What wasn’t freeing was the sexual tension building from spending time in her company, touching her casually but never more than that, and never being allowed to be alone with her. That vibrating awareness grew more powerful every day—with every glance, with every touch.
He was beginning to think he’d brave locking the two of them inside a coat closet if he could find one.
A glance around had him meeting her brother’s watchful eyes. Ah, yes. Chaswick knew all too well the workings of a gentleman’s mind. Addison grimaced and shook his head ruefully.
“You smell like sweet cakes this morning,” he said softly, for her ears only.
She stopped and leaned in. “You smell like…” She closed her eyes and inhaled just below his chin. They were standing closer to one another than was particularly proper while in public, or anywhere really, but Addison simply waited while she contemplated his scent. “Leather, and… freshly cut wood. And something… something that is uniquely you.”
She drew back and met his gaze, blushing, revealing that she, too, was remembering the feel of his intimate touch almost two weeks before.
“Something good, I hope?” Addison cocked a brow.
“Oh, yes. And spicy… perhaps clove.” She leaned in to sniff him again. “I’m growing rather fond of it.” Damned if the tone of her voice couldn’t stir him into a rather inconvenient and potentially embarrassing state.
“Let’s keep moving, shall we?” Chaswick spoke from behind them.
“Oh, Chase, look at this one. I think your mother would love having something like this in her suite.” Lady Chaswick drew her husband across the room, allowing Addison and Collette a good ten feet of separation as they stepped into a special room of the exhibit.
Ironic that Addison could appreciate and yet resent the man’s relentless doggedness at the same time. He adjusted his trousers and forced himself to remember where they were.
“Oh, my.” Collette shivered beneath Addison’s hand as the two of them arrived at a large painting of a medieval castle. Set on the precipice of a cliff, an angry sea raged against it.
“Do you like this one?” he asked, always intrigued to know her opinion.
If she did, he would buy it for her, perhaps as a wedding gift, even if it was somewhat dark. Not that she ever asked for or expected anything of the sort from him, quite the opposite really. He’d never met a person so apathetic about owning material possessions as his fiancée.
He stared at her while she stared at it.
“I wouldn’t describe myself as liking it. It’s powerful, though, and depicts an… ill-fated hopelessness.”
“You see all of that?”
“The way the sea boils, and the fierce curl of the wave. It’s like a monster.” The second tremor that ran through her was even stronger.
“So you don’t like it?”
“Do you?” She twisted her neck around to meet his gaze responding with a question of her own. “What does it make you feel?”
In the past twelve days since she’d accepted his offer, Addison had learned that his fiancée didn’t ask questions without expecting a sincere answer.
He shifted his gaze from her expressive eyes back to the painting and then leaned forward to study it properly.
“Respect for those things that endure,” he said, not filtering his thoughts, something he only found himself doing when he was with her. “It doesn’t seem hopeless to me.”
She saw a threat in the painting whereas he appreciated the massive stones stacked upon one another, discolored and covered in moss but timeless, practically everlasting.
“Hmm…” she answered softly. “You don’t see that the tower is one giant wave away from falling into the sea?” Even her frown had the ability to charm him.
“Not at all.”
With a nod, signifying her acceptance of his answer, she turned, and Addison steered them along the corridor to the next painting. Behind them, he could feel her brother watching them.
She leaned closer and the whiff of vanilla he caught had him contemplating options other than closets. Behind a potted plant, perhaps, or…
“I didn’t realize you were such an optimist,” she said.
“I wouldn’t go that far. I’m more of a realist than anything.”
