AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Even if it meant the world to her.
Unable to stand the ambiguity of what had just happened consuming her mind for another second, she tilted her head down, her forehead sliding along the skin of his chest. “I need to get dressed. We need to leave soon.”
Silence. His arms tightened harder around her.
She shifted her face upward, her chin resting on his chest. “You don’t want me to go there.”
His light brown eyes seared into her. “I don’t.”
“Why?”
“You don’t need them. They aren’t the salvation you think they are.”
She drew a deep breath and pulled slightly up and away from him. “I may not need them, but I do need to know—know what happened to my mother. My father. Mama June never got a chance to tell me of them—the real story—if she even knew herself.”
“Don’t you think there was a reason for that?”
Her mouth clamped closed.
Of course, there was a reason for that. She knew it as well as he did.
But it had been years. Years and years since her mother had left these shores.
Whatever had happened, surely the passage of time had numbed memories, be they good or bad.
They had to welcome her into their family.
They had to.
{ Chapter 12 }
Pen stood in the middle of the peach-hued drawing room, holding her body still as she glanced about her. Her fingers curled into each other and her middle right finger began scratching her right palm, the seam of the new white satin gloves Strider had procured interrupting any damage her nail could do.
Aware that her body had just betrayed her within a minute of setting foot into the Jacobson manor house, she turned slightly away from Strider standing next to her, feigning interest on the large pastoral oil painting to the left of the white marble hearth.
Strider stepped around her, blocking her view of the painting, his gaze intent on her as he grabbed both of her wrists and pulled her hands apart.
He leaned forward, his lips next to her left ear, his breath tickling the skin along her neck. “Don’t fall to it, Pen. Don’t stiffen or I’ll have to set my lips onto your neck in this very proper peach explosion of a drawing room.”
“Your lips are already nearly there,” she whispered, praying the butler that had just let them into the room hadn’t turned around and was watching this spectacle from the doorway.
“So don’t make me slip and do it. For if I slip, my hand may just stray to your breast to steady myself.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“There is very little in life I won’t do.”
He drew back slightly and the devil spark in his eyes forced an exasperated smile onto her lips before she could control it. The bugger. With that low rumble of his voice, the mere mention of touching her breast with his lips on her neck made her core awaken, heat flooding between her legs.
He dropped her wrists and moved to stand next to her, admiring the landscape scene with a sudden devoted interest. He’d donned a different tailcoat for this meeting—crisper, the lines of it impeccable—but less functional than the dark coat he usually wore, if he was wearing a coat at all.
His hands clamped behind his back as the tip of his head nodded to the painting. “A celebration of sheep, if I’ve ever seen it.”
“It is.” She looked to him. “The butler said Lord and Lady Jacobson were expecting us. How did you arrange to have them meet with us?”
“I had to call in a favor from a friend of Lord Jacobson. That has gotten us in the door, at the least.” He glanced at her and his eyebrows lifted. “What did you think, we would knock on the front door and they would welcome us into their home?”
“Maybe? It would be polite.”
