“Why, Gideon?” Her mouth tightened. “What did I do?”
“Nothing.” He said it at once.
She did not look convinced.
He exhaled, then glanced toward the quiet street, searching for a better answer than the truth.
He couldn’t find one.
“On Bond Street…” he said at last, carefully. “Outside the shop…”
Her expression shifted.
“I forgot myself,” he said. Gideon forced himself to continue before she could speak. “Not completely. But enough.”
Enough to stop pretending I don’t want you. The answer rose too quickly. Too dangerously.
“Enough to know I needed to be more careful.”
Her gaze searched his. “Careful of me?”
“No.” His voice roughened. “For you.”
He dragged a hand over his jaw. He needed sleep. A cold bath. Anything but her standing before him in the thin morning light, looking tired and wounded and far too lovely.
“Dash is my closest friend.”
“I am aware of that.”
“Then you understand why I cannot behave as though…” He stopped.
“As though what?”
Gideon looked away again. “As though I nearly kissed you in the middle of Bond Street.”
The words hung in the cool morning air.
Down the street, a door closed. The faint rattle of cart wheels carried through the square. London was waking.
Gideon should have stepped back.
Instead, he looked at her mouth.
“But you didn’t,” she said softly. “You didn’t kiss me.”
His jaw tightened. “No.”
“And then you decided that was the end of it.”
“Beatrice—”
“You do not get to do that,” she said. “You do not get to put me against a wall, look at my mouth as though you mean to ruin me, and then vanish—leaving me to wonder whether I imagined the whole thing.”
His breath left him slowly. “I did not mean to hurt you.”
“No,” she said. “You just meant to avoid me.”
He could not deny it.
