The Songbird's Seduction by Connie Brockway Read Free Book Online

turning his tanned face an even richer color. “Whatever are you talking about?”
    She frowned, all interior fluttering abruptly halting in the face of his explicitly
un
flirtatious tone. “What am
I
talking about? What are
you
talking about?”
    “My pen.”
    “What?”
    “You have my pen. I would like it back.”
    She stared at him. “Now see here. I may have been precipitous in declining an invitation you hadn’t yet finished—”
    “
Finished?
” he cut in, startled into rudeness. “I hadn’t
started
one. Why would you make such an assumption?”
    Assumptions? He didn’t . . . ? She wasn’t . . . ?
He hadn’t . . . ?!
Oh, dear. Pride alone allowed her to keep her chin up. “I saw the look in your eye.”
    “
What
? There was no look in my eye.”
    “There was,” she said. “Which is how I deduced your intention. It’s not the first time this sort of thing has happened to me, you know.” It was the second time. The first had been an invitation from a middle-aged, overweight financier who’d ambushed her at the stage door and which, needless to say, she’d refused in no uncertain terms. But the gorgeous man with the cleft chin needn’t know that. A girl had her pride.
    “That was
not
my intention.”
    “You’re self-conscious,” she said, with dawning understanding. “I daresay you don’t generally approach strange women in hotel bars.”
    He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “No. I do not.”
    “You don’t look the type,” she agreed. “Which is why you are now attempting to mask your embarrassment by coming up with an excuse for your impulsive act. One that will, as they say, allow you to save face.”
    His frown had disappeared, replaced by an expression of amazement. “Incredible,” he murmured.
    “Yes, I know,” she said demurely. “I am good at reading people. It’s what I do, after all.” She fluttered her lashes just to let him know there were no hard feelings. “Certainly this is not the first time nor, dare I say, shall it be the last that a gentleman has sought an introduction through unusual means. But that’s no reason to claim ownership of a very expensive pen that does not belong to you.”
    “But it
does
.” He was openly exasperated now, running a hand through his hair. Just as she’d suspected it would, it tousled up into thick, loose curls. “Are you listening to me, young lady?”
    She flushed. As a matter of fact, she hadn’t been. “Of course. But if the pen is yours how then could my friend Mr. Margery have loaned it to me, making me promise to look after it?” she asked reasonably enough, because, truth be told, she was becoming a bit annoyed he wouldn’t simply own up to being overwhelmed by a desire to speak to her.
    “I have no idea,” he said, by all appearances attempting to master a nearly equal frustration.
    “Of course you don’t.”
    “But it
is
mine and I would very much appreciate it if you would return it to me.”
    This was getting out of hand. “Now see here, this is a very expensive instrument and I am not going to simply hand over my friend’s pen so you can preserve your dignity.”
    “
What
dignity?” he demanded through clenched teeth. “Everyone is staring at us. And I
know
it is expensive. It is one of the reasons I am willing to make a public spectacle of myself in demanding its return. That, and the fact that
it was a gift.
”
    She looked around. Those in their immediate vicinity had stopped talking and were regarding them with amused interest. A small group nearby had even turned their chairs for a better view.
    Heat swept into Lucy’s face and suddenly she was eight years old again and at her great-grandmother’s house, being introduced to the Tartar for the first and only time while Uncle Mikhail stood by, hat in hand, extolling Lucy’s many virtues as a battalion of servants looked on: She could mimic any bird, sing like a nightingale, sit quiet as a cat at a mouse hole through even the