A Door Half Open, A Line Half Crossed
DORIS didn’t mean to stare at him the way she did. She didn’t mean for her pulse to jump or her breath to heat when Thomas Humpkin opened the door and looked at her as if she were someone he shouldn’t want.
But it happened anyway.
The man had aged like danger, a quiet, disciplined danger. Broad shoulders, forearms dusted with dark hair, a jaw sculpted by years of clenched grief. His eyes… those calm storm-gray eyes dragged over her with a mixture of shock and something else he immediately tried to hide.
“Doris,” he said, voice rougher than she remembered. “You look… different.”
“You mean older,” she murmured, stepping in.
His gaze sharpened.
“Much older.”
There it was— that flicker, that split-second flash he tried to bury under niceties and
