A Bad Day for Sunshine (Sunshine Vicram #1)(86)

She bowed her head in thought. “You should have told me.”

“Like you tell me anything.”

“What?” She studied his expression but couldn’t tell if he was serious. “What would I tell you?” Now, she could. Yep, he was definitely serious. In fact, the term deadly serious came to mind.

He’d stilled, and his caramel irises glistened as an emotion startlingly similar to rage seemed to take over. But when he spoke, his voice was dangerously calm. “Are you fucking with me right now?”

She twisted around to better face him. “Are you fucking with me?”

He continued to stare as though weighing his options.

She continued to stare, definitely weighing her options. After a moment, one of them called dibs. He’d saved her daughter’s life. He could be angry and grumpy and curmudgeonly all he wanted. He could argue and belittle and look down upon her until the stars burned out. Bottom line, Levi Ravinder saved Auri’s life.

Without thought, she put a hand on his bristly jaw, bent over him, and placed a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth.

He let her, and when she raised back up, he asked, “What was that for?”

“For saving my daughter’s life.”

“You should thank the rest of me, too. It was a group effort.”

Her stomach flip-flopped. In its defense, it’d had a difficult day. “You need to rest.”

“Chickenshit.”

She gasped. “I am not. You know what? You’re delusional from being out in the elements for two days and almost freezing to death.”

“I didn’t almost freeze to death.”

“You’re dreaming all of this.”

“If this were a dream, you’d be naked.”

“This is all in your”—she waved her hands in the air—“deranged imagination.”

“The only thing deranged is you if you think I’m going to forget this.”

She stood and hurried for the door, but she hadn’t expected him to throw back the covers and follow her. She hadn’t expected him to brace a hand against the door and hold it closed when she tried to open it. And she certainly hadn’t expected him to press the length of his body into hers. To wrap his long fingers around her throat from behind. To scorch her skin with his nearness.

He was everything she’d ever craved. Every fantasy. Every lascivious thought. All wrapped up into one, powerful predator.

He bent until his mouth was at her ear. His warm breath fanned across her cheek when he spoke, but it was his words that caused the molten lava to pool in her abdomen.

“The next time you come into this room and sit on that bed, you need to plan on staying a while.”

Then he took hold of the doorknob and opened the door for her. A door she couldn’t get through fast enough.

She hurried past the threshold and down the stairs, every inch he’d touched burning. Every molecule in her body begging her to go back.

When she looked up from the bottom of the stairs, the door was already closed. She took a deep breath and patted her scalding face just as a hand shot out and grabbed her arm.

It whirled her to face its owner, Clay Ravinder, and the smirk he wore cemented her very low opinion of the man.

“Looks like you and the Apache had fun.”

She set her jaw, then dropped her gaze to the fingers wrapped around her upper arm before raising it back to him.

He let go and showed his palms in surrender. “Cold as ice, you are.”

Without answering him—any form of acknowledgment would only encourage—she walked to the front door and opened it. The wind splashed an icy gust on her face, but it felt good. It was what she needed. A metaphorical slap to snap her out of her fantasy world.

Because Sunshine Vicram and Levi Ravinder?

Not in this lifetime.


Auri took a short nap, a ritual she’d loathed since she was a kid almost as much as she’d loathed ketchup on hot dogs. She was beginning to change her stance on both practices, however.

She did feel better. A little groggy, maybe. A little grumpy. Probably because she had no way to contact Cruz. No way to thank him.

Since he was grounded from his phone and from leaving his room possibly for the rest of his life, she considered walking to his house but thought better of it. It had warmed up significantly, but not enough to tromp through the snow at dusk.

She decided to do some research instead and checked out Sybil’s online presence. Or she tried to. She couldn’t find a trace of the girl. No social media accounts. No tags. No mentions. The girl was a ghost.

Perhaps she was trying to be invisible on purpose, to thwart whomever she knew was coming after her.

Auri couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for her. To know that she was going to be kidnapped and murdered years before it actually happened. What had Sybil gone through? What damage could something like that knowledge do?

And then for no one to believe her.

Thirty-seven pages deep into her Google search, give or take, she finally came across a picture taken on a crisp fall day of a young girl with red hair, round glasses, and freckles. Her name, Sybil St. Aubin, had been spelled wrong in the caption, but it was her, all right.

Sybil was only about ten in the picture. Her cheeks a bright peach from the cold. Her olive-green eyes glistening with life.

She was posed with a boy around the same age. Dark hair. A grin full of mischief.