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“I can’t tell you how many times I dreamed that you would come,” she told him softly. “But it makes no difference, in the end. At least I know that now.”
She told herself that was a kind of gift. A bit of grace in an otherwise bone-chilling December. Something she would find a way to live with, going forward.
The way he looked at her then was in no way graceful. “I think you will find it a stark difference, indeed, to wake the morning after next to find a man half in the grave heaving away on top of you.”
Timoney did not particularly wish to imagine that. Some demon moved in her, however, and she found herself smiling serenely at him as if the image did not bother her at all.
“Crete.” She tried to sound something like pitying, because it felt good. To pity someone other than herself. “You’re too late.”
His hard mouth moved. That was all. Maybe she needed to examine why it was she wanted it to mean more than it did. “That sounds a great deal like a challenge.”
“It’s really not.” She thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her cloak, not sure that she would ever truly be warm again. Not now that he’d reminded her what true heat was like. True fire. “I do appreciate you coming here and reminding me exactly why I’m making the decision that I am.”
Crete studied her. The moon came out from behind the clouds again and shone down all around them, making everything feel magical and miraculous—and a great many other things that were not true. She blamed Christmas. And him.
“You’re getting married in the morning,” he said, after a moment. “That means I have the whole of the night to change your mind.”
And like that, she lost the ability to breathe again. “It...absolutely does not mean that.”
His eyes glinted with a hint of heat. “I don’t mind telling you, little one. I like my chances.”
“What do you think will happen? Do you think you’re going to so muddle my head with sex that I’ll forget what you did to me? That you had me bodily removed from your flat?” And she still couldn’t breathe, but it turned out, she didn’t care about that as much as she could have. As much as she should have. “Because let me assure you, Crete. I won’t forget that. Ever.”
“Forget or do not forget,” he said with a shrug. Ashrug. “All I ask is that you allow me to remind you of everything else.”
Timoney couldn’t understand why he wanted to do this. It didn’t make sense, not after the night he’d so cruelly tossed her aside. When he’d been brutally clear that there was no future here, no matter what.
She stared at him in the mist and moonlight, that beautiful face of his set and unreadable, the way it always was.
And she reminded herself that she had survived him. She had survived that night, though she’d thought it might kill her. Dead inside though she may have felt, she had not, in fact, died. She wasn’t the same woman he’d crushed so easily.
And she was marrying Julian tomorrow, no matter what he did tonight.
If, as she suspected, the light of day would remind Crete how little he wanted the things he seemed to think he wanted here in the dark, that was fine.
What would it hurt to treat this as a little exercise in wish fulfillment until then? She wasn’t susceptible to him now—not the way she had been, anyway. She could have lost herself completely in him only moments ago, but she hadn’t. She’d found her footing. She’d held it.
And this was the first time she’d been around him for more than a few minutes without the passion between them erupting, rolling on into that same inferno no matter where they were. The cloakroom of a club. Too many vehicles to count. The bathroom at an upscale restaurant with most of fashionable London on the other side of the door.
There you go, she told herself.It’s already different. You’re fully clothed.
She told herself that the heat she felt inside her then was shame. And then felt a tiny ribbon of real shame, because it wasn’t.
“You’d better come into the house,” Timoney told him, after a moment. After making sure she felt steady enough with the invitation. “But you mustn’t be seen.”
Then she whirled around and started back up the cold stone path, not checking to see if he followed her.
For she knew that he did.
Like something out of a Greek myth.
Are you afraid that if you look back that he’ll be gone?she asked herself as she walked.Or that he won’t?
She led him to one of the doors on the far side of the manor that led to the conservatory, where no one but Timoney ever seemed to go. Her uncle and his guests had moved into one of the sitting rooms, as she’d seen through the brightly lit windows, and she couldn’t think of a reason any of them would venture away from the warmth and the drink to come all the way across into the old part of the house.
It would be safer to take Crete to her bedchamber, where she could lock the door, but she hoped she wasn’t quitethatfoolish.
Once inside, she sat down on her favorite settee, where she’d spent hours and hours as a child. And she wasn’t prepared for the sight of Crete, then, prowling around this particular room as if he was altering her childhood with every step. He was so male. So reckless and bold in this place she thought of as soft. Sweet.
