The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers #1)(24)

A memory slid in of a beloved figure she’d made herself forget.

Joan. The closest Cleopatra had ever come to a true mother. Another fire. One set by the Devil himself.

Leave me . . . you need to leave . . . And coward that she’d been, she’d not hesitated before gathering her sisters and abandoning the decrepit building. Unable to meet his gaze, she briefly contemplated that sconce in question. “I know about it,” she gruffly admitted. Just not for the reasons he believed—the ones having to do with his burned club. Hopping down from her perch, she wandered several steps, presenting him her back. Cleopatra drew in several slow, quiet breaths.

“Is that a concession of guilt?” Adair’s whipcord body went taut, bringing her attention to the previously escaped detail about the towering figure. Having discarded his jacket at some point, he stood in his bare feet, with his cravat gone, and only his shirtsleeves and breeches. It was a familiar state of undress she’d witnessed countless men in before. Only the tufts of dark curls peeking out from the opening at his neck and the olive hue of his muscled chest were so very different from the gents caught in dishabille at her family’s hell. Her pulse kicked up.

He moved fast, like a tiger she’d once witnessed pounce in the royal menagerie. “I asked you a question.”

Cleopatra retreated until the backs of her legs collided with the desk. Her heart hammered a wild beat that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the heat pouring off his chiseled frame. “My family didn’t torch your hell,” she got out, her voice far too faint to merit any respect or authority. Nonetheless, she surged on the balls of her feet, going toe-to-toe with him. “Ya were destroying it enough without any of ours bringing you to ashes.”

His nostrils flared. “Yet you spoke about the power of a blaze—”

“Because I do,” she snapped out, annoyance making her careless in all she revealed. “Not everything is about you and your ruined club.” Cleopatra pressed her palms against his chest to shove . . . but the heat of his skin pierced his shirt, the feel of his muscled physique burning her as sure as any of the blazes they now fought over. She curled her palms into the lawn fabric.

“You know about it, then,” his melodic voice washed over her.

She nodded slowly. “Oi do.”

Run . . . you need to take your sisters and . . .

Cleopatra pressed her eyes briefly shut. More than a foot shorter than he was, she’d have cursed and lamented the staggering difference that weakened her. Now she fixed her gaze on his chest, giving thanks that he could not see her.

Adair brushed his knuckles over her jaw, forcing her neck back to meet his gaze. His quixotic touch muddled her senses as his intense, piercing green eyes sought hers. “Your parents?” he ventured.

Her parents? What was he . . . ?

Why, he assumed she was just another whelp taken in by Diggory. Numbly, Cleopatra dropped her arms to her side.

“My parents and sister were also claimed by a fire,” he said gruffly, a surprising confession that let her into his world.

Then the significance of that loss, coupled with the one he’d recently suffered, penetrated her shock. He’d lost not only his family but his club. Cleopatra dipped her eyes once more. Despite the horrors that gripped her nightmares still of that long-ago day, she’d not allowed herself to think of Adair’s club being consumed in a similar way. Of the terror he and the men, women, and children inside would have known. The smell of burning flesh—

“Oi’m sorry about your club,” she said hoarsely.





Chapter 7

Cleopatra hadn’t probed and pried about the admission he’d made about his past: the parents and sister he never spoke of. Instead, she’d fixed on just one . . .

Oi’m sorry about your club.

There were five words there he’d never imagined a Killoran could or would ever string together.

Everything about that apology stank of a street trick. A bid to deceive one’s enemy, all to gain an upper hand. After all, she’d been discovered sneaking about Black’s home. Her emotional response was likely nothing more than a bid to distract from the fact he’d caught her red-handed.

Only—

She spoke about fires as one who knew. It had been there in the flash of horror and the emotion thickening her tone as she’d simply stated an understanding for what he’d lived through . . . not only recently at the Hell and Sin . . . but as a boy.

The young woman lifted her gaze to his, those luminous depths impossibly big behind the round rims of her spectacles. And something far more dangerous than a weakness for a Killoran consumed him—desire.

Dismayed, he stepped around her, brushing her out of the way. “Don’t you ever come in here again,” he ordered, swiftly stacking the numerous building plans Phippen had designed. “Don’t wander the halls at night, and don’t let yourself into rooms that don’t belong to you,” he gruffly ordered.

Cleopatra pulled herself up onto the edge of his desk, and from behind those silly, large wire-frames, rolled her eyes. “All the rooms here are unfamiliar.”

His lips twitched. “Fair point.”

“As much as you’d prefer to keep it that way, I’ll not let you make me a prisoner here,” she said.

Adair gathered the finalized design plan for the Hell and Sin and purposefully tucked it in the middle of the pile. For as sneaky as this one had proven herself to be on countless scores, he’d be wise to lock up his paperwork and any room he wanted this one to keep out of.