“Lady Amanda, I shall be certain your bags are deposited in your room. With your lady’s maid.” Which she didn’t have. Hiro knew that, but the pretense was necessary to preserve her reputation. He inclined his head again. “If you have need of me, please do not hesitate to ring.”
God, she hated when he turned back into the bodyguard.
Still, she watched him march stiffly toward the stairs, then pasted on a smile and turned back to her mother’s friends.
Prepared to pretend to be a dutiful obedient lady who absolutely had not eaten ram’s bollocks with her tea while in Siberia, or dived naked for oysters in the South Pacific. Pretend to be a lady who cared what Society thought of her.
At least for a little while.
CHAPTER 4
The bell rang at eleven in the evening. Then again at eleven-fifteen and eleven-twenty.
Hiro stacked his hands behind his head, stared up at the ceiling of the small hotel room he’d been given, ignored the summons from the woman he would crawl on hands and knees for, and tried to think of the least erotic things he could imagine.
Intestinal cramping due to polluted groundwater.
The wart onSobo’schin, which I used to have to pluck the hairs from.
The time the rope bridge gave out near the Arabian Sea and we almost died.
Actually…the memory of the way Mandy had gripped his wrist, her brown eyes gazing trustingly up at him as she dangled above certain death and he did his absolute best to inch them to safety…
Well, it wasn’teroticexactly, but it reminded him of why he loved her so much.
Her trust, her sense of adventure. The way she didn’t see him as anywaylessbecause he hadn’t been born into one of Scotland’s ruling families, the way she had. The way she was always optimistic, even when it came to their future.
The future they couldn’t share.
Because, no matter how accepting and generous she was, Amelia was the sister of the Duke of Effinghell and her sister was married to the Duke of Bestinbum. She wasn’t Mandy, she was Lady Amanda. She wassomebody.
And Hiro? Hiro was her brother’s bloodybutler.
Muttering a curse his grandmother used to hurl at him, he rolled to his side just as the clock struck the half-hour. Unbidden, his gaze darted to the bell.
It hadn’t rung after the third time, and he wasn’t certain how he felt about that.
On the one hand, he was pleased Mandy had given up onneedinghim, realizing that it would destroy her reputation if it was rumored her male servant went sneaking through the hotel in the dark hours to visit her suite.
On the other hand, that kiss today in the cemetery had only fired his blood, his want. Christ, he needed release, and because he couldn’t have it, his bollocks ached even more.
Life was simpler when they were trekking through the Colorado mountains or sailing down the Danube.
“Fooking hell,” he muttered, pushing the sheets out of the way and sitting up. Perhaps he should take himself in hand. A good frigging would at least help him sleep.
He glanced at the bell again.Shewas letting him sleep.
The knock on his door startled him so much that he almost yelped. But he was up and moving before his brain registered what he was doing, his hand on the latch before he remembered he was nude.
Thatat least made him pause. “Who is it?” he called gruffly.
“I am tired of you ignoring me.”
Fook fook fook. Hiro wrenched the door open to see Mandy standing there in the hall, draped in a silk robe, hair down around her shoulders.
“What in the absoluteshitare you doing here?” he hissed as he grabbed her wrist and yanked hard.
She was smiling when she fell into the room with more force than necessary, tumbling into his chest and managing to kick the door closed behind her. As she reached up to wrap her arms around his neck, the front of her robe slid open to reveal she was wearing not much of anything beneath it.
