She felt something course through her then that was too close to guilt, to the sickening heat of shame, and she didn’t understand it. She didn’t want to understand it, just as she didn’t want to feel that betraying flood of heat behind her eyes. She didn’t want to think about her work from his perspective. She liked the box she’d put him in all these years. She shoved it all aside, and tried to focus on the point of this. The reason she was here—and it wasn’t to let him take her down in his inimitable way. Again.
“Exactly what opportunities do you see in this mess?” she asked instead, fighting to keep her voice level.
He watched her for another long, intense moment, and Miranda had to order herself not to fidget as she stood there before him. A wild panic surged through her then, alarm bells tolling out a frantic melody, her stomach in a twist, because she had the terrible feeling that whatever was about to happen would ruin her forever, far more comprehensively and irrevocably than any kiss had done. She knew it . She could feel it hanging there in the air between them.
And worse, she suspected he knew it, too. As if this was all just one more nightmare waiting to happen, and she the fool who had walked right into it.
Don’t be ridiculous! she snapped at herself. Why was she reduced to hysteria in the presence of this man? Miranda had always prided herself on her calm reason, her logic. She’d studied so hard, and from such a young age, to be a scholar—to save herself from moments like this one by thinking her way out of them.
She had weapons, too. She needed to remember that.
But even as she hastily tried to arm herself, his midnight eyes only seemed darker, that temptation of a mouth something near enough to stern, and she had to fight to restrain a shiver. Anticipation or anxiety? She honestly didn’t know. His mouth curved, though it was not a smile, not at all, and it danced through her all the same.
“I think we should date,” he said.
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