“Excellent. Then I shall light us a fire, and you can read to me until I fall into a deep slumber and forget the past ten days.”

Her spine stiffened. “Forget the past ten days?” she snapped. “You disappear without a word after commanding me to stay, and you think I’m going to just read you to sleep?”

Benedict dragged his hands down his weary face. “Irena, please.”

“It’s late, my lord. You are clearly exhausted. Perhaps we should return to our rooms.”

Benedict reached out and grasped her elbow. “I have no desire to spend another night alone in my empty chambers, Irena. Not tonight. Please. I just need to hear your voice for a while.”

His quiet pleading broke her resolve. “What happened at Ebberfield, Benedict? How is Rosendale?”

Benedict swallowed deeply but said nothing.

Irena removed herself from his grip. “My lord, you have asked me repeatedly to trust you. Yet time and again you refuse to trust me. Until you do, there can be no starting over with us.”

Clutching the book to her chest, Irena turned toward the door. She made it fewer than ten steps before he spoke again.

“He’s gone. He held on for days, but his injuries were too severe. There was nothing to be done.”

Irena turned around. In the low light of the candle, Benedict’s features chased a shadow that had nothing to do with the flickering flame.

“Oh, Benedict. I’m sorry.” Irena walked back to where he stood. “You were close to him?”

“I’ve known him all my life.”

She silently begged him to say more, and for a disappointing moment, she thought he wouldn’t. But the moment passed. “He raised me,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

Benedict strode to the fireplace and fixed his eyes upon the flames. “He was more a father to me than my real father.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “I was my father’s heir. That’s all that mattered. I once went two full years without seeing him. He didn’t even recognize me after all that time.”

Irena let out a breath of air. “Oh, Benedict.”

He turned around. “Rosendale didn’t have children. He and his wife couldn’t. Their home became mine.” A ghost of a smile appeared on his face as if picturing them. “He took me everywhere. Everything I know about running the estate I learned from him. And Elizabeth, his wife, always greeted us at the end of the day with a sweet pastry or a bowl of stew.”

“Your mother didn’t wonder where you were all that time?”

“My mother didn’t live there most of the time. She spent the season in London and summered at our Scottish estate. I only saw her at holidays.”

“Benedict, that’s horrid.” She approached him. “Your parents abandoned you,” she said, stopping inches from him. “It’s unforgivable.”

“I was better off without them. Life was rather unpleasant when they were in the same house.”

“Why? I realize members of the peerage rarely marry for love, but most at least settle into a tolerable companionship. Even my parents enjoyed that much.”

“Perhaps my parents were less companionable than most.” He said it with a smile, but the tightness of his jaw told her he wasn’t as cavalier about it as he wanted her to believe.

Irena lifted her hand, hesitated for a second, and then rested her palm against his cheek. The stubble of his day’s growth was scratchy beneath her fingers, but his skin was warm and soft. With a quiet groan, Benedict closed his eyes and pressed his face into her touch, like a flower turning to the sun.

“I missed you so much, Irena,” he said.

“I missed you too,” she admitted.

With a groan, he lowered his forehead to hers. “I am at your mercy, Irena. From the moment I first saw you, I have been half a man because the other half belongs to you. End my agony, love. I beg you. Kiss me. Let me hold you. Please.”

She would no sooner deny him the comfort he needed than she would deny a starving man food. She pressed her lips to his. Softly at first, but then with more pressure. He groaned again and quickly took charge. He pulled the book from her fingers and dropped it. Then he lowered her to the floor. His lips moved across her heated skin, teasing and taunting a hot trail from her jaw to her throat to the rise and fall of her rounded breasts. His hand slid up her side, gathering and dragging fabric to reveal her legs, then farther still until his fingers brushed the underside of her breast.

The need to be touched sent her arching into him with a fervent plea on her lips, but a plea for what, she knew not.

“My love,” he murmured. “May I touch you?”

“Yes,” she moaned. “Yes.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“How’s it coming, Thea?”

Thea dropped her paintbrush and whipped around, face red. “What?”

It was nine days later, and they were at Alexis’s café. Thea was painting the restaurant’s logo onto the raw brick wall behind the bakery counter. And not for free, either. She was getting paid for this gig. Her first real paid job as an artist.

Liv clunked the large vase she was carrying onto the nearest table and crossed her arms. “Okay, that’s it. What the hell is up with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re distracted, edgy. You’ve been avoiding me for a week, and you’ve barely said a word since we got here. It’s like you’re itching in your own skin or something.”

“I’m fine,” she lied. Thea had been avoiding Liv. There was no denying it. But this was why. Her sister could always see right through her, and she was tied up in enough knots already without her sister’s sarcasm. Something significant had happened between her and Gavin the night by the fire, and things had been different between them ever since. They had come closer and closer every night to crossing the final bridge, but they always stopped.

But tomorrow night was the team Christmas party. The night when she would be spending a night alone in a hotel with him. And both of them knew what that meant.

Oh, the irony. Liv used to be the only person she trusted with the truth. Now she was back to faking it. For Liv.

Liv suddenly laughed behind her. Not a funny, ha-ha laugh, but an OMG cackle, as if she’d suddenly figured out the punch line to a joke she heard hours ago. “Holy shit,” she said with a snort.

Thea looked over her shoulder. “What?”

“I can’t believe it. I missed the signs, but holy shit.” Liv laughed again.

“Are you going to let me in on this little epiphany?”

“Yep.” Liv said and grinned, crossing her arms. “You’re horny.”

A hot flush raced up Thea’s neck. “Shut up.”

The door to the kitchens swung open and Alexis emerged. A cat named Beef Cake followed at her heels. “Who’s horny?”

“Oh my God, no one.” Thea returned to her mural.

“Admit it. You are. I know he makes nightly visits to your bedchamber—” She said that last one with a horrible British accent. “It’s starting to get to you. And if you’re this horny, think about the state he must be in. Serves him right. He’s probably primal at this point. I bet the sheets in the guest room are as stiff as he is.”

“Ew, Liv!” Thea choked.

Liv started dancing a little jig. “You’re horny. You’re horny. Admit it, you’re horny.”

Thea jammed her paintbrush into the jar and whipped around. “Fine. Yes, I’m horny. But why shouldn’t I be? Have you seen my husband? It’s like living with a walking firemen’s calendar. The shirtless ones. Every day it’s a different month—shirtless with the dog, shirtless with the kids, shirtless working on the wall, shirtless reading.”

Alexis shook her head. “Wow, I have no idea what is going on.”

Liv crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “Yes, your husband has a nice body.”

“Nice? Nice? His trainer has him doing some new core work, and you know those little V things guys have just above their hips?” Thea ran a finger up and down each side of her pelvic bones.

“Uh—”

“I mean, Gavin has always had them, but now he really has them. And then there’s the beard! And oh my God, Liv, do you know what he did tonight as I was leaving? He leaned. You know what I’m talking about, right? The man lean? He put his hands on either side of me and leaned to kiss me. He’s trying to kill me!”

Liv’s cackle sounded like a dying rooster. “So sleep with him already. Use him for his body and then throw him out.”

Alexis cleared her throat. “Um, who exactly are we talking about again?”

Liv and Thea spoke over each other.

“My husband.”

“Her husband.”

Alexis cocked her head. “You need permission from your sister to have sex with your husband?”

They spoke over each other again.

“No,” Thea growled.

“Yes.” Liv laughed.

Beef Cake meowed.

“Gavin and I have been . . . having trouble,” Thea explained, cheeks hot.

“Having trouble?” Liv snarked. “Is that how you’re describing it now?” Liv looked at Alexis. “She was ready to divorce him as of three weeks ago, but he sweet-talked her into letting him move home for a second chance.”

“He’s trying to fix our marriage.” There it was. She was defending him. The world had turned on its axis.

Liv’s laughter faded. “Wait. Are you—are you actually thinking about taking him back?”

Thea returned to her painting.

“Thea, you can’t be serious.”

Thea bit back a snarky response and settled for, “Why not?”

“Because you’re doing exactly what he wanted you to do. He has known all along how to get to you. This is what he does. He’s a professional athlete.”