Standing, he dusted off his palms. I grabbed the offered hand. He pulled me to my feet, but as I stood, I realized one of my legs had gone to sleep. Bran steadied me as it crumpled.
I’d never been this close to a boy before and I wanted to freeze the moment. To bank it against the frightening, unknown void that my life had so recently become.
I memorized the rasp of his calloused palm on my bare skin. The bleating of sheep and the rush of wind as it curled around us. When I breathed in, I could smell him. Bran Cameron. Clean cotton and fresh-cut wood. Saddle oil and sun-warmed skin that somehow reminded me of toasted marshmallows that dissolved melty and delicious on your tongue.
“Hope.” Bran’s voice sounded oddly husky as I opened my eyes and looked up into his. “I want you to know that I—I’ve truly enjoyed today. It . . . This . . . was real. For me at least. Don’t forget that.”
Me? Ever forget this day? Unlikely.
Before I could utterly embarrass myself and beg to stay just a little longer, a crackling came from the underbrush behind us. Our heads whipped toward the sound as a large, rust-colored deer tiptoed out. A gangly, spotted fawn followed, nosing under his mother’s belly.
Bran’s grip tightened on my wrists. Bound together, we didn’t move a hair as the doe raised a slender head and blinked at us with lashes so lovely, they seemed fake. Eventually, sensing we were no threat, her velvety ears twitched. She bent to nibble at the tough grass. The baby shifted with his mother’s movements, struggling to stay attached. Spellbound, we watched him totter on spindly, impossibly thin legs.
Bran turned to me with a joyous grin. At the motion, the doe’s head shot up. In a flicker of white tails, both animals were gone.
I exhaled, ready with a joke about Bran’s camera and how he wasn’t such a great stalker after all. But the words died when his hypnotic eyes searched mine.
“So beautiful,” he whispered.
He meant the deer—I knew that. But for an instant . . . a tiny space in time . . . it almost felt like he was talking about me.
“Camera.” I blurted. “You . . . no camera.”
When he grinned, I wanted to tumble off the side of the mountain.
“I wish,” he started, then shook his head.
We were so close, I could smell mint toothpaste and sun-kissed skin as his breath brushed across my lips.
My eyes closed. Adrenaline shot through every cell in my body. Everything else fell away. My chest tightened. But this wasn’t fear. Well, it was. But not scary-frightening. No. Scary-exhilarating. Scary-wonderful. He’s going to kiss me. My very first kiss.
Bran’s chest moved in a quiet sigh that I felt more than heard. His hands tightened on my skin. My breath hitched, and I barely had time to think, Ohh . . . this is it, before he stepped back and let his hands drop, the moment lost forever, except in my imagination.
Chapter 15
DOUG’S SHY, BARITONE LAUGH FILLED THE LIBRARY AS I practiced walking . . . again. I was getting better, though the gown I was using while Moira finished our actual costumes was way too long.
“The trouble is,” Doug said, “you’re swinging your arms like an ape. Women don’t walk that way in the past. Here, Hope. Let me show you.”
The big guy pressed his palms together at waist height and made a curiously graceful turn about the room. “See? Don’t use your arms to balance. Just kick the hem out as you walk.”
Phoebe snorted. “No way, babe. I’m asking Gran to take our hems up. Hope will trip a million times if she has to do it like that.”
“She can’t let her ankles show.” Doug dropped onto a squishy sofa beside her. “You either, come to that. You’ll drive the lads crazy. Or else they’ll jail you for a harlot.” He sighed in false annoyance. “Then I’d have to go crack some medieval skulls. And who has the time?”
Phoebe leaned over and kissed the tip of Doug’s long nose. My throat tightened as I watched them exchange a tender grin. At first glance, they didn’t seem to work as a couple at all. Phoebe’s tiny delicacy against Doug’s brawn. But when he told me the story of how they’d met, I realized I’d never met two people more perfectly matched.
“It was my first day at school after Lu brought me to live at Christopher Manor.” Doug’s hands had flown over the keys of his laptop as we sat alone together in the library. I’d never seen anyone compartmentalize so completely, doing three or four things at once with absolute precision. “Well, ye’ll notice there aren’t a lot of people here with my skin color? My mum was from Senegal, see, and while in Edinburgh there were plenty of kids like me, here . . .” He shrugged. “Add in that I was already a foot taller than anyone else in my year, and, well, I caught the attention of some of the older lads.”
Phoebe entered. She stayed unusually quiet as Doug spun his tale. But she stood behind him, her fingers curled around his shoulders as he typed.
“They surrounded me on the playground. I was crying, missing my mum. Big as I was, it didn’t occur to me I could’ve beaten them senseless.”