Now that he’s closer, I note I have a couple inches on him, just enough that he has to tilt his head slightly to meet my gaze. Enough, too, for me to make out his features a little better than I could inside the saloon.
Mid-to-late-twenties like me, I’d guess. Dark hair beneath his hat and a tidy mustache on his face. Sharp jaw, sharp nose, and a cutting smile. Not to mention those fuckin’ eyes that feel like they could slice right through a person.
A devil, for certain.Although, with that awareness simmering beneath my skin again, I can’t say he isn’t a good-lookin’ one. Disarmingly so. Which I’ll just bet comes in handy for him in more ways than one.
“Cypress.” He offers his hand now as if I’m not still aiming to shoot him and looks genuinely disappointed when I don’t take it, waiting a few moments longer just in case I might change my mind before he withdraws. “Not at the name stage yet, then?”
I narrow my eyes at him and he smiles again, same as he did when he first caught me looking, and it only confirms my suspicions that the expressions he aimed at the others inside were anythingbutgenuine. That the ones I glimpsed when no one else was watching, the ones hesawme glimpse while he was busy watching me, were the true ones. And somehow just as beguiling as his eyes…
“I know what you’re up to,” I tell him, hoping to wipe the look from his face but his grin only broadens. “I knowyou,” I add.
“Do you?” He sounds…pleased. Hopeful, even. “You know, I was feeling the same.”
My stomach tightens, guilt and shame rearing up before I have a chance to reason with myself that, in this case, him knowing who I am is agoodthing. “If you recognize me, then you should also recognize the position you’re in.”
“Yes. Not quite my favorite yet.” He hums something that sounds like the beginning of a song. “I’ve been looking for you, too, you know.”
“Why?” I snarl back. “You got a death wish?”
“Not today.” He steps neatly to my left, out of the way of my gun until I move to follow. He starts to make a half circle, me turning with him, and any remaining ideas I had of him throwing up his hands in surrender once confronted completely dry up.
“You should’ve moved on,” I tell him, and he shakes his head, smirking.
“So I’ve been told. But how fortunate, it’s never really been my strong suit.”
“It’ll be the suit you’re buried in if you don’t do as I say.” I keep my pistol aimed, thinking I should put some space between us even though I can’t seem to get my feet to move. “I mean it. I know what you’re doing. I know you’re a fuckin’ thief.”
“Athief?” he repeats, pausing briefly in his path. “That is quite the accusation.” His expression looks more curious than concerned. “What evidence do you have?”
“I had my eye on you tonight.”
“I noticed.” That grin again. “But that means you know I lost far more than I took. Wouldn’t appear to make me a very good thief, would it?”
I shrug, undeterred. “Depends on what you’re after.”
“And what do you think that might be?” Instead of stepping sideways this time, he takes one step toward me and then another, continuing until he’s standing right in front of me. The barrel of my gun presses into his chest, directly over his heart, sothat all I’d have to do is pull the trigger.
But I don’t.
He smiles again after a few moments pass with us remaining just like that, with him not taking his eyes off mine. At the last second, he finally shifts to walk past me, brushing his shoulder against my own as he goes. “I’ll be seeing you, wolf.”
Wolf?I turn to watch as he disappears into the night after one last lingering backwards glance, the slowly reemerging sounds of people on the street out front the only thing enough to finally make me drop my arm against my side. To make me drop against the same wall where he’d been waiting for me.
Who the fuck was that?
My heart is racing now that the moment is gone and I have a chance to think. Gut feelings aside, the truth—much as I hate to admit it—is that he’s right. I have no evidence for the accusation I made. And if heisa thief, then he’s a damn poor one since all he managed to do tonight was leave with his pockets lighter.
If he does come back tomorrow, I’ll have to continue to keep my eye on him, as well as my distance. Because any man who worries so little about his own mortality is one best avoided unless strictly necessary.
And it isn’t. Itisn’tnecessary, because heisn’tmy responsibility either. I sigh, tilting my head back against the wall and catching enough of a glimpse of the star-filled sky that I wonder how late it is.
Out of habit, my free hand strays to my vest, reaching for my pocket watch only to find…nothing. I straighten, looking down and searching again as if it will suddenly appear before moving on to my pants pockets, and I must be more tired than I think because only when I’ve reholstered my gun and amuselesslypatting myself down does it finally click.
“No…” I stride out to the street, searching up and down for someone who already moved on just as I told him to, his pocketsno longer quite as light. “He fuckin’ robbed me.”
I think I might be in love. The feeling, however, does not appear to be mutual. Yet.
It does not appear to be mutualyet.