Bayou Moon - Andrews, Ilona [111]
He turned the corner and went off the way William had come.
Crazy family. William looked at the bottle. Why the hell not?
The door led him to a narrow staircase. He jogged up the steps into a large room. The floor was wood. Bare rafters crossed over his head—the room must’ve been sectioned off from the rest of the attic. To the left, the wall opened into a narrow balcony. Two soft chairs waited on the right. Cerise curled in the left one, by a floor lamp, reading a book.
I found you.
She saw him and blinked, startled.
He knocked on the stair rail with the bottle.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“It’s me. Can I come in?”
“It depends. If I don’t let you in, will you huff and puff and blow my house down?”
She had no idea. “I’m more of a kick the door open and cut everyone inside to ribbons kind of wolf.”
“I better let you in, then,” she said. “I don’t want to be cut to ribbons. Is that wine for me?”
“Yes.”
William crossed the floor and handed her the thick bottle. The light of the lamp caught the wine inside, and it sparkled with deep emerald green.
“Greenberry.” Cerise checked the label. “My favorite year, too. How did you know?”
He decided not to lie. “Kaldar gave it to me.”
She smiled and he had to hold himself back to keep from kissing her. “My cousin is trying so hard. It’s not his fault—he’s been trying to marry me off for years.”
“Why?”
“It’s his job. He arranges the marriages for the family: haggles over the dowry, makes preparations for the weddings, that sort of thing.” Cerise looked at the flowers in his hand. “Are those from Kaldar, too?”
“No. I picked those.”
Her eyes shone. “For me?”
“For you.” He offered her the flowers.
Cerise reached for them. He caught her hand in his. His whole body snapped to attention, as if he’d awoken from a deep sleep because someone had fired a gun by his head. Want.
She took the flowers and smelled them. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He watched her pull the stems apart on her lap. She took three flowers, added a fourth, and wrapped its stem around the first three. “Will you pour us some wine?”
Yeah, because wine was exactly what he needed right now. William opened the bottle and poured the shimmering green into the two glasses. It smelled nice enough. He sipped it. Nice, a bit sweet but nice. Not as nice as she would taste, but he had to settle for the wine for now. “Good.”
“It’s homemade.” Cerise kept weaving flowers together. “It’s a family tradition. Every fall we go to Fisherman’s Tree to pick the berries, and then we make wine.”
She sipped her wine, he drank his, and for a while they sat quietly next to each other. He wanted to reach over and touch her. She made him feel like a child made to sit on his hands. William drank more wine, feeling the warmth spread through him. Maybe he should just grab her. If he did, she’d try to cut off his head right there. His beautiful, violent girl.
“Why are you smiling?” she asked.
“Because I thought of something funny.”
Cerise wove the last flower into her tangle. It looked like a large circle now. She picked it up and put it on her head.
Oh, yeah. He would bring her more flowers and wine and anything else she wanted, until she liked him enough to stay with him.
“Is this your place?” William asked to say something.
“Yes. It’s where I hide when I have a fight with someone.”
He didn’t remember her fighting with anyone. She sat at the table for a while and then slipped out quietly.
“Who are you fighting with now?”
Cerise got up and walked over to the wall. He followed her. Pictures hung on the wall behind the glass. Cerise touched one of the frames. A man and a woman stood by the pond, both young, almost kids. The man was a Mar: lean, dark, tan. The woman was blond, soft, and slender. Fragile. If she was his, William thought, he’d be worried about breaking her every time they touched.
“My parents,” Cerise murmured. “Gustave and Genevieve.”
“Your mother looks like a blueblood.”
She glanced