Page 44 of No Mistress Of Mine

“Thank you,” she mumbled as she pulled off her gloves, her cheeks burning. Never had the class difference between them seemed greater than it was right now. “Your English tea is something I’m not used to,” she added, even as she wondered why she felt the need for an excuse. “Even when I lived here, I never could quite get the hang of it.”

That made him laugh, and she frowned, taken aback. “Why are you laughing?”

“I’m not laughing at you,” he assured at once. “It’s just the way you talk, your colorful American expressions. ‘Get the hang of it,’ for example. It’s charming.” He paused, and his smile faded. “I’d forgotten that.”

She feared she was the one being charmed here. Damn it, she’d come prepared for a fight, not for this. “Why are you being this way?” she whispered painfully. “Why are you being so nice?”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

It ought to be, but it wasn’t. And that was the problem, a problem she’d sensed the moment she walked in the door today. Denys, angry and resentful, was a man she’d been prepared to meet ever since she’d decided to return. She could hold her own with that man any day of the week. But Denys when he was like this made her feel much too vulnerable.

“Of course it’s a good thing,” she answered, forcing a hearty certainty into her voice that she didn’t feel in the least. “I just wish I knew what inspired this about-face on your part.”

“Nothing earth-shattering. I was railing about our situation to my friends—you remember Stuart, Jack, Nick, and James? Anyway,” he went on, as she nodded, “I was expressing my views about this partnership—”

“And peeling paint off the walls in the process, I bet.”

The wry answering look he gave her acknowledged the truth of that. “I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that my friends found my predicament quite amusing.”

She couldn’t help grinning at that. “Did they?”

“Oh, yes. They pointed out that I was being an utter idiot.”

“And what was your response? Did you tell them to go hang themselves from the nearest tree?”

His mouth twitched. “No, actually. I...” He paused and lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I was forced to agree with them. And with you. Neither of us wants to sell,” he went on before she could express her astonishment at this most unexpected change of heart, “so working together is the only viable alternative.”

“Do you think you can do that?"

“I shall have to.”

“You don’t...” She paused over her next question, not sure she wanted the answer. “You don’t still hate me?”

“I never hated you.” He looked away, drawing a deep breath. “Despite how much I wanted to. And,” he went on, returning his gaze to her face, “in trying to decide what to do with you, I realized that resenting you, fighting with you—whether it be about our past as lovers or our future as partners—is a futile exercise. The only thing to be done is to accept the situation and learn to work within it.”

It was just what she’d hoped for, and yet she didn’t find it the least bit reassuring. “Are you sure that’s how you want to play it?” she asked. “You wouldn’t rather take a piece of my hide?”

“An intriguing notion.” His lashes lowered, then lifted. “Which piece did you have in mind?”

Her heart slammed against her ribs, and her teacup rattled in its saucer.

Dismayed by such an obvious display of nervousness, Lola lifted her cup from its saucer and gulped down the rest of her tea, but though it was hot and sweet and strong, she didn’t feel fortified by it. Instead, she still felt as skittish as a colt.

Seated beside her was the man she remembered from long ago, the one man who’d made her break all her own rules about keeping stage-door johnnies at arm’s length. The man whose kisses had made her head spin and her knees go weak, whose tenderness had softened her hard, cynical shell, whose passion had stolen her heart. This was the man she’d fallen in love with. And it had been a huge mistake.

Her gaze lowered to his mouth, and the kiss they’d shared a week ago was suddenly vivid in her mind. Her lips tingled. Her body flushed with heat, and her heart began thudding in her chest so loudly that when he spoke, she had to strain to hear what he said.

“Would you care for more tea?”

Lola stiffened in her chair. “No, thank you. I’d prefer it if we could come straight to business.”

She grimaced at the tartness in her voice, aware of how rude she must seem in light of his hospitality, but she didn’t know how much more of Denys being nice she could handle in a single day. “Sorry if I’m rushing you,” she added, shoving her teacup toward him as her mind grasped desperately for a viable reason to speed things along so she could get out of here. “It’s just that I... I have plans this evening.”

He took her cup and saucer from her outstretched hand. “Of course. You’re going to the theater, I suppose?” he asked, turning away to set aside their tea things. “Or the opera, perhaps?”

She had only an instant to decide, for any hesitation smacked of lying. “Opera. By the way,” she rushed on before he could ask what was playing at Covent Garden tonight, “I received those financial statements from your office. Thank you for having them sent over.”

“No thanks are necessary,” he said, and to her relief, his voice was brisk and businesslike, expressing no further curiosity about her fictional plans for the evening. “Is there anything you wish to ask me about the state of the Imperial’s finances?”

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