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“Miss Green, a word, if you please.” He hindered her fast progress towards the exit.
Half-turned to him, she said, “I’m sorry, my lord, but I have an appointment.”
Her refusal pushed him to an inch from snapping. What appointment, and more importantly, with whom? Images of her and Flynn in her cosy little house together and alone morphed him into a feral creature he had to smash down to keep his threadbare control.
“It’ll take but a minute.” He insisted.
She stalled in the middle of the stage while the theatre emptied. Her back eternally to him.
In long strides, he climbed the few steps up the stage and rounded her to post himself right in front of her. His eyes sought hers, but she diverted hers. Drake peered fixedly at her even as she evaded any eye contact. Silence fell between them not even broken by the sounds of steps distancing on the floorboards. Everyone had left.
“What is it?” he asked, crossing his arms in waiting.
“I don’t know what kind of question that is.” The coldness of her tone was only skin deep, underneath he heard the strain that it took her.
“You are not yourself.” He reiterated.
She scoffed to the wings behind him. “As if you had a clue of who I am.”
He did, enough to see something wasn’t right. “I’ll stand here with you until you tell me what’s going on.”
“Apart from the hell of a day I just had?” He’d never seen her swear and perhaps that gave away the measure of her emotions.
Drake narrowed his gaze. “We could talk about the hell of a day I also had, but we won’t.”
“Good, because I don’t have all night.” She rebutted.
"In a hurry to go to your love nest and your darling actor?" She wouldn't miss the note of scorn in his tone.
That made her turn to him, launching a thousand daggers with those green beacons.
There. It was coming now.
“You dratted hypocrite!” She spat hotly while those beacons pierced him, heated
him, swallowed him. He’d take anything she was willing to throw at him. Anything!
Needless to ask the reason for her veritable wrath. Men gave themselves the right to take as many women as they wished and never gave those women the same choice.
He hitched a brow determined to drive her to the edge. Any reaction would be better than the indifference he endured all day. “Of course I am a hypocrite.” He was not about to let the proverbial sleeping dogs lie. “I’m a man, and an English lord on top of that.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The undiluted powder keg that exploded inside Hester blew with such force she didn’t recognise herself. She’d spent an awful night as her unhinged imagination produced images of this scoundrel before her and his future wife together, revelling in every single pleasure he’d taught her, did to her. It turned her into a fireball of frustration and anger.
By the time she left her bed, not only was she tired and irritable but also without a drop of energy for the work she loved so much. And then she entered the theatre to see the very bloody giant standing magnificent in his finery to induce impulses of ripping it all off his taut body and explore him with her hands and mouth. The amount of effort it took her not to look at him, not to revel in his baritone, and even not to feel the acute jealousy that threatened to open its sour dam at Franny took the last drop of will-power she possessed. The strain had been extreme in itself. But naturally, the dratted man had more in store. He halted the rehearsal every five minutes to point at inexistent flaws, clawing at the last shred of patience she had left. Duff and Hester did a great job today, there was no need of that.
"In which case, you and your hypocrisy can go to the blazes." She threw at him, uncaring that she had careened out of control and her temper ran amok. Enough was enough.
He uncrossed his muscular arms, braced his long thick legs, and directed her a smug look, as though he intended her to go mad. “I’m already there.” And jerked his sculpted jaw at her. “Care to join me? Alone is no fun.” The movement of his head made his brown wavy locks shine in the oblique light. All she ever wanted in that minute was to dive her fingers in them.
Her mouth freed a humourless laugh. “And make the same mistake twice? That would be foolish of me.”
“At least our mistakes produced…” he paused and let her hang on what was to come, “fireworks.”
The flush that burst on her cheeks said it all. Those fireworks still fizzled her insides with memories and yearning. “You can go and produce them with your future marchioness.” She was past caring that he would see the source of her anger. The onslaught of her feelings made her shake.
“I told you there’s no future marchioness.” He said that with such propriety she almost believed him.
