A piece of tape that still hadn’t given up its secrets no matter how many times he’d watched it.
Zac stared at Gabriel’s text for a moment then typed a reply. I wasn’t aware there was a meeting.
Another couple of seconds and a response came back. Eva didn’t tell you?
Once again anger stirred, this time not so easily dealt with. So Eva had called the meeting, had she? And hadn’t told him. Eva, who almost never did anything or went anywhere without him.
Eva, who was apparently hiding something from him.
Zac sent back a curt reply. I’ll be ten minutes. Then he put his phone into his pocket and settled back in his seat. “I’ve changed my mind, Angus. Second Circle. Immediately. And don’t spare the horses.”
Angus didn’t. And precisely ten minutes later, they were drawing up outside Alex St. James’s club, the Second Circle, where the Nine Circles members held their regular meetings.
The doorman inclined his head as Zac approached, pulling open the doors with alacrity.
Zac nodded an acknowledgment then stepped inside, heading straight for the stairs that led to the club’s private rooms.
He ignored the slow burn in his gut, the one he usually associated with anger. Clearly Eva hadn’t informed him about this meeting for a reason, but by God it had better be a good one. She always told him first whenever she had something to share with the others. At least, she always had.
Until now.
He didn’t want to think about what that might mean.
Zac pushed open the door that led to the Nine’s favorite room and walked straight in, kicking it shut behind him.
The room had a warm, luxurious feel to it, with wood-panel walls, tall library bookshelves, and subdued lighting. A couch stood before a roaring fire, flanked on either side by two leather armchairs, one currently occupied.
There was a silence.
Zac didn’t speak, nor did he look at anyone but Eva.
She stood by the fire, her small, fragile figure dressed in her usual uniform of black skinny jeans and black Doc Martens, Iron Maiden T-shirt, and leather biker jacket. Her hair, the color of pure white snow, was pulled back in a messy ponytail, strands of it hanging around her face. Her eyes were a pure, crystalline charcoal gray and met his, full of her usual prickly defiance.
He could feel his body already beginning to gather into yearning, like she was a compass point he turned to no matter where he was. A feeling he was starting to hate since it would never, ever go anywhere.
Eva, his beautiful angel, the girl he’d rescued nearly naked and broken and bleeding from the side of the road one night seven years ago, had never given him one sign, not a single one, that she felt anything for him beyond a twisted kind of friendship. And that rendered her untouchable.
He wouldn’t push himself where he wasn’t wanted. Ever. Especially not with her. Her past had damaged her beyond repair, or at least beyond his ability to help. A fact that ached like a piece of broken glass lodged deep in his soul.
Pity his body didn’t seem to be taking any notice. It wanted her with a single-mindedness that bordered on obsession.
Luckily he’d gotten very good at ignoring it.
“Sorry I’m late,” Zac said, directing this to Eva as he put his gloves down on a nearby table and shrugged out of his overcoat. “I was unavoidably detained.”
She lifted her chin. The look in her eyes told him she knew he was angry she hadn’t told him about the meeting and that she didn’t care. But then she never did. And the way she constantly challenged him was part of her charm, part of his fascination with her.
“You haven’t missed anything,” Gabriel said. “At least not yet.” He was sitting in a chair near the fire, his long legs extended. A pale, exquisite woman sat in his lap, black hair and blue eyes, perfectly dressed in a pencil skirt and blouse. Honor, Alex St. James’s sister and Gabriel’s lover, a new member of the Nine Circles.
On the couch sat her brother, one shoulder heavily bandaged from the gunshot wound he’d taken the previous week. Alex had only just come out of the hospital and looked like it too—shadows under his blue eyes, a pallor to his skin. Beside him, her hand on his thigh, sat his Russian bodyguard, Katya Ivanova. Another new member.
Really, it was getting far too crowded in here.
Zac nodded a wordless thanks to Gabriel for informing him of the meeting then walked over to the couch, slung his overcoat over the arm, then leaned his hands on the back of it, staring at the fine-boned woman standing in front of the hearth, the fire leaping at her back.
“Do go on, angel,” he said levelly. “Don’t let me interrupt you.” But if you think I’m not pissed off about this you’re mistaken.