A Lot Like Hope

The fine hair on the back of his neck crackled as India moved into touching range.

“It looks great,” she commented.

Which he heard clearly because she’d managed to be in exactly the right spot on his good side. Somehow. Almost as if she’d planned it. He hadn’t even had to turn his head.

“Thanks,” he muttered because convention dictated a response when someone paid you a compliment.

“Rowe.”

Silence stretched between them. Against his will, he glanced over at her. She wasn’t trying to avoid looking at him any longer, and their gazes locked before he could stop himself from falling into the depths of her eyes. They were blue, on the lighter side, like the ocean near the shore.

“India,” he croaked and cleared his throat.

“Mumble established our names…”

Her quick smile drew one from him despite his stern admonishment to step away, glance away, do something other than stare at her. But she wore this pink colored top with all these straps that let swathes of bare skin peek through and the neckline followed the curve of her shoulder blade perfectly, and he didn’t think he could shift his eyes or even blink if his life had depended on it.

“This is awesome,” she continued. “Mumble pay you, of course. But I appreciate mumble.”

Dang it. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t rearrange the last bit into a cohesive phrase. Had she moved out of his optimal hearing range or had he lost his ability to concentrate on her words? Latter, likely. Too busy paying attention to the woman instead of the sounds.

“I’m not expecting any compensation,” he told her honestly, shocked he could speak at all.

She had a dark line in her right iris that nearly bisected the ocean of blue. He’d never noticed it before. Probably because he spent a lot of time studying her covertly. He didn’t remember a whole lot of his dream about her—other than the clear sense of belonging—but she definitely hadn’t had that fleck in it.

Details. The devil had been in his for a long time. Funny how he’d forgotten that his hearing had carried most of his intel gathering—but not all. He’d automatically committed even the minutest of things to memory his whole life.

And that line through her iris would never again be absent from the India Kingston in his head.

“If I don’t pay you mumble express my appreciation?” she commented with a laugh.

Oh, he could think of a few things. And it was a lot harder to jackhammer his mind off that subject once it got started imagining all the ways. Seemed his brain might already have been primed from the dream and needed no encouragement what so ever to gallop off on a vivid fantasy involving India and a thorough exploration of the bare skin peeking out between those shoulder straps…