Page 87 of Forbidden Fate

Cruz is gone.

Not physically. Physically, he’s sitting right there at Señora Valentina’s kitchen table, but he’s also somewhere else.

Somewhere dark.

And for some ridiculous reason, I don’t like it.

I don’t like watching him disappear into himself.

Which is stupid.

Merely yesterday, I was tied to that disgusting cot, waiting to find out whether this man was going to hurt me, sell me, kill me, or use me as bait.

Now I’m sitting here in a borrowed robe, drinking coffee in a brothel kitchen, worrying because he looks sad.

I snap my fingers in front of his face. “Hey. You with us?”

His lips part. “Yeah,” he says. Then he clears his throat.

“Convincing.”

He blinks a few times. “I was just thinking.”

Mercedes clicks her tongue. “Oh, listen to him,” she says. “He was just thinking.”

Esmeralda sighs. “A broody man. Pensive. Tortured. Staring into the distance.”

Mercedes leans toward me, lowering her voice as if Cruz can’t hear every word. “Women love that, you know.”

“I’m learning,” I say.

Cruz looks down into his coffee.

Is he blushing?

No way.

Cruz Moreno does not blush.

Except he absolutely does.

A faint flush touches the high bones of his cheeks, almost hidden beneath his dark complexion but not quite. It’s subtle, but I see it, and something warm moves through me before I can stop it.

“Look at him,” Mercedes says. “So serious. So handsome. Like he’s carrying all the sorrows of the world.”

“Maybe he is,” Esmeralda says.

“Or maybe he’s trying to look interesting.”

I can’t help it. I grin.

Because now I can see it too. Cruz sitting on some moss-covered rock beside a babbling brook, his gaze fixed on the water as he contemplates the cruel intricacies of life. Maybe with his shirt open at the throat. Maybe with wind ruffling that black hair.

I swallow.

Nope.

Absolutely not.