Page 100 of The Duke Who Saved Christmas
“Yes.”
“Who?”
I swung my gaze towards him, lifting my wine glass to my lips. “You.”
“I don’t remember falling to my knees after you kissed me.”
“No, but it’s been a week since I accidentally hit your lips instead of your cheek with the smallest tipsy peck, and you keep going on about it. The way I see it, you’re on your knees now.” The smallest of smiles crept onto my face. “Especially since you’re trying extremely hard to get me drunk. Are you trying to coerce me into kissing you again, Your Grace?”
His expression darkened. The eyebrows that were raised just a second ago pulled together in the middle of his forehead in a deep furrow, and any trace of a smile disappeared from his face as if I’d just insulted him.
He held my gaze for a hot second before he got up and crossed to the bar in the corner of the room. He returned with a whiskey glass clasped tightly in his hand, and he calmly set it down on the coffee table before he proceeded to open the whiskey and pour it.
Then, with a mirroring of my move, he held the short glass close his lips and met my eyes. “Bold of you to assume I need to get you drunk to have you kiss me, Miss Harding.”
“Bold of you to assume you could convince me to do such a thing while sober,” I retorted dryly, still holding my glass to my lips, holding his gaze.
“Fortune favours the brave,” he said without missing a beat. “If you’re so confident, why don’t we lay that kiss on a bet?”
“Forgive me, but this feels like something set up solely to benefit you.”
Thomas tipped the Connect-4 board upside down. The red and yellow chips slipped out of the rivets and scattered across the coffee table, and as he separated them into two coloured piles, he smirked at me. “Of course, it is. Why would I bet on something I think I’m going to lose?”
Hmph.
The bastard had me there.
“Are you aware how ridiculous this is? You’re a thirty-year-old man who is head of a three-hundred-year-old aristocratic household, and you’re betting a kiss over a game of Connect-4 with a woman who’d rather smack you with a fire poker than kiss you.”
“Yet that woman has still not said no to my ‘ridiculous’ suggestion.”
“That woman is in shock,” I replied curtly. “So, what is this? If you win, I have to let you kiss me?”
“No.WhenI win, you have to kiss me and bring me to my knees, as you so succinctly put it.” He pushed the yellow chips over to me with a smile on his face.
“I want the red ones.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve been red all night,” I harrumphed. “And you keep winning. I want the red ones.”
“Fine. Let’s switch.” He did a quick change of the piles. “Red or yellow, you’re going to be putting your money where your mouth is where your kissing skills are concerned.”
I picked up the first red chip and narrowed my eyes at him. “What if I win?”
“Are we really entertaining that?”
“Stranger things have happened in the last couple of weeks,” I mumbled. “If I win, what are you doing for me? And you can’t say kiss me, because that’s cheating.”
“Bugger.” He tapped his long fingers against the table, tilting his head to the side. “I’ll do whatever you want for twenty-four hours.”
“Are you telling me you’ll be my slave for twenty-four hours?”
“That’s how confident I am.”
“Hm.” I touched the red chip to my nose. “Is that twenty-four straight hours or twenty-four business hours?”
Thomas’ lips twitched up. “Spoken like a true businesswoman. It would be your win, so I’ll say it’s your choice.”
