The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers #1)(55)

It’s only because you enjoy the discussion on his building plans for the Hell and Sin . . .

“That is it,” she muttered, stepping out of her room. She paused.

She saw an unfamiliar servant staring at her through street-hardened eyes. He raked a disdainful glance up and down her person. By his scarred visage and inability to dissemble as a proper servant, he was anything but liveried staff. Another guard assigned her by Black, then. Cleopatra drew the door shut with a decisive click. Not that she blamed him for his wariness, but still, there was something annoying in having one’s footsteps watched as closely as they’d been in the streets of St. Giles.

“Where ya think you’re going?” the guard snarled from behind her.

Cleopatra stiffened. His coarse Cockney confirmed everything she’d already gathered about his origins and role here. Angling her head, she favored him with a condescending sneer. “I don’t answer to you,” she said in flawless tones her brother had insisted she perfect, and in this, she reveled in the power they gave her over this man. “A mere . . . footman,” she taunted.

Hatred circled in the depths of his blue eyes. “Whore,” he spat.

She’d been called so much worse in the course of her existence that insults had ceased to matter to her, and yet the vitriol in his utterance had ice skittering up her spinal column. She flattened her lips into a coolly mocking grin. “Born the son of one, I expect you think you might have experience in recognizing one.”

He went still; then his eyebrows shot to his hairline.

Claiming victory, she yanked her skirts away and started forward.

“You bitch,” he hissed in her wake.

Dismissing the guard outright, she reached Adair’s door, and even though every morning they went through the formalities of her lightly rapping, this time, eager to be free of the nameless street thug, she let herself in.

Seated behind his mahogany desk, with a pencil in his hand, Adair looked briefly up from his design plans. “You’re late,” he observed with a grin that eased some of the tension from her previous exchange.

“I didn’t realize you’d hired me to work for you.” Closing the door behind her, she hurried to join him at his desk, where a familiar seat that had come to be hers was already positioned. “If so, we failed to negotiate the terms of my payment,” she drawled, settling into the oak Carver chair.

He rolled his shoulders. “And here I thought you were just eager to have anything to do with a gaming hell,” he said, reminding her of her own words.

Carefully studying the changes he’d made that morning, she avoided his eyes. Afraid he’d see too much. Afraid he’d know that she enjoyed his company and wanted to be here. Adair resumed making notes on his pages, and she studied him in silence for a long while. “Your brothers don’t take up much time with the new plans,” she observed. She’d only ever seen Adair in this room overseeing the details regarding the Hell and Sin.

Weeks earlier, he would have no doubt told her to go to hell with her questioning; now he drummed the tip of his pencil in a distracted staccato. “The role of head has . . . fallen to me.” His words and eyes revealed nothing but for an infinitesimal pause. Her interest stirred.

Ryker Black, one of the most feared men in the streets of St. Giles, had ceded control of his club . . . to Adair? For the easy relationship she’d struck with him, she didn’t expect he’d give her the answers to all those questions. He’d take it as probing, on her part, for Broderick. “I never thought I’d witness the day Black turned control over to anybody,” she ventured, curiosity making her throw her hesitation to the wind.

Adair grunted noncommittally.

He trusted less than anyone she’d ever known in the whole of her life, which given the people she’d either dwelled with or called family, was saying a good deal, indeed.

Letting go of her curiosity, she devoted her focus to the sheets before them. “You took my advice, then,” she observed, pointing to the private-quarters gaming rooms he intended to set up inside the redesigned Hell and Sin.

“You were correct.” Adair tossed his pencil down and cracked his knuckles. “It was a waste of valuable space to not add tables. Lost revenue that we hadn’t been able to recoup.”

Cleopatra leaned forward, intently studying it. She’d spent her whole life hating Adair Thorne and his family. And yet, when presented with the opportunity to grow his fortunes on the backs of desperate women or take a loss in profit, he’d opted for the latter. Those weren’t the actions of an enemy; they were the mark of a good man.

“You’re quiet.” He spoke with the familiarity of one who’d come to know her over these past three weeks.

“I’m always quiet,” she said, fiddling with the edge of the desk. Catching that nervous movement, she swiftly lowered her hands to her lap.

“More so than usual. Do you disapprove?”

“And would it matter if I did?” she returned.

He flashed his even teeth in a heart-stopping grin. “Three weeks ago, I would have said no.” How much had changed in three weeks.

“And now?”

Stretching his legs out, he crossed them at the ankles in a negligent pose. “Now I see how clever you are in matters of gaming and business, and I’d be a fool to not take your suggestions under consideration.”