“I can think of little else,” she muttered.
He needed a way to distract her, console her. Fortunately, he had the ideal tactic at hand.
“I am ready now,” he announced.
She turned wary, those blue eyes growing wide. “For what?”
“To give you what you asked for all those years ago.”
Wariness shifted to alarm. Her lashes flared dark against her fair skin, and the blush waved through her cheekbones like a flag. High, arched cheekbones; she’d lost the cushion of babyfat that had filled out her face at eighteen. Now her features were honed into mature lines, her beauty a weapon. He wondered if she knew yet how to use it.
She stiffened, throwing her shoulders back, which had the most interesting effect of raising her bosom closer to his eye. The baby fat that had dissolved from other places on her body had apparently gone straight to her breasts; eighteen-year-old Mad hadnotpossessed such magnificence. Or if she had, she’d been kind enough to hide it from display, knowing the sight of such a décolletage would destroy his ability to reason.
“I have rescinded my proposal,” she said stiffly. “It was unadvised in so many respects. As you kindly pointed out.”
“I was referring,” he said, “to your request for a kiss.”
Her lips parted with a little O of surprise, and that was his undoing.
She was like perfumed dusk rolling into his arms, a cool slant of shade on a blistering hot day. Cold spring water to man parched with thirst. One tug at her hand brought her where she belonged. She matched his height so well, he had only to dip his head and notch her lips to his. Finally.
Finally.
She was in his arms. Madelina, the dream he’d not allowed himself to harbor, because dreams were meant for better men.
Mad, the girl whom he’d watched grow up, but he’d never imagined would bethis—a siren come to life.
Her lips were petals of wildflowers. Her skin was brushed silk beneath his fingers as he slid them over her cheek. She tasted of orange and allspice, as if she’d been tippling the Christmas cider. He anchored his palms on either side of his face to hold her for his kisses, and the hair brushing his fingers was damask over his callused skin.
She was a cloud in his arms, the fluff of a dandelion smoothing all his hard and brittle edges. She was softness and pleasure and everything sweet, and he was falling headfirst down a deep, deep well.
He wanted to kiss her forever, but he needed air. He needed to understand what was happening. He never lost his head. He never succumbed. He was the master of himself at all times, even inside a daze of sensuality. But this—with Mad—was different.
He stared into her eyes, feeling his breath halt. “Well and good I didn’t kiss you all those years ago,” he said.
Hurt flashed through her wide, deep eyes. “Why?”
Because he would have been lost forever, lost to himself, to her. He would have built himself around her like a finch weaving its nest. And he never would have found his own balance, something he needed to do. He would have remained a leaf in the wind, blown about by impulse and longing, and he would never have found work that was meaningful to him.
Here, in his cousin’s home, his cousin’s study, his cousin’slife, Garrick finally realized how much he had longed to have something of his own that mattered. The first time he was offered it, in the form of this woman, he ran. The second time, he didn’t have a choice; the burden of Barty’s work descended upon him, like it or not. Now he had two things that could give his life meaning, and he would have to choose between them.
His work, or Mad. Because he couldn’t have both. Either one would threaten the other, make it impossible.
“If I’d kissed you when you first asked, I don’t believe I would have let you out of bed thereafter,” Garrick said. “And think of all we would have missed.”
That flush climbed her cheeks again. “Oh,you—”
He captured her lips, catching whatever she’d meant to say in another whirling, dazzling, mind-searing kiss. She wasmore potent than spirits. He heard chatter in his head, as if his mind were already moving to the future, plotting strategy, laying out plans. The chatter grew. He pushed it away to focus on her. The heat of her mouth as their tongues met and tangled. The soft catch of her breath and the sounds like tiny moans that enflamed him with triumph, with the need to possess. The incredible soft fullness of her body as he pressed her against him and felt her surround, fit, melt.
“Oh, heavens. If it isn’t my heartless rake of a son seducing another woman,” came his mother’s voice from the doorway.
Her mother’s gasp came next. “Madelina! What have you done?”
Madelina’s expression, dazed, soft, looked as if she’d just emerged from bed. She would look this way when he’d properly made love to her, had well and truly claimed the woman he’d always known was meant to be his. She’d been trying to ensnare him for years, with or without knowing how, and he was done running. He smiled into her sweet, blushing face.
“Mothers, you may be the first to congratulate us. Madelina has consented to be my bride.”
“Truly?” His mother gaped. “Madelina?”
