Page 88 of Bad Luck Bride

“Pineapple lilies?” She turned her head, and he pulled back a fraction. “What are those?”

“They grow in South Africa. They’re quite pretty, but they smell like a dead body.”

“Lovely.”

“I’ll send a footman with them while you’re out. That way, the room will be divinely wretched by the time you return.” He gave her a look of apology. “I advise you not to test me on this.”

“Oh, very well, since you are determined to use blackmail…” She paused and turned toward him. “How did you know gardenias are my favorite? I don’t remember ever telling you that.”

He smiled back at her. “You didn’t.”

“Then how did you know?”

“I made a calculated guess.” He paused, leaning closer, inhaling deeply, relishing the arousal that began rising inside him even as he reminded himself to keep his head. “Your hair always smells like gardenias. Scented soap, I imagine?”

She tossed her head and looked away, making a scoffing sound that wouldn’t have deceived a child. “That seems like pretty slim evidence to me.”

“On the contrary. No woman would ever wear a scent she didn’t love.”

She sniffed as if unimpressed. “I daresay you know a great deal about what women love.”

He grinned at that. He couldn’t help it; she sounded so prim. “I know enough,” he said. “But I also overheard you in the flower shop at the Savoy, saying you wanted a gardenia for your hat. And…”

He paused again, his grin fading as his arousal rose higher.

“And,” he resumed, bracing himself for the torture he knew was to come, “the first time I ever saw you, you had a gardenia in your hair. Right here,” he added softly, lifting his hand to her temple. Her hair felt like silk, and without thinking, he leaned forward as if to kiss her, but he jerked back in time, letting his hand fall and reminding himself sternly not to ruin the moment by rushing things.

She was staring at him as if in disbelief. “You remember the flower in my hair? After all this time? Most men, I daresay, wouldn’t even know what flower it was, much less remember it fourteen years later.”

He lowered his gaze to her full pink lips, then lifted it again to look into her eyes. “I remember everything, Kay.”

Her tongue flicked over those lips, calling to the desire inside him. “You do?”

“I do,” he said, and took a deep breath, summoning all his control, “I remember that night in Chiswick in the maze, when I kissed you for the very first time. The moon was nearly full, and I remember it made your eyes look like silver. I remember the scent of your hair and the feel of your body in my arms.”

He watched the color wash up her neck and into her face, telling him his words were having an effect, and when her lips parted, he decided to push his luck a little further. “I remember all the times we snuck out of some ball or party, how we talked and laughed.” He lifted his hand again, cupping her cheek, caressing the plump curve of her lower lip with his thumb. “All the times we kissed.”

She was as pink as a peony now, and he pushed on.

“I remember Birmingham,” he said, his voice unsteady to his own ears, “and that inn where we stayed. I remember watching you take down your hair and how it looked like liquid copper in the firelight. I remember your silhouette behind that screen as you changed into a nightgown—the fullness of your breasts, the curve of your waist, the flare of your hips—and I remember that it took every shred of willpower I possessed not to fling the damn screen aside, haul you into my arms, and make love to you right then and there. I remember heartily cursing myself for doing the noble thing and sleeping on the floor because we weren’t married yet, and I remember the torture of lying there in the dark with you so close by and me with raw, unrequited lust coursing through every cell of my body. Hell,” he added with a hoarse laugh, “it’s hard not to remember all that, since it’s precisely what I’m feeling right now.”

Her breath was coming faster now, quick little puffs against histhumb, and though he knew making love to her with words was a tactic that seemed to be working, he also knew that he was at the brink.

He wrenched his hand away, and when he took a step away from her, it felt as if he were ripping himself in two.

“It’s getting late,” he said. “We should go back.”

“Yes,” she agreed in a whisper. “But then…” She paused and looked at him, and something in her eyes made him fear that all his efforts to be noble were about to be absolutely shredded. “When have we ever done what we should?”

He didn’t know quite who moved first, but suddenly, the clipboard between them was clattering to the floor along with her handbag, and she was in his arms. As his hands pressed into her back to pull her even closer, she rose on her toes, and then, to his stunned surprise, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.

At the touch of her mouth, all his resolutions about courtship seemed absurd. His arm wrapped tightly around her waist, and his other hand cupped her cheek.

Her skin was soft and warm, her lips were like velvet, but it wasn’t enough. He slid his hand to the nape of her neck and opened his mouth against hers to deepen the kiss. When her lips parted in surrender, the soft moan she made into his mouth sent his desire rising even higher.

Kay, he thought in joyous agony.Kay.

His tongue entered her mouth, and he tasted deeply of her as he slid his free hand up her ribs to brush the side of her breast. He lingered there, but the hard whalebone rigidity of her corset stood inthe way of any possible explorations there, and he moved his hand down again, over her waist to her hip.

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