“I wouldn’t bid on that one,” Galina sing-songed. “It was manufactured in a funeral home. Who knows what kind of nasty diseases it carries. Honestly, there should be a rule against her selling them.”
All movement ceased in the church basement. If Ginny had felt cold in the corner before, she was freezing now, inside and out, yet her face burned with heat. How she could listen to such comments her entire life and still have them land like daggers in her chest was beyond her. She should have been a seasoned pro. But in the wake of Galina’s words, she reeled. Her hands shook. Every eye in the room was on her and it took all of her inner strength not to flee the room.
A chair scraped back.
“Can you please watch Ginny’s back while I kill the dumb bitch?” Roksana asked in an oddly formal tone, receiving an immediate—and alarmingly bored—“of course” from Tucker, thus rousing Ginny from her stupor.
“No,” she murmured to Roksana, though she even found it hard to look even her friend in the eye after her embarrassment. “I think…I can do this.”
Until recently, she might have smiled and whispered some altruistic sentiment about killing people with kindness. Not now. Letting people step on her to elevate themselves had been fusing her to the ground for so long. And now that she knew what it felt like to be lifted up by friends, by purpose, she didn’t want to stay down.
Roksana pursed her lips and sat back down.
“Galina.” Ginny called, facing the room again. “Since you’re so worried about the rules, they state that you must be a Coney Island resident to be admitted to the club and I’m almost positive you dwell in Gerritsen Beach.”
Galina gasped and dropped the clutch purse she’d been holding onto her folding table with a dramatic thwack. Guests turned to look at her and she let out a high-pitched laugh. “Yes, but…very, very close to the border. And no matter where I live, my dresses aren’t tainted, Death Girl.”
Ginny’s composure faltered when the woman set down her bidding form and scurried back to the bright side of the room. She could feel the crack running from forehead to belly, but she faced the basement and kept her chin up, ignoring the hot pressure building behind her eyes. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t cry—
The air in the room changed.
Whipped up, lifting her hair as if on a breeze.
She wasn’t the only one who felt the shift, either. Everyone in the vicinity looked around for the source of renewed energy, some people rubbing their arms, others whispering amongst each other. Even Gordon stopped yanking on the collar of his dress shirt and faced the entrance, just in time for Jonas to stride in.
Time slowed down and Ginny…she quite simply stopped breathing.
Remember you’re mad at him.
How on earth was she supposed to do that when he walked purposefully in Ginny’s direction, through a sea of dumbstruck guests, looking at her like she’d just completed work on the Sistine Chapel? Or perhaps turned water into wine. And really, the way he regarded her with such reverence would have been enough to tumble her tower of anger, but he looked…
Righteously sexy.
Careless, black hair. Eyes that held the weight of dangerous knowledge. An air of total command—that was the part she was mad about. Or supposed to be mad about. What was happening to her? Was she melting?
Did he always look like this?
Yes. Yes, but…in a room full of regular, everyday humans, he was transcendent. He dropped the jaws of everyone he passed, one person dropping their Dixie cup of fruit punch, as well.
He wore jeans. Dark ones, much nicer than the pair he’d donned the night they met. Along with boots, a white shirt and an overcoat of soft, chocolate brown.
Flowers. There were flowers in his hand.
For her.
“Ginny,” he breathed, stopping in front of her. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
She nodded. Or shook her head. Hard to be sure.
He handed her the flowers, then cupped her face in his hands, brushing her cheekbones with adoring sweeps of his thumbs. Their lips met and they both shuddered, the cellophane crinkling beneath her grasping fingers. Ginny didn’t have to look around the room to know they were the center of attention and she couldn’t have cared less anyway. She only saw Jonas.
“Why are you over here in the dark, love?”
“Am I in the dark?” she whispered, his green eyes imbuing her with a sort of lovesick delirium. “It doesn’t feel like I am anymore.”
His expression softened. “I’ll have you moved.”
“No,” she blurted, snapping out of her Jonas Hypnosis. “The proper way to phrase that question was, shall I have you moved? Or even better, shall we see if you can be moved?”
Cautiously, he took the bouquet out of her hands and set it down on the table. “I’m not following.”