Page 50 of The Scot's Perfect Match
And then, just as suddenly, it was over.
He stepped back, his chest rising hard and fast, his jaw tight with something like regret, or was it restraint? “I’m—” His voice cracked. He swallowed. “I should no’ have done that.”
Ava blinked, the festival spinning back into focus around her. Bagpipes keened in the distance. Children shrieked with laughter. The scent of spiced cakes was thick in the air. But none of it felt real.
Her lips still tingled. Her pulse still roared in her ears.
She wanted to speak. To laugh. To rage. To demand answers. But her tongue felt heavy, and her thoughts tangled. Because beneath the shock, beneath the outrage she knew she should summon, one undeniable truth rose to the surface, terrifying in its clarity: She’d wanted him to kiss her. Again.
The realization gutted her, left her unmoored in a way she hadn’t felt in years.
She turned without a word, skirts swishing around her ankles as she ran, though she wasn’t moving fast though she wasn’t entirely sure where she was going. Each step only made the whirlwind in her head louder: the feel of his hand on her elbow, the press of his mouth, the way the rest of the world had fallen away as if there had only ever been the two of them.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not with him. Not after all this time, not after everything she’d built to protect herself.
And yet…
She pressed a hand to her lips, as if she could wipe away the heat that still lingered there. It didn’t work. She wanted to laugh. To cry. To scream. But she did none of those things. She stopped running, gathered herself, spine stiff and chin high, and walked away, her heart still hammering, her composure nothing but a fragile mask.
For the first time in years, Ava didn’t have a plan.
17
The Ladies’ Marriage Prospects Bulletin
A lady must never dance more than twice with the same gentleman, for society counts steps as carefully as it does reputations. Conversation during a quadrille should be light, never clever; wit is admired in a gentleman but thought dangerous in a lady.
Gavan hadn’t meant to kiss her.
He could still feel the press of her lips against his, the shock of her breath catching against his cheek for a single heartbeat before she’d yielded. It wasn’t just a kiss. It was a memory set alight. The taste of her lingered like the ghost of summers past. Stolen rides across the heather, teasing glances that had once meant more than either of them dared name. He had built walls over those years, brick by careful brick, to bury what they’d been. And one impulsive moment had reduced them to rubble.
He wasn’t the sort of man who acted on impulse. He prided himself on being deliberate and careful. But the moment she turned, eyes wide and uncertain and entirely too close, he hadn’t been Gavan, the steady guardian of Moira’s future. He’d been the lad who once wanted Ava more than his next breath.
His hands still tingled with the phantom memory of holding her, his body remembering what his mind had spent years denying. The scent of her lingered in his memory, lavender and something wilder beneath it, like open air after a storm. And yet beneath the heat of that moment, shame coiled low in his gut. Was it only an impulse? Or was it every buried feeling clawing its way to the surface, demanding to be acknowledged? He didn’t know. Worse, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
The thought looped in his head like a punishment as he paced the edge of the festival, the hum of music and laughter clashing with the pounding in his skull. He’d been raised to be a man of control. Deliberate, careful, unflinching in the face of impulse. And yet one look at her with those wide, startled eyes when he said her name, and he’d come undone.
Gavan could still feel the shape of her lips under his, soft and yielding, as if some forgotten part of him had been waiting years for that exact moment.
And damn him, but she’d kissed him back with a heated fervor that fueled desire and a wildness in his heart.
For a breath too long, there had been no festival, no watching eyes, no history between them. Just Ava. Ava as she’d been when they were young and reckless, and Ava as she was now, sharp, untouchable, and the only woman who had ever been able to knock him off balance.
He dragged a hand through his hair, cursing under his breath.
What was he thinking? What if someone had seen? What if she hated him for it?
Hell, what if she didn’t?
He clenched his jaw until it ached. He hadn’t come here for this. He’d come to keep Moira safe. To make sure Ferguson didn’t take advantage of any of the hopeful maidens.
The thought snapped him back like a whip.
Around him, the festival carried on as though his entire world hadn’t just shifted. The village green teemed with life. Children ran shrieking between stalls draped in wildflowers, clutching ribbons and honeyed nuts. Old men hunched over a game of draughts beneath a canopy of oak branches, while matrons in feathered bonnets bartered for jars of early summer preserves. At the far side, fiddlers sawed out a reel quick enough to set half the village stomping in time, skirts and kilts a blur of color. It should have been joyful. Instead, their joyful celebration of the summer solstice felt like mockery.
Ferguson stood near the far side of the green, smirking like the cat who’d licked a bowl of cream clean, surrounded by men who laughed too loudly at his jokes.
The fury that rose in Gavan’s chest was cold this time, not hot. Steady. Purposeful.
