Carcel tilted his head, his gaze soft, his small, comfortable smile still in place. He had just complimented her writing, and she had, in response, frozen. She was staring at him, her lips parted, her book forgotten in her lap. Her hazel eyes were wide, and he could see a thousand, unreadable, frantic thoughts swimming in them. She looked, he thought, like a startled, beautiful fawn.
"Ines?" he asked softly, his voice a low, gentle rumble.
Ines blinked.
She was pulled, with a jarring snap, from the depths of her own mind. She had been staring. She had been staring at the man she had just, in a moment of profound, earth-shattering, internal clarity, realized she wanted. All to herself. The thought was so loud, so clear, so final, that she was terrified he had heard it.
Her heart was a drum. Her cheeks were on fire. She needed a distraction. A new topic. Something that was not the library, not her 'illness', and not, for the love of God, her writing.
