Yet that single syllable was enough to set his bare skin alive. He knew that voice. Even by a single syllable. His ears strained for more, for certainty.
“These are the viscount’s rooms?” Her voice, while definitely hers, sounded different, like there was a catch in it.
“My lady, this is most irregular. If you would please—”
“Ipleaseto wait here for his lordship.”
Without delay, he padded across the wet bathroom over tatami mats and came to a stop at the sliding rice paper door separating his bedroom from his private sitting room. He placed ambivalent hands on the door handles and hesitated a brief moment. A moment of self-preservation, perhaps. After all, she washere, in his private rooms. No good could come of it.
His jaw clenched in decision. He was master of these rooms.
The door slid open on silent tracks. Framed by the rectangular doorway stood Payne facing down Lady Olivia, her determination apparent in the set of her shoulders and the rigidity of her usually lissome body. She exuded no whiff of the pugnacious, only the quiet assurance that she would have her way.
“Payne,” Jake said, eliciting startled glances from the adversaries. “That will be all.”
“My lord, I tried—” Payne began in a rush.
Jake caught Lady Olivia’s eyes, flickers of doubt chipping away at the assuredness he’d heard in her tone seconds ago. “And shut the door behind you.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Jake raised his brow and questioned Lady Olivia with his gaze. Her jaw clamped shut, and her lips drew into a straight line, as if every muscle in her face was bent on keeping words locked away. As if the flow of them would cost her dearly. After last night, he wasn’t certain what he’d expected of her, but it wasn’t this, to find her barging into his private rooms.
Of course, he’d entered her private rooms uninvited. Perhaps he should have expected a counterpunch of this sort.
“May I inquire why you’re here?” he asked at last, convinced they would be engaged in this staring contest all day if he didn’t broach the topic.
He reached down to secure the knot at his waist, and her gaze followed the motion. A second later, she appeared to catch herself, wide, blue eyes startling up to meet his again.
“I, uh—” she began. He watched her struggle to keep her gaze steady on his, resisting the pull to steal glimpses of his bare torso. “I have something I want to say to you.”
Her words emerged choppy, the phrasing disjointed. As if her mind was wandering off in a thousand directions. She wasn’t acting like herself, her cool composure appearing to fail her. He rather liked this Lady Olivia.
“Olivia,” he began, seizing this unsteady moment to take a risk and make a gain, “have I leave to call you Olivia?”
Her eyebrows knitted together in question, even as she nodded her assent to the familiarity.
“In my experience of you,” he continued, a rush of satisfaction fueling his response, “those words could lead us anywhere.”
~ ~ ~
Olivia swiveled around and pretended to take a look at the room about her.
Somehow the moment had gotten away from her, and the logic and bravado that had propelled her forward had already begun to fail her. How could she possibly say what she’d come here to say with him standing in her line of sight wearing . . . almost nothing?
Too distracting were the corded muscles of his arms and stomach, rippling beneath surprisingly tanned skin. Too distracting was the fine dusting of golden hair scattered across his chest that narrowed to a thin line below his navel as it trailed ever lower to its inevitable destination beneath his towel.
A woman couldn’t think with that much flesh on display.
And it wasn’t about the quantity, either. This was flesh of the finest quality, even if it was littered with a scattering of newly emergent bruises. What did this man do with his time?
Back firmly to him, she focused on what had first caught her attention when she’d entered this room: the room itself. She’d never beheld one like it.
Despite the rather large amount of wood, a brightness pervaded the atmosphere. A simple, caramel-colored grid of maple outlined the ceiling and walls, which were, in turn, filled in with blank rice paper. Centered in the room stood a sunken mahogany table and four legless chairs.
The room came together in way that suggested open air. One could breathe in this room, so sparse and distinct were its furnishings. With each breath a measure of strain dissipated.
It was all so utterly, simply, starkly beautiful. And all so utterly, simply, starklyforeign.
