No Kissing Allowed

Chapter 22: Hazel Eyes

She sighed. "What's your plan for tomorrow anyway?"

"As far as...?"

"As far as eliminating me. What will you say as the reason?"

"That's easy. I'll lie."

"And say what?"

"That I'm more interested in the other one. Camilla the beach babe in the corner over there." He waved a hand in the direction of the rolled up poster.

"And that would be a lie?"

Jamie wrinkled his nose, realizing he was caught. Cornered. It didn't matter, he supposed. After tomorrow he'd never see her again, so he may as well tell the truth. "If it were up to me, I'd choose you in a heartbeat."

"You're lying."

He couldn't help but laugh at the irony. The one time he wasn't lying...

Somehow, it was urgently important that she knew he meant it. He couldn't put his finger on why. "Blue eyes are beautiful, but hazel eyes are too."

"Beautiful on the inside."

"I was referring to the outside. I don't know you well enough to comment on the inside."

"Now I know you're lying."

He felt the urge to bite her on the shoulder. He bit his lip instead.

"I thought I was Jane Eyre," Cora challenged. "The original plain Jane. Wasn't that what you called me when you chose me this afternoon?"

Jamie grunted. "You can't believe a word I say in front of the cameras."

"You understand why I find this confusing."

"It's simple." He nuzzled his face close to her ear again. "When we're here at night with the lights out, we're playing Truth or Dare for Cowards. I'm required to tell the truth."

She shook her head. "Just because that's the name of the game doesn't mean you're playing by the rules."

"I am."

"How do I know that?"

"I give you my word as a gentleman."

She laughed. "You told me you're not a gentleman."

"It is a bit confusing, I admit. Even to me."

Her tinkling laughter continued. So much better than the sound of her grief earlier. It made him yearn for more. "Hazel eyes personified," he said. "Right on the boundary between gentleman and not. I cross back and forth depending how the light hits me."

"But what color are hazel eyes when there is no light?" she asked. "Hazel isn't a real color, so are they brown or green?"

"Both at once," Jamie replied smoothly. "A paradox in living form. A metaphysical oddity. Like Schrödinger's cat, both alive and dead at the same time."

"Schrödinger's cat now?" He could hear the bemused smile on her voice. "What do you know about Schrödinger's cat?"

There went another pinprick. He wondered how long he'd be picking shards of broken glass out of his hide when she was through with him. "Why is it so unfathomable to you that I should know something?"

She shrugged in his arms. "People who reference modern theoretical physics in conversation generally don't look like you."

"My knowledge of arcana is vast and deep as the oceans." He was laying it on thick now. Most people didn't use the word 'arcana' in conversation either. "What do such people look like in your experience?"

"Like me," she said. "Or a different-gendered equivalent of me."

"And I am not a different-gendered equivalent of you?"

"No, and I'm not the female equivalent of you either. Camilla is." She said this with a note of finality, like a teacher providing the class with the correct answer at the end of a lively student debate. "Which is why I know you're lying. Not that I don't appreciate the compliment. It's sweet of you to say," she patted his arm, "but thoroughly unnecessary."

A surface. Eyes and skin. That's all she saw when she looked at him. Fair play, he supposed. She didn't know him well enough to see anything deeper.

The question was whether there was anything deeper for her to see. That was what niggled at his mind. He'd known himself for 27 years, and he still wasn't sure of the answer.

But he wanted her to look. Suddenly, he wanted it very badly. It hit him like a blow. A direct hit to the solar plexus.

"Stay." The single word escaped with his exhaled breath.

"What?"

"I'll send you home if you want, but it's not what I want. I want you to stay."

She rolled around to face him. He felt tempted to turn the light back on. The torches outside the bungalow had all burnt out, one by one, and no light lingered to alleviate the darkness.

She touched his face with her hand. It only made the feeling more intense. "Stay one more day," he whispered. "You can let me know tomorrow night if you want to leave after all."

"I can't see your face. My night vision is terrible."

"What are you trying to see? My eye color?"

"If you're lying to me or not."

She rolled away again and settled back into his arms. He tightened them possessively around her.

"I am a puzzle. A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma..."

"A man who talks too much and won't let me fall asleep," she murmured through a yawn.

"Stay another night," he urged.

"Maybe." But her voice had grown fainter, garbled with sleep. "I'll let you know in the morning."

"You can't leave yet," he whispered. "Not with the game unfinished. Now you've confessed your deepest secret, but I haven't told you mine."

But she didn't answer him again. She abandoned him into the abyss of unconsciousness.

And Jamie lay awake.

And he burned to know her answer.

And he wondered why he cared and what it meant.

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