A Midsummer Night's Romp (22 page)

Gunner met his brother's eyes. “Could I get your light, please, El? This is Lorina, by the way. Lorina, my brother Elliott, Baron Ainslie. That's Alice, his baroness, beyond him.”

“Hi, Lorina!” Alice called, waving. “Good to see you again. It's been a long time, huh? I look forward to
having a chat with you about Sandy. Er . . . later. When you're not so . . . occupied.”

Lorina, now draped across his lap, gave a feeble smile in reply. “Nice to see you again, Alice. I'm sure you'd like some sort of an explanation about what we're doing down here—”

Gunner stopped her talking by dint of covering her mouth with his hand for a few seconds. “I don't think that's necessary.”

“But they're going to want to know what we were doing—”

“No,” he said firmly, the humor in the situation making his lips twitch. “I think they know exactly what we were doing.” She turned beet red and started sputtering an explanation that he ended by announcing, “You may congratulate us, actually. We have decided to get married.”

“We have not!” Lorina managed to say before he rolled her over so that her face was into his chest.

“Ignore her. She's a bit disconcerted by the fact that our lamp went out several hours ago.”

Lorina struggled against him, but he kept her firmly clasped to his chest.

Roger gave a cheer and started babbling to Sue about the possibility of having a wedding the last week of the show in order to drive up viewers, while Alice clapped excitedly. “You can have the wedding at the dower house now that the renovations are done! Oh my god, this is so exciting! Elliott, isn't it exciting? Your mom is going to go ballistic! Good thing she's coming home in a few weeks.”

“Very exciting,” Elliott said, giving Gunner an unreadable look. But at least he had the presence of mind to set down the flashlight he'd been holding, and turned
to shoo the clutch of people back along the passageway to the stairs. “We will get the full details in a bit, everyone. Now, I think you've filmed enough.”

Roger clearly wanted to protest, but didn't wish to annoy Elliott, so with a reluctant wave of his hand, he instructed the film crew to follow him and Sue.

Gunner didn't need to catch the acid look that the latter cast him to know he was now in her bad graces, but he didn't particularly care. What he did worry about was what Lorina would say as soon as he released her.

He looked down at her. She had tried to push herself back from where he'd clasped her to his bosom, but gave up when she realized it was doing no good. Now he loosened his hold and braced himself for the barrage.

It wasn't long in coming.

“What the hell do you think you were doing? You could have smothered me with your lovely chest muscles and that soft chest hair, which I never think I'm going to like but which is really nice on you.” She smacked him on the arm. “Don't you ever do that again! Not unless I ask you to, anyway. And why on earth did you tell them we're getting married? Are you insane? Did the lack of light make everything but your genitals wither away and die? You're bonkers—that's what you are. You're outright bonkers!”

“I told you that if we were discovered down here
in flagrante delicto
that I'd have to marry you, and marry you I will.”

“
Have
to marry me?
Have
to? Oh, I do
not
think so,” she snapped, getting to her feet. “No one
has to
marry me, especially not some oversexed, way-too-handsome-for-his-own-good brother of a lord. No sir! The man I marry is going to feel
grateful
to me, not beholden by some outdated and totally insane moral code that says men in the act of getting their jollies off have to wed their fellow jollyee.”

He waited until she took a breath, and awkwardly got to his feet, shaking off his jeans as he did so, and attempting to hop his way into them. He had to sit down in the dirt to do it, which left grit in unmentionable places. “We'll talk about it later,” was all he said.

“We'll talk about it when
I
say we will talk about it,” Lorina yelled, then stopped, realized what she'd said, and huffily donned her own clothing, muttering all the while, “Of all the stupid things to say in front of people . . . we're going to get married, he said, just like
he
gets to decide that without me having any input whatsoever, not that I'd marry him now if he was the last man on the earth. . . . Where the hell is my left shoe? I am a strong woman, one who does not allow men to run roughshod over her, and that includes making decisions about what I do with my own life. That is
so
something my father would do! Well, I won't have it, do you hear me? You may be the only man I'm comfortable with, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let you push me around!”

Gunner took mental notes while she ranted, but wisely kept his thoughts to himself. Ten minutes later they emerged from the stairs back into the main cellar. He could hear the sounds of digging and voices coming from the northern end, but didn't stop to investigate whether anything of interest had been discovered. He escorted a still muttering Lorina up the stairs and to the kitchen, where he knew the family would be. But rather than stopping there and accepting the cups of tea that Salma held out to them, he shook his head and said, “We'll be down shortly,” and gently pushed Lorina out the door and into the hall, up another flight of stairs, and finally into the small suite of rooms that had been his since his father had died, and he had inherited Elliott's former digs.

“The shower is in there,” he said, pointing to the
attached bathroom. “If you've got dirt in the same places I do, you'll want to get it out before facing the family.”

“They're
your
family, not mine,” Lorina said huffily, but immediately started removing her clothes. “I don't have to face them about anything. I'm no one to them, nothing, more than nothing. Just some chickie you got it on with in the bolt-hole. Although I do feel bad about Cressy seeing us.”

“Don't,” he said resignedly. “I'm sure she's going to manage to turn the event into a horse of her own.”

He would have liked to join Lorina in the shower, since he could think of nothing more pleasurable at that moment than soaping her up while standing under a stream of hot water, but when he peeled off his clothes and entered the bathroom, the glare she gave him through the shower door warned that his presence was not going to be welcome. He sighed and, wrapping a towel around his waist, left his rooms.

Lorina was out of the shower when he returned. He held out a handful of clothing. “These belong to one of my sisters. She's about your size, and I thought you might like some clean things to change into. At least until I can have your own things brought here.”

“And why, pray tell, would you have my things brought to your room? Do you think that just because we slept together means I'm moving in?”

“No, I think you're moving in because that's how married people live.”

Lorina took a deep breath, then two more before finally managing to get words out. “I see you are confused about several points. First of all, we aren't married. Second, and this is the most important, so I suppose it should really be the first point, I am not some mousy little woman who wants and needs a man to make decisions for her. Third, and this is almost as important as the new
first point, so I suppose it should be second—hell, now I'm confusing myself—third, no man tells me what to do. I make my own decisions about what I do with my life.”

“I think that your third point and the first one are basically the same,” he explained gently, wanting to wrap his arms around her. More than that, he wanted to take the hurt from her, the same hurt that showed in her eyes . . . in between the flashes of ire, that is. “And I apologize.”

She had opened her mouth to dispute what he said, but paused, a little frown pulling her brows together. “You . . . you do?”

“Yes. What I said was thoughtless and high-handed. You have every right to be annoyed with me, although in my defense, I'd like to say that I said what I did with your best interests uppermost in my mind.”

She crossed her arms. “And how exactly does announcing our upcoming nuptials without even bothering to ask me represent my best interest?”

“You need me,” he said simply, deciding honesty was definitely the best policy with her.

“Me?” She looked aghast. “I don't need anyone!”

“Of course you do. We all need people—I need my family, and Cressy, and now you. And you need me because . . . well, because.”

“Because why?”

He considered her stance—it reminded him of a deer about to bolt. Carefully, mindful of her feelings, he answered, “You said earlier I was the only man you were comfortable with. I assume that means some men in your life have not been as considerate of you as they ought to have been. I will never be inconsiderate of you.”

One of her eyebrows rose in a mute statement.

He made a little conciliatory gesture. “Other than announcing our engagement without first asking you, that is.”

She shook her head. “You really do take the cake—do you know that?”

“Possibly, but you have to admit that a marriage between us would solve a lot of problems.”

“Oh, really?” She stood before him with a towel tucked around her torso, unfortunately hiding those lovely breasts from his view. “Such as?”

“It's generally viewed as the right thing to be done when one is discovered in such a situation,” he said, trying to think of valid reasons why she should marry him. He knew why he wanted her, but finding reasons for her to accept him was more difficult.

“If you're in a Georgette Heyer novel, possibly. But I have news for you—no one does that sort of thing these days.”

“It would allow you to stay in England longer than a normal tourist.”

“What makes you think I want to stay here?”

He didn't answer that. Searching his mind, he offered, “We wouldn't have to sneak around in order to make love. It wouldn't shock Cressy to know we were sleeping together if we were married. And it would make Salma happy. She's long wanted to see me happily settled.”

Lorina hesitated. “Much as I like Salma, I'm not prepared to get married just to please her.”

“You have to admit that we get on well together. Very well together,” he said with a little smile. “Think of how well things would go if we weren't on a dirt floor, hmm?”

She gave a ladylike snort. “There is more to life than mind-blowingly wonderful sex.”

“And,” he said, presenting his coup de grâce, “if we were married, I could teach you how to be a proper photographer, so you wouldn't have to go around pretending anymore.”

The color faded out of her cheeks, and her gaze
dropped. Instantly, he felt consumed with guilt and, without thinking, took her in his arms, kissing her hair. “I'm sorry, love. I shouldn't have said that. I really am an oaf, aren't I?”

“No,” she said, her voice muffled as she snuggled her head into his neck. Her arms were tight around his waist. “It's not you, Gunner. It's me. I'm the one who is an oaf. And more. I've lied to you and Cressy and Salma and Roger, and, oh, everyone. And if you knew the truth about me, you'd never in a million years even joke about getting married. I'm not who you think I am. I have . . . dark secrets.”

“You are a warm, loving woman,” he told her, wondering if she was going to trust him enough to tell him those secrets. “I'm sure you had a good reason for lying to us all.”

“I do,” she said, making a suspiciously wet sniffling sound. He pulled back and tipped her head up. Her lashes were damp. “Oh, god, Gunner, you're going to make me tell you, and then you're going to hate me, and you'll tell everyone about me and then they will hate me, too, and I just don't think I could take that!”

He brushed away a tear that had welled over her lower lashes. “I think it's safe to say that there's little you could do to make me hate you, and even if you did harbor some secret so heinous that it made me think twice about you—not that I think anything could—then I can promise you I won't tell anyone else about it.”

She swallowed hard and slid her hands up his chest, her fingers sending little tingles of electricity along his flesh. “I'll tell you, but if you hate me because of it, I'll never forgive you.”

He kissed her, and led her over to the bed, where he pulled her down onto his lap. “Fair enough. No, to the right, those are my balls. Thank you. Comfortable? All right, begin.”

Lorina leaned into him, tracing random patterns on his left pectoral. “It all started with my friend Sandy. She's Alice's foster sister, or one of them. I gather Alice lived with a few foster families.”

“She did. She's remarkably well-adjusted despite it, although I think she gave Elliott a few bad moments before she settled down.”

“Well, anyway, she lived with Sandy's family for several years, and since they were nearly the same age, they hung out together. Then Sandy went to college, and Alice turned eighteen and left the foster system, but they stayed in contact. Sandy and I met when we were roommates our freshman year. When we left college, we got an apartment together. She went into child welfare work, and I got a job teaching French to community college students. During summers, Sandy took time off to pursue her lifelong passion by volunteering at archaeological digs all over the world.”

“Ah,” Gunner said. “I wondered when we'd get to Thompson. I take it she met him at one of the digs?”

Lorina nodded. “And fell for him hook, line, and sinker. Came back from a dig and told me she was in love, and couldn't wait to quit her job so she could join him, and live happily ever after, et cetera.”