One Night With You (The Derrings #3)(44)

"Good riddance."

Unruffled by Chloris's histrionics, Seth lowered himself into a plush wing-backed chair, fingers idly tapping the arm as he watched their clumsy retreat.

Jane buried her shaking hands in the folds of her skirts, more satisfied than she liked to acknowledge over the violent episode.

"Lovely family," Seth murmured.

"They're not my family," she hastily corrected, then flushed when she realized her true family was little better.

"I suppose I would be in no rush to claim them either."

Pulling back her shoulders, she looked down at him where he lounged, one booted foot at rest upon his knee in a casual pose so at odds with the waves of tension emanating from him.

"Why did you come?"

"Did you not hear me? I believe I made myself quite plain." His eyes warmed as they roamed over her, that amber flame back, lighting the dark centers. "I've come for you."

"Yes, I heard you," she said quickly, the heat in her face intensifying, burning all the way to the tips of her ears. "I—I—"

"You stormed into my house," he broke in, rising to his impressive height and advancing on her with slow, measured steps, "and announced you carried my child." He stopped directly in front of her, the breadth of his chest and shoulders filling her vision. "Did you think you had seen the last of me?"

"I had not thought much beyond confessing my… condition."

He rocked back on his heels, eyes narrowing. "You had to know it would come to this." Jane shook her head, not certain what she had thought would happen when she told him the truth… and not certain it mattered anymore.

"But then," he continued, eyes crawling over her face in a way that made her skin prickle, "I can't claim to know you." Another step closer, and their breaths mingled. "Can I?"

"You did once," she murmured, dropping her gaze from his penetrating stare, a stare that would see all of her if she did not look away—the shadows of her heart, the dark corners of her mind, the deep regret that lived in her soul, eating at her for not confessing her feelings, not taking a chance all those years ago.

She stared at his lips, at the mouth that kept her awake night after night. Her fingers ached to caress the scar marking its upper corner.

The impulse to confess that she hadn't changed that much—at least in regard to her fool's obsession with him—smoldered within her chest.

"Yes," he mused, drawing a finger down the side of her face in a tantalizing stroke. She closed her eyes at the contact, tormented from the touch. At her mouth, he traced her bottom lip, the rough pad of his thumb a slow drag of heat over her sensitized skin. "But you aren't that girl anymore, are you?" That said, he dropped his hand and stepped back with the abruptness of a slap to the face.

"And you're not that boy," she shot back, lips tingling from his caress. The grim way he looked at her fueled her temper. The boy she had known never toyed with women. Never seduced one and then moved to another without pausing for breath. It did not matter that she had been both women. It still marked him a libertine, incapable of deeper emotion for any single woman. A man, she realized, not very different from her late husband. Unable to love… or at least unable to love her.

But then perhaps she didn't exist anymore. Not as he had known her. Not as she had once been. Their days of frolic seemed a lifetime ago. All save that day. It haunted her still, teased her with the haziness of a dream. The afternoon had been like all others. Before he fell in love with Madeline.

They had swum beneath a rare sun, splashing and wrestling in the water. Until it happened. A flash of light in a dark sky. The moment had burst upon them, and they had stopped, frozen with a sudden awareness that had not been there before.

She could recall the drops of water clinging to his face, to the lean, exposed flesh. Ripples of muscle and sinew danced beneath his skin. His slicked back hair gleamed darkly beneath the sun's glare, beckoning her fingers. He had looked at her then. Truly looked at her. Frozen and entangled, every fiber of her had screamed for him to close the distance and end it—

or rather begin it. Instead, he had broken away and swam back several strokes to splash her as if nothing untoward had occurred.

That memory had never left her. She thought about it countless times over the years, wondering what he would have done had she only leaned closer. Would he still have given his love to Madeline beneath falling apple blossoms? Or might she have been the one to claim his heart?

"No," he agreed, his tone brusque. "I'm not that boy. Neither of us are who we used to be." She nodded stiffly before turning and moving to the window. He followed, the heat of his big body radiating at her back. She drew a small invisible circle on the glass, trying to pretend she did not feel him there.

True, the Seth she had grown up with had treated her with affection, entrusted her with his confidences, shared his dreams. The rigid man behind her would never do those things. She would do well to remember that.

"It appears we shall become reacquainted." The low rumble of his voice sent shivers up her spine.

"I'll arrange for a special license. I don't imagine you would want a large wedding again—"

"Why are you doing this?" she demanded in a voice so soft she could scarcely hear herself. "I cannot imagine you actually want to wed—"