. This is not a date.”
“Of course not. But if I pay, we could just deduct—”
“Not. Paying,” she ground out, then looked at her filthy hands. With a despairing moan, she tugged her blouse. He couldn’t tell its color under the soot. “I need to shower and change.”
“I’m sure we fit the dress code somewhere.”
“Cute,” she said, but a smile peeked past her scowl. Her gaze flicked over him. “You might want to change, too.”
He touched his jaw. “Do I have something on my face?”
She pressed her lips together, eyes glittering. “Just a little.”
“Where?” He moved his fingers to his cheek. “Here?”
“Yes. And there. And a little here…” A snicker burst free. Reaching up, she wiped along his cheekbone, fingers warm against his skin. Her brows drew together, and she dissolved into helpless laughter. “It’s everywhere.”
Her laughter was infectious, silvery and soft with a slight throaty burr. He finally let his own laugh out, shoulders shaking as he swiped at his face. His fingers came away coated in crumbling gray. He probably looked like he’d stuck his face in a dustpan. They made quite the pair, and the more he tried to picture it the more his laughter fed hers until they sagged against the wall, gasping for breath.