This was the kind of love he wanted. The kind he would sit and wait in a meadow for, even if it meant waiting his entire life. His heart tightened and tugged; the music swelled with purpose, almost swirling around him and Sam like a well-directed wind.
“You like it because your friends call you Danny Boy.” Sam broke him from his reverie with a smirking accusation.
“You see right through me, Dubarry.”
By the end of the afternoon, they sat on a bench near the Christ Church cattle, soaking up the last golden shine of the day’s sun, alternating licks on their 99 Flake ice cream cones and truly embarrassing public displays of affection. Well, embarrassing for her, probably. He wanted the world to know how much he liked her, and he’d happily keep kissing her until everyone on earth did.
“This is so much better than studying,” she said, sighing before capturing his lips once again. The sparks between them should have set the wooden bench below on fire.
A loud, cracking whip of a shout from across the yard sent Sam hurtling to her feet and shattered the moment between them.
“Piggy!”
Daniel recognized the future earl from the party as he rounded the corner and made a beeline for his girlfriend. What really captured his attention, though, was the way everything about Sam changed the moment she heard his call. Her back straightened. Her smile disappeared. The light in her eyes curdled to thick, impenetrable morning fog.
She nodded. “Captain.”
He then turned to Daniel, who hovered behind Sam warily. “I’m sorry, I seem to have forgotten your name.”
“Daniel.”
“Right, right. The mechanic, yes,” he muttered, the wordmechaniclittle better than a curse coming from him. “You don’t mind if I steal Sam for a moment, do you? She’s been difficult to get ahold of since you started hanging around.”
At first, the question repulsed him. He wasn’t Sam’s keeper. She didn’t need his permission to go anywhere. After a split second of consideration, though, Daniel knew it was another way to elevate himself. Like forgetting his name, acting like he’d somehow stolen Sam served as a perfect reminder of their two worlds and how disparate they really were.
“Yeah, go ahead.”
This was the first night of meeting her all over again. Here they were, in front of Christ Church, and he was helpless to save her. From a distance, he watched as Reginald walked her to the edge of the yard, far out of earshot. For once, he wasn’t worried about looking like a creep for staring. He was more concerned with the tight hand gripping Sam’s upper arm and the snapping of the man’s jaw as he practically snarled in her face.
His own hand clenched into a fist, torn between the urge to throttle him and not make a public scene. Kissing her in the open was one thing; mercilessly exercising his brute force on a poncy future earl was quite another.
Eventually, Reginald let Sam go, taking his leave to return to whatever expensive puddle of champagne and cigarette ash he’d crawled out of. She stood in place for a too-long moment, staring at the place he’d been, before rushing off in Daniel’s direction.
“Are you okay?” he asked, reaching for her.
Sam strode right past him, slipping an oversize pair of sunglasses on, concealing everything Daniel wanted to see and understand and unravel.
“Yeah.” She smiled a smile so fake Daniel could actually feel his heart crack at the sight of it. “Let’s get outta here.”
Chapter Fifteen
Two weeks passed. Two weeks of kissing and singing and that laugh that sometimes captured her whole face. Two weeks of not being able to figure her out. On the one hand, she was a duke’s daughter, removed and surrounded byGame of Thrones-style walls.On the other hand, every once in a while, he’d see a flash of someone else. The person he suspected was therealSamantha Dubarry. Sometimes it came in quick flashes of laughter. Other times, it was grander than that, like the time she left a lecture in the middle because she’d seen on Snapchat that his car broke down in Buckland Marsh or the time she sent her family’s handyman to Nan’s house because she’d overheard the old woman talking about a leak in her roof she couldn’t afford to fix. Every time, she’d mutter something aboutdon’t mention itorit wasn’t a big deal, but slowly, he was starting to peel away that exterior of hers. More and more, he captured glimpses of her real, unhidden self.
She cared about people. Deeply. And if there was one thing Daniel thought was sexier than anything else, it was someone who cared.
“Reward, please.”
And considering she’d practically moved her study lounge to a ruddy wooden workbench in the garage where he worked, he’d had many opportunities to take in that quiet sexiness.
“A reward?” he asked, smirking down at the fried engine of a now-extinct Italian sports car with a logo so rusted he couldn’t tell it from a Porsche. “And what did you do to earn that?”
“I read an entire page and a half, thank you very much.”
“And how many pages do you have to read before your lecture tomorrow?”
She sniffed and turned onto her back, laying a thick book with an uncracked spine across her chest. The struggle against ogling the rise and fall of her breasts in a delicate white top was almost irresistible, but resist it he did. “I really don’t think that’s relevant.”
“Well, then, I really don’t think a reward is relevant.”
