One Dangerous Desire (Accidental Heirs) (21 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Y
OU COULD PUT
off the notion of marriage for a while.” Sullivan’s irritatingly practical suggestion made Rex clench his teeth like he was attempting to bite through a bar of steel.

“Not an option.” Resisting May, pushing her away in an attempt to protect her, might have once seemed a loss he could force himself to endure. Now it was unthinkable. She’d given him her trust. He’d made love to her, knew what it was to hold her as she fell asleep, and to wake with a pleasure-soaked sense of peace.

“Then if you plan to marry her, you must do it while Cross remains free. I’ve set a Scotland Yard man on his trail, but it will do you little good if he’s arrested for some petty crime.”

Rex paced in a circle around Sullivan as he stood in the center of what would eventually become Rex’s managing office at the Pinnacle. The room had just been wallpapered and the scent of paste lingered in the air.

“You’re urging me to be patient. You do know it’s the least of my virtues.”

Sullivan arched an eyebrow and pursed his lips, as if considering whether Rex possessed any virtues. Then his mouth softened into a grin. “In this case, I cannot fault your impatience. You have a chance at happiness, sir. Any man would be a fool not to grasp it.”

“If I trace that comment backward, I believe you’re acknowledging that I’m not a fool, Jack.”

The detective assumed an innocent expression, eyes wide. It suited him ill. “I never thought you were, Mr. Leighton.”

Rex stared at his hired investigator a moment. As usual, Sullivan refused to back down or look away first. “Just tell me it’s begun. That your detective inspector friend has started to build a case against my father.”

“I can assure you on that point.” Casting his gaze down, Sullivan flicked a pocket watch open. “And the guards you asked me to employ for the building site should be here within the hour. I’ve also stationed a man at your house.”

“Just make sure he’s inconspicuous. We don’t want to frighten the neighbors.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Good. You can carry on with your day, Jack. I’ll wait for the guards to arrive and orient them to the building’s vulnerable areas.”

Sullivan surveyed the room, tracking his gaze around every inch. “You don’t even have a chair to sit on.”

“I’ll walk the building.” Not only did he consider it his duty, but Rex enjoyed inspecting each aspect of the builders’ progress. Every nail hammered tight, every brick laid, felt like a victory. The Pinnacle, an impossible dream to the child he’d been, was becoming reality before his eyes. In uncharacteristic moments of wistfulness, he imagined his mother watching its progress. She’d take pleasure in the lush furnishings and the building’s modern design. He hoped she’d feel pride in his accomplishment.

After Sullivan departed, Rex started on the ground floor. The carpenters, painters, electricians, and bricklayers didn’t work on a Sunday, and the lobby area was quiet, the tiled floors echoing his footsteps back to him. As he scanned for the changes wrought since his last visit, May consumed his thoughts. For years he’d been fixated on his own financial and business goals. Now he longed only for a future that included May. He would have to delay the opening of the hotel until the matter with his father was resolved, but he wanted to marry her as soon as he could acquire a license.

He’d take Sullivan’s advice and let the law do its worst to his father. As for Lord Camford, Rex couldn’t think of him without seeing his mother’s eyes. She’d waited for years for her father to answer even one of the letters she sent to him at regular intervals. Now, his grandfather could wait for Rex to feel anything but loathing for the man, if he ever did.

Up the stairwell, he entered the ballroom. The muscles of his face contracted into an unbidden grin. In his mind’s eye, May was here too, pinwheeling around in the middle of the unpolished floor, tracing the glitter in the wall with wonder in her gaze. Finally, after several coats of paint, the room had begun to take on the blue of her eyes.

“I thought I might find you here.”

His body tensed as he turned. He recognized the sweet lilt of May’s voice, but there was a dissonance to it today, like a chord played out of tune.

The grin on his face widened at the sight of her. Having her here, in the flesh, was much better than yearning for her in his head. “Tell me you at least took the carriage this time.”

She didn’t smile at his teasing tone, nor did she look particularly glad to see him. Worse, as he drew near, she flinched back.

If he hadn’t experienced the weeks since they’d met, he might have thought they were back to that first encounter on the street in front of Ashworth House, with May insisting he’d never get to touch her again. But he had touched her, and she’d made him whole, and nothing could be allowed to come between them again.

He ran a hand down the sleeve of her gown and caught her hand. “You don’t appear nearly as pleased to see me as I am to see you.”

“I am.” She ran a bare finger along the edge of his hand, and he felt the stroke at the base of his spine, as if she’d drawn her fingertips down his back. “I’ve missed you since we parted.”

Clasping his other hand ’round her waist, he pulled her close and finally earned the welcome he craved. She let him gather her into his embrace and lifted up on her toes for a kiss. But something was amiss. He sensed tension in her body, hesitation in her touch.

“What is it?”

“I spoke to my father about his ultimatum.” May bit her lip and cast her eyes downward.

“I see.” His belly tensed as he waited for the rest. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing her again, but he would not force her hand as her father seemed determined to do.

“I think he wishes us well.”

Rex released the breath he’d been holding and smiled.

“But . . . ”

Nothing in him tensed as she hesitated. May had chosen him. Her father had given his blessing. His own father would soon be dealt with. Everything else could be managed.

“I would like to take a role at the new store. To learn from Mr. Graves about managing Sedgwick’s.” A frown pinched the skin between her eyebrows.

“Wonderful. Graves seems an able man from whom to learn.” Rex gathered May in his arms.

She pulled back, still frowning. “The store may consume a good deal of my time. Perhaps you’d prefer I helped with the hotel or played hostess at home.”

Despite her serious mien, Rex couldn’t stifle a chuckle. “Yes, I’ve always wanted a wife who would stay home and make me teacakes and arrange ridiculous parlor games.”

With a warm, diminutive palm on his chest, May pushed at him, forcing Rex to loosen his hold. Forcing him to let her go.

Every step she took away from him across the freshly polished floor echoed like a hammer strike in his mind. She was too glum. He missed her light and laughter, her animated enthusiasm about some sight or color that had taken her fancy.

Stopping in the middle of the ballroom, very near where she’d stood the first time he showed her the space, May spoke with her back to him. “Lord Devenham told me that he would do what he should, rather than what he wished to do. That he’d marry a woman he didn’t love because of expectation and duty.”

“What the hell does Devenham to do with us?” His shout trebled against the high dome of the ceiling, louder than he intended. Only yesterday he’d held her, made love to her, experienced a bit of the contentment he’d been pursuing all his life. Now she was talking about the pale, floppy-haired aristocrat who’d asked for her hand in marriage.

“If you’d married Caroline as you’d intended, you would have that doting wife who was content to stay at home.”

“First of all,” he said, forcing the darkness from his tone, “I never intended to marry Lady Caroline.” Considered it, yes, but quickly discarded the notion. Cast away thoughts of any other woman, truth be told, the moment he saw May again.

A spark lit in May’s eyes when she swung around and cast him a narrowed gaze, the perfect peaks of her upper lip slanted down in a doubtful moue. “You allowed her to grope you at Lady Stamford’s party and skated with her at the roller rink.”

“That parlor game was
not
my idea. And I skated with a black-haired, rose-scented beauty at the roller rink. Much less skillfully than she did, I might add. That’s the bit I remember.”

The distance between them was too much. He couldn’t give her room to voice her doubts and worries when it turned the very air between them frigid. As he crossed the half length of the ballroom, Rex held out his arms. “Teach me to waltz.”

Her soft, hesitant smile mended him, somewhere low and hidden in his chest, where unsentimental men weren’t supposed to feel a thing.

“You know how to waltz. You’ve been in London for years and probably attended dozens of balls.” Her shoulders settled back, and her lush lips eased up into a half smile. He dared to draw closer. Close enough to see the blue of her gaze turn vibrant and bright, a bit of the light in her eyes returning.

“Two dozen, at least.”

“And you never waltzed?”

“I managed but quite poorly. I paid for a few lessons.”

May made him suffer, not taking his hand, not filling his empty arms, but she started a tantalizing little dance of her own. Circling around him, as if she moved on the spoke of a wheel, and he was its axis.

“Was he a good teacher? I learned from a frightful man who swatted me with a yardstick for every misstep.”

Maybe May was capable of more patience than he’d given her credit for. He would have snapped the yardstick in two over the man’s head after the first strike.

“She was a fine teacher.”

“She?” The wheel ceased moving, and May shuddered to a stop, hands hooked above each hip. “Did you break her heart?”

“No, if you must know, I broke her toe.”

“You didn’t.”

“During the first lesson.”

Her hands slid down, and he watched them as a hunter watches his prey. He craved those hands in his.

Finally, she put him out his misery and placed one palm against his, positioning his other at her waist. She remained stiff and unyielding, but at least she was in his arms.

“Was she beautiful?”

H
E LICKED HIS
lips before answering. A simple, habitual gesture on most men, but Rex turned it into a seduction. She knew what he could do with those lips. How his kisses could turn her insides to warm syrup.

“She was tall.”

Elegant, long-legged temptress, no doubt.

“And blonde.” May had spent half her life wishing for cornstalk tresses, or even chestnut, perhaps auburn. Any color but the lack of one.

“She wasn’t you.” He closed the distance between them, used his hand at her waist to maneuver her close, and stole her breath in a kiss. He clutched at her like a hungry man, kissed her like they might never get the chance again.

“Ain’t that a lovely sight, boys?” The grinding, smoky voice of Rex’s father sounded from the entrance of the ballroom.

In a single burst of movement, Rex pivoted toward his father and pushed May behind him. She allowed the shelter but lifted onto the tips of her boots to see over his shoulder. His father was flanked by two titans, men half again as tall and half again the width of George Cross’s narrow shoulders.

“Your business is with me, Cross. I’ll see her into a carriage and return to speak with you.” Rex reached back to grasp her hand as he spoke and then strode up to the three men who were blocking the ballroom’s entryway. He stepped toe to toe with his father, holding May protectively behind him.

“Move. Now.” Rex gritted out the words and didn’t flinch when the two behemoths on either side of his father bristled. One lifted a gnarled bit of wood, cradling it lovingly in his arms like a musician might hold his instrument.

His father shuffled back a step, and for a breathless moment, May believed he’d relent. Rex would take them all on to protect her. Of that, she had no doubt, but the notion of the damage the three men could inflict made her feel boneless and weak. She’d never fainted in her life, but suddenly dizziness fought to overtake her.

Clutching at the back of Rex’s coat, she shook herself and managed a deep shaky breath. She refused to be that silly, frivolous girl anymore. Whatever George Cross intended, she’d face it with Rex. Though, at her size, she’d prove next to useless if the three men set on Rex to injure him.

“Really believe she’ll marry the likes of you?” George Cross nudged his chin in her direction. “Think you can satisfy an heiress?”

Despite Rex’s hand holding her in place, May couldn’t stay her tongue. “I’m quite confident he can, Mr. Cross.”

“What if she grows to hate you?” Rex’s father continued as if she hadn’t spoken, staring into Rex’s eyes, an ugly sneer trembling at the edge of his mouth. “Judge you every day, she will, in her pompous, uppity way. As your mother would have done to me.”

When the twisted little man talked of Rex’s mother, May heard the emotion in his voice. Whatever Cross felt for Rex’s mother, he seemed determined to transfer all of his pain and resentment to Rex.

“Step aside,” Rex growled, squeezing her hand, as if to signal that the time had come to move. He reached his other arm out to push his father aside, but Cross feinted back, lifting his own hand out and executing a mock bow, as if to usher them through the doorway.

Rex tucked her under his arm, tight against the hard, heated protection of his body, and moved across the threshold. Just when she thought they’d moved far enough to be free from the grasp of Cross and his cronies, one of the bulky giants reached around her, yanking so hard she slipped from Rex’s clasped hand, nearly off her feet. Then the vise of flesh and iron around her chest was gone, and she was pushed toward George Cross. He hooked her upper arm in his and pressed the cool, sharp edge of a knife to her throat.

“This here’s what we call persuasion, boy.”

When George Cross swiveled with her to face Rex, May saw that he was restrained too. The bearded fellow with a cudgel had him pressed against the wall just inside the ballroom. The rage and frustration in his face made her want to cry out, but she bit back the urge.