Steady as the Snow Falls Read Online Free

you.”
    She started to nod, and then stopped. He wasn’t looking at her.
    “You had no idea who I am. You still don’t, although I am smart enough to realize your ignorance won’t be for much longer.” His tone was faint, and then hard. He shifted his gaze to her. The singular focus with which he watched her was unnerving. “That’s why I contacted you, and that’s why I hired you.”
    Beth swallowed. “But…how would you know that? I don’t—I don’t understand.” She heard the tremble in her words, and wished he hadn’t.
    He shook his head, nothingness replacing the heat of seconds before. He raised a hand, and just as quickly let it drop. “You don’t need to. But when you leave here, Beth, and you do your research, just remember that you already signed a contract to write my story. There is no backing out at this time. It’s too late.”
    Shocked to hear her name pass his lips, and not sure why, she lowered her gaze. Her pulse beat out of tune, electrocuted into a song it didn’t recognize. Beth’s name on Harrison’s mouth sounded like an endearment to her ears, which was silly. It was her name. All he did was say her name. But that voice, with just the right inflection, and it went from a name to more.
    “You’re a football player.”
    “Was.”
    She crossed the room to put greater distance between them. Standing that close to him felt dangerous to her. He’d suck her up into his vortex, and that would be the end of Beth; she might not even care. She stopped near the door, her limbs firmer with an escape only a few steps away.
    “I don’t know a lot about sports, but aren’t you young to be retired?”
    He didn’t reply, moving toward her. Beth went still, her pulse escalating. He got closer. And closer. His face was a mask, giving away nothing of his emotions, but his eyes did. They burned, scalded. Made her body weightless, spun her heart around and around in her chest. Her lungs were singed, and she feared if she didn’t break eye contact soon, there would be nothing but a pile of ashes in her place. And yet her eyes remained a hostage of his.
    When he was close enough to touch her, he abruptly turned and left the room. She blew out a noisy breath of relieved air and rubbed her forehead. He made her jumpy, and she couldn’t breathe properly when he looked at her a certain way—the way he just had. Beth dropped her hand and frowned, studying how it trembled. She clenched it into a fist, refusing to consider what her reactions to him meant. They weren’t all bad. His words told her to stay away, but his aura said otherwise.
    “Are you coming?” Harrison called, irritation prickling his words.
    She flinched at the barbed tone and went in pursuit of him, finding him back in the initial room in which they’d met. Her eyes flicked to the coffee in longing. Coffee was good on cold days, but coffee was just as good on all the days.
    He stood facing the bookcase, his long fingers traveling along the spines of the books. It was a gesture that could be easily overlooked if someone wasn’t paying attention, but she was. It was reverent, loving. Harrison was a reader, which meant he was a thinker.
    She’d always felt a certain kind of loneliness, a trickle of sadness, with Ozzy, who didn’t read. Beth was never able to discuss books with him and how she interpreted them, or find out what he thought they meant. Beth wasn’t able to talk about likes and dislikes of the story, and what knowledge was learned from reading it. She read, and she kept the magic of the stories locked inside her, cherished only by her. Books needed to be shared with others. She longed for that connection, however small it seemed. It meant something to her.
    Beth was a thinker as well, a dreamer. Knowing she and Harrison had something in common made her head spin. She was in the presence of an anomaly, a contradiction. There were words, and there was tone, and there were expressions, and there was body language. All