The Heiress Wakes to a Second Chance novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Library

Philip walked her home from the donor dinner and kissed her hand at the gate.

Iris let him.

She smiled up at him under the lamp, and said goodnight, and listened to his shoes go down the wet street.

Then she stood in the dark with her hand held away from her body.

"You can come out," she said.

Nothing moved among the dripping hydrangeas.

"Dane. I can smell the smoke. You don't smoke."

"I stopped," said a low voice. "Tonight I started again."

He stepped out of the shadows with the collar of his coat turned up and rain in his hair.

He had been standing there for two hours.

She could see it in the way his shoulders were drawn together against the cold.

"Come inside," Iris said.

"I'm supposed to be gone."

"The house is locked and Odette is asleep. Nobody in Boston knows you're here."

"Three feet," he said, and his voice cracked on it.

"I rewrote that rule."

She went in ahead of him, and he followed her down the hall.

She opened the library door.

The fire was low, and the tall shelves threw shadows over the leather chairs and her father's old desk.

She turned the key behind them.

"I watched him kiss your hand," Dane said, from the middle of the rug. "I stood in your garden and watched, and I wanted to put my fist through the gate."

"Good."

"Good?"

"I scrubbed that hand twice in the cloakroom," Iris said. "I'd like you to do it properly."

His breath went out of him in a rush.

She crossed the rug and held her hand up to his mouth.

He took it in both of his, turned it over, and pressed his lips to the center of the palm.

Then to each knuckle.

Then he kissed the inside of her wrist, where the pulse was racing, and she heard herself make a sound.

"What I said in the lobby," she began.

"It was true."

"It was true then. It isn't now."

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