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“Very well,” Nicole agreed cautiously, experiencing a flicker of hope at her father’s ever-so-subtle relenting. “I’ll tell Lord Tyreham you’ve asked to see him.”
“Good. As soon as possible. Today.”
Hope was eclipsed by fear. “Papa, you can’t leave the cottage. If someone should see you—”
“They won’t and I won’t. I’ll stay safe inside these walls while I wait for the marquis’s visit. Tell him I’ll expect him around noon.” Nick gave the brim of Nicole’s cap a gentle tug. “That, Elf, should give you more than enough time to have his testy stallion eating out of your hand.”
“Papa, are you saying …?”
“I’m saying that the Derby is little more
than a fortnight away. So if you want to win it, you’d better go start your training.”
With a whoop of joy, Nicole flung her arms about her father’s neck.
Dustin prowled the stable floor, lost in thought. Arising before dawn had posed no problem today, for he’d never gone to bed. What’s more, he wasn’t the least bit tired.
What he was, was frustrated.
Frustrated and stymied.
Nicole Aldridge. The most breathtaking, unexpected distraction ever to walk into his life.
Refreshing, beautiful, unconventional—if he’d been preoccupied with her before, he was obsessed with her now. Like a lovesick schoolboy, he’d spent half the night reliving the moments she’d spent in his arms, recalled the feel of her: soft and delicate, eager and innocent. As fervent in her masquerade as she was in her awakening. Except that the masquerade was intentional, the awakening unconscious. Unconscious, unintentional, and, as of yet, unfinished.
God, how he wanted to finish what they’d scarcely begun.
He could actually visualize her in his bed, her eyes alight with lavender fire, her skin like silk beneath his hands.
She’d shiver and breathe his name as he went into her …
Dammit.
With a grimace, Dustin halted, shifting to relieve the sudden constriction of his breeches. This was madness. In all his life, he’d never behaved like this, not even as an adolescent with his first woman. Yet now, after but two meetings, he could think of nothing but Nicole, his senses in turmoil, his body rigid to bursting.
He had to stop this insanity. If not for his sake, for Nicole’s. The last thing she needed during the next few critical weeks was to be perpetually reminded that he wanted her and that she wanted him, too. He’d vowed to protect her, to keep her and her father safe. Accordingly, he’d hired Alden Stoddard and, by doing so, shouldered the task of helping Nicole convince the world she was a boy.
Something he could hardly do if the very sight of her—clad in jockey garb or not—made him randy enough to howl at the moon.
What in hell’s name had he gotten himself into?
For starters, an unpalatable mystery that, he was beginning to suspect, delved far deeper than he’d originally assumed. Whoever wanted Aldridge off the turf wanted it badly enough to threaten his life … and the lives of all who aided him. Why?
And at the heart of this thickening mystery was a beautiful woman who made Dustin feel too many conflicting emotions to recount, much less understand.
Hell, even that which he understood was unrivaled in its intensity. Desire, commonly the most uncomplicated motivator, elemental as the physical craving of one body for another, took on a new dimension when it came to Nicole. He wanted her with a gnawing hunger that would tolerate no substitute, a hunger that defied control or alleviation.
And that was but the fringe of his bafflement. Because, beyond her body, he wanted to hold her, to help her, to envelop her in a cocoon of safety. At the same time, he wanted to fling open the world’s portals to her, offer her every iota of reckless freedom she’d be offered as a man and denied as a woman.
He wanted to understand the dreams in her eyes and find a way to make them reality.
How in God’s name could he feel so much, so soon? They’d spoken but twice, their conversations brief, shrouded in secrets, their kisses broken fragments of temptation that were a lifetime from fruition.
The truth was, he didn’t even know her.
And yet he did.
Rubbing his eyes, Dustin tried to assess the situation rationally. He was a grown man, one who’d lived two and thirty years and was seasoned enough to know that experience shaped character. It also molded outlook and modified expectations.
