Kai hesitated for a quick beat before nodding. He turned the deadbolt and pulled the door open. Jake had already taken a step forward when he noticed. There, just beyond Kai’s shoulder stood Olivia, hand raised as if she’d been about to tap the knocker.
An easy smile on her lips, she said, “Oh, good, you’re in. Yesterday, I forgot—”
“Lady Olivia,” Kai interrupted as he stood aside, “I believe you are acquainted with Lord St. Alban?”
The smile froze on her face, and her eyes went wide. Her mouth snapped shut.
Clear as the ting of a bell, Mina’s words came to Jake.I think it’s best to let the heart have a say in the matter. Now that Mina was safe, at last, he could hear them. He wouldn’t be marrying Miss Fox.
“If you will excuse me, I have a matter to attend to,” Kai said, and vacated the tidy foyer.
But Jake hardly noticed. Only Olivia mattered. She blinked and seemed to remember herself. He wished she wouldn’t.
“Lord St. Alban, how . . . unexpected.”
~ ~ ~
Uneasy, unbearable silence stretched between them, and all Olivia wanted to do was shift on her feet. Any sort of movement to disperse the nervous energy rioting through her body.
But she wouldn’t. He would know his effect on her, that she’d gone anxious and twitchy over him, which must be avoided at any cost. She should slip past, and forget she ever saw him. But her curiosity wouldn’t allow it. “Are you here about Mina?”
Intense, inscrutable emotion flared within his eyes, but was gone in a flash. “Yes.”
“I thought she wasn’t interested in an art master.”
“Mina has many interests.”
“Undoubtedly,” Olivia said, at once certain he wasn’t going to tell her how or why he’d come to be in Jiro’s studio. But since she had him here, there was something she might as well ask him. “Have you seen the latest haiku today?”
His head cocked to the side. “There’s another?”
“Oh, yes, and it’s a delight,” she said, hard notes of sarcasm inflecting every word. “I suspect it will be the talk of the Duke’s ball tonight.”
“The Duke’s ball,” Jake repeated softly as his gaze narrowed upon her. “You will be there.”
The foyer walls drew close, and Olivia found it difficult to drag in her next breath. “Of course. I live there. At least, for the present.”
“For the present?”
“I sent notice to your solicitors this morning that I shall take the house on Queen Street.” She attempted to swallow the lump in her throat. “I believe that severs the connection between us.”
He took a step forward, and all that remained between them was a tiny patch of air that would become insignificant in an instant, if they chose. No longer inscrutable, fire snapped in his eyes. “It will take more than that to sever the connection between us,” he spoke in the velvet rumble that made her insides go molten.
“Jake,” she whispered, her pounding heart suddenly in her throat, making her voice go weak and breathless, “nothing has—”
“Changed?” he cut in. “You do keep saying that.”
She glanced away, unwilling, unable, to hold his gaze any longer. Yet when his fingertips reached beneath her chin and gently tipped her head back, her eyes had no choice but to meet his. “You and I have more to say to each other. Much more.”
“I seriously doubt that, my lord,” she said without a dram of conviction in her voice. Still, she must try. “I do believe we are finished.”
“We are far from finished, Olivia. In fact, we’ve only scraped the surface of our beginning.” His gaze held hers for one, two fraught heartbeats, and again her breath suspended in her chest. “Don’t forget to save a dance for me tonight.”
With that, he let go of her chin and stepped past her. It wasn’t until he’d rounded the corner at the end of the block that her breath could release. A shiver, warm and delicious, purled down her spine at the promise in his voice, at the promise in his eyes.
Her feelings were wrong, utterly, utterly wrong. But there was no help for them. That man affected her at a level, deep and true and elemental, over which she had no control.
She would have to do a better job of steeling herself against him in the future.
