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She jolted. She could see the feral expression now and recognised it as anger.
Her stomach knotted, the lump of guilt and regret growing to impossible proportions.
‘How long have you known?’ she whispered.
And howmuchdid he know?
Did he know about Ruby? About their child? The knots in her stomach became giant serpents.
But, as he continued to stare at her, her own anger surged, along with the devastating hurt she’d buried deep five years ago.
She let it burn under her breastbone now to protect herself from the shivers wracking her body, and the black hole of inadequacy threatening to open up in her chest.
So what if she’d lied to him about her identity? She refused to feel guilty about it. Refused to let him accuse her again, the way he’d once accused that foolish girl.
The girl he’d dismissed without a backward glance—and thrown away so casually.
What right did he have to be angry with her, when he had treated her so appallingly that night? And what exactly did she have to apologise for, when he had never apologised to her?
Brandon frowned, annoyed to see Lacey’s initial shock turn to stubborn resistance, instead of the guilt and embarrassment he had been expecting.
That she only looked more stunning dressed in the creased gown, her short hair a mess of unruly curls, and the bold, belligerent light in her eyes turning them to a golden brown, was neither here nor there.
He wouldn’t be fooled by her act a second time. Heat surged in his groin, calling him a liar.
Well, not until he’d got a few straight answers out of her—to the many,manyquestions which had been queuing up in his head while he’d been sitting in the dark for hours, waiting for her to put in an appearance. That she’d intended to run out on him, without even the courtesy of a goodbye, let alone an explanation, added to his sense of injustice.
‘You may not know this, but you have a rather distinctive birthmark on your right cheek,’ he said, his gaze drifting down to her bottom to make it abundantly clear exactly which cheek he was referring to. ‘I noticed it the first time you tried to trick me into a commitment.’
‘Trickyou?’ She sucked in a furious breath. ‘I didn’t try totrickyou into anything five years ago,’ she snapped, her exploding temper highlighting the gold sparks in her irises. ‘You arrogant, insufferable, overbearing...’ She sputtered to a stop, clearly struggling to locate an insult bad enough.
‘Arrogant, insufferable, overbearingwhat, exactly, Lizzy?’ he goaded, as his own fury pulsed like a ticking bomb. ‘Halfwit, perhaps, given that is what you take me for?’
‘Don’t call me Lizzy,’ she shot back. ‘My name’s not Lizzy any more, it’s Lacey.’
‘So I gather, which begs the question, why did you change it?’ he sneered, letting his outrage at her deception show. ‘Other than to deliberately deceive me, of course? And why did you choose not to inform me we had already met when you walked into my office this afternoon and proceeded to snare me again with your artless little act?’
‘My artless little...?’ Her cheeks exploded with outraged colour as her face turned a surprisingly beguiling shade of red. ‘I did notsnareyou, you arrogant jerk.Yousnaredme.Youinvitedmeto Paris, not the other way around. I tried as politely as I could to turn you down. And you refused to get the message, and refused to take no for an answer, like the overbearing halfwit you actually are.’
‘Ah, yes, your not at all convincing attempt to turn down my invitation. Am I actually supposed to believe now that wasn’t all part of your act too?’ he sneered. ‘To lure me back into your bed.’
‘Oh, go to hell, I don’t give a flying f—’ She stopped dead, clearly making a titanic effort not to utter the swear word for no reason he could fathom. ‘I don’t give a flying feather duster what you do or do not believe!’ she finally burst out.
He should have been even more angry, of course, but the ridiculous alternate swear word had his fury fading.
‘A feather duster?Really?’ he said, having to bite his tongue to stop from smiling.
This was not funny in the slightest. She’d tricked him, deceived him, and he still hadn’t got a single straight answer out of her. But something about the way she was fighting back was making admiration for her—and her temper—build alongside the fury.
It occurred to him she was different from the girl he remembered. That girl had been quiet, subdued, deliberately close-mouthed when he’d confronted her that night about her virginity—making him sure he’d been right, that her ‘sacrifice’ had all been a deliberate ploy to trick him into a commitment. But this woman was a firebrand.
Her glare sharpened. ‘Yes, really,’ she declared. ‘I try not to use profanity when I can help it,’ she said with just enough strained patience to make his lips quirk again.
‘Why?’ he asked, because he was genuinely curious, the coy reply almost as beguiling as the rosy hue on her cheeks.
She looked away from him, but not before he caught the shadow of guilt.
What was that about? Why would she feel guilty about trying not to swear at him? It made no sense.
