Page 35 of To Heist and to Hold

Twenty-four hours. It had been a full twenty-four hours since he had seen Heloise.

Actually, it had been over twenty-four hours.

Not that he was keeping track. Ethan shifted in his seat, even as he cast a covert glance at the clock on the mantel and quickly calculated exactly how many hours it had been.

Something that caused him to huff a small laugh.

Very well, mayhap he was keeping track. But was it any wonder, considering what had occurred between them?

“Ho, what’s this?” Teagan sat forward, peering at Ethan closely, as if he were a naturalist studying a new and strange species of insect.

All the partners, as well as Copper the floor manager, were gathered in the owners’ suite to discuss the upcoming masquerade and the progress on the boxing venue.

A meeting that Ethan wished fervently would finish soon, and not only because he should have retired to his bedchamber hours before for some much-needed sleep.

Since he had received Heloise’s message last night that she had things to see to and would not be able to return to Dionysus until this evening, he had thrown himself into his work in an attempt to exhaust himself and make the time go by more quickly.

Though he had failed horribly in that, hadn’t he? Not only was he completely awake, but the time was passing with aching slowness. Even that, however, could not dampen his mood.

“Is Sinclaire here smiling?” Teagan continued, narrowing his eyes. “What peculiar phenomenon are we witness to?”

The smile—one he hadn’t realized he was doing—should have dropped the moment Teagan had begun to tease him.

Yet it didn’t. Strange, that, he mused as he glanced around the circle of men, all of whom gazed back at him with various degrees of confusion and surprise. Any other time he would have glowered and snapped at them. Now, however, he merely shrugged.

“I hardly think it’s anything to comment on,” he murmured, to which Parsons snorted.

“The smile could perhaps be overlooked,” he said, raising a pale brow. “But not your reaction to Teagan. Even I want to punch that smug grin off his face. Yet you’re sitting there unfazed.”

“Oh, I didn’t say I didn’t want to punch him,” Ethan countered. “At least, I want to punch him as much as I typically do.”

“There!” Isaac exclaimed, sitting forward and pointing an accusatory finger at Ethan. “That right there is suspicious in and of itself. You should want to punch Teagan more after a comment like that.”

Ethan stared at him. “So there is something wrong with me because I don’t wish to do more violence to him?” Which was so ridiculous a bark of laughter escaped him.

Every man in the room started and stared at him, mouths agape.

“Was that a laugh?” Copper asked in a loud aside to Isaac.

“I think it was,” Isaac replied. “Should we check him for fever?”

Ethan rolled his eyes. “You’re all a bunch of arses.”

“Well,” Teagan conceded, “we can’t deny that’s true. But there is something different about you.” He tapped one long finger against his lips.

“No, there isn’t,” Ethan said, his light mood of a moment before beginning to dissipate. Truly, they were all maddening to a one.

“No,” Isaac said, “Teagan is right. There is definitely something different.” His expression turned sly. “That couldn’t be the doing of our lovely Mrs. Marlow, could it?”

To which Ethan didn’t have a reply. Except, that was, for the heat that flooded his cheeks. Something that was as loud as a shout, if the reaction of every man in that blasted room was anything to go by.

“Aha!” Teagan crowed, sitting straighter, eyes wide as he glanced around the room. “Did you see that? He blushed.”

“I did not,” Ethan grumbled.

“You did, too,” Isaac countered, grinning.

“Oh, yes, it’s definitely due to Mrs. Marlow,” Parsons said.

Ethan stared at him. “You as well?”

Parsons shrugged. “I’m not an idiot. I see the way you make cow eyes at her and disappear for hours at a time when she’s around.”

“I’ll bet even Copper here has noticed,” Teagan said.

“Well,” Copper replied with no small amount of pride, “it is my job to notice the unusual. And Sinclaire here showing attention to any single female is highly unusual.”

“So you’ve all just been watching me like I’m some damned animal in the Tower menagerie?” He glared at each one in turn. “I’m glad to see I’ve given you all such a fertile source of amusement.”

“And there’s the glower back in place,” Isaac grumbled, deflating against the back of the couch. The very same couch Heloise had straddled him on just days before. Which, naturally, brought his blush back. Not just on his cheeks, though; his whole body burst into flames.

Desperate that the other men not renew their damned teasing, he cleared his throat and said, his voice ringing through the room, “But we came here to discuss the masquerade. Let us put our focus on that, shall we?”

Blessedly, they conceded, though reluctantly, the draw of teasing Ethan too great for them to pass up with any willingness.

Soon, however, they fully immersed themselves in the subject at hand.

At the end of an hour, finally done, they rose and, deep voices rumbling together like stones in a metal drum, began to take their leave.

But though Ethan had been eager to find his bed, he found he was reluctant to do so just yet.

Walking over to the damask couch that Isaac had vacated, he looked down at it for some time, remembering Heloise straddling him, legs strong as she’d moved over him, her sighs and cries of pleasure as she’d taken him inside her…

“Penny for your thoughts, Sinclaire.”

Ethan started, glancing over his shoulder. Teagan was there still, though alone now, arms crossed and head tilted to the side as he considered him.

“They’re hardly worth a penny,” he replied. He would never tell the man that recollections of Heloise were worth more, much more. Hell, they were damn near priceless.

Ethan made to move around him. Teagan, however, was apparently not quite through. His hand snaked out, snagging on Ethan’s sleeve.

“You have to admit,” he said softly, “that our teasing is warranted, this time more than ever. You’ve never been one to mix business and pleasure, and have certainly never brought a mistress to your rooms.”

Mistress. Why did the word sit like acid in his stomach? He had never thought less of women for taking lovers, after all. Even so, it felt wrong here somehow. Mayhap because the term could never encompass all that Heloise had become to him. And hearing her referred to that way made his blood boil.

Pulling his sleeve from Teagan’s grasp, he turned to face him. “I’ll thank you not to speak of the lady in that manner again.”

Teagan’s eyes widened infinitesimally at Ethan’s quiet warning. The next moment, however, and his face was wiped as clean as a schoolboy’s slate, his dark features rearranged into his typical easy-going charm.

“My apologies. I won’t do so again. But damn me if this isn’t a surprise. I’ve never seen you in such a state over a woman in the more than thirty years I’ve known you.”

Thirty years. At the reminder of how long they had known one another, Ethan found his anger abating, his shoulders easing.

They had been through much together, he and Teagan, Parsons, and Isaac.

Even Copper and Mary and the myriad workers at Dionysus had been part of his life since their days on the streets, people who had all felt want and hunger and the utter unfairness of the hand life had dealt them.

All their lives were connected, like links in a chain, their decades together having created attachments that could not be broken.

The thought had no sooner washed over him than Gavin’s face flashed in his mind, an apparition come to taunt him. Hadn’t he believed the same of his brother as well? That link in the chain had shattered. And there would be no putting it back together again.

Teagan’s grin faltered as the man seemed to sense something shift in him.

“What I’m trying to say in my clumsy way,” he said, voice more subdued than Ethan could remember hearing it, “is that I’m glad for it.

I know things have been difficult since Gavin—” He closed his mouth with a snap of teeth at the same moment that an unintentional hiss of breath escaped Ethan’s lips.

They had not spoken of Gavin since his death.

Or, at least, no one brought him up in front of Ethan.

Given the ease with which Teagan had spoken his name, it seemed Teagan, and quite possibly the others, were not so reticent.

It was something he suddenly wished he could do, shrug off the permanent, debilitating pain that came from remembering his brother and how he had betrayed them, think of him without feeling he would go mad from the anger and grief.

The realization took him aback. He had willingly locked every weak emotion he possessed in a strongbox and thrown it into the gray, turbulent ocean of his heart, letting it sink into the depths where it could never be found again, all in an effort to forget his brother and the pain his memory brought.

Yet somehow, someway, that strongbox had risen to the surface, had opened the smallest crack. And those emotions he had thought forever dead to him were seeping out. Why? What had changed?

He knew the answer to that question even before it had fully formed in his head: It had been Heloise, with her strong yet gentle hands, with her passion, with her too-curious eyes that seemed to see to the very depths of his soul. She had revived something in him he had thought forever dead.

Shaken, he took an involuntary step back from Teagan. Though he had realized he’d fallen in love with her, he had never thought it could change him in such a way. And he did not know how to feel about it.

“I’ll take my leave now,” he mumbled. Then, without another glance at the other man, he bolted from the suite.