AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m not in the business of reforming rakes,” Pia said as she reached for the pen.
Their fingers brushed, causing a sizzle of awareness to shoot through him.
Hawk schooled his expression. “Of course you are,” he contradicted her. “I assume you adopted Mr. Darcy from a shelter?”
“That was saving a soul, not reforming a rake.”
“Is there much difference?” he asked. “And anyway, who knows what dastardly deeds and reprobate behavior Mr. Darcy engaged in before you met him?”
“Better the devil you don’t know,” she responded, turning a well-known saying on its head.
He placed his hand over his heart. “And yet one could say we encountered each other under blind circumstances not so different from your first meeting with Mr. Darcy. Surely, if you can find it in your heart to take him…?”
“I am not taking you in like…a-a stray,” she responded reprovingly.
“Much to my regret,” he murmured.
Giving him a lingering cautionary look, she turned her back and, using the wall for support in imitation of his earlier action, signed the contract.
She turned back to him and handed him a copy of the contract.
“Splendid,” he said with a grin. “I’d kiss you to seal the deal, but I’ll venture to guess you wouldn’t find it appropriate under the circumstances.”
“Certainly not!”
“A handshake then?”
Pia eyed him, and he returned her regard with a bland look of his own.
Slowly, she extended her hand, and he grasped it in his.
He let himself feel the vibrant current coursing between them. It was the same as when they’d met three years ago. It was the same as it always was.
Her hand was small and fine-boned. The fingers, he’d noticed, tapered to well-manicured nails that nevertheless showed not a hint of polish—so like her, delicate but practical.
When she tried to pull away, he tightened his hold, drawing out the contact for reasons he didn’t bother to examine.
She looked up at him questioningly, and he read the turbulent sexual awareness in her amber eyes.
In a courtly gesture, he bent and gave her a very proper kiss on the hand.
He heard Pia suck in a breath, and as he straightened, he released her hand.
She swallowed. “Why did you do that?”
“I’m a duke,” he said, the excuse falling easily from his lips. “It’s a done thing.”
In fact, Hawk admitted to himself, the context wasn’t fitting even if the gesture might have been. He wasn’t greeting a woman—one of higher social status—who’d offered him her hand. But he brushed aside those niceties, not least because it had been tempting to touch her.
“Of course,” Pia acknowledged lightly, though a shadow crossed her face. “I know all about your world, even if I’m not part of it.”
“You’ve agreed to be part of it now,” he countered. “Attend the theater with me tomorrow night.”
“Wh-what?” she asked, looking startled. “Why?”
He smiled. “It’s Lucy’s off-Broadway show. Seeing my sister on the stage, in her element, might give you useful insight into her personality.”
Pia relaxed her shoulders.
