Someone coughed.

Paige frowned, wondering why a muffled laugh followed that cough.

“Please ignore them.”

His voice was deep and rich, like something rumbling out from a bottomless, magical well. Hearing it appeased her, but at the same time, made her core ache and tighten. Her legs, and remarkably the rest of her, felt unsteady as she rose to her feet.

He stepped back to let her pass, then noiselessly followed her up the stairs.

She could feel his eyes on her nape. His body close to hers. Felt aware of his every step in the wake of hers. Up the landing … down the hall …

Why was her heart pounding like this? Because she feared what he’d find or because she feared the directions her thoughts were taking?

“I don’t like this house all that much,” she said shakily as she entered her bedroom.

When he passed, his arm brushed her shoulder, triggering a tense, fiery frisson down her spine.

“You never did.”

He delivered the remark with no inflection as he surveyed her mirrored nightstands, and Paige couldn’t conceal her startled, “Oh.”

He walked past her vanity, his presence a shock of testosterone in such a girly room. The white comforter, the lacy pillows, the canopy, all seemed to fade into the background, flimsy and insubstantial compared to the primal magnetic force, the realness, of him.

Facing her, he crossed his arms and assumed a wide-legged stance that made her feel utterly small. “Were you in this room previously today?”

A shaft of unease spiked through her stomach. She’d not only been in this room today, she’d been screaming at the walls. You son of a bitch! I won’t forget forever, I won’t give you the satisfaction! “Yes,” she admitted.

“Can you retrace what you did for me?”

For me …

Flushing at how utterly personal that last sounded, she sailed over to the door. “I only came in and … sat on the bed for a bit.”

She promptly demonstrated, bouncing slightly as she did.

He didn’t smile, didn’t move; he was so intimidating. “You sat.”

His gaze drifted down her neck, lingered on her chest for a heart-stopping moment. Then his fingers curled into his hands and his jaw bunched as he dragged his eyes back up.

His voice rumbled up his chest, an octave lower than before. “Did you do some reading?”

She exhaled slowly and forced herself to focus on his question, but she was loath to admit to him what had just happened. What she’d done.

He’d think her crazy. Reckless.

“I straightened up,” she improvised, then winced and tried to appear contrite. “I shouldn’t have? I’m sorry, I’m afraid it’s a terrible habit of mine.”

He nodded toward the bookshelf and signaled at the bottom. “Do you recall which of these books you moved?”

Note: he didn’t ask if she’d moved them, but stated it as fact. She’d tampered with evidence. She might very well be in deep shit.

“I …” It took a second for her to register her folly. The yearbook she’d haphazardly stuck among the others was standing upside down. The rest of her books were lined up perfectly and in alphabetical order.