“I’m not so different, Sophie.”
But he was. They both knew it, too. After being kicked out of his home, he’d had something to prove. That he was successful. That he was perfect. She wondered if he understood that about himself.
She stopped at a hill that by afternoon’s end would be covered with children coming out to play. She glanced between the snowy slope and Grayson. “Prove that you haven’t changed.”
His head whipped around. “I don’t need to prove anything ,” he said, his tone that of a lawyer in court.
Sophie smiled. “I’ll save you, Grayson. I’ll save you from a life of little more than drawing up contracts, acting proper, and doing the acceptable thing. And I’ll do that by putting a little excitement in your life.”
His jaw went tight.
“Slide down that hill.”
“Which will prove little more than that I’m a fool.”
“It will prove you know how to have fun.”
“Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, there is nothing to transport me.”
” ‘Transport me’?” she repeated, giving him an incredulous look. Then she shook her head and scanned the landscape, catching sight of a red-slatted sled. “You’re in luck. Surely a sled is transport enough.”
There it went, the tic in his jaw beating like the hall clock. She wasn’t sure if the proof made her happy or sad.
But she was given no chance to think it through when Grayson dropped the box of goods on a bench with a clunk, and stormed over to snatch up the guide rope.
She stood stunned and watched his retreating back as he marched up the snowy hill, his ever so proper coattails flapping, snow no doubt filling his fine leather shoes, the brightly colored sled following along in his wake. She cringed for a second, then laughed up to the skies and raced after him.
At the top she panted from exertion. He stood very still, without looking at her, staring at the city that stretched out below. The sight of him took her breath away. The past disappeared. The future wasn’t a thought. There were only the two of them on this hill, the beauty of him, as always, surprising her.
“Why did things have to change?” she whispered.
He turned to face her, his eyes solemn. “Do you really wish things had stayed the same?”
“I wish my mother were still here.”
He sighed and reached out to hook his arm around her shoulders, pulling her against him. Amazingly she didn’t feel the need to flee. She savored the warmth of him, the scent of male, warm despite the cold.
“True, but you’ve gained so much as an adult,” he said. “Do you want to give all that back?”
“For my mother? In a heartbeat.”
They stood in silence, an ease wrapping around her much like his arm. “I wouldn’t go back,” Grayson said so quietly she almost didn’t hear. “I wouldn’t be young again to save my life.”
It had been horrible for him. Even she, so much younger than he was, had understood that. But just like her, he couldn’t change the past. They could only move forward and make what they could of the future.
She savored the wonderful moment one last second, then she pushed away.
“Come on, Hawthorne, hop on that sled.”
He straightened, coming back to himself. After a second he glanced at the red slats and grimaced, as if he wondered how he had gotten there. “Maybe another time.”
He started away.
“Chicken.”
His eyes narrowed and he turned to face her.
“Baaak, baaak,” she taunted.
“I am not a child to be dared into action.”
She folded her arms into wings and strutted in a circle.
“I am not a chicken.”
“Of course not,” she replied, pulling her knees up high beneath the long skirts of her gown and jutting her chin.
With a curse, he pointed the sled down the hill. “If I break my neck, it is nothing worse than I deserve,” he grumbled, then lowered himself to the wood.
But he was a big man, no longer a boy, and his knees popped up like tents.
Sophie’s eyes went wide before she couldn’t help herself. She burst out laughing until tears rolled down her cheeks.
Glowering, he leaped up. “This is ridiculous.”
“Baaak.”
“Then you get on it with me.”
That shut her up.
“I hardly think I have anything to prove when it comes to having fun.”
A smile pulled on his lips. “Baaack,” he mimicked, the sound drawn out in a taunt.
“Damn you, Grayson Hawthorne.” After which she marched over and plopped down.
Seconds later Grayson mounted behind her. The feel of his arms around her was like a shock. But the shock gave way to unbridled joy as they set off down the hill.
The late-winter sun had turned the new snow to crusty ice, and they slid with growing speed, her boa blowing out behind them like a feathered flag. Wind caught in her hat, tugging it from her head. For half a second they each tried to snag it, but it flipped on the breeze and tumbled away.
Sophie laughed, relishing the moment of unencumbered freedom. Then suddenly they hit a bump and left the ground, before hitting with a crash, the sled tumbling out of control.
Landing on her back with a thud, Sophie stared up at the brilliant blue sky, too surprised to move. Puffs of white clouds drifted by, and she thought she could lie there forever. The peace, the sense of life not pressing in on her. The lack of worry.
Only seconds later Grayson leaned over her, blocking out the clouds and sun.
“Sophie,” he stated, his eyes dark with concern, his brow knitted. But the effect was lost with the snow that frosted both his hair and his expensive cashmere coat. He looked more like a snowman than a proper Victorian solicitor.
“Sophie, are you all right?” he demanded, his voice growing hoarse with worry.
With that she laughed. She couldn’t help it.
Grayson froze, then slowly leaned back on his haunches.
“I’m fine, but I’m not sure you are.”
“This isn’t funny. You could have been killed.”
She raised herself up on her elbows and smiled. “But I wasn’t. Though if looks could kill…”
His scowl deepened, then he started to push up. But he stopped when she caught him in the side of the head with a snowball. She nearly laughed again at the look on his face. Startled, amazed. Then slowly his expression shifted, his eyes narrowing.
Sophie silently cursed herself, knowing she should have quit while she was ahead. Slowly he started toward her.
“Grayson,” she warned, scooting back.
But he caught her ankle, his fingers surprisingly gentle, but still like manacles against her thick wool stockings.
“Now, Grayson, really.” She forced a smile.
“Now, Grayson, what?” he asked, his voice a rumble of sound as he slowly pulled her to him.
“You are acting irresponsibly.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Yes. “It hardly matters what I want. I’m simply thinking of your reputation,” she reasoned. “We are in a public place, after all.”
“You weren’t too concerned about reputations and public places when you forced me to ride down this hill.”
“Forced? I doubt I could force you to do anything you didn’t want to do.”
He shrugged, a crook of his lips beginning to show. “True.” His smile widened. “You badgered me into doing it.”
“I do not badger.”
But the words trailed off when she found herself so close to him they nearly touched.
He had let go of her ankle, and he reached up to brush his gloved fingers down her cheek. “I’ve missed you,” he said.
Self-conscious, she snorted. “You weren’t missing me last week when I was advising your client.”
He chuckled, his fingers still brushing against her cheek. Her heart beat hard and she told herself to flee, but
she couldn’t. She stared at him, her mind racing.
“That was last week,” he said, before his face darkened. “You have a way of making me forget.” He hesitated. “But I’ve never forgotten the baskets you sent me when I lived in Cambridge.”
She felt the red that flushed her cheeks. He hadn’t forgotten. “God, I was so silly. Sending those things like you needed me to help you with food.”
“I did.”
The words made her heart snag in her chest.
“You saved me from needing to steal during those first months when I didn’t have any money.”
“I can’t imagine you without money.”
“Imagine it. You should have seen the place I lived in.”
“Oh, but I did see where you lived!”
This time it was Grayson who went still. “What are you talking about?”
Instantly she cursed herself for mentioning her nocturnal trip to Cambridge all those years ago. She did her best not to think about the night she had slipped inside that dismal garret and found him. The beauty of him, the naked, hard planes of his body held in the hands of someone else.
Shocked and devastated, she had backed out silently. To make matters worse, the next morning it had been announced that the Grand Debut solo had gone to Megan Robertson.
Sophie had fled for Europe on the first ship out of Boston Harbor, the document signed giving her father control of her affairs.
“It was nothing,” she said, brushing snow away from her skirts to keep her hands busy. “I just happened to be in the neighborhood once.”
“Good God, when?” He leaned away.
“Before I left for Europe,” she said casually. Though she didn’t feel casual at all. If only he had been alone, life would have been so different.
“I always wondered why you didn’t say goodbye.”
His words surprised her, since she hadn’t gone there intending to say goodbye. At the time she hadn’t known how wrong things were about to go.
But suddenly he was smiling broadly, making him look for all the world like an errant schoolboy. She realized he was inordinately pleased.
“I knew I couldn’t have been so wrong about you,” he said.
His joy was contagious. And the nighttime visit was suddenly in the past. She felt his joy, felt that old bond, as if they were connected. And before she knew what she was doing, she pelted him with another handful of snow.
This time he wasn’t surprised. He grabbed up some himself, and when she tried to scramble away, he pinned her in the snow, then stared at her. His smile faded, that deep intensity filling his features.
She could only stare back. Then he tossed the snow aside and lowered himself until they lay face-to-face.
“I’m going to kiss you, Sophie.”
Tell him no. Get away. Run as fast as you can.
Her fingers curled in his snowy lapels as he leaned close.
The kiss was sweet and gentle, and her heart soared. His lips tasted hers, brushing back and forth. He pulled back and met her gaze.
“Sophie.”
The implacably hard, ruthless man had faded away, making it more difficult than ever to resist him. Making her feel safe. He looked at her, his dark eyes suddenly aching, desperate. In that moment he looked vulnerable as she never would have imagined this man could be. His strength drew her and repelled her in turn. She couldn’t afford a strong man who would try to dominate her life. But this vulnerability of the soul drew her in a way that made pushing away seem impossible.
Her heart tightened with something she couldn’t name. Panic? Perhaps. But it felt like something more. As though she wanted to give in. Despite everything.
With a start she turned her head away, pressing her cheek against the snow. But he cradled her chin and pulled her back. She could see the passion in his eyes.
He didn’t say a word, he only dipped his head again, and this time the kiss was a demand. He lowered himself with a groan, his arms wrapping her close. And she was lost.
He caught her lower lip between his teeth, gently, barely. Then he slanted his lips over hers. She hated the shiver of feeling that raced down her spine, much less did she understand it. She only knew that she wanted his touch, seemed to need it in some elemental way.
He groaned when her hands slipped up around his neck, and she felt the minute he started wanting her more. She relished the knowledge, though she knew she shouldn’t.
Opening his coat, he pulled her inside. She could feel his heat and the strength of him. His hands ran up her sides, his thumbs grazing her breasts beneath the bodice of her gown. The simple touch sent sensation jolting through her. But the jolt mixed with fear, and she stiffened.
Grayson sensed the change and he pulled back to look at her. She saw his eyes, his achingly dear face, mixed with that unfamiliar desperation she had never seen before—as though he needed her more than she understood, in ways she had never guessed.
“What is it?” she asked, reaching up and touching his cheek.
The darkness in his eyes flared, sharp, fierce. Yearning. But then he turned his head and kissed her palm, pulling one finger slowly into his mouth.
Darkness and fear were pushed to the murky edges of her consciousness as he pressed his lips to the tender spot beneath her ear. Everything was swept away then. Only Grayson was left, and the intensity he brought to life in her body. Tumbling in the snow on a winter day, in a town to which she had sworn she would never return.
He started to pull away. But she only held him close. “Don’t leave me,” she whispered.
He stared at her. “I won’t.”
He pulled her tightly into his arms, neither of them aware of the cold snow or the world around them as he rolled over, taking her with him until she was on top of him.
“Hey, mister, what are you doing with my sled?”
It took a second for the words to penetrate her senses. When they did, she craned her neck to find a little boy leaning over them, his eyes accusing.
Grayson froze, then pulled them both up from the snow with an athlete’s swiftness.
The child’s eyes went wide over the sheer size of Grayson and the clearly expensive clothes covered in snow.
“I was just borrowing your sled, young man. I appreciate the loan.”
The boy stepped back as he glanced between Sophie and Grayson. “Sure, sure.” Then he grabbed the rope and ran across the snow, the sled jerking back and forth as he went.
After a moment, Grayson turned back with a wry smile. “He won’t be back for a while.”
Sophie had to orient herself, trying to grasp what had happened before the child showed up. “If ever,” she managed.
She headed for the street.
Grayson caught her arms and brought her into his embrace. His laughter trailed off to a satisfied smile. “You please me, Sophie Wentworth.”
With one strong hand, he tilted her head and kissed her deeply before he set her back, then retrieved the box and headed for Swan’s Grace.
Her knees felt weak, and as she watched him go, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to chase after him or nail him in the back with another snowball for his arrogance. Please him, indeed.
Chapter Thirteen
“Have you set a date yet?”
“Good morning to you, too,” Grayson said as he entered his father’s study in Hawthorne House the following day, a late-winter storm brewing outside.
His boot heels rang against the hardwood floor before hitting carpet, the sound instantly muffled by thick-piled wool. It was Friday, nearly noon, and Grayson had spent the morning in court. He came by now after receiving word from his father to join him for lunch.
Bradford grumbled. “I don’t need sarcasm. I get enough of that from Lucas.”
“Have you talked to him then?” Grayson asked, surprised, as he folded his long frame into one of the wing-backed chairs in front of his father’s desk.
Bradford finished up with a document in front of him, then looked up. “He ju
st left.”
Grayson sat forward. “Lucas was here?”
“He came by looking for you.”
Bradford slammed his fist against the desktop, making pens and a letter opener jump. “He had the audacity to stand there and tell me he was having an outstanding year. Hell, with each day that passes, more and more people learn that my son owns a gentleman’s club.”
“I doubt everyone knows.”
“Anyone who matters.”
Grayson studied his father. Without warning he thought of Sophie telling him that he expected people to be like him or they were wrong. Was there another way to be in life? Was he turning out to be like his father, a man whom he could barely tolerate?
He had worked hard to live up to what was expected of him, then worked harder to fit back in to the world of his family until it became habit. Was there a place between wildness and strict propriety?
He cursed silently.
“Mother must have been thrilled to see Lucas,” he said, forcibly changing the course of his thoughts.
“I didn’t tell her he was here.”
Grayson stared at his father incredulously, an incredulity born of frustration. “She’ll be furious.”
“Your mother does what I say,” he replied angrily, tossing the pen into its holder, “and I won’t allow her to see him until he straightens out his ways.”
“Then she is likely never to see her youngest son again.” His fingers curled around the chair arm as he fought the urge to pummel his own father. That wildness within him flared, wildness that had begun to rise back to the surface since Sophie arrived.
“Damn it, what did I do to deserve such a derelict of a son? An owner of a saloon, for God’s sake.”
“A gentleman’s club, I believe it’s called.”
The older man focused on Grayson. ” ‘A rose by any other name is but a rose.’ “
“Ah, I see you even make changes to Shakespeare. Does anyone please you?”
“What has gotten into you?” his father snapped.
Grayson wanted to know as well. Recently he found himself questioning aspects of life, things that had always been clear. Society. His place in it. What he wanted in a wife. Sophie made him second-guess himself.
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