Page 33 of Heiress Gone Wild

“Well, I’m about to prove you wrong about that.” Still looking at her reflection, he turned his head a bit, inhaling lavender fragrance, savoring the warmer, deeper scent beneath.

“Believe it or not,” he murmured, his breath stirring the loose lock of her hair as he spoke, “some things are worth waiting for. Things like this.” He pulled his hands back slightly, bringing the necklace into the proper position around her throat, letting the jewels fall against her skin as he looked in the mirror and said, “Open your eyes.”

She did, and immediately inhaled a sharp gasp. Her eyes, almost black in the dim light of his bedroom, went wide as she stared at her reflection. Her lips, the same soft pink as the sapphires, parted in pure astonishment.

She wasn’t the only one astonished. To Jonathan, jewels meant little—colored stones and bits of metal strung and soldered together, that was all—mere baubles when they were sitting in a velvet-lined box. But around Marjorie’s throat, displayed to perfection against the backdrop of her creamy skin, jewels became something else, something that made his throat go dry.

The necklace, a collar of marquise diamonds interspaced with cushion-cut rose-pink sapphires fitted perfectly around her long, slender neck. Along the bottom of the collar, larger pear-shaped diamonds dangled, dancing and sparkling in the light, grazing her collarbone. Below the hollow between her clavicles and above the cleft of her breasts, surrounded by the leaflike points of more marquise diamonds, sat the Rose of Shoshone in all its dazzling pink glory.

“Oh,” she breathed, a soft huff of air between her parted lips. “What is it, a ruby?”

“Pink sapphire—which is the same thing, really, though lighter in color. Remember you asked me yesterday what the Rose of Shoshone was?” He nodded to her reflection in the mirror. “Now you know.”

“Good heavens. This is mine?”

“When you turn twenty-one, yes. Do you like it?”

“It’s...” She paused, laughing a little as if descriptions were beyond her. She lifted one hand to her bosom, her fingertips grazing the Rose’s polished surface. “But where did it come from?”

“Your father found it, and all the other jewels in the necklace, long before I knew him. The diamonds he acquired in South Africa, the sapphires in Idaho. As to the latter, he was panning for gold on the Payette River—”

Jonathan broke off, his voice failing, for he saw something in her face that he hadn’t seen before, something in her dark eyes, parted lips, and quickened breathing, something that as a man, he instantly recognized—a dawning awareness of herself as a woman and the power that came with it.

His body responded at once, arousal flaring up within him like a match set alight, and he knew he was in serious trouble.

This was his best friend’s daughter, Billy’s little girl, who he’d sworn to safeguard and protect, and yet, right now, he felt as protective of her as a wolf did a lamb.

He told himself to withdraw, but then, she laughed, a low, throaty sound of feminine exultation that pinned him in place and shredded any thought of withdrawal. Instead of diminishing, the desire within him deepened and spread, and he could only stare at her, riveted, as heat spread through his body. Suddenly, a deathbed promise to his best friend seemed like nothing at all, and he realized what he’d just done had been a huge, god-awful, disastrous mistake.

He’d intended to give her a reason to do things his way. A rather selfish thing to do, he appreciated now, engineered as much for his own convenience as for her well-being, and like most selfish actions, it was coming back to punish him. In spades.

Pull back, he told himself, but he was powerless to make his body obey his will. His senses were aware of every aspect of this moment—the warmed metal of the necklace clasp in his fingers, the loosened wisps of hair at her nape tickling the backs of his hands, the lavender and woman scent of her in his nostrils. He was aware of the glittering jewel nestled above her breasts, the softness of her skin beneath his wrists, and his own rock-hard arousal hidden by the back of the chair.

Reflected in the mirror, he could see the bed, located a scant six feet behind them. Six feet, he thought, all the distance that existed between a girl’s innocence and her ruin. He stared at the bed, anarchy inside him as he fought man’s eternal battle, the battle between desire and honor.

He tore his gaze from the bed, knowing he had to stop this sort of dangerous thinking before it could take hold, but when he looked at her again, radiant and beautiful, with glittering jewels around her throat and a glimmer of Eve’s knowledge in her eyes, he couldn’t resist postponing for just a few more exquisite seconds what he knew he had to do.

She wasn’t laughing now. Perhaps the sense of power he’d awakened in her gave her an inkling of what he felt, because she wasn’t staring at the jewels any longer, but at him, her eyes wide, her lips parted, her cheeks flushed.

Billy’s daughter, looking at him in a whole new way, and yet, still too innocent to know what she could unleash with those soft brown eyes and those kissable pink lips and that smashing body. But he knew, and as he thought of it, the heat inside him grew stronger and hotter, deepening into raw lust.

He was a dog.

Sucking in his breath, he pulled the necklace from around her throat. “You will be making your debut in the spring,” he said, his voice harsh to his own ears as he strove to regain his equilibrium. “You’ll have all the delights of a London season, complete with a coming-out ball, at which you will be able to wear this.” He paused, holding up the glittering jewels in his fingers. “But that won’t be possible if you become an object of shame or ridicule.”

In the mirror, he watched as everything he’d awakened faded from her expression then vanished as if it had never been.

“I see.” She rose to her feet, sliding from behind the chair and turning to face him. “You showed me that necklace so that I would comply with your wishes, is that it?” she asked, a cool, metallic quality in her voice he’d never heard before. “You dangled it in front of me, as if it’s a toy and I’m a child?”

“That wasn’t my intent—”

“‘Be good, little girl, and someday, you’ll have nice things.’ Was that the understanding I’m supposed to get from this little lesson?”

He stirred, appreciating that there was a kernel of truth in her assessment. Worse, in her cool voice, there was anger and unmistakable hurt, but though it cut him to the quick, he knew she’d be hurt a hell of a lot more if he did not do his duty as her guardian.

“My intent was not to manipulate or cajole you, but merely to make you see what’s at stake. If you want to move in society, you must play by society’s rules. It’s that simple.”

She didn’t move. Her expression, so devilishly beguiling a few moments ago, was now pale, polished, and as hard as alabaster, but he shoved aside any regrets.

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