He kept all conversations superficial. Eighty percent commentary on the weather, ten percent complaints about traffic, five percent directions to the next town, and the rest signing his name in guest books when he checked into the next inn or posting house on his route. It was easy to be charming when one didn’t expose one’s true self.
He’d always thought he liked it that way. Cleaner. Easier. Now he wasn’t so certain.
Perhaps a small change of plans was due.
He pushed open the door to the bakery.
“Ho there, Mr. MacLean,” the baker called out. “More shortbread, is it?”
No, not “the baker.” Mr. Bauer. Who had been paying more attention to Jonathan than Jonathan had to him.
His neck heated.
“Shortbread for me,” he agreed, “and whatever Miss Parker would like best. How is Stephen’s foot?”
The baker’s face lit up. “Only thing wounded on that boy is his pride. Can’t admit to losing a race to his younger brother, can he? But I play along, and let him eat all the hot buns he likes.” Mr. Bauer chuckled and handed Jonathan a paper parcel. “Go on, then. Miss Parker must be waiting for you.”
Jonathan left a pile of coins on a corner of the counter and headed toward Miss Parker’s shop.
He’d bothered to learn her name, hadn’t he? But he didn’t know much more than that. He would have made a muck out of choosing the right library book for her, if Cat Lady hadn’t been there to save him. And he wouldn’t have known Miss Parker’s first name was Angelica, if he hadn’t overheard one of her actual friends use her Christian name. She didn’t want him to know. Jonathan was a stranger.
He could do more. He could be more.
Connecting on a level slightly deeper than the superficial didn’t terrify him at all.
Jonathan liked Miss Parker more than he wished to admit. Liking someone too much led to pain when he inevitably lost them. He must take care only to like, and never to love.
Miss Parker was dangerous. He liked her because he didn’t have to try to like her. She was witty and bonny and clever. Liking her was easy and uncomplicated.
At least, it had been uncomplicated. Strangers’ opinions couldn’t hurt him. This new plan of truly coming to know someone else—of letting them stop being a stranger—risked someone else truly coming to know him.
Although it would only be for a week or two, the prospect made him feel disturbingly vulnerable. What if he tried to make real friends with her, and couldn’t? What if it worked beyond his wildest dreams, only for him to have to walk away?
Which one was worse?
Chapter 6
Angelica felt Mr. MacLean’s proximity long before the bell tinkled above her shop door.
She’d looked up from her swage at the exact moment he’d stepped into view, whistling his way down from the castle before vanishing into the bakery across the street. She also happened to glance up once again the moment he’d stepped out of the bakery.
Or maybe her gaze had been on the front window all along instead of concentrating on her work.
As he entered, Mr. MacLean flashed a smile she could feel all the way to her toes. He lifted a pair of delicious-smelling parcels. “I brought you a present!”
Her stomach growled in response.
Angelica ignored her stomach. And the tingling in her toes. She might take whatever was in those parcels off his hands, but Mr. MacLean she ought to send packing.
“I said we could have dinners together.” She cast her gaze pointedly at the clock behind her. “It’s not dinnertime.”
“And yet, one must eat.” He placed the parcels in the middle of the counter, between her work area and the display of jewelry.
“One must do one’s work,” she corrected, but it was no use. Her belly’s insistent grumbles loudly drowned out her own.
In her haste to return to her work, she’d once again failed to break her fast this morning. The Yuletide ball was in two days.
“One small respite,” she informed Mr. MacLean, who grinned at her. “One very quick, very fast, minuscule—ow.” A flash of heat slashed through the muscles of her wrist, convulsing the muscles of her hand. The tools she’d been attempting to carefully put away clattered into the drawer.
In seconds, Mr. MacLean was there in front of her.
“Let me see,” he demanded.
She rotated her wrist carefully, wincing at the pain. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s something,” he said firmly. His eyes were not on her wrist, but rather on her face. His rakish smile was gone.
She shook her head. “It happens all the time.”
He raised a brow. “All the time?”
Well... all the time when she worked too much for too long without pause. Sometimes she held tiny tools in a cramped position for hours on end. Her muscles forgot what it was like to finally let go.
Mr. MacLean held out his hand, palm up. “May I?”
She wasn’t certain it was wise.
She was a Black woman with no husband. A professional jeweler in her place of business.
Mr. MacLean was not her friend. He wasn’t even a customer. He was a foppish white man who’d entered her shop on a lark because he was bored, and had nothing better to do with his time.
But he’d asked permission. And the secret truth was... Angelica was desperate to know how it would feel if he touched her.
Not “if.” When he touched her.
She gave a little nod and held her crooked wrist out, just above his palm. She would not place her hand in his. He would have to do it himself.
His hands were warm and impossibly gentle. Strong and firm, as confident as the man himself. Smooth, as though he’d never worked a day in his life.
The pad of his thumb feathered softly against the inside of her wrist.
Her fingers flexed involuntarily, but not in pain. At the shock of her hand cradled in his, at the pleasure of being caressed so tenderly.
Everything about her hand felt suddenly unfamiliar. The way her
