My feet were starting to hurt, so despite a distinct lack of swag to show for my shopping efforts, I headed back to the Starbucks I’d seen. Of course, with my sense of direction, I took a couple of unintended detours along the way. When Finn figured out I was lost, he found his voice long enough to ask me where I wanted to go. Then he clammed up again as he led me to Starbucks.
I bought a venti mocha with plenty of whipped cream. I offered to get something for Finn, but he shook his head.
I had just picked up my drink and was scanning the small store for an open seat, when Finn suddenly stepped in front of me. I almost ended up pouring the entire contents of my cup down his back, since I’d taken the lid off to take a sip.
“Hey!” I protested, but he just stood there like a wall. I wasn’t even sure he felt the hot coffee that soaked the back of his spiffy suit jacket.
“I have no ill intent,” a voice said. Ethan’s voice.
I felt a cold lump form in the pit of my stomach as I peeked around Finn’s body to make sure my ears weren’t deceiving me. But no, that was Ethan, standing just inside the doorway. My heart clamped down painfully in my chest.
Ethan held both hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I just want to talk to Dana for a moment,” he said. He must have seen me, but he had eyes only for Finn at the moment. Can’t say I blamed him. Not for that, at least.
The cameo suddenly felt hot against my chest, and I reached up to fidget with it. It wasn’t so hot as to be uncomfortable, but it was definitely warmer than it should have been. My skin prickled like there was a current of static electricity running through me.
“Sir, I’d advise you to keep your distance,” Finn said, and he sounded dead serious. A couple of the other customers had noticed the standoff and were now looking at us curiously. I hoped a fight wasn’t about to break out.
Ethan looked away from Finn and caught my gaze. “I really need to talk to you about something,” he said.
I folded my arms across my chest—careful not to spill any more precious drops of mocha—and glared. “I have nothing to say to you.” I hoped I sounded angry, though looking at him again made my chest ache. I shouldn’t have felt so betrayed, not when I’d known all along that he was too good to be true. But I did.
Ethan ran a hand through his hair. “I couldn’t have screwed things up any more if I’d tried,” he said, “but you don’t know everything yet. There’s something else I have to tell you.”
The prickling sensation hadn’t gone away. Was lightning about to strike or something? I uncrossed my arms and rolled my shoulders, hoping to dispel the feeling.
“Go ahead and talk,” I said in my flattest voice.
“In private,” Ethan said.
“Not gonna happen,” Finn countered.
Ethan looked exasperated—and even, maybe, a bit scared. “I don’t mean private as in a room with a closed door. I mean private as in the two of us sit down at a table and you do your looming a few feet away. I’m no match for a Knight, and we both know it. She’ll be in no danger.”
Note to self: ask Dad later what a Knight is. Because I could hear the capital letter, and I knew it meant something more to these two than it meant to me.
Finn was silent a long time. Long enough for some of the observers to get bored and look away. I was beginning to think the cameo was going to burn me after all—and the prickly feeling was going to make me go crazy—when all of a sudden it stopped. The cameo cooled way faster than it should have, and the prickling was gone.
“It will be as my lady wishes,” Finn said, and I was glad I hadn’t taken a sip of my mocha or I would have choked on it.
My lady? Had we suddenly been transported back to the middle ages? But no, somehow I didn’t think they had Starbucks back then.
Ethan turned a pleading look on me. “Dana, it’s very important. Believe me, I wouldn’t be risking a Knight’s wrath if it weren’t.”
I sure didn’t want to talk to him at the moment. In fact, I was pretty sure I never wanted to talk to him again. But I doubted I’d be able to sleep at night if I didn’t hear whatever it was Ethan had to tell me.
“All right,” I said.
Finn guided me to a couple of comfy seats in the corner. There was a human woman—probably a tourist, based on the I ♥ AVALON T-shirt she was wearing—in one of those chairs. Finn didn’t even have to say a word to intimidate her into vacating the seat. I looked up at him.
“You’re kind of a jerk, you know. She was there first.”
Finn gave no indication that he’d even heard my rebuke, much less taken it to heart, but Ethan had a coughing fit that I suspected wasn’t coughing at all.
I sat down in the chair that had been vacant all along and let Ethan take the tourist-lady’s chair. Finn moved away to hover by the door, and I felt absurdly grateful for the distance.
I tried to be cool and expressionless as I sipped my mocha and focused my gaze just beyond Ethan’s left shoulder instead of on his face.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and it was so inadequate I immediately lost that cool and expressionless look I’d been going for. For a moment, I seriously considered giving him a hot mocha facial. He shook his head before I could tell him where to shove his apology.
“That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said. “I just wanted to say it, even though I know it doesn’t make anything better, and even though you probably don’t believe me.”