This was living. This waslife. All the rest was practice, an insipid copy of what they’d found here together.
They were stronger as one. More complete. More combustible. Her entire body tingled as if any moment the heat they were generating might truly erupt into flames.
She longed to rip off her spencer, her gown, her shift. It was too hot in here for clothing. How might his shoulders feel without this tailcoat? His chest, without the waistcoat? What if their bodies had nothing between them but air, and then not even that?
With trembling fingers, she reached for his cravat. A small knot or two, a few pesky buttons, and she might learn more than she’d dreamed of Max and his kisses. The fire between them would—
“Oh!” came a startled female voice.
Bryony leapt away from Max. Her heart skipped madly in her chest. She turned to face a woman about her own age standing just inside Max’s open doorway with a key in her hand.
Approximate age was the only thing Bryony seemed to have in common with the new arrival. This woman was beautiful. Femininity incarnate. High cheekbones, darkly-lashed eyes, thick ebony hair that curled into lustrous ringlets of its own accord. She did not look as though she had stepped in from the rain, but rather out of the pages of a magazine. Not a real woman, but an artist’s ideal come to life.
“Frances,” Max growled in warning. “I instructed you not to visit today.”
“Why do you think I came?” the gorgeous woman replied without the slightest repentance and thrust her hand toward Bryony. “You must be the evil siren. I’m Frances, Max’s sister.”
Amid the avalanche of competing thoughts tumbling through her mind, Bryony managed to grasp the dainty fingers before her and give a firm shake as she’d seen her father do on occasion after a successful business dealing.
Had she somehow engaged in a silent transaction with Max’s sister? She might have thought to curtsey rather than shake hands, had a regrettable spurt of envy not convinced her the unexpected visitor was a different type of woman entirely.
She felt her cheeks redden. “I thought you were—”
“—his twin,” Frances finished with a laugh. “We hear that all the time. I should be offended, since he is two years my elder. I am only six-and-twenty.”
Bryony glanced from Max to Frances and back again. Mortification heated her neck.
Of course. The same dark hair, the same dark eyelashes, the same high cheekbones. The same utter disregard for anyone else’s rules or expectations.
“Pleased to meet you,” she stammered, catching a glimpse of her upside-down bonnet from the corner of her eye.
It was probably too late to bother picking it up from its position on the floor across the room in a weak attempt toward propriety. There would be no explaining away what Frances had seen as anything other than what it was. With luck, she had only seen the kiss, and not Bryony’s passion-drunk desire to turn it into something more.
“Max hasn’t said a word,” Frances whispered. “He must still be suffering your Medusa effect.”
Bryony blinked in confusion, then felt her cheeks heat anew in sudden understanding. He did not see her as a hideous monster, but as a woman who could turn him hard as stone with a mere glance.
Delighted, she shot him a saucy look over her shoulder. “Smart men like powerful women.”
“Frances was just leaving,” Max said, scowling at his sister. “Goodbye, Frances. Thank you for the short visit. Leave your key on the table and don’t come back.”
Frances ignored him and threw herself onto his sofa to grin up at them. “Don’t mind me. This has been most illuminating. I always wondered what your business meetings were like. No wonder you two spend so much time at the office.”
Max stiffened in offense. “I have never before—”
“He’stimid?” Frances gasped in mock horror.
“Gentlemanly,” Bryony corrected primly.
Frances snorted at the idea. “Of course.”
“Off the couch,” Max said, voice tight. He pointed from his sister to the exit. “Out the door.”
Frances paid this no attention. Her focus was on Bryony. “He says you’re an evil genius. Something about turning a greater profit in a fortnight than any of the zanies he invests with could hope to turn in a year.”
Bryony beamed with pride in Max’s direction.
He glowered at them both.
