“Are you all right?” His warm breath swept over her heated cheeks. She inhaled to draw in some much-needed air, the heady scent of him sending her pulse hammering. Her gaze dropped to his lips as they curled into an all-knowing smile.
“You want to kiss me, don’t you?” His smooth voice hypnotized her for a moment, her head drifting toward his mouth, his hand lifting to guide her there. At the last possible moment, she jerked upward, her fingers grasping for the railing to steady herself.
He appeared unaffected, though, even shrugging before pulling up to stand before her once again. He shoved the money toward her, cocking one eyebrow when she didn’t take it right away.
The entire episode felt like a dream. “I really didn’t expect—”
He leaned toward her. “Then you shouldn’t have suggested it.”
Offended by his tone, she tugged the money from his hand and turned to trek the rest of the way up the stairs. She tried to convince herself she’d done the right thing by taking the money and losing part of her father’s memory.
“I could really go for some tea.”
She sighed, loud enough for him to hear. She supposed he’d saved her enough times this evening to deserve, at most, one small cup of tea.
“Fine. One cup, and then you wait downstairs.”
“Agreed.”
She turned and walked the rest of the stairs to her home. Her one-room apartment remained as she’d left it: the dishes drying in her wooden rack, her futon bed wrinkled, but made, a jersey towel drying over her bathtub and her literature assignment waiting in her backpack on the miniature drop leaf kitchen table. She placed the money inside an empty cookie jar on the edge of the counter and tapped it shut.
“Good God. You live here?”
Abby rotated to find Edmund’s face twisted in disbelief. His expression was a painful reminder of what little she had in life compared to, well, everyone she knew. It was also a reminder of how far she’d come since her father died. She remained, as he’d hoped, on the same path he paved for her. He had meant to keep her safe and secure. She believed it only kept her from finding a place to build her own memories. So far, she’d only managed to confine them.
“If you’re going to complain, you can leave now.”
Edmund sent her a seductive glare. Out of patience, and with the night growing late, she shook her head. “That smoldering look might work on simpering females like Zella Pendleton, but not me.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Was I smoldering?”
Unnerved, she clicked her tongue. “You know what I mean.”
He nodded, but continued to glance around, his gaze intense and wide with amazement. When her parents acquired the record store over thirty years ago, they’d made the upstairs their home. After Abby was born, they moved across the street to a modest two-bedroom apartment. It was here, however, where her mother painted and where they played dress-up and danced to her father’s favorite albums. It was where her memories lived, though fleeting.
“I’m sure my home is as big as your closet, so if you start to get claustrophobic, you are welcome to show yourself out.”
He placed his hands behind his back and shook his head. “No, no. It’s quite…cozy, in a primitive sort of way.”
“Just don’t make yourself too comfortable,” she said, pulling out a chair from under the drop leaf table.
He smiled and sauntered straight toward her futon bed.
“Especially not there!” she called out, but it was too late. His behind had already planted itself on the heavyweight quilt Raify had made her, sometime after Abby’s mother died.
While Abby tried not to let him affect her, his palm fell onto her pillow, caressing it with a masculine hand. She glanced away, but not before a ripple of exhilaration swirled down her spine. She tried to shake it off, blaming it on the near-death experience on the stairs.
“This isn’t 1811 England, you know,” he said, drawing her attention back to him. “And you won’t be ruined if I’m caught trespassing here. Other than that rather uncomfortable looking chair and the bathtub, it appears your bed is the only logical place for me to sit at the moment.” He hesitated, a spark of mischief lighting up those sea-green eyes. “Of course, I am in need of a good wash.”
He shrugged out of his jacket and began unbuttoning his shirt, revealing the powerful breadth of his lean torso.
“No, stop!”
Chapter Five
Abby’s hands flew to her face as if she were indeed an early nineteenth-century virgin, subjected to ridicule and disgrace. She recovered her twenty-first century dignity and removed her hand, half expecting Edmund to stand naked right before her.
By this time, however, he’d closed up his shirt, most of the way, and stretched his long body atop her bed. His penetrating gaze taunted her, challenged her.
Then, as if she’d been smacked in the back of the head by a wayward flying object, she remembered he was only there for the paper, and of course, a cup of tea she agreed to make him in a moment of foolish weakness.
“I know what you’re doing.”
His eyebrows rose. “And what am I doing?”
“You’re trying to distract me.”
“Is it working?”
Abby let out a disgusted breath before leaving his immediate area to go fill a tea kettle with tap water and place it on her two-burner stove. She turned just in time to find Edmund bouncing, with noticeable disdain, on her lumpy mattress.
“Good God. This is atrociously uncomfortable.”
A little offended, she drew back. “Do you always complain this much?”
He smiled. “I’m particular. I like expensive things and furniture that won’t put a splinter in my arse from squirming too much.”
Abby’s mouth dropped open. “You are quite the charmer, Lord Rushwood. I’m sure your game show contestants are going to adore you.”
He continued to bounce. “Yes, as long as I don’t have a futon mattress to bed them on. Being the gentleman that I am—”
She snorted loudly, and he continued unflustered.
“There’s nothing worse than your partner getting a splinter in the middle of lovemaking, for what I remember of American girls, you do prefer the bottom.”
She choked, a blush creeping up from her chest to her cheeks. She tried to hide it, but his crooked grin told her he’d recognized the shade of mortification right away.
“Am I right, Abby?” His sultry voice sent invigorating ripples down her spine, thus causing her pulse to hammer at her throat. She didn’t dare admit she didn’t know.
“For a man who tried saving me from a few wandering hands, your directness regarding sex is…”
“Arousing?”
“Disconcerting,” she said, shaking her head at the smirk he sent her. “Are British guys always so direct with their love life?”
“Sex life, yes; love life…no.”
She harrumphed. “Maybe it’s because you know nothing of the first and are terribly inadequate regarding the second.”
Her words never seemed to faze him. It was as if she took shots at his ego with a cannon stuffed full of fluffy marshmallows.
“Bravo, Miss Forester. You have accomplished spurring my curiosity so that I look forward to the day my inadequacies, as you put them, are laid to rest.”
Her stomach flipped, and this time, she tried to blame it on skipping lunch earlier. In all her life, she’d never stood in the presence of someone so…so…blunt. And lies didn’t count. She stared, she knew, for a long time at him. She memorized his haughty smile, the fluffs in his perfect caramel-colored hair, and the way his chin would descend closer to his chest as his gaze scrutinized everything about her.
“For the record, if you try anything remotely inappropriate, a splinter will be the least of your worries.”
He sent her a casual wink. “Duly noted.”
Abby smirked at him before stepping back toward the stove, wishing her decades-old appliance would go ahead and
boil the water already. She tried to keep quiet, tried not to think of why every time he looked at her, her pulse jumped. She tried in vain.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly do you have that might persuade a woman to marry you? I mean, looks can only get you so far, you know.”
She glanced back in time to watch him sit up and tilt his head at a mischievous angle. “Oh, did I hear a compliment buried somewhere in that sarcasm?”
She began to answer him with a stern no when he sighed and lay back down, interlacing his hands behind his head and closing his eyes. She thought she saw him turn to sniff her pillow.
“Well, besides my fine looks, don’t forget I have a title, a mansion in the south of…somewhere, a villa in Italy, and”—he paused to count on his fingers, at last giving up when he ran out of them—“loads of money at my disposal.”
She clicked her tongue, unimpressed. This, of course, caused him to sit up, his aristocratic lips parting in surprise. Good. She’d pushed him a little off balance.
“What?” he said, his sensual voice reverberating through every cell in her body.
She shrugged, turning her back to him. “All that is very impressive, but I wonder, would it be enough for someone to put up with your egotistical ways? I mean, have you considered what you’d do if you were ever to lose your gilded mattresses?”
His answer came quick, forcing her to spin halfway around, and find him smiling. “Yes, I shall die a frightful death in the fetal position.”
His answer made her think he might actually sleep in a bed made of gold. She stole one of his smiles. “Duly noted.”
For the first time, he stood and ambled close. She attempted to slip away, but he lifted his arms, bracing them on either side of her head. In her wildest dreams, she’d never imagined being pinned against an olive-green refrigerator by a man so wicked and striking.
“How about you, Abby? Are you quite comfortable with nothing?”
His sultry breath tickled the side of her face. Before he decided to ask her if she wanted to kiss him again, she cleared her throat and raised her chin. “My father worked very hard to give me what you see as being nothing. It might not be much, but it’s mine.”
Or, at least, half of it was hers. The rest belonged to Kendra.
Edmund’s gaze fell upon her lips, lingering there for a heart-skipping moment. Mesmerized, eager, and afraid, Abby finished her thought before she caved into his closeness. “It’s like my life; uncomplicated. I know what I want—”
“Do you? I think your life is a lot like your bed: unrefined and uneven, just waiting to be smoothed out with the right…stroke.” As one hand cradled her jaw and the silken pad of his thumb brushed across her lips, she felt the warmth of his other hand penetrate through her shirt. He went no further than this. He had boundaries, Abby thought, unlike the strangers in the bar, at least physical ones. His teasing and taunting was another matter.
“So,” she said, forcing her voice to sound normal. “Are you saying you’ve summed up all my problems and have concluded that your humble touch holds all the answers on how to fix them?”
He stopped caressing her, but his hand never dropped. He leaned closer, challenged by her question. “No, but I’m willing to give it a go.”
She’d opened her mouth to respond when the blasted tea kettle began to whistle, low at first until its ear-piercing shriek forced him back.
“Bergamot?”
His smile widened, devilish and angelic at the same time. “That would be lovely.” He fell away to join her at the small table, taking the seat she’d offered him at first, their elbows almost touching.
She poured milk into the matching peacock blue and white porcelain cups, an heirloom from her mother’s past.
“Cream? How very English of you, Abby Forester.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.” She started to pull the cups away when his hand reached out to stop her. “Don’t. It’s fine.”
She sent him a tired smile. “My mother drank it this way, and Raify, the woman from downstairs, always prefers to have her tea this way.”
“What kind of name is Raify?”
“Hers.” Abby winced at the brusque way she answered him, despite him trespassing on her night so far. Still, she didn’t apologize, feeling his intense gaze upon her face, sliding down at a breathtaking pace toward her throat.
Out of habit, she grasped the locket around her neck and clung to it like a security blanket. His observation rattled her, and she sought to occupy her thoughts with anything but him. Remembering her book assignment, she stood and began unpacking her bag, her hands shaking so the thick version of Jane Eyre tumbled from her fingers and onto the planked floor with a thud.
She didn’t expect him to be chivalrous, although he’d shown those colors once before. She didn’t expect him to do anything but just sit there. However, when he reached out to pick the book up, and their hands tangled in the process, she drew back as if he’d scalded her.
His reaction was less severe; quite lacking, in fact. Embarrassed by her overreaction to his touch, and his placid reaction to hers, she sought to secure the book and end the night altogether. Only he had other plans.
Abby reached out to retrieve the volume, only to have Edmund draw back and take the book with him.
“Are you a fan of Charlotte Bronte?”
“No, I am being forced to read it and Pride and Prejudice, and then write an essay on how my life parallels my two century-old counterparts, if even one exists, and so far it’s not going very well.” She meant to imply he’d messed up her plans on reading. He only smiled at her as she attempted to obtain her book once more, with the same failed result.
“So, which character are you most like, Abby?”
Since she hadn’t read past the back on either one of them, she turned the question around. “So which character are you most like, Edmund?”
With the book still clasped comfortably in his right hand, he abandoned his tea for his favorite seat on her bed. “Since I believe myself both rich and handsome, Mr. Darcy, of course.”
“Don’t you mean vain and disagreeable?”
He chuckled before sobering. “So you do know a little about the characters.”
Abby shrugged. “When I’m flipping through the channels and see Colin Firth, dripping wet, I’m going to stop and pay attention.”
Edmund’s lips curled into a smile. “Of course.”
She didn’t even bother to ask what he meant. “I just wished we had something more modern to read and compare. I really can’t afford to fail this class.”
He laughed before expressing his opinion on the matter. “Both books are classics and surpass time. And how does a woman fail Women’s Lit?”
She ignored his second question and answered his first. “No, Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennett are two women trapped in a man’s world who aspire to become wives. How does that surpass time?”
“And what do you aspire to be, Abby Forester?”
She stood in astonishment at the question. Of course, she was trying to keep her father’s shop from being turned into a hair, or worse, nail salon. Wasn’t that enough for now? Wasn’t it enough to want him to be proud of her? The answer nagged at her until Edmund remained too silent, his attention turning back to the book.
“I believe you should try and keep your mind open when reading both.”
Abby’s mouth dropped open. How dare he accuse her of being closed-minded? He, a man whose main occupation was to scrutinize everything and everyone around him. Affronted, she seized the only flaw she could find with him, albeit not too successfully. “Well, at least I’m not some fake gentleman hiding behind a prominent title.”
His beautiful eyes widened, but his smile never faded. “Since you opened the gate, let us travel down the road of fake attributes, Abby.” His gaze dropped to her breasts and lingered there.
Fiery warmth rushed through Abby’s veins. She didn’t remember how she’d come to ob
tain her phone so quickly, only that it went whizzing in the air, missing his side by mere inches. The vase Derek bought her after she’d caught him with his ex, sustained considerable damage, second only to her phone.
“Get out!”
Her blood flowed like a furious river, and she dared Edmund to say something else. The teakettle was the closest thing to her hand now.
“You’re not a very good shot, are you?” he said, pointing toward his head.
She dropped her gaze from his temple to his midsection. “I wasn’t aiming at that one.”
His shoulders dropped and he held his hands up in a surrendering pose. “Perhaps we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot.”
“Don’t tell me you thought of something nice to say.”
“Hardly. You appear to be a desperate woman in tremendous need of a good shagging, and I could think of no greater torture than to spend one more minute in your company. Unfortunately, the fate of my sex life depends on you giving me that research paper. So, I’m going to make you a deal. I’ll give you two thousand pounds for the wretched document, and then you’ll never see me again.”
Abby inhaled, gathering enough verbal fortitude to rebuke his offer. “Perhaps in the world you come from, insults and inhospitable boasts are used to get what you want, but not in my world. You could throw twenty thousand pounds in my direction and I still wouldn’t give you the darn thing.”
She believed he expected her to break down and give in. She didn’t. She wouldn’t. After several moments of staring each other down, he confronted her without a smile or a proud stance.
“Where is it, Abby?”
She didn’t answer him, prompting him to take matters into his own hands. She stood in disbelief as he began circling the room like an anxious lion.
It wasn’t until he stopped at her nightstand that she rushed at him, interlocking her arms around his powerful midsection. He was hardness and strength, barely budging as she worked up a sweat trying to haul him back. With her body tiring and her arms shaking, she ducked under his elbow, placing herself between him and the small mahogany antique.
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