“I’m sorry,” he begins catching my fist in his hand, bringing both of them to his chest. “I didn’t think—I didn’t know McCain would sit you next to Griffin. My God, I’ve wanted to pull my hair out just watching you together.”
“Together? Are you crazy?” I heave my arms back, trying to pull them away. I even briefly consider kicking him in the shin, but I guess something must clue him in to that thought as he presses me back against the wall, quickly sliding his knee between my thighs. I grit my teeth, and I ignore the flare of heat this drives through me. I will not feel this way about him. I refuse to be distracted by the electricity that jumps between us, raw and weighty.
“Yes, if you want the truth,” he replies, all fiery blue eyes and fierce expression, “I think I am a little crazed. And I’ve you to thank for that.”
“Did you do a couple of lines of white paranoia before dinner?”
“Holland, stop fighting me.” His voice is husky and almost hypnotic, and he doesn’t rise to my insult, which just gets my goat a little more. “Please calm down.”
“Calm?” I cry very much the opposite of that thing he’d like me to be. “You want me to be calm after the stunt you just pulled? How could you, you asshole? Oh, I beg your pardon,” I snipe, faking a kowtowing sideways kind of bow. Without the use of my arms, you know. “How could you, your grace, you asshole!”
“I didn’t know you’d be seated next to him.”
“I didn’t want to sit next to anyone. I didn’t want to be there! What if I didn’t have something suitable to wear? Did you even think of that?”
“No, I. No. I’m sorry, that thought didn’t occur to me. But you did.” His gaze softens as it falls over me.
“You humiliated me deliberately,” I barrel on, refusing to allow him space to compliment me. “And I will never—never—forgive you for that!” All those feelings from before, the ones I thought I’d packed up in a box and slid under my childhood bed, never to be examined again, begin to float so close to the surface that choking them back causes me physical pain. The kind that tightens my chest and throat and makes me want to dry heave. Pain. Embarrassment. Shame. The awareness that people were talking about me, wondering what went on, gossiping about who was to blame for why the wedding was not going ahead. That’s what this feels like. Again. I wasn’t equipped to deal with it last time, and I sure as shit not ready for it right now. I need to leave. Go. Now. “Let go of me.”
“I’m sorry, Holland. It was utterly selfish of me, but please, listen to me.”
“I don’t have to do anything you tell me.” I sound like a kid on the verge of a temper tantrum, so I inhale deeply and deep breath. Aim for dignified. I will not cry.
“I’m sorry you didn’t want to be there, but I’m not sorry you were. God, you are so beautiful.” His thumbs stroke the backs of my hands, and I flinch.
“You don’t have to flatter me.” It’s not going to stop me from trying to knee you in the balls the first chance I get. “I’m just the nanny, remember?”
“It isn’t flattery when it’s the truth.”
“An inconvenient truth? See, I heard you earlier talking to Portia,” I rattle on as my heart pounds and my eyes sting. “Griffin told me her name.” He glowers at the mention of his brother, but I’m not done yet. “He said she’s one of your regular lays. You know what else I heard?”
“No, but I have a feeling you’re dying to tell me,” he murmurs, unmoved.
I heard what she said about my dress, is what I want to say, but that would only prove how much it hurt.
“I heard her ask you who I was. Just so you know, I also heard what you said. And it wasn’t that I was beautiful, or even just the nanny, or—”
“Stop saying that.” His angry response slices through my words. “You are not just the nanny.” He glowers down at me, his expression nothing short of furious and making my heart bang against my rib bones with the finesse of a two-year-old with a xylophone. But I refuse to be cowed. To be fooled.
“I’m not anything. I’m no one,” I retort, though the wobble feels less than powerful. “Those are your words, by the way. I wonder if you tell her she looks beautiful, too.”
“I’m not in the habit of inviting comments on my life,” he retorts. “Nor do I choose to discuss my life with those who mean little to me.”
“I’m confused. Are you talking about her or me?”
Calm exchanged for anger, he suddenly looms over me. “You are the most infuriating—”
I almost laugh. “Me infuriating?” Then I’m not feeling so entertained as I begin to struggle again. I’m pretty sure if he wasn’t wearing a velvet jacket, I’d bite him. Velvet is nice under fingertips but would give me the heebie-jeebies if it touched my tongue. Kind of like peach skin. So yucky.
This is not me. This is not how I behave. I never get bent out of shape or stabby ever. But who knows? Maybe I am really that way; maybe I’ve been saving all my fury for a particularly infuriating and arrogant duke.
“You’re the one I’ve spent the evening watching. You’re the one I want to hold in my arms. Can’t you see that?”
“All I know is I’m not the one telling lies.”
“This time, perhaps.”
“I’m not the one keeping secrets,” I barrel on. “I mean, you say I’m here by pure coincidence, but I know there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“You want you know why you’re here?” His words come without thought and with a fierceness as his eyes blaze and his jaw sets like granite. “It was to keep you away from Griffin because he wants to fuck you!” His chest begins to heave under my hands, his eyes angrily ghosting over my face. “I couldn’t stand the thought of you being with him. And if you couldn’t be with me, I was going to make damn sure you weren’t anywhere near him.”
“Strange how the absolute opposite happened.”
“What?” His angry mask slips. “What do you mean?”
“I was with Griffin, and you were with Portia,” I answer simply. Maliciously. “You know, the expensive ride.”
“Portia is no one to me. Just because you don’t believe it doesn’t make the fact any less true. The woman was the farthest thought from my mind when I insisted you come to dinner. It was you I wanted sitting next to me, God damn it! And your experience of sitting next to Griffin is a perfect example of why I thought to get you a job out of London in the first place.”
“That makes no sense.” I retort, but the heat has died from my words. “You say you want me with you, but you don’t want me with you at all?”
“My life is not my own, Holland. I’m pulled from left to right, from above and below. I put the needs of this family, our properties, and this estate above everything, and the one time I let my guard down, the one evening I allowed myself to carve out something for myself, it was with you.” He inhales long and deep, his eyes closing for a moment, almost as though to gather the courage to carry on. “It was my birthday that night. And you were the gift I could never have expected.”