His free hand floated forward. Not to place her hand on his elbow, but to briefly tangle his fingers with hers, as though they were lovers forced to furtively clasp hands instead of launch themselves into each other’s arms the way they truly wished.
She hoped the rascal did not hear her sharp intake of breath or glimpse the heightened pulse fluttering at her throat.
At last, he held out his arm.
She paused for effect before taking it. “Are you certain you want my fingers to wrinkle your fine tailoring?”
“I’ll rip off every stitch posthaste to serve as a cushion for lovemaking, if that’s one of the choices,” he answered without hesitation.
She glared at him sternly. “It is not.”
“Then I accept mere wrinkles.” His brown eyes twinkled merrily. “For now.”
She arched her brows as they set out along the labyrinthine path. “You’re that certain you’ll succeed at seducing me?”
He lifted his own eyebrows right back. “Are you that certain I won’t?”
Gladys did not reply. The question of who was seducing whom had quickly become moot. The matter was no longer if, but when. This time, she would not relinquish control or toss her future away so foolishly.
This was revenge, pure and simple.
Well… a little complicated. Because men like him were meant to make intimate conquests, she couldn’t ruin him the same way he’d ruined her. But she could dangle something he wanted in front of him, and snatch it away before he could claim it as his. Her heart would not belong to him.
The Despicable Medford had always got everything he’d ever wanted without even trying for far too long. He didn’t respect women like her. Didn’t see them as human beings. Just as vessels to be used and discarded.
By seeking commensurate vengeance, Gladys was essentially performing a public service for womenkind everywhere. A broken heart would teach him to value the next female to cross his path.
She just had to remember it was all only a game, and she the one controlling the board. She could not risk getting tangled in her own web and have her heart trampled on a second time.
When they reached the center of the hedgerow labyrinth, the folly where they were supposed to take their picnic was already full of people. The disgruntled expression on Reuben’s face was so comical, Gladys half expected him to rush at the revelers with a lance, like Don Quixote beating back the windmills.
Instead, he collected himself and made a what-can-you-do shrug, then set down the basket right there on a grassy knoll in plain view of the folly and the pond and the entire pedestrian clearing.
“Your admirers will see you doting your attention on me,” she warned him as she closed her lacy parasol.
“And steam shall rise from your admirers’ ears as their brains melt into puddles of jealousy,” he responded.
Simple to say, less simple to live through. Gladys could not help but anticipate with a measure of glee Reuben’s undisguisable discomfort at being the center of attention in this way. The rake who could not be bothered to ask his conquests’ names, visibly courting a woman in front of all his peers and in spite of their inevitable gossip.
But Reuben’s attention never once strayed to their surroundings. As he spread the blanket and helped her to take a seat in the center, his focus remained one hundred percent on Gladys. The curious onlookers were no distraction. It was as though the rest of the world did not exist for him at all. Only Gladys mattered, and their picnic.
Or at least, that’s how a practiced rake would want his target to feel.
She pulled a smooth flat rock the size of her palm out of her reticule and placed it beside the blanket on the grass, then removed the dainty hourglass from her reticule and set it atop the rock. Grains of sand immediately began to spill forth into the empty lower half.
Reuben sent her a cynical look. “I only have an hour?”
She lifted her shoulder. “Change my mind.”
He smiled. “I’ll do my best.”
Of course he would. This sham romantic encounter was what a rake did. If she went home with him tonight and shared his bed the way he clearly expected her to do when presented with a simple picnic, he’d be back here tomorrow with someone else, making the next conquest.
“Why me?” she asked softly.
It was the question that had been eating away at her ever since that first encounter all those years ago—and its echo earlier this week, on the very same bench. Was it truly nothing more than random happenstance? A woman being in the wrong place at the wrong time and finding herself in the clutches of a conscienceless scoundrel?
Or might it be something more?
