Page 84 of The Scent of Intuition
“You said thateverybody has a secret?” She cocked her head and eyed Alfie from her head down.
He nodded.
“Even you?”
Now he shrugged.
“Tell me.”
Alfie flattened his lips and gave a faint shake of his head.
Bea narrowed her eyes. “You don’t trust me then?”
“I trust you to accomplish many impossible feats, Bea. You have the delicate touch of a great diplomat. It was plain to see at the Langleys when you made List talk. And you were the one who made sense of it.”
“You made the truth serum for him,” she said.
Alfie raised his brows and inclined his head. “But it was you who made it work.”
“Except I didn’t have the skill to discoveryoursecret.”
Now he gave a mischievous tilt of his head. “Ah, but if I hadn’t known about the truth serum…You’d be excellent as a spy, I think.”
“My mother would expire at the thought.” Bea couldn’t suppress a smile. “Perhaps I should enlist at the Foreign Office.”
“Then you should test your skills to uncover truths.” Alfie widened his stance and Bea realized that he was hiding something about his persona.
“Based on your defensive stance, it’s not something around you that you’re hiding. It’s somethingaboutyou.”
He didn’t move.
“You’re not really Alfie Collins but the lost pirate son of Jean Lafitte and you’re smuggling opium.”
Alfie gave her a crooked smile. “If I had as much money as Jean Lafitte, I wouldn’t mix ointments for the Ton in London.”
“True. You’re also not sunburned enough to have spent much time in the open sea.”
“How do you know?”
Bea crossed her arms but then lifted one hand and patted her mouth with her index finger. “You are strong, not sunburned, and you always have enough supplies. I know!”
He narrowed his gaze.
“You’re a smuggler at the docks! So you work at night, lifting heavy crates with pulleys and climbing from ship-to-ship.”
He grinned. “As enticing as that sounds, I don’t like to get my hands quite that dirty. And the docks smell like fish.”
Bea stepped closer.
Then, as he stood his ground, even closer.
She knew his scent already and had spent hours in bed conjuring it up. He had tasted fresh and minty when she’d kissed him and his scent was earthen, real, and oh so masculine that she wished to strip his clothes off him and taste every inch of his body.
Then a thought grabbed her, and she couldn’t wriggle out of it with any argument of propriety and being a lady.
What did his body look like?
One more step and she could smell him again. His freshness mixed with something that was just him. Bea hesitated for a moment, but he just stood there, his arms now hanging from his sides. So she grabbed his collar and tugged gently. He leaned in and she evaded his face, nuzzling his neck instead. He smelled so wonderfully like Alfie. “You smell smart.”
