How to Woo a Wallflower (Romancing the Rules #3)(27)

Gabe turned to retrieve a clean rag. He willed away his response to her. She was a Ruthven. He was from the gutters of Whitechapel.

“Were you worried about me?” The thread of hopefulness in her voice kindled heat in his chest. Right in the spot where his heart would be, if he still believed he possessed a working one. His whole body warmed, and he was buzzing with that devilishly appealing energy she exuded.

He swiped a wrist across his brow before turning back to her. She gasped and lifted a hand to her mouth.

“What?”

“You’ve . . . ” She waved toward him and pressed her lips together. “I’m afraid you’ve gotten a bit of paint on you too.”

Wonderful. “Where?”

Dropping to her feet, she approached and tugged the clean rag from his hand. “Your turn on the desk, Mr. Adamson.”

“Not necessary. Just tell me where.”

“Too hard to describe,” she insisted, though there was a mischievous glint in her eyes. “You’ll at least have to lean down so I can reach.”

He rested his arse on his desk’s edge and tried to pretend having her fuss over him was a nuisance. He even worked up an irritated sigh, but it turned to a gasp when her fingers swept through his hairline.

“Hold still,” she said breathily.

She was a pretty young woman any day of the week, but when applying herself to a task, her eyes widened, her lower lip plumped, and her soft round chin jutted forward. Her touch came gently, forcing her to smooth the rag over the spot several times.

“Almost done,” she whispered and pressed an inch closer, right between the V of his thighs.

He gripped the edge of his desk because he remembered how it felt to hold her this near, and every instinct told him to tuck his hand to her waist. One dip of his head, and he could take her determined mouth. Slide his hand into her hair and free those curly waves trapped in pins at her nape.

“There.” She smiled at him and took a step back. “Now just make sure you don’t touch me again, and you’ll remain spotless.”

“That’s not as easy as it sounds.” He meant being spotless. After the things he’d done, he would never be clean. But the other was true too. Keeping his hands off her was an increasingly impossible challenge.

“Isn’t it?” The rasp in her voice shot shivers down his back. She moved closer again, her skirt pressing against his legs. “Then you’ll touch me again?”

Before he could answer, she pressed her clean hand to his. He gripped the desk so hard his knuckles ached.

“Gabriel,” she whispered.

His name sounded perfect on her tongue. So good he could almost forget the times he’d heard it shouted like a curse.

The front doorbell echoed through the workroom, and Gabe edged off the desk, sidestepping away from her. “I have no appointments scheduled,” he told her pointlessly. His tongue felt as thick as the sluggish haze in his mind, and he struggled to remind himself that this was work. She was his employer’s sister. Hell, she was his employer.

Daughtry’s signature double knock sounded at his door before the man pushed inside. “Visitors to see you, sir.”

“I don’t entertain visitors.” No one knew that better than Daughtry, who maintained his appointment calendar.

“Say they’re friends. Say you invited them to stop in to see the office. A Miss Morgan and her cousin, Miss Banks.”

One of Clary’s gilded brows winged high.

“I’ll come out to greet them in a moment.” He turned to face her and was shocked to find the same regret in her expression that he felt in spades.

“Go. I’ll tidy this up so that you can visit with them in your office.”

“Yes,” he said. Yet he couldn’t force his feet to go. He preferred to stay here, with her. Even when she ignored him and began collecting the crimson-stained rags, he liked being near her. He couldn’t lie to himself about that anymore. The impulse was too strong to deny.

Miss Morgan’s voice filtered in from the workroom. She was just the sort of woman he’d always told himself he wanted. Demure, well mannered, agreeable.

But she didn’t fire his blood. Or cause him to stand stock-still, clenching his fists so that he didn’t reach for her. He didn’t think of Jane Morgan from the beginning of one day to the start of the next.

The only woman who lingered in his thoughts was Clarissa Ruthven.





CHAPTER NINE

“How many more?” Clary shook out her hand and glanced at the wall clock, adorned on either side by watercolors completed by her students at Fisk Academy. After addressing twenty invitations in a swirling round hand style, her wrist throbbed from the tension of striving not to make a single error.

“Are you tired already?” Helen teased. She’d already thanked Clary for leaving Ruthven’s and coming straight to the school for more work. “Luckily, this is the last of the lot. We’ve already sent dozens of invitations ahead of these. Sally has a lovely looping hand, if not nearly as neat and precise as yours.”

“How is Sally?” Since she made her visits in the evenings, Clary missed seeing many of the girls. The few who lodged at the school were sent to bed at seven, though as one of the oldest, Sally was allowed an extra hour to read before turning down her lamp. Of late, Helen reported that Sally had been quiet and depressed, often choosing to retire when the younger girls did.