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‘Really?’
‘Yes.’ I hesitated for a moment. But even now that all those insane, irrational words were falling from my lips, I couldn’t do one thing: procrastinate. My mouth snapped open again, and words started pouring out. ‘I am not a man who often expresses his emotions, Miss Linton.’
‘You don’t say?’
She was making fun of me? She dared to make fun of me now of all times? Now, when I was getting ready to…?
What exactly was I getting ready to do?
My mouth seemed to have quite definite opinions on the matter. Without my say-so, it started speaking. ‘I must admit I was…somewhat concerned for you.’
‘Somewhat concerned? Dear God, really?’
She was making fun of me. And, to judge by the sparkle in her eyes, she was having considerable fun doing it. The insolent little…!
I whirled to face her, my eyes alight. ‘Dammit! Do not joke, Miss Linton!’
She blinked up at me, so sweet, so innocent, so completely full of colloquial manure. ‘I wouldn’t dare!’
Stepping forward, I reached out until I had captured her face with my hand. The logical, cold part of my mind was shouting commands to let go, to step back, to keep silent—but for once, I could not keep my mouth shut. Words kept pouring out. Words from deep in my chest where, once upon a time, there had been a living, beating heart. ‘I…I might be slightly…irrationally infatuated with you.’
She put a hand to her chest. ‘Irrationally infatuated? Dear me!’
My jaw clenched hard. How could she still be ridiculing me? I was tearing myself open for her!
Admittedly, I was doing it with a precision scalpel, creating an opening of roughly two point twenty-one millimetres, but that should be enough for anyone, shouldn’t it? It was perfectly clear what I really meant!
But all she did was stand there, grinning up at me with a knowing smile, her head cocked in that way that made me want to…made me want to…
‘All right, all right!’ I snapped. ‘I may even have certain…impulses towards you that border on caring about you!’
There! If that wasn’t romantic, I didn’t know what was.
‘You don’t say?’ She raised an eyebrow. She. Dared. To. Raise. An. Eyebrow. ‘Well, I am so glad to hear that you feel a certain amount of friendship towards me.’
Friendship.
Friendship?
I did my best to nail her to the spot with the pure force of my eyes—a skill that had me served well during many a business negotiation. Right here and now, it didn’t even put a dent in her grin.
‘Friendship is not quite the right word, Miss Linton,’ I squeezed out between clenched teeth, every word a curse and a plea at the same time. ‘My impulses towards you…they might go slightly beyond the platonic.’
‘Oh, so they are Aristotelian?’
Was it legal to sue a woman for damages for excessive verbal torture?
I would have to put my legal team on that.
‘Mr Lin-’ I swallowed, biting back the address, which, by now I had to admit, was nothing but a farce. One I was more than ready to dispense with. ‘I mean Miss Linton, we are not discussing philosophy here!’
She batted her eyelashes at me. Batted her eyelashes. Oh yes indeed, my legal team would be getting work soon. ‘Indeed? Then pray tell, what are we discussing?’
‘I…’ My voice failed. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was such an illogical concept. Such a madness! ‘I…’
‘You can say it, you know,’ she was kind enough to inform me. ‘The word isn’t poisonous.’
