Was it unforgivably naïve that a small part of her still hoped that when he’d looked at her, he saw her, and not just the next innocent mouth to add to his collection of stolen kisses?
He frowned, as if the question confused him. “Why not you?”
“Let us speak plainly. You did not come to the matchmaking festival to make a match.”
“It’s true, I’m a committed bachelor,” he admitted freely, not that there had been any doubt on the matter. “Nothing that happens will alter that.”
At least he acknowledged the truth to her face this time. When they did consummate this flirtation, there could be no crying on either side when they parted ways and returned to being strangers.
“Let me guess… Why tie yourself to one woman when you can sample them all?” she asked wryly.
He hesitated, then gave a roguish shrug. “Something like that.”
She waited, but he offered no further explanation for his relentless philandering.
Well, what more had she expected? A simple, base desire to nestle his cock between as many legs as possible was not only what she’d always believed about him, but also what he’d always claimed and how he’d always behaved.
Yet something about his reaction to her question made her think there was more depth there. Something that he was not sharing.
“Might we change the topic?” he asked lightly. “I do not want to waste any more grains of sand talking about other women. They don’t matter. This picnic, here, with you, is what matters.”
And that was it, wasn’t it? The obvious answer: whenever he was with whomever currently happened to be present, no other women mattered. Not the one he’d kissed that morning, or the one he’d tumbled the night before. Just the one sitting in front of him—for as long as she held his attention. The moment she was out of sight… well, there’d be another woman to take her place. And another, and another. Each would be the only woman that mattered. For a minute, an hour, a night.
Then the poor wretch would discover the following morning, to her horror and humiliation, that she’d never mattered one whit at all.
“What’s in the basket?” Gladys asked, forcing herself back on script. She could not let her disgust at his single-mindedness impede her plans for revenge. “You did not ask me what I might like.”
“I was forced to guess,” he agreed. “I hope at least one thing in this basket will meet your approval.”
He placed his hand atop the wicker, but hesitated before lifting the lid.
She frowned. Something was off. Reuben was not how she remembered, nor quite what she’d expected. Handsome and charming and audacious and all that, but perhaps not quite as cocksure as he tried to project.
Either that, or Gladys was finally getting under his skin.
He met her eyes, then flung back the lid of the basket and reached inside.
She could not help but lean forward in anticipation. Nothing would have prepared her for what he drew out from the basket’s shadowed depths.
“Here.” He shoved a book onto her lap. “It’s for you.”
She picked it up in wonder.
This wasn’t just any book. This was the latest volume in the series she had been devouring. The novel the proprietor of the lending library had not been able to obtain. Gladys had visited every inn and every library in Marrywell in search of this very item, all to no avail.
“Where did you find this?” she demanded.
He gave a crooked smile. “London.”
“London?”
“When you left the lending library, I went back in and asked what it was that the proprietor had been unable to procure for you. He wrote down the title and author. I hope I managed to find the right one.”
“Oh, it’s the right one, all right.” She wanted to hug the coveted volume to her chest. She wanted to hug him to her chest. After years of receiving money and jewels from her clients, for the first time, a gentleman had actually given her a gift she really wanted. Something personal, that only she would appreciate. “You drove to London and back in one night? When did you sleep?”
“In the back of the carriage.” He rubbed the nape of his neck as though it still pained him, and gave a sheepish smile. “As much as anyone can sleep in the back of a carriage.”
She stared at him. If this audacious man thought for one second that inconveniencing himself of time, money, and comfort in a mad hunt to find and present her with the latest book by her favorite author was the key to a woman’s heart… Damn, he was good.
