Page 47 of Iridescent
Unless there is another Ninth Bell tucked away on Poyser Street, I am exactly where I am supposed to be.
Except I am not due here until seven, and it is barely past six.
My compulsion to be early can, at times, border on pathological.
“You lost?” an unruffled voice calls from behind me.
The question catches me off guard, momentarily dislodging my composure. Embarrassing, considering composure is one of the few disciplines I have never had to fake.
I turn and come face-to-face with the most arresting pair of gray eyes I have ever seen—mercurial as London weather, marked by three tiny flecks near the upper outer corner of her left eye, and framed by dark lashes.
I notice them immediately.
Unusual, for me. I avoid looking into other people’s eyes. It feels invasive. Too intimate. Eyes betray what mouths spend years trying to conceal.
Yet my focus catches on the small constellation of pigment in her eye, pulled there by something I have no explanation for. The silence around me suddenly feels insufficient.
A line creases between her brows, and oddly, my fingers flex with the impulse to smooth it away.
“You’re early.” Her gaze drops briefly to the duffel on my shoulder. “Dom’s seven o’clock. Right?”
My attention snags on her mouth. Full at the center, with a pronounced Cupid’s bow that makes every word look deliberate.
She is speaking. I register that much. Her voice is low, calm, disconcertingly steady, but the blood pounding behind my ears turns every word unintelligible.
Fingers snap in front of my face, wrenching me—against my will—back into the room.
“You always stare this hard at people you’ve just met?” she asks.
My attention snaps back to her face.
Fuck.
She noticed.
Mortification scorches up my neck. The room, already too warm, seems to gain another two hundred degrees.
I clear my throat and lower my hands to my sides, careful to keep my movements controlled. The last thing I want is to make her feel cornered.
Judging by the look of her, however, I may be worrying for the wrong person.
“Xavier Navarro,” I answer at last, peering over her shoulder toward the dim corridor. “I’m here for the house coach.”
“You found her.”
A faint accent lilts through her English, too subtle for me to place, and the calmness of her voice does nothing to ease the catastrophic malfunction inside my head.
Wait. House coach?
My eyes widen before I can school them.
Oh. Fuck. She’s the house coach.
The man who confirmed the appointment over the phone had sounded gruff enough to chew glass, so yes, I had expected someone built closer to a refrigerator. Not a woman with gray eyes, taped knuckles, and a voice capable of dismantling my concentration.
Her expression cools. “What? Disappointed it’s a woman?” Distaste leaks through her tone.
More like entranced.
