"Laurell K. Hamilton - Anita Blake 15 - The Harlequin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Laurell K)

special. When I was alone, not with any of them, not looking at them, or all covered in their metaphysical
stuff, I could be all uncomfortable, and feel stupid. I felt stupid and grumpy right up to the moment that I
saw Nathaniel standing just inside the doors, waiting for me.

He was five foot six and a half now. He'd grown half an inch in the last month. At twenty, twenty-one in
the spring, he was growing into the broad shoulders, filling out in the way that most men do at a slightly
earlier age. I actually got carded more at clubs than he did now, which irritated me, and pleased him. But
it wasn't height that made me stop and stare.

I stood in the midst of the Friday night crowd hurrying around me, and for just a few minutes I forgot that
something bad enough to scare Jean-Claude and Malcolm had come to town. Yeah, Jean-Claude had
told me we were safe, but still, it wasn't like me to be careless in a crowd.

Nathaniel wore a leather trench coat and a matching fedora. The hat and coat hid most of him, and still
managed to emphasize the body underneath. It was like hiding and asking for attention at the same time.
He'd added the hat to his winter gear because without it, he had gotten recognized a few times.
Customers from Guilty Pleasures had spotted him as Brandon, his stage name. Once we covered the
hair, it didn't happen again.

His hair was in some kind of tight braid, so that it looked like his auburn hair was cut nice and standard
short. It was illusion. His hair fell to his ankles, totally impractical, but God, it was pretty.

It wasn't just the standard ooh, isn't he pretty that made me stop. It was that suddenly in his new leather
trench coat and hat, with his hair all covered, he looked grown-up. He was seven years younger than me,
and I'd felt vaguely like a child molester when he first hit my radar. I'd fought long and hard to keep him
out of the boyfriend box, but in the end, it hadn't worked. Now I looked at him like a stranger might, and
realized that the only one who still thought he might be a child was me. Standing there looking like a fetish
version of Sam Spade, he didn't look twenty. He looked very over twenty-one.

Someone bumped me, and that made me jump. Shit, that was too careless. I started moving, dressed in
my own black leather trench coat, but no hat. I didn't do hats unless it was freaking freezing. Even with
Christmas only weeks away, it wasn't that cold. St. Louis in the wintertime: freezing one day, nearly fifty
the next.

My trench coat was unbuttoned from the waist up, only belted in place. It was colder that way, but I
could still reach my gun. Going armed in winter was always full of fun choices like that.

He spotted me before I'd gotten through the outer doors. He gave me that smile that made his whole face
glow, so happy to see me. Once I would have bitched, but I was too busy fighting off my own version of
the same smile. One of my other boyfriends said I hated being in love, and he was right. It always felt so
stupid, like your insurance rates should go up, because you're impaired. Romantically handicapped.

The face under the hat was too pretty to be handsome. He was beautiful, not handsome. Apparently, no
matter how tall he got, or how much he muscled up, that wasn't going to change. But it wasn't a delicate
face, the way Jean-Claude's was, or Micah's was; it was stronger boned than that, higher cheekboned.
Something a touch more male in his faceтАФI couldn't put my finger on it, but somethingтАФand when he
looked full at you, you never thought feminine, but always male. Had that changed in the last few months?
Had I not noticed that, or had it always been like this and I just was so determined to marginalize him that
I couldn't let his face be more masculine than Jean-Claude's or Micah's? Did I still equate strength and
being a grown-up to being male? Me, of all people? Surely not.