Nora Roberts - The Pagan Stone

“Oh well.” With a shrug, Cybil shook back her hair. “It was fun thinking about it. And it calmed me down. We’d better go back in, get started.”

Layla tugged Quinn back as Cybil went inside. “Am I really the only one who noticed that she just kept describing herself as the kind of woman Gage would fall for?”

“Nope. But isn’t it interesting that Cyb didn’t appear to get that?” Quinn draped an arm around Layla’s shoulders now. “Even though, in my opinion, she was right on target. She’s exactly the woman he’d fall for. Won’t this be fun to watch?”

“Is it Fate, Quinn, or choice? For all of us?”

“I vote choice, but you know what?” She gave Layla a pat. “I don’t much care, not as long as we all live happy-ever-after.”

Thinking of just that, Layla looked at Fox as she walked into the kitchen. He popped the top on a Coke, laughing at something Cal said. As his tawny eyes glanced her way, they warmed like suns.

“Ready for a little fortune-telling?” He held out a hand for hers.

“I want to ask you a question first.” It was important to ask now, she realized, before those cards were turned.

“Sure, what do you need?”

“I need to know if you’ll marry me.”

The conversations around them stopped. For several long seconds there was no sound as he stared at her. “Okay. Now?”

“Fox.”

“Because I was thinking more like February. You know what a crappy month February is? Why shouldn’t there be something really great to look forward to in the mostly crappy month of February?” He took a slug of his Coke, then set it down as she stared back at him. “Plus, it was February when I saw you for the first time. But not Valentine’s Day because, you know, complete cliché and way too traditional.”

“You’ve been thinking?”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking, seeing as I’m completely in love with you. But I’m glad you asked me first. Takes the pressure off.” With a laugh, he lifted her off her feet. “February work for you?”

“February’s perfect.” She laid her hands on his cheeks, kissed him. Then lifting her head, she grinned. “Fox and I are getting married in February.”

Amid the congratulations and hugs, Cybil caught Gage’s eye. “Don’t worry,” she said quietly. “I won’t propose.”

She put on the kettle for tea, to keep her calm and centered when they went back to work.

GAGE SLEPT POORLY, AND THE INSOMNIA HAD nothing to do with dreams or visions. He wasn’t used to making serious mistakes, or worse-certainly more mortifying-clumsy missteps. Particularly with women. He made his living not just reading cards and the odds, but out of reading people, what went on behind the eyes, the words, the gestures.

It was small comfort to understand, at about three a.m., that he hadn’t read Cybil incorrectly. She was just as intrigued and attracted as he, just as interested-and probably just as wary-of acting on those now-famous buzzing sexual vibes.

No, he wasn’t wrong about the sexual connection between them.

His monumental mistake had been knee-jerking off a disquiet inside himself and kicking it right into her face. The second layer of the mistake being-and Christ, it was lowering-he’d been after reassurance . He’d wanted her to agree with him, to tell him there wasn’t anything to worry about. She wasn’t any more willing to get dicked around by Fate than he was.

With that all tidied up, they’d work together, sleep together, fight together, hell, maybe die together, and no problem.

All that talk about emotion and emotional connection had spiced the stew he’d already had simmering inside him. Hadn’t he watched both his closest friends, his brothers, fall in love? And weren’t they both heading toward the altar? Any man in his right mind would take a hard look at the hand being dealt and fold before the draw.

And, with hindsight flashing like neon, he had to admit he should’ve kept that move, that thought, that opinion to himself. Instead, he’d fumbled it, gone on the defensive. And had, essentially, accused her of setting him up. She’d been right to kick his ass over it. No question about it. Now the question was how to put things back on a level field without having to wade through the sticky waters of an apology first. He could use the greater-good ploy, but however true it might be, it was weak.

In the end, he decided to play it by ear, and walked into the rental house. Quinn was halfway down the steps, and paused when he came in. After the briefest of hesitations, she jogged the rest of the way down. “Hi. You wouldn’t be here to work, would you?”

“Actually-”

She plowed right over him with a rush of words and movement. “Because we’re very shorthanded. Fox and Cal are both in meetings, and Fox’s dad had a couple hours, so Layla’s over at the boutique with him going over plans. It’s down to me and Cyb, and actually, I need to run out to the place to get the thing. I came down to get Cyb some coffee, there’s fresh in the kitchen. Get that, will you? I’ll be back in twenty.”

She nipped straight out the door before he could get in a word. At least half of what she’d said was bullshit manufactured on the spot. A man recognized bullshit when he was standing knee deep in it. But since it served his purposes, he just walked back to the kitchen and poured two coffees, then carried them upstairs.

That curly mass of hair tumbled this way and that out of pins Cybil had used to secure it to the top of her head. A new look for her, he thought-at least that he’d seen-and a damn sexy one. She worked with her back to him, on the big dry erase board. Another chart, he noted, and recognized the names of the cards they’d all chosen in the various rounds the night before. The music, he assumed, came from one of the laptops set up in the room. Melissa Etheridge soared.

“Wouldn’t logging those into the computer be faster?”

He saw the quick jolt, and the quick recovery before she turned. The look she spared him was what he thought of as beige. Absolutely neutral. “They are logged, but this is easier on the eyes, and more accessible to the whole group. Would one of those be my coffee, or do you plan to drink both?”

He stepped over, held one out to her. “Quinn said she had to go to the place to get the thing, and would be back in twenty.”

Irritation flickered over Cybil’s face before she turned back to the board. “In that case, you ought to go downstairs, or outside until you have a chaperone to protect you from my wiles.”

“I can handle you.”

She glanced back. No beige now, Gage mused. This look was all smoke, with the faintest tinge of hot blue at the edges. “Others have thought the same. Their mistake.”

Screw it, he decided as she continued to print her perfectly formed letters. When a man played his hand poorly, he had to take his losses. “I was out of line.”

“Yes, we’ve established that much already.”

“Then no problem.”

“I never imagined you had one.”

He drank some coffee. He watched her. He tried to figure out why her cool disinterest just pissed him off. So he set the coffee down, and took her arm to get her attention. “Look-”

“Careful.” The warning dripped like molten sugar. “The last time you started a statement that way you ended up with both feet jammed in your mouth. I imagine you’d find it as boring as I do to make the same mistake twice.”

“I never said I made a mistake.”

When she met this with silence, and a long, bland stare, it occurred to him she’d be a killer at the poker table. “Okay. All right. The whole day was over the top. Since I don’t see you as a tease, it’s pretty clear we’re going to end up in bed together.”