He gave a brisk nod. “Complete honesty from this moment forward. I can accept that. Anything else?”
“You must show me the respect and courtesy due my professional position.”
“I wouldn’t be here, Miss Townsend, if I didn’t already respect you and your skills.”
She pondered his words and the meaning of them. As well as the formality of his address. “You came here with the distinct purpose of hiring me?”
He merely held her gaze. No muscle movement. No fidgeting or acknowledgment.
“Complete honesty,” she reiterated.
“Yes.”
“But earlier you gave a different reason for your presence.”
“I’m not accustomed to asking for assistance and wasn’t comfortable with the notion of it.”
“Therefore, you let the need for a sleuth appear to be my idea instead of yours. No more of that. I can’t help you if you’re not more direct.”
“We’d not negotiated the honesty part yet.”
Giving a curt nod, she had the feeling he’d always looked at her with a sort of raw honesty but suspected his words and actions had been a combination of truth and falsehoods. “And lastly, our conduct is to reflect all business.”
“What precisely does that mean?” His tone contained an undercurrent of pique.
She rather regretted the last condition already, because it would prevent her from teasing him and raising his ire. From emptying a bowl of chocolate glaze over him, although the image that jumped into her mind was not of pouring it over his head but slathering it across his chest. But she knew he could serve as a distraction, and she had to remain focused on the task at hand. It would be easier to resist him if he never touched her, if he never gave any indication that he wanted her. She cleared her throat. “We are business partners and nothing else. I very much doubt you reach across your solicitor’s desk to stroke his jaw.”
“Do you not like me touching you?”
“That’s beside the point.” She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she hadn’t revealed that, but then it was part of the total honesty she needed between them. She wanted him to touch her again, which was the very reason that she needed this condition in place: to remove all temptation. “Why did you not keep your distance in the carriage? Why give the impression that you... desired me?”
His jaw clenched. He didn’t want to tell her. Should she tell him not to sit at a card table because she was beginning to find him easier to read? Was it because he was more comfortable around her or that she simply knew him better?
“Because kissing you wasn’t enough. I did desire you. I owe you an apology for”—he swallowed, but firmly held her gaze—“any impression I gave that I was not affected by what transpired between us. I’ve not been able to stop thinking about how satisfying it felt to have you fall apart in my arms.”
She shouldn’t have asked, because she’d grown warm, and his intense gaze was making tiny tremors erupt throughout her. Now she regretted asking for the third condition. But she was not going to withdraw it. “Can you not see how such behavior might distract us from remaining focused on the task at hand?”
“I’ll concede your point—and you should know that I seldom concede.”
Giving her the victory and acknowledging it. Good Lord, it might go to her head. “Well then, if you are agreeable to those three terms—”
“As long as they go both ways.”
“That goes without saying.”
“I want to hear you say it, because I’m well aware that you were playacting as well. I believe there might be the slightest possibility that you are not as easy to read as I’d originally presumed or that you let on.”
Taking a deep breath, she couldn’t hold back a small smile of triumph. “I shall be completely honest with you, conduct myself at all times as a businesswoman, and afford you the respect of a man who is not a scoundrel.”
“You don’t have to go quite that far. I am perhaps a bit of a scoundrel.”
She didn’t think so, but with honesty between them, perhaps she’d uncover the truth of him. “Then we’re in agreement. I’ll draw up papers for us to sign. Halfof the amount due upon signing, the remainder when I have the proof you need.”
“Where do you reside?”
“What has that to do with anything?”
“Complete honesty.”
