Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance) (23 page)

Her brain played fill-in-the-blanks.
Carmina
.

She did the only thing she could think of. She squeezed snow into a sphere and let the snowball fly, catching the kid on the scarf at his neck.

“Hey!” He whirled on her.

“Don’t look at me,” she said innocently. “It was Quin.”

His scowl melted into a devious smile as he packed his own snowball. “Well, this is from Marcus.”

“Bring it on.”

A few minutes later, she was retreating from a fresh volley of icy ammunition when she backed into a wall. Leather-covered hands clasped her upper arms, steadying her.

Gray
. Somehow, she managed to keep herself from twisting around into his arms and dragging him down to kiss her.

He stood silhouetted, blocking out the sun. His face was a blotch of darkness in the overwhelming light. He reached out to dust the shoulder of her coat. Snowball shrapnel fell. “My nephew has rotten aim.”

She squinted into his shrouded features. “I’d say he has pretty good aim.” The white on her coat proved it.

“I didn’t mean that nephew.” He poked his chin at Sterling. “I meant this one.”

A boy Sterling’s age appeared at Gray’s hip, shoving wire-framed glasses up the bridge of his nose. A fist closed around her heart and she resisted the urge to throw her arms around Gray. Despite his hard shell, he was a big softie.

“Hi,” Sadie managed, through her shock. “I’m Miss Strange.”

“I am Argent of the Gray House.” He had a slight European French accent, not the domestic Québécois she was used to. He pushed his glasses up again.

Sterling dropped his snowball and came running. “Dude!” His voice cracked with excitement. “You’re my brother. Wanna build a snowman?”

Argent nodded and they ran off to roll snow.

“Merry Christmas,” Gray said, under his breath.

“I thought this was against the rules,” she teased.

“Maybe I’m getting tired of my family’s rules.” He leaned in to whisper in her ear. His tone turned threatening. Had she been cold a second ago? Now sweat beaded in her coat. “I’m not too fond of yours, either.”

*

***

******

****

*

Buckingham Palace. The Pentagon. Gray’s apartment, thought Sadie. Places she’d never thought she’d see the inside of.

She considered walking away. She’d managed to avoid Gray all day, but she just couldn’t face a Christmas dinner of grilled cheese, with only a re-run of
The Sound of Music
for company. Besides, she’d told Sterling, who had delivered the invitation, she’d come. So she steeled herself and knocked on a wooden door exactly like Pippa’s.

The door opened and she found herself face to face with Gray’s chest. Her mind rewound to last night, stripping the shirt from his solid muscles.

The air went out of her. She cursed herself for being so weak he could steal her breath just leaning on one arm, blocking the doorway. She decided it was his fault for smelling like cinnamon and looking like heaven in a silk shirt.

I told him not to touch me again
, she thought. This seemed dumber than letting him touch her in the first place.

She suddenly remembered it really wasn’t polite to stare at a person’s chest, even if it was the finest one on the planet. It took terrific effort to rip her gaze upward, to his face.

But he was busy looking down her dress.

She snapped her fingers and pointed to her face. “Gray. My eyes are up here.”

“I know.”

“Do you want to look in them, then?”

“If you insist.” His smoky gaze slid up her throat. A blush followed, spreading out to her whole skin. “Come in, Sadie.”

His voice made her shiver, for some reason.

“You have to move, unless you want me to squeeze through.” She indicated the small space between the doorjamb and him.

He hesitated, as if squeezing appealed, then stepped aside.

The Christmas tree made her jaw drop. Blue and silver ornaments gleamed from the dark green branches. It was a beautiful decorator’s piece. Nothing like her sister’s Charlie Brown tree, covered in lopsided homemade ornaments made by kids but displayed with pride. How had he gotten the massive thing through the doorway, much less up three flights of stairs without getting needles everywhere? It was like...magic.

Underneath sat a garbage bag of ripped wrapping paper, boxes of robot building sets, and a stack of xBox games reaching her knees. A ten-year-old boy’s fantasy Christmas, dreamed up by a thirty-year-old bachelor.

Her heart ached a little, thinking of the strings Gray must have pulled to do all this. She put her inadequate, barely wrapped, no-batteries-required present on the coffee table.

Gray’s apartment layout was the mirror image of Pippa’s. But in place of Pippa’s cozy velvet sofa, Gray had a hard-looking leather one. Where Pippa’s amber-shaded lamp shed golden light, Gray had a metallic blue one. The elegant spindly legs of the dining table under it made Sadie think the word “Louis,” but she didn’t know the Roman numerals that should go after it.

This apartment needs a woman’s touch,
thought her traitorous brain.

And I believe her name is April,
she retorted inwardly.

“Your chairs don’t match,” she told Gray, who was checking out the way she checked out his apartment through the corner of his eye, as if he cared what she thought.

“The servants searched the chateau but couldn’t find them. They might have been in one of our other places.” Gray said this in the same tone of voice someone might use to say he couldn’t find a favorite pair of socks. “Can I get you a drink?”

He led her toward the kitchen. She followed, wondering what kind of family could lose a set of two-hundred-year-old chairs. In their house.

A rich family. A noble family. A family out of her league. She felt just a little bit smaller.

Every burner on the stove—he had a gleaming stainless-steel gas one—held a pot, simmering quietly. She should have been able to smell the wonderful scents of Christmas dinner, but all she could smell was the cinnamon around Gray.

Things had been odd between them all day. It would have been nice to simply avoid the man she’d slept with the previous night, but with the boys around, they had to act normal. Even so, she caught a dangerous heat in Gray’s gaze sometimes, just before he turned away.

She saw it now, but he didn’t turn away. He handed her a beer and fixed her with a stony stare. He leaned his fine ass against the counter casually, but Sadie felt trapped in a cage with a sleeping lion about to wake. Hungry.

“Where are the boys?” she asked.

“Not here. We’re alone.”

The word “alone” was a physical presence between them. Sadie fought competing urges: Leave until the boys arrived or down her drink in one gulp. Looking at Gray’s lips on his cut-crystal tumbler of amber scotch, she had a third urge, but she forced it out of her mind. She couldn’t run because her feet were crazy-glued to the floor. Suddenly, she couldn’t drink either, because Gray’s hand was on her neck.

He rasped his knuckles down her throat. Every neuron in her brain fired. She melted under his hand.

Chapter Seventeen

Something metallic and cold hit her skin, sending a bright shivery chill down her spine.

Gray wore a ring. His engagement ring.

Nausea dragged her under. She shoved as hard as she could on his great wall of a chest. He stumbled back, the confusion in his eyes turning to something darker. “Sadie.”

“What?” She clenched her teeth until they ached. “You’re the one with a fiancée.”

“I told you. You don’t know about April and me.”

His calm tone made her want to scream even more.

“My French is good enough to understand the word fiancée.”

“How about boyfriend?” He sipped his drink. “Because April’s spending the holiday with hers.”

She tensed. Gray had many faults, but lying didn’t seem to be one of them.

“I sent her my lift ticket. It doesn’t make any sense for her to ski alone.”

“I don’t—” She was about to say “understand,” but the sound of a wooden door flung open interrupted her. Someone shouted for Uncle Gray.

“We’ll finish this later,” he warned.

“We can’t finish anything, because we didn’t start anything,” she spat.

Gray’s jaw clenched. He left the kitchen—but his maddening cinnamon scent didn’t. It lingered in the air like it had on her own skin. She waited until her eye stopped twitching, then joined the boys.

Sterling and Argent lay on their stomachs on the carpet at their uncle’s feet. Gray occupied a black leather chair like a throne. She ignored him. She ignored the pulsing awareness between them. She ignored the heated looks he shot her way, as if he was imagining her naked.

She concentrated on the twins. Sterling punched buttons on the xBox. For some reason, he wore Argent’s glasses.

“Hi, Sterling,” she said.

Argent, wearing Sterling’s Transformers t-shirt, answered in a passable North American accent. “Hi, Miss Strange.”

The old twins-switching-places trick, she figured out. Gray didn’t react. Either they had fooled him or he was a good actor.

“I brought you a present.” She pointed to the battered box on the glass table, looking shabby next to the shiny tech toys.

“Tiddlywinks!” shouted Sterling in Argent’s European accent. “Uh, we play this all the time in Switzerland.”

He rolled over his xBox controller in his rush to get the makeshift ribbon off the box. She nearly raised a triumphant fist as Sterling started spreading the game out.

“Where did all this stuff come from? The dinner, I mean,” she asked Gray, unsure where ten-year-olds stood on Santa Claus these days. “Aren’t all the stores closed?”

“Not in Hong Kong.” Gray lifted his drink to lips that had brought so much happiness to so many of her body parts.

“He used an instantaneous transportation spell.” Argent continued to fake an American accent. “Er, Argent told me.”

“So last night, you got Argent from Switzerland, then headed to Hong Kong to grocery shop?” After leaving her bed.

“Stopped in Vienna first for an enormous coffee. You should really try...” Gray’s voice faded, as if suddenly remembering Vienna wasn’t an option for her anymore.

“You must be exhausted. Just relax and I’ll serve, now that you’ve done all the work,” she said flippantly, to hide her admiration.

She was spooning mashed potatoes into a covered casserole when she felt Gray’s presence behind her in the tiny kitchen. The back of her neck tingled as if sunburned, and it was all she could do to concentrate on landing the potatoes in the dish.

“Listen, if you ever tell anyone about this...” A big hand came over her shoulder and indicated the food on the stove.

“You keep saying that.” A laugh burst out of her. “Your macho image is safe, Gray. I’ll do anything for turkey dressing.”

“I’ll remember that.” Warm breath kissed her neck.

Think fast, she told herself, and whirled to shove the hot dish into his hands. He gave her a heart-melting half-smile, telling her he saw through the obvious maneuver.

A few minutes later, Gray called the boys to the table. And he pulled her chair out for her. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had pulled her chair out for her.

“I hate to ruin your joke, boys, but you need to take Argent’s glasses off, Sterling,” she said.

“I’m Argent.” Sterling pouted.

“What are you talking about?” Gray asked.

“You’ll hurt your eyes and Argent just poured gravy on his salad.”

Sterling passed Argent the glasses.

Gray blinked at them, then at her. “How can you tell them apart? They’re identical twins. No one can tell them apart.”

“Really?” She squinted at them. “I didn’t notice.”

Gray raised a thick eyebrow at her.

She did notice Argent staring at her, sitting so far forward in his chair his chin brushed his mashed potatoes. His glasses had slipped again. She reached over the candied yams and pushed them up his Roman nose.

“You are a...” He searched for the English word. “Non.”

She sighed inwardly. “I’d forgotten there for a second.”

“Shut up. Miss Strange doesn’t suck,” Sterling said.

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me since I got here. I was the first Non Sterling ever met, too,” she told Argent. “Do you want to ask me something?”

Gray’s face was tight, as if he’d just been reminded of something unpleasant. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I’m here to teach, aren’t I?” she said.

Gray rolled his eyes.

"Je ne sais..." Argent said. "Oncle Gris, je veut dire 'Comment sentez-vous?'"

“He wants to know how you feel,” Gray translated.

“Are you asking what it’s like to be a Non?”

Argent nodded.

“It feels normal to me,” she said. “But around here sometimes I feel like everyone is speaking a language I don’t understand.”

“I know what it’s like to be a Non. They’re just like us,” Sterling told Argent. “But they talk about their feelings more.”

Gray chuckled. “I think you’ve confused Nons with females.”

“Will they teach us about that in grade seven health?” Sterling asked. Grade seven health was notorious at Strange Academy for one thing:
sex ed
.

“Girls have cooties,” Gray said, pointing his drink at Sterling. “Until you’re eighteen.”

“I don’t have cooties and I’m a girl,” Sadie said.

Gray pointed at her. “She’s crawling with cooties.”

“Cooties,” Argent said, testing out the word.

“I don’t think you’ve got cooties. And maybe Carmina doesn’t,” Sterling said.

“Stay away from that—” Gray bit off the word, looking her direction.  He didn't have to mince words. She understood now. Carmina might end up being a vampire—which Grey had a problem with. And for now, she was a Non. Which he had even more of a problem with. “We’ll talk about this later, Sterling.”

“If you leave, you would be happy, yes?” Argent asked.

The table quieted. She wished they were still talking about cooties, but they were back to her being a Non.