Beautiful Beast (Gypsy Heroes #3)(4)

‘Wrong. I think you’re the most beautiful woman in this club, and I’d like to take you out.’

‘Where would you take me?’ she asks curiously.

‘The woods.’ My answer irritates me. Bravo, Shane. You sound like a f*cking serial killer.

But the first flicker of interest appears in her eyes. ‘The woods?’

‘Yes. I have an old chateau in France. It is very beautiful this time of the year. At night the fireflies come out.’

She inhales with surprise. ‘Fireflies?’

‘A sight to behold, they are. I never tire of watching them as they blink around the garden. There used to be more, but there are fewer and fewer of them now.’

‘I have never seen fireflies. They seem more like the stuff of myths. How magical to see them for real.’

‘Then you must come to Saumur.’

‘Saumur,’ she murmurs, tasting the name on her tongue.

‘I promise you’ll love it. There are crickets and bull frogs and wild boar, and occasionally a peacock looking for a mate will wander into the grounds.’

Her mouth parts with wonder. ‘Really?’

‘Scout’s honor.’

‘Will I have to sleep with you to see all this?’

I am still holding her hand. I stroke the silky skin on the inside of her wrist with my thumb. ‘Not if you don’t want to,’ I say.

She smiles slowly, sexily. When she smiles she’s as beautiful as a field of fireflies.

‘We can just be friends?’ she asks cautiously.

My eyebrows shoot up. That’s a new one for the books. I honestly don’t think anyone has ever said that to me. ‘We can be whatever you want us to be.’

She leans closer, her eyes suddenly alight with mischief. ‘Are you wearing mascara?’

I laugh. ‘No.’

‘You have very fancy eyelashes,’ she says solemnly.

‘I could say the same about you.’ I swear I have never had such a weird conversation with a woman before.

‘But I’m wearing mascara,’ she says with a grin.

‘Do you have a name, mascara-wearing babe?’

‘My name is Elizabeth Dilshaw, but everyone calls me Snow,’ she says as she gently tugs her wrist out of my grasp.

I don’t want to but I let go. ‘Really? Snow?’

‘Yes. I was born in India where almost everyone is dark-skinned, so when I was born so fair and with such a full head of midnight-black hair, all the nurses started calling me Snow White. The name stuck and I became known as Snow.’

I smile broadly. She did step out of a fairy tale, after all. ‘Skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony.’

‘And you are?’

‘Shane.’

‘Yes, I think I’d like to see the fireflies and have you as my friend,’ she says softly.

Izzy Azalea and Rita Ora’s ‘Black Widow’ is playing. There are people brushing past us; I can smell their perfume and cologne. They serve as a backdrop for her. Someone calls my name, but I don’t turn to look. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

She bends her head and shakes it, and her beautiful hair moves like a silky curtain around her face. ‘No, I’m with … friends. I have to go back to our table.’


I take my phone out of my pocket. ‘What’s your phone number?’

She lifts her head and tells it to me and I key her number into my phone. Not taking my eyes off her, I press the call button. A bird starts chirping from inside her bag.

‘Now you have my number too,’ I tell her.

‘Yes, now I have your number,’ she says slowly.

The moment is strange, surreal even. Full of undercurrents and deeper meanings, it doesn’t belong in the middle of a club relentlessly dedicated to the pursuit of the pleasures of the flesh. All the clever words and witty remarks have deserted me. I don’t want to let her go.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. I ignore it. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ I say.

She nods slowly. ‘Yeah, maybe you will.’

For some odd reason her voice is sad. As if this promise has been made before and never kept, even though I cannot even imagine a scenario where a man takes her number and does not call. She is impossibly intriguing. I resist the temptation to reassure her that I will call.

‘Well, then. Nice to have met you,’ she says and, turning, begins to walk away.

‘Snow,’ I call.

She turns around, one charcoal eyebrow raised.

‘I will call you,’ I promise. It has never happened to me before. I have never cared to reassure anybody that I will call. If I felt like calling the next day, I called. If I didn’t, well … c’est la f*cking vie.

One side of her mouth lifts, and then she turns away and carries on in her path, again an incorruptible fairy tale creature. When she disappears from my sight I can’t stop smiling. I take a triumphant sip of my drink before tilting my body slightly so I have a view of her table.

And that moment is like that video of John Newman’s track, ‘Love Me Again’. Do you know it? Where a boy and a girl meet in a dreary club. They escape from her wannabe gangster boyfriend and run out of the back doors. Hand in hand, full of hope and excitement, thinking they have outrun the bad guys, they get out of a narrow alleyway and dash straight into an oncoming vehicle. The video ends abruptly on a black screen.