Wedding of the Season by Laura Lee Guhrke Read Free Book Online Page A

again, his breath stirred the delicate wisp of hair that peeked from beneath her hat and curled against her cheek. “Would you like proof?”
    She set her jaw. “No.”
    He ignored that answer, compelled to provoke her on purpose, push her, gain a reaction. “I remember you always favored pink undergarments,” he said in a low voice. “Pale pink with tiny satin ribbons and lots of lace.”
    She stirred, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Her cheeks flushed pink and she looked away. A reaction at last.
    “I remember how the pulse in your throat used to start hammering whenever I kissed you there,” he went on, relentless and not even knowing why. “I remember the little mole just above your left—”
    “Stop it.” She backed up a step, and when he started to follow her move, she lifted her hand, flattening it against his chest. “I said stop. If you don’t, I shall be forced to tell Aidan you made advances toward me, and he’ll kill you.”
    “He’ll try, perhaps. But first you’ll have to tell him you came running over to see me.” He paused, smiling faintly. “Alone. Only two hours after I arrived—”
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop saying that!” She jerked her hand down and retreated several more steps.
    This time, he didn’t follow. All he’d wanted was a reaction. Besides, his leg was beginning to hurt like hell. Shifting his weight more to the left, he remained where he was, but he couldn’t resist needling her. A petty form of revenge, he knew, but all he had. “Trathen will wonder why you came here, you know. Speaking as a man, I can assure you of that.”
    “Do you intend to answer my question? Did you come home to make trouble for me? To . . . to ‘upset the applecart,’ as you put it, and make some sort of scene at my wedding?”
    She really thought he’d do that? Will studied her for a moment, noting the anxious way she was biting her lip, the way her hands were clenching and unclenching. Evidently she thought him capable of that very thing. “Terrible for you if I burst into St. Paul’s and strode up the aisle, shouting breach of promise, or something,” he murmured, not feeling inclined to reassure her. “The society pages would be full of it for days.”
    She stiffened, and her hands unclenched to rest on her hips. “If embarrassing me is your intent, I can safely say you won’t succeed. Having been jilted practically on the church doorstep, pitied as the deserted fiancée, and laughed at for making such a fool of myself over you when you were only stringing me along, I can safely say that nothing you do will ever embarrass me again.”
    “I strung you along?” He gave a laugh, a laugh that sounded bitter, even to his own ears. “That’s the pot talking to the kettle. What about you?”
    “Me?” She blinked, clearly taken aback. “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “Don’t you? What of all the times you pretended to care about my interests? All my books about Egyptology you borrowed, all the sketches of artifacts you drew for me, the rapt way you listened whenever I talked about excavating a site of my own one day? Pretending, always pretending, to be as fascinated by it all as I was. But that was a lie.”
    “I wasn’t pretending, and I did not lie! I wanted to understand your interests, try to appreciate and share them.”
    “Yet when the opportunity came to share them in truth, you showed your interest in Egypt to be nothing but a farce.”
    “I never dreamed you’d actually go! I thought—” She stopped, as if suddenly realizing she was heading into deep waters. Pressing her lips together, she looked away.
    “You thought it was a fantasy and nothing more,” he finished for her. “Wonderful and exciting to dream about digging up tombs or playing at it like we did when we were children, wasn’t it? But only if it never became a reality. All right for you to humor dear Will as long as we were still sitting by the fire here in merry old